You know it's been a good day when...

1) You have spent two hours in a library looking at books for mooching with, rather than books for study.

2) Your daughter allows you to read her a poem and expresses pleasure and interest in said poem.

I would quite like it if schools shut on a Wednesday every week. I don't want to completely ditch school altogether, obviously, as then I would not have a job, and I would be unable to keep up the level of patience required for the amount of pottering around at child pace that we have done today.  But to be freed from the time restraints of the school run for a day has been absolutely wonderful.  There has been a great deal of wandering going on.  There was nothing to rush for at all. The kids spent an hour playing spies in the park, an hour looking at books, two hours pottering around their favourite museum.  BabyM and I very much enjoyed the company, especially the bit where we ate chips and cake for lunch with friends (well, I say we, BabyM did not partake). The kids got on like they used to before the shadow of puberty started to loom large over their inseperability.  I am absolutely and completely exhausted, but it has been a golden day.

They now have plenty of reading material, and it seems a shame to send them back to school tomorrow.  But I don't think "they had to read their library books, and the baby and I will miss them" counts as exceptional circumstances.

The poem, by the way, was from A Poet's Guide to Britain by Owen Sheers. I picked it up and opened it at a poem by U A Fanthorpe (one of my favourites) about a place very near where we live.  This was obviously a sign that I should borrow it. It's about Swarkestone, where, apparently, Bonnie Prince Charlie decided he didn't really like England much after all. I very much know how he felt, since I can't drive over that blasted bridge without clipping the curb.  Obviously that was what made Charlie turn back.