Wednesday 31st Jul

Well it’s raining pretty consistently this morning, and so I gird up my loins, and out I go with the papers. Not surprisingly given the school holidays and the rain, the streets are quiet. I actually like walking in the rain; it might well make my list of, in the words of Julie Andrews, “A few of my favourite things.”

On my return home I am faced with the eldest’s rucksack from Morocco, and spend the rest of the day at intervals removing, washing and cleaning most things. The joys of being a house husband. On occasion to distract myself I play Mario Kart on the Wii with the youngest. Along with Mrs P the three of us have played quite a bit over the last couple of weeks, and far from improving, I’m possibly getting worse at the game. Certainly Mrs P has quite quickly proved a better driver than me. I’ve never been any good at computer games as far back as Space Invaders and Pacman; it’s probably why I’ve never been very interested in them.

I manage to get the ironing done before Mrs P gets home, and then we go out to eat. It was Mrs P’s birthday at the weekend, and now the eldest is back we can go out to dine en famille. It’s funny how things change, but in days gone by we would just have gone where we liked. Now the decision is influenced by which discount vouchers are available to give us the best deal. In this case it’s the Beefeater, and very nice it is too. Decent steaks, burgers and chickens all round. It really is impressive how much a teenage boy can eat. As a footnote the teenagers spoke to us before, during and after dinner, instead of immersing themselves in phones and ipods, for which Mrs P and I were very grateful. It was almost like eating with grown ups.

Yours looking out for the sun.

Jay.