Saturday 19th April 08

A cracking day... up none too early after a reasonably comfortable night on Dawn's living-room floor, and read for an hour or so before making a public appearance in the kitchen where I chatted with Dawn and had breakfast. A quite lazy morning... the only strenuous activity was rebuilding a bit of dry-stone wall that had collapsed in Dawn's garden, which was my first experience of dry sone walling, albeit not a 'proper' dry stone wall, but a dry stone facade wall against a retaining brick wall... just cosmetic really, but looks good.

Sam went to see his Uncle and I had some good chats with Dawny over lunch, then the phone call came from my employer Ali who picked me up in her car. Her five year-old daughter was happy to see me again, she's been 'Professor Fiddlesticks' mad since meeting me at the Sheffield Green Fair last summer. We got to Totley Junior School where the party was to be held and I was introduced to Ali's carers and and her teenage son and friend, and I got changed and got ready to party on.

About 25 children and probably the same number of adults came to the little girl's party, the idea was to help her form some friendships in a new school, help her mum meet some other parents, celebrate her 5th birthday and for everybody to have lots of fun. Which we did do, as usual, the circus show took a full hour with lots of participation, and tea was a traditional spread (apart from what Ali had made for me, which was salad and homity pie, yum!) and then we did the balloon activities, again, loads of fun and silliness. It all finished, as expected, at 6pm and one of the carers drove us all down to the station so I could get my 6.54 train back to York, very satisfied and with payment in my pocket.

I decided to go to Baz's party and was really glad I did. I took a large bottle of perry and some smaller bottles of 'pear cider' (silly name as it is infact perry!) and parked my bike/trailer in the back yard. The party was half Baz's birthday and half Liz's housewarming, so two lots of people got to meet each other and I enjoyed myself immensely, lots of new faces and interesting people, the best social event I've been to for a trememdously long time. Good to have Rob Renegade on decks playing some cool tunes, and lots of folks in fancy dress. I made a dozen balloon models over the evening and they were well received!

Home at 2am! Did blog before going to bed! Needed to sit and wind down slightly....