The new nursery

Not a lot happening here in London at the mo, apart from the good news that
our granddaughter Mini has settled into her new nursery very quickly this
week. She took to it like a duck to water. We all trooped round to the nursery
yesterday afternoon at 3.30 to collect her, when Mrs C and I were introduced
to the staff ... three really lovely, cheerful women.

I would have been very pleased to be a child there myself ... instead of an
utterly horrible experience I had at the nursery I attended, where the woman
in charge rushed in one morning brandishing a carving knife, threatening to
chop our heads off if we all didn't stop crying. Well we weren't crying all
the time, just when my sister and I saw my mum and dad kissing each other
across the road when my dad set off for work on his bicycle. We waved but
they ignored us. I felt abandoned. So if people tell me they had a miserable
time at boarding school as children, being cut off from their families, that's something I can relate to.

In the afternoon, I watched the BBC biopic on Enid Blyton, one of my favourite
authors when I was a kid. It was on BBC4, so it's likely to be shown again on
BBC1 or BBC2 some time ... I can recommend it to you. Helena Bonham-Carter was
in the lead role. Here's what Stephen Adams of The Daily Telegraph had to say
about Enid's troubled personal life ... http://tinyurl.com/m5lgf4


Later that day, my almost-son-in-law J invited me out to his favourite local
pub in S. Wimbledon, where we had a fun time drinking beer (mine was a draught
Caledonian bitter, Deuchars IPA, which was very nice), and playing pool ....
my first game of pool ever! Well, I have played billiards as a teenager with schoolfriends, and I watch snooker on the telly from time to time. I felt
a bit "rusty" when using the cue for the first time in ages. Despite playing
some crap shots including a few total misses, I did manage to pot quite a few
balls and managed to win one game (playing against J who plays pool a lot).

Tomorrow we're heading over to Wansdworth Common to meet up with a couple
more relatives, C and E. E is expecting a baby boy early next year, and we're
taking around bagfuls of baby clothes for her (from her cousins). I took lots
of photos at their wedding in Derbyshire a year ago .... how time flies.