London Days

Finally, I feel like spring might actually be arriving.  Come Imbolc there was still the threat of snow, and while snodrops were up in the park, the ones in my garden hadn't even popped their cherries.

Today, however, I looked out the window and there they were, or most of them, the Frog has stabbed a garden light into the middle of the patch but most of them seem up and bobbing about.  Not only that, but yesterday we had actual sun; and the magnolias are out on the next street and a few other blossoms are stinking up the air something lovely.

Tomorrow it's Friday - Charlie day.  It's not my day off, it's the one day I spend alone with my son.   I can't say how cool Fridays now that the boy is actively involved in plotting them out - sometimes we spend all week planning.

This year we've already been to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum - and the Transport Museum twice;  last time we even found something new.  It was sort of a great day; it was pissing down with rain and we rode at the top of the bus to Trafalgar square.

He loves the square even when there's nothing going on; he loves the fountains, mainly.  Once there was an ice bear; once some great big tree trunks; once the fountains were full of flowers.  The changing sculpture on the 4th plinth has been great - he loved the big ship in a bottle.  Last time it was so wet that I splashed out on a taxi from the square to the museum.  As I sat, driving through London in the back of a taxi with my four-year-old raving about everything he could see out of the windows, I felt sort of brilliant, to tell the truth.  Afterwards we had pizza in Covent Garden and watched the street performers.

London has opened up; we're not just after open spaces and playgrounds anymore; we're on the hunt for new things. I've promised him a trip to the Tower of London when the weather clears up, we've got the Zoo in our sights and the Musieum of London might get a look in .  Sometimes we just hang local - last week it was lunch with friends around the corner, sometimes it's just the park or a clear up in the garden.

Suddenly my urge to move out of the city doesn't seem quite so pressing now that all this cool stuff is on the agenda.  I don't know what I'm going to do when he goes to school in September.  Work I expect.  Miss him, probably.