Hey Friend,
How are you? You’re not gonna believe this but we’re already half-way through the summer holidays.
Seriously, how did that happen?
I guess it’s passing more quickly for me now that I’m working.
Yep! Let the celebrations continue!
It’s been a long hard slog but, thank God, the best position came along and I feel like doing a little praise dance every day 😊
There is a rather nervous dog in the office which I was a bit concerned about… but I fed him some chicken and we’re all good (I think).
So, back to the summer holidays.
I’d seen an article online about the Perseids meteor shower. The children and I watched it last year and I’d promised them we’d do it again, in the hope that it would be warmer this time around.
It wasn’t.
But we were definitely more prepared this time, getting the blow-up mattress out so we could lay down and not have to strain our necks looking up.
We eventually settled into our spots on the mattress after much fidgeting and nudging. Bubs kept sitting up, fascinated to be on our terrace after midnight.
‘Just lay down and keep looking up,’ I told him, following the advice I’d read to get our eyes used to the dark.
Breaking the short-lived silence, Older Miss said: ‘Gaslighting has been going on for centuries’. I had no idea what she was talking about so, she kindly explained. ‘Imagine some man said “Those four stars there? That’s a bear.” And everyone just accepted it.’
I had to remind the children to laugh quietly while trying to muffle my own chuckles.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t playing ball and the clear skies that I’d seen prior to waking the children up at 11.45pm, slowly began to fill with wispy clouds.
A bright ‘blink-and-you-missed-it’ light passed through the sky, encouraging us to stick it out regardless of the increasing lack of visibility and chilly temperature.
The clouds were passing quite quickly though and this prompted a game of ‘What can you see in the gaps of the clouds?’ (as apposed to ‘what does that cloud look like?’).
Littler Miss decided a triangle-shaped gap was a Dorito which then morphed into a rocket…
Amongst other things, there apparently was a meerkat (which I thought was actually a hedgehog standing on its back legs); a deer bending down to eat grass and (my favourite even though I couldn’t see it) a ballerina being a bad citizen, kicking over a bin.
The night air felt colder as the few patches of sky slowly disappeared. Not before we’d seen a few more flashes of light whizz by. And as we lay there giggling and talking, I knew this was a memory I would tuck away in my heart forever.
After around forty-five minutes, the chill got too much and we ventured back inside just in time – the blowup mattress was silently deflating and we were getting closer and closer to the terrace’s wooden floor.
We didn’t see the predicted ‘fifty per hour’ (or whatever the number was) but the handful we did see were worth it.
It’s still visible tonight and for a few more days this month I believe. If you can manage to stir out of bed in the early hours of the morning, go outside, look up and enjoy the show. Hopefully the night sky will stay clear for you. If not, you can always look for that naughty ballerina…
Speak soon xx
You're not gonna believe this... 