Summer afternoons

I remember being one of those kids who could always find something to do in the summer holiday and never wasted time wishing school would hurry up and start again. Not having a TV gave us a wide set of skills for self entertaining. Now our own kids are pretty similar, even though they do have access to screens. So, in the mornings we have mostly been at the riding school which is a fine location for different activities as well as riding, and in the afternoons we have done a variety of stuff as well as hanging out in the paddling pool when the temperature gets too much.

We went to see “El Robo del Siglo” (the robbery of the century) at the cinema. It’s an Argentinean film based on the true story of a bank robbery in Buenos Aires. It’s a good story, and it was nice to watch a film of a genre different from Hollywood plastic. Danny said “I didn’t understand that film. If they’re adults, and adults know that it is wrong to steal, why would they do it?” Fair question.

We rebuilt the Notre Dame! Last year when we visited Paris, we spent a whole day exploring the Notre Dame and really loved it. So Danny chose a Nanoblock model of the cathedral to build. We made it, and it was on display in his room, until a younger member of the household decided uninvited to take it apart. That was when we realised that we should have kept the instructions. I tried to figure out how it went using internet photographs, but my skills aren’t that sophisticated, so I contacted the manufacturer Kawada in Japan to ask if I could have replacement instructions. They said contact a distributer. So I contacted a distributer and they said they couldn’t do that. So I went back to Kawada and we toed and froed a bit until I said this is the first time I’ve bought a Nanoblock model so maybe you could see this as an opportunity to show me your great customer service. And a couple of days later I got a pdf attachment of the instructions to rebuild the Notre Dame for free and for nothing. So for the record I would like to say that when challenged, Kawada and their distributer Schylling have given us great customer service. And the model is really nice. We finished it yesterday. And I saved the pdf.

Danny the other evening appeared wearing long trousers, and a long sleeved hoodie with the hood pulled over his head, and his spiderman mask. Since it was still 37 degrees outside, I raised an eyebrow at him. And he said “I opened the office door and there was a bug and it tried to sting me, and I was afraid it might still be cross with me, so I’m in disguise.”  

Now I’m busy thinking about Scout camp, to be followed immediately by family holiday, leading into team conference, and I realised school will start pretty much as soon as we get back from all that, so I’m trying to be as prepared as we can be before we go away. The last few days we have been gathering signatures on the medical paperwork. This afternoon Joni went to the dentist. I am still recovering. The whole thing was reminiscent of a Horrid Henry story (Francesca Simon has been one of our favourite authors for many years). In fact we decided we should write a new chapter entitled Horrid Henry goes to the dentist, encorporating the line “Horrid Henry’s mum decided that his father would take him next time…”

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