School Holidays

The school holidays are here, which is both a great pleasure and a bloody chore.

On the plus side, no morning hectricry. And I get to spend lots of time with my wonderful daughter. I'm not being sarcastic.

On the minus side, she has to be entertained. And this has to be balanced with all the things that need to be done which invariably she doesn't want to do.

And her negotation - read argument - skills are becoming increasingly sophisticated - read strident.

So dog walking, which needs to be done, is a chore, since it involves peeling her ladyship away from Kids TV, and the Little Princess is on after Playschool, both of which I secretly like.

Her usual position is that she wants to go to the brook, and I relented in that yesterday, which turned into a bit of a disaster as we went down on foot and as soon as Matilda was off the lead she peeled back to the duck pond to snaffle the breadcrumbs and bother children.

And when we got the two hundred metres up the brook to the playground and had the little play, of course she deemed dog walking to have been completed and decided it was home-time.

In the afternoon though we had a nice time. We went down to the Powerhouse where they're running kids' activities, just to pick up some information and to go to the playground.

The playground was closed, but we spent a couple of hours playing in the park and smelling roses, of all things.

I offered her Shrek today but she declined, inexplicably. She went next door for morning tea with Ben whilst I walked the dogs in the pouring rain.

Did I mention it's freezing cold?