Chickens in a box

At last James is old enough to have his own bike seat and today we celebrated his 11 months in the world with a trip to The Crown and Garter. The boys had a packed lunch with sandwiches, biltong, strawberries and muffins while Eddie and I washed down ploughmans and chips with lager shandy. I am proud to say that William is now a firm biltong fan; it joins pork scratchings - which he also loves - as a snack of choice for the more discerning. Alas the only downside to all this rural bliss, is having to cycle home again... :)

Back downstairs, dripping wet and in my robe after having gone upstairs to check on the boys only to find William slathered head to toe in Sudocreme! Hilarious. And the guilty half-smile on his white face was something else. Getting the stuff off was a total nightmare, I must have used almost every lotion and potion in the shower trying to get it off. He'd even smeared it over his eyes, so you can imagine the howls when I had to soap it off.... A lesson learned the hard way - I will NEVER leave a pot of Sudocreme where small hands can find it. And cover themselves in it.

It's worth mentioning that about 5 minutes after sitting on Ferrari last week, Will's face swelled up so much that it took a full 24 hours and several doses of Piriton before he finally resumed his usual shape. He went a little bit red in one eye after stroking two of the dogs at the yard, but Ferrari sent him into total spin. Horses are clearly an issue! I would still let him sit on one of the ponies again, maybe dose him up beforehand and see what happens. Surely the more he's exposed the more his system will begin to recognise allergens and begin to settle down? The irony for me is that I'm such an animal lover, and I want us to have a dog one day and maybe even a horse, but while William is so sensitive it can't be an option. In the meantime we're going to back to the Quack on Thursday to discuss asthma and try to agree whether Will actually has it or not...

It is SO DIFFICULT. But I absolutely love it. Today I rode Evita, very fast and who turned on a sixpence making it very hard to stay on. Apparantly the secret is to think 'snowplow' and grip as hard as you can. Today I escaped unscathed, but suspect I may be on borrowed time....In the meantime hitting the ball remains very much a case of luck rather than judgement, and it was only in the last 5 minutes I managed to do a whole length of the pitch at a canter, by which time Eddie and the boys had gone in. Typical!