Good and bad

Our youngest son came up trumps and bought Alice the delightful necklace shown here, on our window ledge, for Mother's Day. He first went into a "real" jewelers and enquired what they might have in his price range, which unfortunately was nothing since the prices started at about five times the amount he had set aside. But he persevered, successfully searched elsewhere and Alice and I feel he made a very good choice.

Haven't things changed in what seems like such a short time! Alice constantly marvels at the fact that at birth he could fit into my hand and now he is taller than her, and obviously will very shortly be taller than I am. We were delighted when he was born and in the ensuing years we have continued in that mode although to be brutally honest we did have to take a certain amount of care in ensuring that not all toys he was given were actually permitted to be used.

He is now a real emerging person in his own right, and has just gone off on a school field trip investigating the sea and secondary jungle in Malaysia for a week.

This sounds like a lot of fun as they get fairly well "hands on" with all sorts of things and are grouped into sets they are not normally in at school to integrate them into new working groups. Here Maggie Podzemny's fine picture records what they may encounter and shows exactly why I am glad to be excluded from such excitement.

However having pleased us so much with his generous gift for Mum's day he did rather disappoint Alice the following day; mind you I was not expecting anything different. We were at the school at six in the morning and Alistair was straight off to meet his pals. Then on to the coach, and as they drove out Alice was deeply disappointed that he did not look out at us lonely parents and wave goodbye. But at least it was very clear that he was already enjoying himself!