Stillness

We didn’t visit Didsbury Makers Market this month (nothing unusual there) partly due to laziness but also due to being invited to join the family for lunch. We met up in Cheadle and enjoyed some delicious Lebanese food.

<ph Martha with cap

Martha was still proudly wearing the cap she was presented with at the T20 match. Shazam let me down a bit, being unable to identify the music being played, Lebanese (I think) interpretations of popular western songs. Potential fodder for the radio show.

Liesel and her Mom started packing in earnest for their upcoming trip. Clothing for four seasons might be required so you can imagine the size of their cases.

We picked the children up from school and walked straight home on this occasion. It was threatening to rain, and we recalled the days when, if it were raining as we walked home from school, the children would walk slower and slower. No longer, thank goodness!

Indoors, Martha, with Oma’s help, made an earring holder from an old picture frame and some wire mesh. A very clever concept. Meanwhile, William was concentrating on his Minecraft-themed craft activity, gluing a million very small pixellated tiles to very small templates.

After we’d wolfed down some pizzas, Martha was scheduled to play in another cricket match but this was cancelled when the rain became too hard. Before that point, she and the team had a spot of practice.

Did she hit the ball hard enough to smash a window in that nearby house? I couldn’t possibly comment.

Well, that’s two out of the three grandchildren, where’s the other one? Very civilised, Keiran took his Mama and Dada out for breakfast.

Very nice breakfast at SeaSprout, Freshwater, a good choice of venue!

Liesel and her Mom flew from Manchester to London Heathrow, the first leg of their journey back to America, specifically to Seattle initially. And despite setting Google Maps to take me straight home, I still managed to miss a turning. It often happens. I’m not consciously aware of being emotionally challenged after such an airport parting, but maybe something is going on in the depths of the grey matter.

So I arrived home too late to join the regular walk around Northenden, but I went and joined the gang for a coffee anyway.

I wandered over to Wythenshawe Park to join that organised walk, but somehow missed everyone. I didn’t even have a coffee here before wandering back home again.

The soundtrack to my stroll was partly traffic, and partly birds singing, but nearer home, we just enjoy the sounds from the building site: diggers, pile drivers, excavators, pneumatic drills, lorries, generators, compressors, bulldozers and who know what else? Very loud, very rhythmic. And so a joy to have our windows open at home. Still, it’ll be nice when it’s finished…

Liesel and Leslie enjoyed their adventures with Holly and Pat (Holly’s Mom) in Washington state, USA, jetlag not being a big problem. They visited Lynden, Fairhaven and, by boat, Friday Harbor on San Juan Island (one of the San Juan Islands).

I’m not sure whether they had dinner or supper that night, given that in the afternoon they consumed ice creams as big as standard sized human kidneys (I imagine).

Another day, another cricket match. This time, the venue was the home of Stockport Georgians Cricket Club, which is a lot further from home. Both William and Martha got in some good training, even though William wasn’t playing.

Martha had a good game, scoring two boundaries, bowling and fielding well. Her team, Cheadle Cricket Club Under 11s Lionesses won the game.

We’re in for another heatwave but that didn’t stop several of us from joining the walks. I do like the sunshine but when it’s this hot, I do like walking through the woods, and keeping to the shady side of the street where necessary.

We were a small but perfectly formed group this morning, as we strolled through Wythenshawe absorbing 27° and appreciating the half-hearted breeze that appeared from time to time.

In other news, I have put together a couple of radio shows, and I’ve sorted through and recycled several piles of paper. Sometimes, indoors, I can hear a little bird above the sound of the building work. I think it’s some sort of small finch, but my Chirp-O-Matic app insists it’s a woodpecker. There is a queue of stuff to dispose of and that’s my aim, to complete that task before Liesel returns. I’ll try not to leave it all until the day before.