We’ve had a lovely mild day today. Not a lot of sunshine but pleasant to be out and about in. The small boy was dropped off at my house as usual before 8.00am. We thought we might need a trip to A&E as he managed to fall out of his mother’s car on arrival here. However, once he’d got over the shock and refused to have an icepack on his bumped head, he seemed perfectly fine.
By 9.00 we were out on a walk to The Sandy Park, which his his name for the children’s playground with a huge sandpit. At adult walking speed, even going on the convoluted route he decided we were going to follow, it should have taken about 20 minutes to get there. But by the time we had stopped to blow dandelion clocks at various places - thus ensuring the next crop of dandelions around here - and had a look at various bits of the river, and identified numerous flowers, and examined the channels in the old paths intended take excessive rainwater off the main footpath, not to mention his stopping to construct some more mini-dykes with pebbles and gravel - “this is another rainstopper, Grandma!” - it was about 10.30 by the time we reached the playground. And there he entertained himself with toy monster-trucks in the sand. A very satisfactory morning. Had I known, I could have taken a book with me. He needed persuading to leave after about an hour. I was afraid he would run put of energy and demand to be carried for most of the way home. Carrying 2.5 stone of small child is not part of my plan at the moment. But a chocolate lolly from the co-op store gave him the necessary boost to keep going.
Later, when his older sister arrived after school, there was a request to put up the “tent” in the garden. The “tent” is one of those lightweight fabric constructions with hoops and zips that come together to make a sort of play house, complete with a tunnel of the same kind of materials. It has provided hours of fun for small grandchildren over the years and almost the same number of hours of frustration as I try to fold it up to put it away in its storage bag. The idea is to grasp opposite edges of the hoop supports and bring then sharply together with a twist to form a smaller circle which can be safely stored. In my experience you get it almost sorted and it takes it into its head to spring out of your hands, making it necessary to start all over again. So I try to organise things so that my daughter, who has longer arms than I do, is responsible for the folding.
There are lightweight tents of this kind, proper tents for people to go off camping in, not just for children to use for garden fun and games. They are much lighter than the kind of tents we used to use on camping holidays when our children were small. And even those were lighter than the sort of thing I spent Girl Guide camps in. But when I see people equipped with these circular objects arriving at campsites I wonder how easily they manage to fold them. Is that why you see them abandoned in the places where protestors have been camping out over a number of nights? Do they decide that they simply cannot be bothered to struggle with them any longer? Do they just leave them for whoever can manage to fold them up successfully? This is one of life’s mysteries.
We had fine weather. Emilia-Romagna in Italy on the other hand has had floods. The Formula One race at Ferrara had to be cancelled because of the flooding. I wonder if Bruce Springsteen has been able to go ahead with his concert there. Earlier today I saw posts of social media about people having difficulty getting there from Rome by train as services were delayed or cancelled because of the weather. Modern problems!
I came across this odd post on social media, in favour of reading I think:
“Summer camp for adults where we stay in our cabins and read all day and then in the evenings we sit around the fire and talk about our books and eat smores.”
I could enjoy that, even though summer camp,is an American concept and until I looked it up I had no idea what smores were. My guess was that it was some kind of American snack.
So of course I looked it up and found this:
“A s'more is a confection consisting of toasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker. S'mores are popular in the United States and Canada, and traditionally cooked over a campfire.”
Okay! I suppose the name is a contraction of “I want some more”.
And then I needed to know about graham crackers. This is what I found:
“A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour that originated in the United States in the mid-19th century, with commercial development from about 1880. It is eaten as a snack food, usually honey- or cinnamon-flavored, and is used as an ingredient in some foods.”
It went on: “ The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of Sylvester Graham who was part of the 19th-century temperance movement. He believed that minimizing pleasure and stimulation of all kinds, including the prevention of masturbation, coupled with a vegetarian diet anchored by bread made from wheat coarsely ground at home, was how God intended people to live, and that following this natural law would keep people healthy. Towards that end, Graham introduced the world's first graham wafer product. It was a dull, unsifted flour biscuit baked by Graham himself. The sugarless wafers were a key component of the eponymous diet”.
Well, he sounds like a rather miserable kill-joy. I bet he wouldn’t approve of toasted marshmallows and chocolate or even honey or cinnamon flavouring!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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