Bernard’s body seems to have settled down, with occasional exceptions which do seem to be related to tiredness. We’ve had three weeks in a more regular routine now that he’s in preschool every weekday. He has discovered the wonder of flow charts.

I say more talking, but I mean more reading and writing – it just doesn’t sound as good. A little while ago we unearthed a packet of Letterland flashcards, inherited in a bag full of toys from someone somewhere [i.e. not something I would buy]. These proved reliably entertaining for quite some time, with the added bonus that the boy learned all his letters, upper and lower case. I don’t know if he does much with letters in preschool, but in the last few weeks he has suddenly exploded into reading and writing.

I secretly chuckle when we’re at Alice’s house and Bernard is trouncing Stan on the Speak&Spell.

The Small Boy seems to have a small range of involuntary movements of the head and arms. If you google that term, you find a plethora of possibilities ranging from the benign [many children have tics, they grow out of them] to the truly malignant [which I am currently not giving brain-space to]. Somewhere in the middle is Tourette’s Syndrome, and if you have any idea what that’s like then you know what I am seeing.

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The sky and the weather forecast are both full of snow, but none is actually falling at present. This raises the question: should we travel to South London today to see friends, favourite friends who we all enjoy being with, for a date that has already been postponed once?

In favour: I get to talk about knitting a lot, and knit a lot, and probably collaborate on some finishing off (we like to weave in each other’s ends, which sounds a bit kinky, but isn’t). Pete gets to talk about techie stuff. Bernard gets attention and company. We get to hear about Pix’s trip to Singapore and eat sausages. We get out of the house properly after days of being trapped by snow.

Against: while the snow may at this point be something we feel we can cope with, if more falls and we get stuck out there, that won’t be pretty. We don’t want to spend hours and hours getting home with the boy.

I say we are trapped by snow, but in truth we’ve all been out and about a little bit. Bernard gets put out every now and then to run around and fling snow at the garage door. Pete made it to the office on Friday. Yesterday I taught an antenatal class in a village hall on the other side of town, where the car park was inaccessible and there was hazardous ice around the doorway. It would just be nice to see real people and get a proper change of scenery. Although all the scenery is white.

The sheer quantity of snow is impressive. Bushes in the garden are bent flat, and the back door, which opens outwards, is reluctant to do so. Next door they have three identically-dressed grandsons in the 8-10yrs range, visiting from Australia. They and their parents were building snowmen at ten o’clock last night.

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