make your bed . change the world

If you want to change the world. Make your bed.

So I did but the world did not change. I just felt a little more in control of my corner of it.

And speaking of changing the world if you are going off to the No Kings parade take an umbrella, wear yellow, have your phone charged up and secure and if you hear a whistle sit down. Agree on a meeting point in case you get separated. They are going to goad you, try to make you angry - this frightens me a lot - think Ghandi and Be the change you want to See.

Please, please, please be careful my beautiful brave and wonderful friends. You all have a right to be heard. Free speech needs to be exercised.

And make your bed.

My Mum insisted that we make our beds every morning. We complained of course. But, you can’t tell a kid to do something unless you have carefully (in a quiet moment) taught the kid how to do that something, so here is how mum taught us to make our beds. Wake up. Sit up on to your pillow, shake the covers out to fill with air and swoop the covers up to the pillow nice and flat. So as not to disturb the flat covers, turn, crawl out of the bed across the pillow. Smooth out the wrinkles, puff up the pillow - done.

In fact to help us she went about sewing our blankets together every winter - there were no duvets in those days - these made it much easier to keep our beds tidy. Though the blankets were incredibly heavy.

She also told us in her quiet voice that if we did not make the bed well, earwigs would actually crawl into our ears while we slept. I still need therapy for that - 60 years later.

Let’s not forget that she had a framed embroidery image on the wall reading ‘Spare the Rod and spoil the Child’. So yeah. We made our beds.

And I still do.

Nasturtiums taste great in salads. Peppery and fresh.

Look at these poppies!! What is going on here? No sign of flower buds yet so they are going to be monster alien poppy.

Here’s a close up - of the Poppy monster - not KitKat the KitKat monster.

Swimming

Baby at (almost) 5 months old had his second swimming lesson yesterday. He has taken to it like the proverbial duck to water.

With permission here is a little photo for you. ⬆️

These are very gentle calm lessons with 6 babies and 6 grownups and an instructor. They last half an hour. Their primary objective is to teach baby to feel safe in the water, not to panic, how to climb out, to fall right into the water without screaming, water on face, all those things - and each exercise is accompanied by a nursery rhyme sung in robust voices by the grownups. It is the highlight of our week.

Have a great day.

If you are out and about this weekend be safe. Keep each other safe.

Take care and talk soon.

Celi