The sleepover Friday 22/6/12

Wake to another soggy morning, the rain is bouncing off the garden table and squally winds are buffeting the hedges. Make smoked salmon and cream cheese on rye toast for breakfast with my usual black Italian coffee. I have Louis and Alice, to stay overnight, whilst Sarah attends her graduation ball in Huddersfield with her boyfriend, Richard. Once her insurance comes through, she will be starting in business as a fully qualified podiatrist, doing supply teaching to make her income whilst the clientele grows. I am meeting her for coffee in Beverley at eleven, so after washing and dressing, drive to Cherry and take the dogs out for Pip. It's too wet for the Westwood so they have to stay on the lead and patrol the village again. They seem to understand and walk nicely on the lead and toilet on the grass, which I collect and deposit in one of the bins near the duck pond. Fortunately the rain has eased to the odd spot and I don't need the umbrella. I collect Sarah, as arranged and we wander through town to the Orange shop, her contract on her IPhone has ended and she resists the temptation to upgrade her phone and moves on to a tariff that saves her fifteen pounds a month. Afterwards we have our coffee in the Costa cafe on Toll Gavel and chat about her business before walking back to her house in North Bar, where my car is parked. She has to get ready for the ball and I have a few things to do before collecting Louis at three fifteen. When I get home I meditate for an hour and then make cheese and tomato sandwiches, using up the rye bread and the last of the mature Gouda with a pot of tea. It is raining again steadily when I collect Louis from school, but I have a plan, I have his swimming togs in the boot, along with mine and we drive the twelve miles to Hornsea to the swimming pool there. Beverley is busy with swimming lessons. We play for an hour in the pool and then, after we change, make our way across the car park to Sullivan's fish and chip restaurant. There is only one other middle aged couple in there, so we are served promptly and our meals arrive moments later. Louis is starving and eats all his fish and chips and four slices of bread and butter, I eat all mine as well, the haddock is fresh and beautifully cooked and presented. After dinner we walk on the beach for ten minutes or so, but it begins to rain again, so we drive back to Beverley and collect Alice from North Bar. She is a little put out that we have been to Sullivan's but as she finishes school much later than Louis, is placated when I promise to make fish and chips at my house for her. When we get in Alice keeps Louis amused watching a DVD about dinosaurs on my lap top whilst I knock up fish fingers, chips and beans for her in the kitchen. Whilst she eats I set up the futon in the lounge and draw the short straw and have to sleep with Louis in the double bed. We put him to bed around a quarter to eight and it is my job to tell him a bed time story. Since he visited the Natural History museum on his birthday trip to London with Clement, Louis has become obsessed with dinosaurs, which makes a change from Power Rangers. We were all getting bored with them! As ever his story is about Beverley in the olden days when it was a tropical mangrove swamp with a beach onto the sea and dinosaur roamed everywhere. In the story, cave boy Louis is taken out in a canoe for the first time and taught how to fish with a net by his Grandad and Uncle Andrew. Of course he catches a fish and they survive attacks by sharks, crocodiles and pterodactyl, anyway it does the trick and within half an hour we are both asleep. I wake up at ten and get up to talk to Alice but she has gone to bed, so just have a glass of milk and some oaties and read the Guardian on my iPad for an hour before turning in just before midnight.