An old cardboard moving box + a lot of parcel tape + AC’s ingenuity = one Wardrobe to Narnia! Here it is a few hours later: Yes, I know, it’s very subtle. Unlike C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe, ours lets you know up front that you’re entering another world. The real mystery of our wardrobe is whether or not it will withstand …

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We seem to be in the midst of a “fam-demic”: on Thursday AC wasn’t feeling so good. On Friday Sam’s nose started dripping. Today I’m not feeling so great. We had plans to go away this weekend but we canceled them and are relaxing at home in Brighton. Except that it was such a gorgeous day that we just had to go out for …

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It’s not Fall in the UK, it’s Autumn. And Autumn has been asserting its arrival in the UK long before yesterday’s equinox. Now there’s no pretending that it’s still summer. Even in the occasional sunny air there’s a new crispness. The light in the morning is different, brighter, and at the end of the day it recedes …

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Yes with two LLs apparently. That’s how they spell it here. I learned that the hard way when I had trouble finding a copy of Roald Dahl’s story in the online library catalog. (We never did manage to get a hard copy of the book. Instead I downloaded a free pdf version, converted it to an epub, and we read it on my …

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Gorgeous weather today–at last!–so I took Sam to the seafront after her gymnastics class. The red brick building in the background is our building.

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We returned nearly 15 books to the Jubilee Library today (all Sam’s books) after swim class. I suspect the load felt light because she had just learned that she’s passed swim levels Ducklings 3 and 4 and will now be transferred into Ducklings 5, aka “Super Swimmers.” I wish I could say that the trolley was lighter on …

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Tidying up the flat this afternoon I came across this coat of arms that Sam designed at one of the English Heritage sites we visited this summer (I think it was at Old Sarum). I love the sassy hip of her self-portrait, wielding sword and shield.

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At the dockyard at Portsmouth. The flagship of the British fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the Victory is also where Horatio Nelson met his end in the shape of a single bullet that pierced his lung and lodged in his spine. We spent a good hour touring the ship. It is an impressive restoration and provides a …

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