Conkers

In Cambridge yesterday with T1 (my eldest son) we were walking along into the city centre and we passed some conker trees. There were loads of conkers on the tree and on the ground. I immediately started picking some up and thinking wow, loads of conkers and no small boys with sticks!
T1 looked on, slightly bemused then said 'I'm not playing conkers with you, you know', 'why not' I said. 'Because I'm not a small boy and because there is no skill in playing conkers'.
He's right, probably, although I'm glad that I remember being really excited when young about collecting conkers. T1 then said 'I suppose there was nothing else to do in the 70s' which again was true. However he did then reminisce about how we used to collect conkers when he was little and how he had a little plastic wheelbarrow with lots of conkers in it :)
I said that we used to count them for numeracy skills. He looked at me disdainfully.....




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Empty Nest - disrupted and alternative

Today should have been the first day of my 'empty nest'. Both of my sons have successfully gone off to university. This is an achievement that I have been aiming for and working towards for the last 21 years. Well, maybe not the exact goal of university but the aim that 21 years after your first child is born and 18.5 years after the second then they would both be able to live away from home if they wanted to.
So far so good but the only thing is that I have left home too, to go and work at Edinburgh University. So the empty nest still exists at home but I'm not in it all the time.
It has meant that lots of things have changed and I'm not sure how it's going to work out. At the moment everyone is good, apart from the cat is disgruntled as she has had to go to live at my Mum's and just come home some weekends.





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