My birthday

I am now officially 34 years old. Or 3 + 4 = 7 which is a lucky number apparently, and that’s not happened for 8 years!!

I digress (or just confuse – not sure which). There are a stack of things to be done around the house, or more specifically, the garden, but we decided to not do any of them this week-end and just spend the days doing stuff as a family. As a bonus the weather was fantastic. There’s nothing like a bit of sunshine to brighten the mood.

I got a book with loads of walks around the villages on the edge of London. It includes one for our village which we did recently which was fascinating. So on Saturday we went for a historical walk around Wimbledon Village which was great. We walked all round the village, discovered an old Iron Age camp on Wimbledon Common (of Wombles fame), and discovered the oldest building in the village which is about 450 years old. We were out slightly longer than planned and got home pretty weary after having been walking for about 7 hours!

Then on Sunday we drove into town and explored 18th century London around Buckingham Palace/St James. The highlight for me was probably the oldest wine merchant in London, with 250,000 bottles of booze in the cellars. But the parks looked incredible, we saw some soldiers on horses and Meg pooed into a bag in the afternoon. Our only consternation was when looking at some guard huts outside St James Palace which had what looked like light switches in them – one labelled ‘wet weather’, and another mysteriously labelled ‘black button (with a strip of black tape underneath for dunces). It was another long day, but with such lovely weather it seems a shame not to make the most of it.

After the trials and tribulations of the last few days it was wonderful to be able to spend some time as a three. The weather definitely plays a part, but I feel so enriched to be exploring and learning new things with my girls. I also still get a tingly feeling when I stand in or on a really old place and just pause and think ‘this was built 500 years ago’. I also go off on tangents and wonder what the surroundings would have looked like back then, and who were the people who built it? London is such a fantastic city and doing walks like these really makes me appreciate it more than when stuck in commuter hell during the week.