After yesterday’s beautifully sunny weather, today was vile, and any chance of us getting the Boy out of doors was stymied by the surprising absence of wellingtons in his huge caravan of baggage. Luckily he was still in charm mode, and accepted our decision that we’d be playing indoors all morning without complaint. R and I tag-teamed successfully, taking it in turns to play the games either we or the Boy devised, or to read books with him.
The highlight of my morning was finding that B absolutely adored Jill Murphy’s Peace at Last, which I bought for him a couple of days ago. Each of Mr Bear’s misadventures amused him more than the one before, and by the end of the book he was almost shrieking with laughter. The highlight of R’s morning may just have been my report that while he was out of the room, and B and I were dancing round the kitchen table to a playlist on my phone, the Boy Wonder suddenly stopped and listened carefully to Ray Charles singing Unchain my Heart, and said, “Thass Grandad!” (Did I mention charm…?)
When it was obvious that the rain had set in for the day, I crept guiltily out of the house via the front door to grab some wet flower photos in the garden, while R and B were busy playing. At the time B was being a monster who lived in a den in the corner of the kitchen and occasionally came out to chase people and eat them, and R was being his victim. B had created the den all by himself, by effortfully pushing together his high chair and a kitchen chair to barricade the corner of the room, and we’d then helped him to improve it with a blanket roof. This game and its variations – one of which saw the victim being ordered to come into the den as well, where he was easier to eat – took up a good chunk of the morning.
After B’s lunch we shipped him and his belongings back over the border, and handed him back to his mother in a car park in the middle of Monmouth. The Boy then continued his Royal Progress around Wales, while R and I returned to the Shire, and collapsed in an exhausted but happy heap.
