Clarissa et al.

Well, it dawned very brightly here, and should be dawning shortly on Gabriola Island, BC.

Here is the bride - admittedly as she was 53 years ago, but appropriately dressed, from when she was a bridesmaid at my parents' wedding. Today Shelagh Barbara Huston marries David Michael Soy at the Gabriola Commons, witnessed no doubt by her daughter, son-in-law and two grandaughters, parents, seven brothers and sisters, their assorted children and grandchildren, and a huge motley crew of friends and relatives - and that's just the Huston side! I assume David knows what he is letting himself in for, and I assume he too will be surrounded by friends and relatives.

So, here's to a long and happy life for them together!

Today is my uncle and aunt's diamond wedding anniversary.

Sixty years which have given Dr. Peter and the Rev'd. Barbara Huston eight children, and an ever increasing number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sixty years which started in England, on briefly to the USA, then Canada with long spells in various of the trouble spots of the world - Vietnam, Bangladesh, Somalia - to name but three.

Sixty years in which they have given a great deal to a great many people - love, support and laughter to their extended family and the same gifts to countless strangers, along with in many cases the ability to go on with life and even the gift of life itself.

May today be a joyful one, and may there be many more such days to come.

Today is St. George's day. It is also the day of the first London Marathon in several years in which, so far as I am aware, nobody I know is running - from Peter (the fastest and oldest) not so much slower than the elite athletes, to Roger (the slowest) not all that much ahead of the man in the diving suit, they have braved what I wouldn't consider in a million years, and I salute them for their courage. (I also commend them for their sense in not having another go this year.)

The gardening season is upon us. Jess and I have planted a bed of ornamental grasses at the top of the garden where it is very, very dry and chalky (as opposed to just very dry and chalky elsewhere) and nothing else seems to grow much. I have planted out my jerusalem artichokes, the asparagus is coming up, and father is mowing the lawn. The spring flowers are beautiful, though very late this year. Except when it falls in March the daffodils are usually only a memory when we decorate the church for Easter; this year they were plentiful. The trouble is that they all seem to have flowered at once instead of the different varieties in succession.

These are the daffodils we planted on the road side of the hedge which make quite a show. Mind you, though we do well here in Swallow with our roadside daffodils, you should see Rothwell's daffodils and Cuxwold's snowdrops, primroses, and celendines!

Narcissi, Cowslips in the lawn, Anenomes and Grape Hyacinths

It is gone midnight. I have come to the end of an exhausting evening.

Yesterday Jessica decided that she was too old for Peter Rabbit and that it was time she decorated her bedroom in a more mature style. To be fair, she is absolutely right on this point and the Peter Rabbit soft furnishings etc. have served her and her brothers well for the last twenty years. She was equally clear (an avid watcher of Changing Rooms and the like) that she could do the job. To this end she bought paint and a border, and to be fair the painting isn't at all bad, but what nobody bothers to explain to the gullible novice DIYer is all the preparation that needs doing before you even start to paint.

This morning the boys helped her drag her furniture out on to the landing (access to all bedrooms rendered nigh on impossible) and, without so much as washing the skirting boards they set to work on the painting. They also hadn't hoovered the floor or even lifted the stray socks, knickers, My Little Ponies etc. which appeared from behind and under the wardrobe, toy cupboard, chests of drawers and so on, but spent the day trampling over them. They didn't even strip the bed or empty the drawers, cupboards or shelves. There was at least a week's work sorting the out-grown toys and clothes into bags for disposal to smaller cousins, jumble sales and the bin before anything should have been done to the room. It is no wonder that Helen and Glen washed their hands of the whole affair and left their children to it (not that they are that much better themselves).

None of this really impinged upon me until the afternoon when Jessica phoned to say that the paint had run out and ask me to take her to B&Q.

Muggins did.

They finished the painting and stuck on the border.

Another phonecall from Jess. The boys had abandoned her to do the boring tidying on her own now the fun bit of the painting was finished, and she couldn't lift things on her own, and Mummy was about to kill her if it wasn't all sorted by bedtime.

Muggins went.

So that was six to nine of a fun evening sorted out. Not just lugging furniture about and helping to sort the room out, but washing emulsion paint out of the children's clothes and Jessica's duvet and pillow cases before Helen found out.

I now find out that the boys had not only abandoned their sister, but had also abandoned a remarkably large assortment of brushes, rollers and paint trays all covered in paint and all outdoors. Now, I am of the school of thought that thinks that a tool (like pets, friendship, marriage and, where possible, decorative schemes) is for life, and I couldn't leave the poor things to dry out and have to be thrown away so I took them home with me to wash in the sink.

