What I Did This Weekend - and other thrilling notes

I had my chocolate by the way. In case you're wondering.

So - our weekend went like this....

Scrapped dance classes for various kids in favour of a long and happy family walk. Well Rog and I were happy and the kids took it in turns to be happy while the others moaned generally, complained of welly-related problems specifically, and dropped various aspects of clothing pretty much continuously. Hattie has lost her hat - say no more.

We hastily put the kids to bed in the evening and settled down to watch 'The Hurt Locker' which strangely was already on our cable new releases. I was not at all sure that I wanted to see this but Rog assured me I'd get into the mood for a depressing war-film very easily indeed. And I was gripped and moved in pretty much great and equal amounts. But I hate the title. No-one knows how to say it - is the emphasis on the 'hurt' or the 'locker' or equally on both? How pretentious to give a film a name which even after watching it, one is still no wiser as to what it means! I had to do some online searching to discover the truth. And apparently it's wartime slang for 'a place of extreme pain'. There you go. But as for how to say it, I'm still none the wiser.

Yesterday I took Ed to his riding lesson and made fish pie - that was about the sum total of the excitement.

Actually though, I do love taking Ed riding. It was a beautiful spring morning and the metro trains thundered above us over the viaduct framed by a cold but bright blue sky. The stables are right in the middle of the city with the outdoor arena literally underneath the arches of the viaduct jostling for space between tarmac and scrub. The ponies are deeply unconcerned by the regular rumbling and rattling of the trains - more bothered I think by the drips of water which fall many feet from the iron rafters of the bridge to land anywhere in and around the arena. Sometimes, if it's been raining these drips become something more like a stream. But not yesterday. Spring was in the air even in the city itself and Ed rode tall in his new hat and back protector. I'm not at all sure that this is a past-time I really want to encourage - it's expensive and not ideal I guess for a boy with haemophilia. But Ed enjoys it and I enjoy it too, remembering my idyllic country childhood when I was lucky enough to be able to ride my own hairy, muddy pony every day.

My kids are having a different kind of childhood to the one I had. They're city kids but with the advantage of living near the most glorious countryside - Northumberland is truly breathtaking with a fabulous coastline. They have their Grandma's pub by the sea to visit just an hour's drive away and the beautiful and truly remote cottage up in the Highlands of Scotland where we're planning to spend a few weeks this May and summer. So maybe they have the best of both worlds in some ways. But I do still hanker after that country idyll.

Maybe we'll move someday in pursuit of the dream- if we can bear to uproot ourselves from what really feels like our family home.