Training failure

Brenda flew home from Santander on Wednesday morning. Ryanair's new service has transformed this small airport - up till September it had only been served by 25-seater planes. Now the car park is filled to overflowing - in fact it's not even worth looking for a space, we parked on the grass verge. The queues for check-in and passport control snake round the building. Despite arriving just over one hour before departure time, we were among the last people in the check-in queue, so predictably (for those who know her) Brenda was getting very nervous as the minutes ticked by. It didn't help that I mentioned that I'd seen Ryanair close a check-in desk while there were still people in the queue (in Newquay, now THAT's a small airport). But you know me, I can never resist a wind up. And we know for our trip in December to leave at least 30 minutes earlier.

Jamie and Danny gave her plenty of hugs and kisses before she left, but settled down again happily into their usual routine afterwards. Jamie seemed to have picked up a tummy bug on Wednesday, and threw up in the afternoon. Actually maybe I should rename this blog 'sick bay log', as life seems to be one long year-round succession of colds, flu and tummy bugs in this house, for some reason. She stayed off school on Wednesday afternoon but managed to get to her music lesson ok at 5. She seemed a lot better yesterday, and went to school both morning and afternoon, although she didn't eat a great deal all day. She has rhythmic gymnastics after school and was awake quite early, so I'll be interested to see how she holds up during such a long day.

We decided on Thursday that it was time to start Danny on potty training. They do this at the creche as well, so we arranged it with them and brought plenty of changes of clothes. He toddled off to the creche nappiless and happy, and when we went to pick him up he'd apparently done a few wees in the potty and had only wet himself once. However, back at home he decided he wasn't playing. He refused to do anything on the potty, and managed to wet himself twice and do a no. 2 in his pants in the space of one hour. Oh joy. So we decided to take it a little more gently and put him back in nappies for a while again.

Brenda had some excellent weather while she was here, but it has turned now and is cold, blustery and drizzly. I usually bring the kids to school/creche in the morning, but Carmen had some things to do in the village so she took them today - bad timing as they all had to wrap up in raincoats and boots and struggle against the wind. We will be turning the heating on for the first time today.

I received a cryptic message from Mike Hardman the other day, which when decyphered said that he'd finally bought his camper van. Another long-held dream realised, good on you, Mike. Hope to see you parked in the campsite here soon.

Interesting article in today's Guardian, reviewing a 3-part documentary coming up on BBC TV. "Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion." shame I won't be able to see the docu here, although it will probably appear on Dutch tv fairly soon. Read the article here.