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Took the kids to their drama club tonight. They are now in different classes which means I get to spend an hour with each of them as the other one perfects their show-off skills.
Phoebe wanted to buy some pritt sticks for school and then saw a Mother's Day card she liked because it had a donkey on it. The card read “Sorry for being such a pain in the…†and then had an arrow pointing at the donkey. But Phoebe didn't get the joke and just thought her mum would like the donkey picture. It's a bit of a self-own, but sweet nonetheless. Phoebe also got a slice of cake and then we dashed round the supermarket and dropped off some dry cleaning- we'd made good use of our hour.
Ernie and me were booked in to get our hair cut and it was a bit of a mad dash to the barbers as the drama club ended at the exact time the appointment started, but it didn't matter that we were late. Ernie was very well behaved in the chair (and when I was getting my hair cut) but that might have been down to the promise of a lollipop. There's something very father/son bonding about a trip to the barbers. When you're little it feels like an impossibly grown-up place (which is probably why the boy was in awed silence) but one also fraught with danger - I remember barbers joking that they might take off my ear and me taking that threat seriously. I used to go to the barbers at the end of Benson St in Middlesbrough with my grandad and recall the feeling that it was some kind of chapel to manliness. The working men of Middlesbrough sat waiting for their turn or getting a shave in the next chair. Now, seeing a 4 year old in a barbers chair I know that their hearts were melting at how cute a sight that is. But back then I sat as still as my son, in fear of the scissors and the laughing men.
We got back to the drama club with a bit of time to spare and so went into the churchyard and looked at the graves of Hertfordshire people who had died about 200 years ago. An 87 year old woman would have been born in the 1730s. I've always been fascinated by grave yards and I think Ernie is too. Though he was more interested in the possibility that zombies would come out of the graves and get us. He didn't seem concerned about it. He sort of wanted to see the zombies. I was confident that the people beneath would stay where they were. They'd not bothered rising from the dead since the 1820s, so I didn't see them starting now.
