The Belles

The last few months have been pretty stressful here at the Nell household. All three of my teenagers were sitting exams. I'm thrilled to say that the eldest belle got all her A levels and the place she wanted at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester where she'll study environmental and heritage land management. The middle belle took her english language GCSE a year early and has passed with a C! The youngest belle, who was 14 in May took an extra GCSE in film studies and got an A, plus she took her Biology and Physics GCSE's early too and got B's. Well done to all of them for all their hard work and a large gin for me for having felt as if I'd sat everyone of those flipping exams myself!

Sticky

Everywhere is so hot and muggy at the moment - with the showers and the heat I feel as if I'm trapped in a giant sauna. Today I worked at my day job - I don't usually do Tuesdays but we had two schools booked in at our project so I spent today with fifty plus ten year olds, showing them how their food grows, helping them taste new to them foods and watching them plant and harvest some of our crops. We dodged the showers, got very hot in the polytunnels and laughed when a frog suddenly appeared in a tunnel making them all jump.
Now though I'm very tired! The belles are very busy too at the moment. Eldest dd is on work experience - she was very surprised to discover that this means doing work, but she's enjoying herself. She has also won an award at school for - drumroll - maths. Yes, she doesn't take after me. Middle dd - Miss Boo - has won two awards one for RE and the other one - to Mr Nell's embarressment because you know how much he loves this - Morris dancing. She's going to be morris dancing soon at Birmingham botanical gardens, which reminds me I have to find her a long sleeved white shirt. They said they will supply her with a Baldric - I'm assuming this isn't the guy from Blackadder but is something Morrisy.
Miss La - not to be outdone has just learned she's going to be in the top stream when she starts her new school in September.
Maybe I'll let them off the untidy bedrooms and mountains of laundry and that someone ate all the bread again last night making toast.

Headache

My head really aches today - I don't know if it's the lighting in my office at work or what but this is the second time lately I've had a day in the office and come home with a bad head. Last time this happened at the old job they checked the lights and found the one over my desk was about to catch fire - mmm, maybe I should mention it to someone?
The littlest belle has been trying to find out what she's getting for Christmas. This is the conversation at tea yesterday.
Mr Nell - I hope you're being good or Santa won't visit you.
La - I know what you're going to buy me anyway
Mr Nell - Really? What's that?
La - A guitar - you've been looking on ebay.
Mr Nell - Oh? How do you know?
La - I looked at your browsing history on your computer.
Me - You'd better start deleting that
La - with a shrug - s'okay, I know how to retrieve it.
I'm raising a master criminal.