Sunday I went for another run. Go me! For some bizarre reason I have applied to enter the Eastleigh 10 km race and CS1 suggested that I should try and run the route. I was thinking more like “down to the park and back”. But as I set off I thought “let’s give the top loop a go” (the Eastleigh 10 km race follows a figure-of-eight route round the town). When I got back to the start point I was feeling OK, so kept going, and did a fair part of the bottom loop before cutting back to CGF’s. I measured on Google Maps (because I don’t have any GPS-smart-phone-shout-at-you-while-you-run doodah) and it came out as 8.75 km. Which is probably at least 9. Non-stop! I’ve never run that far before. I have no idea what 9 km is in miles – probably about 16.

On my run I passed a mother and two teenage children who had bought a takeaway coffee from Costa. The boy had finished his and was looking for somewhere to deposit the cup. “No,” said mother, “you can carry it home and put it in a bin there”. Which I thought was excellent anti-litter advice. What is it about a cup that makes it easy to carry while there is coffee in it, but too heavy once it is empty?

Over Christmas, we were playing a trivial pursuit type game. YY read the question: “what animal is a model of flat”, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. We wracked or brains for a while, until someone else looked at the card. It was FIAT.

CGF and I went for a walk along the river and saw a kingfisher. When I say “saw a kingfisher” I mean a flash of blue streaked past and I said “oh, that was a kingfisher”. I’ve always thought that stretch of river was an ideal place for a kingfisher, but that’s the first one I’ve seen there.

We were shopping and one of the shops had a selection of Star Wars themed souvenirs tat. “Oh look”, said CS3, “light sabre pens”.
Seeing a wind-up opportunity, I replied “which ones are those? I’ve never seen Star Wars so don’t know what a light sabre is”.
CS3 believed – though was somewhat incredulous – that I didn’t know what a light sabre was, and pointed out the pens.

When we got home, CS3 showed me the pencil case she had bought. Furry, and with a ruler with the word “Chewie” printed on it.
“Oh, “I said, “Chewbacca!”
“How do you know who Chewbacca is if you don’t know what a light sabre is?” came the, not unreasonable, question.

This song came on the radio. CS3 demonstrated that she is developing a good memory for music by instantly recognising it as “the song where the video is a parody of Cinderella”.