Here we are at the end of the Easter holidays. We’ve had a lovely couple of weeks, one at home and one away – hence this post being a few days late. Now after lots of term time charging around, I do like a quiet and lazy week with the kids.  I have been known to have although a rosy perspective of days spent with the kids colouring, making dens in the garden and jaunts out to local beauty spots. In reality, the colouring lasts 10 minutes, the rain comes down on the dens and the beauty spots are too cold and windy – you can’t beat a bit of Blighty Spring weather.

 As I have mentioned in the past, I do have a fave quiet day filler of a quick nip to the charity shop with the promise of a small treat or two. But this time I had truly excelled, I had the genius idea of coupling this retail trip with a walk / scoot up to Loves Farm in the sunshine! This was via the train station – you’ve got to love the East Coast Main Line. A quick jump in the lifts at the station (always a joy) a packet of crisps each from little tesco and a play on the Pirate ship swings, I felt like I was in an advert for Center Parcs.

 And then we headed to the “new” Barnados, well not new as it’s been open a year but new to me. The shop was massive! Really well laid out in colour, loads of kids toys and nice displays of clothes and jewellery. Sadly no changing room but when I picked up a short black Marni dress which I tried on over my top and jeans and pranced around the shop for a bit – that looks good enough to me. The kids were in heaven, Billy got a lego football game, Amber got a writing book (after chancing her arm with four or five different outfits which sadly didn’t fit). The Manager was lovely too, he was v chatty and was friendly and happy to help with the numerous questions I had for him.

 This Monday morning was all achieved with a little bit of gentle coaxing, lots of “hurry along darling”, “please be careful sweetheart”, “slow down by the cars poppet”. Well, if you live on the route you may have heard something slightly different as I reverted to my inner northern fishwife and may have yelled “ged ‘ere now” once or twice…..