Space To Breathe

This last week I have had some space to breathe. It's been very good. H was away on a school rifle-shooting trip in Germany for ten days until Good Friday evening and Holy Week and Easter are always  busy work-wise for me but this week we have had time to spend together Not Doing A Lot before rejoining the more frenetic pace of our more normal routines. Not Doing A Lot has included -

1. Getting out and about in the fresh air. 
2. Picnics - slightly chilly ones but still picnics. 
3. Happy companionable hours spent on crafty activities. 

It occurs to me, slightly prematurely, I realise, that the number of remaining extended school holidays when such things are on the cards, is not unlimited and in a few years time they will be potentially gone forever. I know, I know, H is not leaving home yet or starting work at just 14, but nonetheless for some reason this last birthday of his has made me sit up short and take stock and look ahead.

May be it's more acute because H is an only child. Never an easy balancing act getting parent and child bonds right with only children and I have always tried hard to make sure that I never get in the way of H being and doing his own thing but sometimes the mother hen in me does just want to hang on to him and the time we can do things together.

So what I am saying in a rather rambling way is that this week has been precious and although I know the time for weeks like this is not forever, I am glad to cherish it while it is now. So often one hears the phrase "I wish we had ...." or "I wish we were ..." I want instead to be able to look back and say "I am glad we had ..." and "I am glad we were ...". And it's funny how sometimes the most persistent and telling memories are not always the high days and holidays but sometimes the ordinary moments of ordinary days at home.

Moments from this week, that may, in time to come, appear in that category are:

1. Watching a mother swan build her nest on an island in a nearby fishing lake while nibbling Simnel cake on a convenient bench and arguing about the physics of heat loss from thermoses. I shouldn't even try, I know!

This is the father swan - the mother was too well-camouflaged to photograph.

2. The first Spring picnics of the year with tea from said thermos flask and plastic mugs - I always think tea has a characteristic and delicious taste out of plastic - my parents have some really ancient bendy plastic mugs that are I think are a type of polythene and the taste of tea from these is even better than from my not-quite-so ancient blue plastic ones but theirs date from the 1950s and are no longer available on the shelves of John Lewis or Ikea!

This is a basket I bought years ago because I liked the unusual shape and the name - it was sold as "A Lunch Basket". It's hopelessly impractical really because that narrow neck makes it impossible to pack stuff in (or get it out again!). For years it sat in the hall as a container for gloves and hats but it's had a wash and a second chance as a picnic container the last couple of years. So far, so good - so long so long as you can remember how everything went in when you come to repack it which I don't always! 

3. Walking through the bluebell woods at Basildon Park above the Thames at Goring

And remembering the last time H and I did that particular walk at the end of the summer when there were blackberries everywhere but we had no containers of any sort or even suitable pockets that could be commandeered temporarily. Did we abandon the idea of blackberrying? Of course not! But what to use? Necessity is not said to be the mother of invention for nothing and H is good with three dimensional construction - see below - and managed to make 2 gusseted bags folded out of the National Trust leaflet with the joins held together with improvised twig pins. This one held up so well, we saved it and I found it in the bottom of the picnic basket complete with a dried blackberry leaf at the bottom. It's slightly the worse for wear but not much, considering what was asked of it!

Waste paper or handy blackberry bag?! ... 

... it all depends on how you look at things!

The improvised bags proved both remarkably resilient and capacious so although challenged somewhat on the afternoon in question, by it coming on to rain heavily, they held out and we managed to bring home quite a haul of fat purple berries. No blackberries of course this week but bluebells and primroses everywhere.

4. Companionable hours spent at the same table doing very different things. Two pics of different ends of the same table at the same time!

A De Havilland Mosquito Mark 4 under construction here using 2-dimensional plans scaled up and converted into a 3-dimensional model using scissors, black card and UHU. Enterprise requiring quite a lot of skill and meticulous attention to detail as well as a facility with numbers and 3-dimensional conceptualising.

"Summer Has Come From The Sunny Land" Granny Squares under construction here. Enterprise requiring not so much skill, some attention to detail and fortunately no facility with numbers or 3-dimensional conceptualising!

5. Finding new recipes for joint experimentation in the kitchen. Miniature chicken-and-asparagus pies and calzone, you are in our sights!