Having a day out - getting away from it all.

For a while my daughter and I have been planning to take her small daughter to Manchester Museum, one of our favourite haunts. We have taken all her older offspring, who have all enjoyed it on the whole.

Coincidentally her car was due for a service within the next I am not sure how many miles. As this was fewer miles than we are going to cover next weekend when we head south to visit her brother and his family, meaning that the service would be overdue, we thought that this would be a good moment to kill two birds with one stone. Other factors came into play, such as that the garage doing the service could not offer her a courtesy car as they had none available and so she would have to hand about in Manchester until the service was complete.

Consequently she came round and collected me at around 9.30 this morning and off we went. We dropped the car off and stomped across Manchester, skirting the actual city centre and finally reaching the museum late in the morning, no mean feat with a sleeping baby on one level of the buggy and a three year old on the top level. Goodness knows how long it would have taken us if the toddler had had her way and had walked under her own steam. As a rule we are in favour of her walking but as it was damp and drizzly, not to mention windy, we went for the speedy option and put her on the top level of what is a little like a set of mini-bunk-beds on wheels. This is a far cry from the huge pram I remember my mother pushing my younger brother and sister around in when he was a toddler and she a small baby! But still, a heavy load to push across a city.

The three year old was quite impressed with her visit to the museum, despite being rather frightened of the skeletons of various animals and needing some reassurance that stuffed foxes, wolves, lions and tigers were not going to be able to get out of the glass cases and chase us around. On the whole though I suspect that her favourite bit was the museum shop! We were all impressed by the vari-coloured tree frogs.

What impressed me most, however, were several sets of primary school children, some appearing to be little older than our toddler. Dressed in their hi-vis vests, to a man they were attentive and interested and did what they were told. We complimented their teachers on their behaviour.

And suddenly it was lunchtime, indeed rather well past lunchtime. We found a pizza place and fed everyone. Heading back in the direction of the garage, we parted company at Piccadilly station, my daughter to continue on her way to collect her car and me to walk down to Ardwick and speak Italian for a couple of hours.

 An excellent bit of escapism!