Author Archives: HHaricot

in the circumstances, I shouldn’t really be looking through a keepsake box bound to make me cry – it did. I have a box my dad’s dad used to show me, and the keepsake I have of him and granny. the box is fairly uniteresting, but in it, he kept his momentoes of his father – who died as a merchant seaman when he was very young. he went into a home at that point as did his brother. larer his brother was a transport to NZ, and died there aged 16. in the box is his fathers seaman cards, english naturalisation and letters to his mother. there is one letter back. also flowers pressed from the grave of his brother, sent by the vicars wife to his mother. He had so little of a childhood, and valued these things hugely.

Also various pictures from his and gran’s childhood – some identifiable, and some not. Will flickr these as the canadian family can look and see if they can identify themselves [well, their parents/grandparents] in grans.

i then thought how poor my keepsakes will be. I have both too much and too little.

was great, but no blogging facility in my brain. Hopefully Chris will do it.

here are the photos.

actually, we are probably both not feeling very bloggish, so while SB does jump ahead maths on the other computer, I’ll do a quick blog for posterity.

I loved all of it, there were no bad moments – wellllll, OK, I WAS a bit stressed before my craft as sure it would be a failure, and when an eager beaver child knocked a whole cup of plaster of paris over me I DID have to take some deep breaths! And I guess BB’s constant desire to run away as fast as possible, or lean throuh bridge to see ducks did get a bit much…

There wasn’t enough time, and inertia stopped me from actually being good enough to explore hookups, even though friends there that I wanted to chat to more [sorry]. And to be honest, my life so spiralling out of control at the moment, the opportunity to sit and let it wash around me was very tempting at times.
however, I was really happy to have put behind shyness to introduce new people [though not very good at it!] I loved meeting them too, as don’t want camp to become cliquey – although when you see people you know the temptation is to catch up on life and everything!

i think the crafts worked really well, getting everyone to hook up and have a good reason to say hello and chat. Although no sandcastles made, the beach expedition too was good for non-stressful meeting and socialising, and getting the children all together.

SB was much more into doing the crafts this year as well, so not me doing it by proxy. SB and Big concentrated so hard on their felting – though i do think there was a bit of pride in who stabbed themselves the most! SB made a great basket, and I made a lid for it.

I was proud of SB for learning to make compromises with her friends, and giggled at her hero worship of violet [who bought her a slinky] and her resilience when violet prefered to play sometimes with the older kids. Though also giggle at the various slaves games initiated – i think – by violet.

the africa alive trip was fun – though wouldn’t hand around to see the lions fed again! Enjoyed the swimming – i love swimming! weather was mostly great.

SB danced and sang at the caberet – though BB didn’t. And all children worthy of claps and cheers. Both my girls appeared to have a fantastic time, enjoying the increased freedom of camp, and SB was fairly responisble about it [well, mostly!] playing with a mixture of children and minimal grumps.

Also great was the last minute suggestion by Merry that why not stay another day and go to the beach in lowestoft – why not indeed?

So a perfect week indeed, and now am over initial brain stopping panic of where my life may be going, i can look back on it and think fantastic again.