One of those days!

It’s been one of those days. It started (rather earlier than I would have liked) with the discovery that Adam had wet the bed. Our bed. On the side without the waterproof mat. 

My get-up-and-go was definitely elsewhere this morning so we were running late to get to music class. In my hurry, I forgot that the parking app likes to make absolutely positively completely sure that you definitely want to pay for parking and missed the umpteenth ‘confirm’ button, resulting in a bright yellow ticket on my windscreen when we got back. 

We arrived home to find a ‘we tried to collect’ note from the courier company who delivered a completely mashed piece of furniture to us several weeks ago and have so far failed to turn up to get it on multiple occasions. Apparently the voicemail and email we sent on Friday within 10 minutes of their message telling us they’d be here today weren’t enough to get across that I wouldn’t be home. Next time I might try a ouija board. 

Next I checked my email and picked up a reply from the gardening glove company that supplies the local gardening centre. I wanted to know why their leather gauntlet gloves only come in a size so massive that I might as well wear boxing gloves for all the good I can do in them. I received a very polite response informing me that the gauntlets only come in large (er, that’s why I was asking...) and recommending instead the flimsy beflowered ladies’ gloves that reach no further than my wrist. Well, that’s me told. I shall go and do a little light weeding and potting while the men in my life gird their Y-chromosomes and venture forth into the testosterone-fuelled battle against the brambles. When I have finished I shall take up my embroidery until it is time to prepare cold beer and a hearty meal ready for their victorious return. Alternatively, I may temporarily suppress my indignation and pay two and a half times the price for the rival company’s smaller-sized gauntlet gloves and then go and vent my unladylike rage on the prickles. After I have finished my tapestry fire screen. 

To cap it all, as I set about preparing three different lunches while muttering darkly about misogyny in the cabbage patches of Great Britain, I managed to burn my own food just enough to make it unpalatable but not quite sufficiently to justify throwing it out and starting again. I finally sat down, with a grumpy wriggly baby whose mission in life at that moment was to knock my food onto the floor, to discover that my much-needed and lovingly made coffee was now lukewarm and had a skin on top. Blech. 

So there you go. Admittedly the afternoon was less full of catastrophic and infuriating happenings but it has still been a day I am happy to see the back of. 

Time for a cuppa, methinks. 

A Passover Journey

Of all the Jewish festivals, Passover is definitely my favourite. There’s a great story with plenty of audience participation, edible props, bonkers traditions and a lot of singing - what’s not to love? 

This year we decided to get hands-on with the story and talked about what we would take with us on the kind of journey the Israelites made into the desert. 

Food and water came up first, and cups for getting more water from streams. Daniel considered string would be pretty useful, while Adam fancied tools (he got a toolkit for his 3rd birthday recently). After some debate, we concluded that a Swiss Army knife would do as most other tools could be replaced by rocks of various kinds along the way. Matches would help with fire for warmth and cooking (some conversation about alternative methods such as flint and steel, or rubbing two sticks together), while a picnic blanket would provide something to sit on, sleep under and shelter in. Finally, a first aid kit seemed sensible. 

Then we made our own matzah, following the tradition of allowing no more than 18 minutes to elapse between the water hitting the flour and the dough going into the oven, to ensure that no leavening could take place. While it was in the oven, we read the story again, packed everything into our rucksacks, and put on our walking boots. Adam, who had grasped that the desert is hot, sensibly insisted on his sun hat too. 

As soon as the matzah was ready, off we went! 

Our trek took us up the road to the park, followed at one point by some rather noisy Alsations (we decided they were the Egyptian army), whom we escaped by crossing the road (or Red Sea, depending on how you wanted to look at it). There we settled down to a brief and slightly chilly picnic of matzah, hummus and charoset. 

The original plan was to continue to the Promised Land (cafe up the road) for the fabled milk and honey (hot chocolate) but we ran out of time so headed for home, talking about modern-day refugees on the way. 

I can see this activity growing with us and becoming a family Passover tradition, maybe a proper hike in years to come, and hopefully inspiring conversations about refugees that lead into positive action like our amazing friends here. 

The matzah wasn’t bad, either!