On Friday Ellie finished at North Marston primary school, and starts secondary school in September. It will be a different world for her, travelling on the school bus everyday, as opposed to just walking up through the village each day, and going to a much larger school. Still, she is really looking forward to it. As ever with the end of term, there was a flurry of activity, including a play which the school did on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was based on Aesops fables, and children had written a number of the scripts themselves. Ellie and her friend Jess had written one on the Town and Country Mouse. They did very well, got a few laughs, and frankly Ellie was the only one who actually acted…. On Friday there was a leavers service at the church, where Ellie stood up and spoke, and then in the evening a leavers party.

For a few years Ellie has wanted a mobile phone, and we have always resisted, saying ‘not until you are at secondary school’… and and so as soon as she finished primary we were informed of exactly the phone she would like. The same model that her friend Jess has… Anyway it’s been ordered and turns up next week. She also wants her ears pierced… this is new ground for us, Nikki never had her ears pierced.

The weekend started on Friday with a curry evening, with Rachel and Alan, Pete and Sara, joining us. Plenty of laughs. Saturday morning, Tricia me and Ellie jumped into the car and went to Bristol, where we met up with Deb, Carlos, Yvonne, Simon, Wendy, Rob, Claire, Derek, and Trevor and Jan, all to see the stage show Legally Blonde. Not entirely my cup of tea, but Ellie thought it was brilliant. Tricia had a catering job this morning, so when we got home Saturday evening she started cooking. I have done a few jobs today, cut the grass, changed some light bulbd that had gone on the car, replaced the rear wiper, and took back the vacuum cleaner I shouldn’t have bought … Just before Tricia and Robbie went away to walk Hadrians Wall the vacuum died. It had been a good servant, and Tricia asked me to replace it whilst she was away. Seems that my choice was not good… even I agreed it wasn’t good once I had got it home. So it has been returned, money refunded, and the one Tricia wants has been ordered.

On Monday the 11th, Tricia and Robbie travelled north to walk Hadrians Wall. They took a train from Aylesbury to London and then on to Newcastle, and then the metro to Whitley Bay. They started the epic trek on the Tuesday morning, and concluded Saturday evening, tired, and in Robbies case, blistered, but nonetheless pleased at their achievement. The B&B’s were good, and the weather was reasonable. Ellie and I picked them up from Milton Keynes on the Sunday 17th. I had taken the week off work, and had planned to do lots of jobs… however, on the Tuesday I started to feel unwell, and by the Thursday I was really under the weather… just a virus, but it really drained me. I went back to work this last Monday, but was absolutely shattered. Fortunately I am now back to myself, but I was somewhat depressed about losing time off work to a virus. Ellie was brilliant, helping round the house, and even doing some ironing. Some photo’s from Tricia’s camera, which packed up after a day… I will put some more up from Robbies camera when I get hold of them. These were from the start of the walk.. as you can see Robbie managed to find a cat to become friends with.

Nikki has been on a bit of a roll lately. She has been in Bath in full time training with the bobseligh team for a number of weeks. Last weekend the whole squad were put through a series of tests, sprints, weights, jumps, pulling a sled etc… she did really well, and pb’d in all the tests. Last Wednesday she flew out to Dallas with the GB squad, all in their GB kit, to spend 10 days at the Michael Johnson Performance Centre. Michael Johnson was the world record holder for 200m up to a few years ago when Usain Bolt took the record, and he is still the holder of the 400m record. Nikki is really enjoying it… and even had some one to one coaching from Michael Johnson himself. Hopefully the rest of her trip goes well. I pick her up next Sunday morning.