7 Quick Takes: 29th october

1. I can't believe that it is a whole week since we left for our weekend in Budapest. Where has the week gone?

2. Down a black hole, is the answer. I went down with a headachy-weak-and-wobbly virus that Tevye had a couple of weeks ago, which wiped out Monday through to Wednesday. I was at the record office yesterday, and so here I am at Friday with a whole week disappeared. Unfortunately the laundry mountain, and the rising tide of clutter, dust, dirt and stickiness have not disappeared with it. They are taking over. Tevye and I are planning to spend tomorrow digging out from under.

3. It is an old story, but I just stumbled across this article by a mother who let her nine year old son ride the New York subway alone. As my parenting style is the "independence" mother, and my children have walked to school at nine, caught the bus on their own at ten and the train at eleven, I'm pretty much on her side. However, unlike the free range mom (who gave her son money for a pay phone if he needed it) the mobile phone is my friend!

4. Cherub is happy as Little-Friend-N is here for the day. They haven't seen so much of each other recently due to different schedules this term, but clicked right back into their old play mode as soon as N arrived. She is forming a couple of rather tentative friendships with little girls in her school class, but her friendship with N is on a completely different level. They are very much on the same imaginative wavelength - great fun to watch and listen to. (Aside: She was very aggrieved recently when I refused to phone and ask on her behalf if N would marry her.)

5. Angel is at the gym all day for a coaching course which will give her a provisional qualification and mean she can earn money as a gymnastics coach. After a week stacking shelves at a "health and beauty" store for work experience, she is now extremely motivated to work part time at the gym rather than in a shop!

6. Star has just informed me that it is now 56 day, 13 hours, 24 minutes and 45 seconds to Christmas.

7. I have just informed myself that it is 11 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes and 45 seconds to the release of the next Harry Potter movie. Anyone else looking forward to it? Unfortunately we will have to wait a week or two before we can see it as the release coincides with my mother's hospital stay and squeezing in a trip to the cinema just isn't going to work.

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