Sluggish at the best of times, the drain blocked! It did not respond to plunging. Father had to take the waste pipe apart. He had to use rods down the drain outside. That's nine till eleven of a fun evening taken care of. I have just finished mopping out the cupboard under the sink and replacing the vases, candles, cleaning cloths, and all the catfood that hadn't become soggy in it.

Midnight, and the end (D.V.) of a fun-filled evening chez Lissa!

Have I mentioned that we are into a six week period of significant birthdays and anniversaries (mainly family) following one after another at the rate of two or three a week! It started with Jenni entering her teens and will wind down as Jessie turns 12 (not terribly significant compared with some of the others), covers a couple of eighteenth birthdays, and a sixtieth wedding anniversary - to name but a few.

Last night it was the turn of Nicky Madden (wholly unrelated) to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. The actual day was a couple of weeks back, but she held back the celebration until all her children could be at home. And the girls had certainly gone to town on the decorations! The theme for costume was 'ethnic' and they had decorated each room of the house as a different continent!

Photo to answer Liz's question

The photo was taken by Mike (whose surname I don't know) who very efficiently e-mailed about 40 pictures this morning to everyone at the party who gave him an e-mail address.

As a prelude to the Easter break we had our termly staff meeting on Friday.

We spent the morning in various activities, dicussing open and closed questions and various ways of making sure the children get the most out of their days at the museums. One 'team building' activity was dividing into two teams and making a moon shelter to protect 4 people from dangerous UV rays using three garden canes and an oversized dustbin bag. The point was a bit lost as two of the new EAs have dropped out before starting and the remaining one couldn't come until the afternoon as she was supply teaching in the morning, moreover two of the regular team were also not there (one on holiday, one supply teaching) which left a very small team to team build. So we problem solved by interpreting the lunar landscape - we used lunar boulders(chairs and a table to support the H frame over which we put the slit open bag, while the others decided that they were huddling in a crater and had strtched the bag over the top and weighted it down with rocks. Each team suggested that in real life we would have sought the other team out and pooled resources.

In the afternoon I taught the others the new Florence Nightingale outreach and we had the regular business of the meeting.

Then on Sunday, I did my final workshop of the term at Normanby Hall where I taught butter-making. Last year the 30 places (2x15) were all taken and people were being turned away. This year (possibly due to the miserable weather, possibly due to being the first proper open weekend of the season, or possibly due to the £2.75 each taking it over the £5 mark for two children) there were very few takers, just 1 (an adorable and bright 2 year old called Harriet) in the first session and 6 (mixed aged 5 to 12) in the second. Because I had bought the cream I let them make a reasonable quantity of butter each so instead of taking the 1-2 ounces each of last year, they all went home with a substantial pieces around the 6oz mark. But it was not the money-spinner for the museum that it should have been - in fact it will have lost money, which is a shame.

Now I shall take my butter-milk and use it to make today's bread, and I shall eat the first slice with the tiny butter-pat I brought home with me yesterday. Then I shall use my left-over four pints of cream to make several large tubs of ice-cream.

Josh turned up this morning with a very realistic looking plaster cast (actually horse bandages over white wadding of some sort) on his arm and a story of trampolining in the dark! It took father in completely, (and his Grandma Thompson who gave him £20 to cheer him up!!!) but I caught the edge of a smile exchanged between him and Jacob so wasn't fooled.

They went on to create a fake e-mail from a Wing Commander A. Gowke about keeping livestock in beteen 11.00 and 12.00 because of low flying sorties over Lincolnshire, the print-off of which they were going to show to Grandad Thompson, Dad, and any dog-walker, horse-rider or falconer they might come across on their farm!

Josh is a good actor and Jacob is pretty dead-pan when he needs to be. They are both, of course, seriously wicked!

I just got a a letter from a lady who is also descended from the Thomas and Ann Coulbeck, and Richard and Eliza Appleyard - she is my grandad's second cousin twice over, so she is my 2 x second cousin twice removed and Liz's third cousin twice removed (just the once so far as I know) - anyway she has two generations of Coulbecks and their wives with maiden names I haven't got beause I never got round to looking in the Waltham registers - I will have to check as I don't know the methods of the other distant cousin who did the research she is using, but it could be significant; on the other hand there are mistakes in the later generations so I'm not holding my breath, but a visit to Lincoln seems indicated.