Public Holiday

I started the day off with a walk all the way up Jacob’s Ladder right from the bottom. It took me 15m45s, not too bad since my first go, a couple of weeks after arriving on the island, was about 19 minutes. And this time I was all alone, with no one encouraging me to finish, so I’m pleased with the effort. I still walked home after that, but didn’t feel too tired and haven’t noticed any stiffness whatsoever. I guess my legs are just getting used to walking. Today was a public holiday, but we still did school (wouldn’t want to deprive the boys of the stimulation), part of which was rolling modeling clay into snakes. This was great fun, but left the table in a bit of a mess, so that prompted a clean-up operation of the house. The boys are really very good at helping. I just have to give them jobs, and they go off and do what’s necessary – usually nothing more complicated than picking up and putting away. For lunch, I put a picnic lunch together and we went to Rupert’s. Since it was a p/holiday, Nick spared some time and could join us, which made it feel more like a holiday (I was very grateful to him). It was great being at the beach. We first sat on the pier and had our lunch there, also feeding the fish with some stale bread. That was great, much better than feeding ducks. There were loads of the little scavenger fish, and a couple of eels, and some slightly bigger fish too. After eating our peanut butter sandwiches, we went across to the beach part, where the boys paddled. The tide was quite a bit higher than the last time we went, so there was less sand, but they were all prepared for the water in their costumes, so they had a marvelous time paddling. Very hot and sunny day, ideal conditions for lunch at the beach. Quite a lot of other people around too, being a holiday. We didn’t spent too long at the beach though, because one little boy about Aaron’s age who had also been paddling with them, was stung by something in the water, we don’t know what, but his hand swelled up and he was in pain, so we quickly pulled the boys out.