Well, it's been about a week since my last blog which is all down to half term taking place! Charlotte my youngest (7 years) needed constant entertaining and it was almost impossible to work at the same time, my son Iain (16 years) came down from his care home in Shrewsbury for the week to look at various places he might move into over summer - it will be great to have him back in Cambridge :) He also visited various education placements etc. so it was all very positive. In between all that my 17 year old daughter Sophie kept popping in and out (often with her washing to do) I don't think I've ever seen the food in the house disappear so quickly! I did manage to get down to London on Thursday for the very exciting launch of History Pin, which I shall blog about further soon. But my family come first and I have enjoyed the intense but happy week spending time with them all :) We all went to a friends wedding on Saturday which was held at Whittlesford Church (great medieval wall paintings in there!)  and finished with the reception at Bedford Lodge Hotel singing on the kareoke.
My lovely granny (94 years old)  was back in hospital on Thursday which was sad, she is in good spirits though and she's sitting up in bed and may even be home by the end of this week. It seems she's had a very tiny stroke - but was has emerged is that she may have the beginings of dementia which will give us a new challenge as a family on how to support her best. She seems so normal 95% of the time but is also happily telling us how at night in the hospital little animals keep coming in and eating her grapes, she says they're little black and white creatures, she's also told us how a lady keep bringing her baby on to the ward and putting her baby in a tiny tin... so it is very sad, sometime the things she says are very funny but it is also sad as we know things are changing, as a family granny has always held us all together, cousins, aunts and uncles etc. but it is all changing and it is just part of the cycle of life, we will all pull together to help each other through this time and most importantly help dear little granny.

It is such a beautiful day today that we decided to get up early and make the most of it. We started by going to the car boot sale at Chaplins Farm in Fulbourn, it is a very good size now, having grown over the last several years to become one of the best in Cambridge. We got some plants for our bare looking garden and we were determind to buy some 'car boot junk', so we came home with a Rubiks Magic from the 1980's and a Garfield cat landline phone, again from the '80's, and both still working great. Garfield has now replaced the home phone and I have been trying to remember the trick to the Rubiks Magic most of the afternoon (as you can tell, I am having the day off today :)
We went for an early lunch at the Robin Hood Pub in Cherry Hinton, which has just been refurbished and changed to an 'Eating Inn', It was very different inside now the work has been done but a really really good job, it looks such a nice place to go now. We sat in the garden and enjoyed our lunch then drove over to the village of Abington, where we had a lovely walk across the beautiful park.
We paddled in the fresh stream which runs alongside the park, which was nice as it is so hot today. We hunted for bits and pieces of old pottery in the water and came away with some bits of old blue and white china which we'll stick on plant pots with plaster of paris at some point, when we've collected enough.
Then we went for a walk over to the pretty little church, there were cows right next to it which I'd have loved to stroke but they wouldn't come close enough. It's such a shame that you can't get into churches now and that most are locked - I know you can go and get the key usually but sometimes you just want to pop in to look around. Still we walked around it, the strange thing we noticed was there were hardly any gravestones at all there - I'll have to find out why.
Then a walk back to the car through this picture postcard village and we drove into Sawston.
We parked just off of the High Street and had a quick look at the newly restored Challis gardens and a peek at Challis House which it is hoped will be a new museum for Sawston some point soon.
We went on to a strange wood at the north west end of Sawston and went for a quick explore, I had flip flops on because I knew we were going paddling but I did a good job of dodging the nettles in the wood :) This was a really odd place, not sure we were even allowed in but there was an open place to get in by. It was very overgrown and seemed unmanaged but strangest of all was the weird old swamp in the middle - it definately looked like a natural traditional looking swamp - not what you'd expect to find in Sawston - I'd love to find out more about this strange place - who owns it, its history etc.
Anyway, we're finishing off the day at home now, so all in it's been a really lovely day :)