Monday 16th August 10

Awake early again as the curtains are far too thin, and I got up and after breakfast went to explore the footpath behind the house, and I found some nice lumps of dry wood which I brought back in case we light the stove on Tuesday evening when it could be cold and wet.

Then Gill and I walked into Mumbles together and had a wander around and did some shopping, and found two greengrocers and a health food shop, a love spoon shop and two charity shops. We spent more than an hour out of the house... and when we got back we thought the boys hadn't noticed that we'd gone, as they were so totally immersed in their DS games. So we had lunch and then had a family conference about what to do with the afternoon. Both the boys wanted to go and play Crazy Golf, as there is a place just at the bottom of Village Lane. So we all walked down and on the way we met a friendly Australian-sounding chap called Karl, who's currently teaching physics but is interested in working in a more creative way, and we immediately hit it off, and chatted for a short while.

I'd never played Crazy Golf before, but the idea is to knock the golf ball along the concrete playing area, past or through the obstacle, and into the hole at the end. This course had about 12 playing areas, all with different shaped obstacles. We all had our own club and different coloured ball, and four score sheets and a pencil. We just totted up the number of putts we each needed to get the ball in the hole, and at the end of the round, we totted up the number of points... and the person with the least had won, and, amazingly, that person was me. Beginners luck!

This was enough activity for most of the family so we came back home. Gill had prepared some tea earlier, a mix of Bulgar wheat, finely chopped onion, mixed seeds and grated carrot, and the middles of the hollowed-out mini-marrows, brought from home. The marrows/large courgettes were stuffed with this and baked with some grated cheese on top. We had this at about 6pm and it was really nice.

Before dark I went to a hedgerow where I'd seen a lot of dead wood and came back with a bag full of lengths of stick, which I may use if we have the stove going sometime.

In the evening I added chopped cooking apple to the de-stoned York cherry plums, and Gill's going to make a crumble with it to take to George and Rhona's.