Sorry, sorry...

Where did that last month go? Apologies (once again) for the lack of posts. I sit here, pathetically sniveling my way through a cold kindly donated by an infant, and trying to remember what's been happening recently. The Husband and I have been to Madeira with my parents - more on that in another post. I have a notebook from the holiday filled with cryptic notes to myself. 'How to smuggle lizards,' is one scribble. 'Giant ship in wicker shop,' is another. Give me a few days to decipher them and I'll go into more detail.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Son Number Two has been wanting to learn to play the keyboard. He's already the owner of four guitars, but has decided to try something new. Thinking a keyboard would be a bit big to bring home on the college bus, I said I'd meet him in town with the car. Just as well. I had been picturing one of those keyboards that's a couple of feet long. Wrong. It was actually a digital piano. (Call it a keyboard at your peril.) We had to fold the car seats down and will have to add an extension to the house. Son Number Two says that learning the keyboard piano will be fairly easy as it's like the guitar. I can't see that myself, but the guy in the music shop agreed with him, so what do I know?

Son Number One has caught the golfing bug and has been to a driving range a couple of times (is that what it's called? There seem to be as many stupid made-up words in golf as there are in cricket. Honestly, I don't have a clue what anyone's talking about around here. When the males in the family took up cricket and were discussing silly mid off and square legs, I thought they were having me on.)

Last weekend was not the best. Son Number Two is trying to decide which university he wants to study music at, so we went to an open day at Derby university on Saturday. We drove for three hours through the rain, attended a pretty lacklustre presentation and came home again. Sunday, we went into our nearby town to do a bit of Christmas shopping. After traipsing around for a couple of hours (and, yes, I bought some books), we returned to the car where we dumped the bags in the car boot. The Husband threw his coat in, too, and slammed the boot shut. Yes, you knew it, the car keys were in his coat pocket. I resigned myself to making a phone call that Son Number One would never let us forget. 'I'm on my way,' my smug son told me, 'and tell Dad he's an idiot.' Which I did. When Son Number One shared our misfortune on Facebook, I reminded him that we'd had to rescue him, once, from the same car-park. He and the girlfriend of the moment had returned from an evening out, to find the car locked in the car-park. Going back the next day to retrieve it, he found his car was the only Skoda in the middle of a Mini convention. 

Too right...

And I got my first assignment back from my OU religion course. I scored 74, which was not brilliant, but I got some good feedback, so now I know I like my tutor. 

It's good to be back at school after my week away. I missed the children, and the daft things they do (and make us do). I was in a younger class this afternoon, where we were meant to be making Roman mosaic pictures, but ended up doing an impromptu version of Strictly Come Dancing. I only scored 2, it was most unfair. I tried to appeal to the judges, but they weren't having it. I hope the class teacher isn't reading this. 

Anyway, I will try to work out what my holiday scribblings say, and will hopefully not take another month to get back to you.