21. Parking beautiful

Fridays and Saturdays seem to be getting the better of me. It seems that I either I find it difficult to place a sticker or I find it hard to find time to blog about but. Or both. So this is a bit randomly on a parking meter on Chatsworth Road. At least I will be able to see how long it stays. I am disappointed to realise that the one at church has already gone. I think our new caretaker is a bit keen!

20. Late night beautiful

Mmm. Sometimes it seems to get really late before I have left my sticker. I thought I might try to leave it in the lovely Chats Palace tonight at Lindy Hop. But it's always tricky to be unobtrusive. So it's on a no entry sign inside our house. Bit lame. But at heady the first one, at work, is still there in the lift. Yippee!

19. Beautiful street art

There's a bollard on the way to school. It's got a round bit at the top which ages ago someone made into a face by adding a pencilled in mouth and eyes. On our way passed yesterday we noticed that an abandoned bobble hat had been placed on top making it even more like a little person. The addition of a sticker seemed a no brainer.

18. Educating Beautiful

Aha! I got another one in at school :-)

Feel a bit guilty about it because I lead a student astray. I spend half an hour each week doing one to one reading help with a lovely Turkish boy. I am amazed how he, who spends all his life speaking and reading in another language and another alphebetic script, can even speak English, let alone read it. But of course it's a bit of a struggle for him and hopefully an extra half hour a week with someone who thinks he's brilliant and can make some fun out of those annoyingly difficult English words will give him the boost he needs to keep up with his classmates.

We meet in the staff room. And when we came across the word 'beautiful' today in our book I couldn't resist the urge to show him my stickers. 'You are beautifull' I told him. 'Shall we leave that message here for your teachers to find?' He didn't question my sanity nor the legality of such an act. We just found an appropriate place together to stick the sticker and then we got back to Duck in the Truck. Magic.

17. Not so beautiful Westfield

Went to Westfield rather guiltily with R for a coffee. She had to get her rubbish Blackberry fixed (again) whilst I (unusually) extolled the virtues of the rival iPhone. But it was nice to sticker together - otherwise Lent feels a bit lonelier than Advent. But maybe that's OK. I guess it's meant to be.

16. Beautiful daughter

Our eldest turned 11. She wanted a swimming party. After years of the noise and chaos of treasure hunts inhabited by pink, glittery, screaming girls this is a whole new deal for us. Several girls arrived (and left) without their parents. When she realised that the one friend who wasn't such a strong swimmer had an ear infection and was not coming she said to me 'Now you don't even have to come Mum!' They were calm, quiet and perfectly civilised. And so kind. When they realised that one of the group wasn't so keen on going on the slide, or in the deep end, they quietly (and without conferring) rearranged themselves so that one of the others would always be around to hang out with her. They shared, waited for each other, encouraged each other and bigged each other up. It was an absolute pleasure to hang out with them.

We talked about the sort of birthday cake she wanted. She realised several of them had given up various things for Lent - chocolate, pepperoni and cocoa being among them. So, she reasoned, she couldn't have a chocolate birthday cake. That would be unfair to those 'fasting'. She hit upon rice krispie marshmallow cake (though her own credentials as a vegetarian are more than compromised when it comes to marshmallows!) which seemed like a winner all round. But of course both of us had forgotten the party was going to be on a Sunday which as the traditional 'feast' day of the week has not usually been counted in the 40 days of Lent. Pepperoni was back on the pizzas, chocolate party favours were not refused and the hot chocolate on the bus went down a treat!


(The pic is rather randomly placed on a baby change unit at Britannia Leisure Centre. But it's quite a nice reminder that once my 11 year old was a baby who I didn't strap into such things. Does anyboday do this??! And it won't last long if last week's one at Kings Hall is anything to go by. It's a bit depressing when I find out that a sticker has been removed...)

15. Beautiful community

We had a spring clean yesterday at church. The Round Chapel is used by so many people over the week. This is great but it does mean it gets rather trashed. We were few in numbers but keen in spirit and though N & I had to dash off twice to deliver and pick up K to/from two different parties we both did a bit of window cleaning which is always do good for the effort:result ratio!!

There were a few hairy moments - one when I spotted N up the top of the longest ladder I have ever seen and one when I felt a bit stranded on the outside window ledge as I wondered if anyone would hear that I had finished and wanted to get back in!! But it was lovely to walk into a much cleaner and brighter church today. Probably should do a spring clean more than once in a blue moon!