Visiting 'the black smoke'...

'Cold Corners' Eva Rothschild. Tate Britain

'Horizontal Stripe Painting' Patrick Heron. Tate Britain

We've had a wonderful holiday lolling around at the grandparent's house, the service was better than a five star hotel and the 24 hour childcare is now sorely missed. During our stay we took Olivia to London for a few days and had a magical long weekend with her. She went on a train for the first time, saw her first dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum, we visited Hope and Greenwood sweet shop, rode the Underground, saw teenagers with green hair and best of all visited Tate Britain. She got tooled up at the art trolley and proceeded to spend six hours skipping from gallery to gallery drawing from paintings and sculptures having the happiest day. It was so cool to share our passion with her and have her enjoy it as much as we do.

"we break up, we break down..."

I am going to write myself a reminder for next December, to not expect to achieve anything... I always forget that this month is spent in a furious hurry and then feel disappointed that I haven't managed to do all the things that I would have liked. It was a relief to break up from school today and have no commitments at all.

Today was a beautiful, sunny winter day, we spent the morning cycling along the beach front singing "We break up, we break down, we don't care if the school falls down. No more English, no more French, no more sitting on the old school bench" at the tops of our voices. A lady walked past and smiled, then turned back to tell us she had been enjoying watching our slow sedate pace, she'd been in town this morning rushing about in a Christmas frenzy and we had reminded her to slow down. I shared my mother-in-law's favourite saying "We're built for comfort, not speed".

PS. Sorry Mrs du Val for teaching Olivia the above song... as much as we will enjoy the holidays I would care very much if school fell down in our absence