A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 24th June 2023

Saturday 24th was the date chosen for June's photo an hour. Right in the middle of Glastonbury Festival! I'd already done one shift working there and been into the festival on Thursday and Friday; Saturday was my second shift, an evening one. 

Here's what the day looked like...

5 lovely others joined in:

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Alex joined in on Instagram Stories

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

July's photo an hour date is Saturday 22nd - see you there!

 

May and June at the Duckpond

A two month round-up this time, as I didn't get round to actually writing a post at the end of May!

• We went on holiday to Butlins in Bognor Regis; on a break which was booked back in 2019 and had been postponed twice. It wasn't quite the break we envisaged when we booked it as we steered clear of all the indoor activities (not wanting to risk catching Covid) but we certainly made the most of the outdoor fairground and childrens activities. 

• Whilst we were in Bognor Regis we also explored the south coast area, doing an afternoon drive to Brighton on one day and a drive to Portsmouth and Southsea on another. And we also surprised Lily with a mystery tour to Paultons Park - which she loved!

• TV - obviously we're 10 years behind everyone here but wow, 'Line of Duty' is rather good isn't it! We binge-watched it over about 2-3 weeks and probably ended up with far too many late nights as we wanted to keep watching the next episode. We watched 'Vigil' as well, which was also excellent - although watching it immediately after 'Line of Duty' meant than we suspected everyone in the show :-D

• Music - I've been listening to Arcade Fire's new album, 'WE' which is brilliant. I've only seen them live once (Glastonbury 2014), I'd love to see them on their tour later in the year but it's not worth the Covid-risk. I'll stick to listening to the tunes on repeat!

• After we'd finished in Bognor Regis we headed down to Cornwall for the weekend to see another show at the Minack Theatre, 'Calvino Nights' - which was fabulous. Lily asked to go to that theatre again so we've booked one of their October shows, 'Horrible Histories - Terrible Tudors'. 

• We've been visiting one of our local outdoor swimming pools a lot recently so that Lily can practise her swimming. We decided to cancel her indoor swimming lessons; she hadn't been since last September (when the Covid rates started rising) and she didn't want to risk it herself. So we've been doing lots of afternoons out in the sunshine, taking a picnic and enjoying the water. 

• I did my usual shifts at Glastonbury festival. helping to look after a farm and a lane in Pilton village. I took Lily into the festival on Thursday when the Kidzfield opened and she had a fantastic time, I think her highlight was playing on the adventure castle and watching 'Andy and the Odd Socks' from CBBC. We didn't go on site the rest of the weekend though, there was just too many people and it wasn't worth the risk. 

• The other half turned 44; we had an outdoor fish & chip supper at a local farm shop which was tasty. Not sure he's looking forward to next year though, being halfway through his forties!

• The other half picked a birthday day trip out to the West Somerset Railway to see the steam trains and eat chips by the seaside. 

• May's photo an hour was Saturday 21st (the day of our visit to the railway) and June's date was Saturday 18th. The next date is Saturday 23rd July. 

• Andrew took his vintage lorry out to its first show since August 2019 - the Bath and West show. It rained quite a bit but he still enjoyed it. 

• We watched some of the Jubilee celebrations on the television. It was brilliant to see the carnival cart from Bridgwater take part in the pageant parade (anyone involved in carnival has been following its build progress over the last year on social media!). If you want to see it all lit up, come and see it (and lots of others) during the Somerset carnival season in November. 

• I've been eagerly making my spreadsheet of all the wonderful shows on at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. There seems to be lots worth seeing although I haven't actually booked anything yet - not sure if any of them are worth the risk. We'd be wearing our FFP3 masks anyway but still, I haven't decided yet what to do. 

What have you all been up to? 

 

June at the Duckpond

Many many years ago I used to do a "weekend at the duckpond" round-up on Mondays. I think Jane from Is That You Darling (who was one of the first bloggers I followed) used to do a 'Mondaying' post and I liked the idea of that so did my own version. 

There's absolutely no way I can keep up with doing a weekly round-up nowdays (to be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to keep it up all those years ago) but I might attempt a sort of monthly round-up instead. Sometimes I feel like there's things I'm quite happy writing about, you know, books I've read, places we've been, good recipes, etc but none of them really are quite "big" enough to warrant a blog post all to themself. So I suppose a monthly post is a way of collecting up all those little things that make life interesting but aren't really significant in any way. Well whatever, let's see how many months I keep it up for. 

So yep, how was our June?

• Photo an hour took place on Saturday 12th - we spent most of the day doing a bit of gardening and a bit of sewing before collecting our supermarket order in the evening. There's a round-up here - http://duck-in-a-dress.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-photo-every-hour-saturday-12th-june.html - and July's date is Saturday 17th. Feel free to join in if you fancy :-)

• We had a lovely swim in Mendip Farm Pool, a privately-owned pool local to us that lets households or bubbles rent the pool all to themselves for an hour. Going swimming is something I miss about the pre-COVID life; I used to swim lengths while Lily was having her swimming lessons and also do aqua aerobics. I mean, I miss it but I don't miss it enough to willingly swim with 20 or so other people (all maskless) in a poorly vetilated room. 

• We bought a load of cheap plants from a couple of garden centres and B&Q back at the end of April and they all seem to be growing quite well.

• It's been a strange month of two halves - sunny at the beginning with the paddling pool out and ice lollies in the garden. Wet at the end with temperatures getting cold again. I imagine the mixture of hot and wet weather had helped the plants! 

• It's been very strange without Glastonbury for the second year in a row. I usually work in Pilton village and get a staff pass to enter. Children of staff are also allowed in free of charge (up to the age of 12) and when Lily was born I thought it'll be great that she'll grow up going to the festival each year. As it is, she's only been to 3 so far - 2016 at 4 months old, 2017 at almost 1 and half years and 2019 at almost 3 and half. 2018 was a fallow year and obviously we all know what's happened to this year and the last. If we assume it does go ahead next year, she'll be 6 and half and halfway to the age where she's not allowed in with me. 

• Andrew's had his second COVID jab, my second one is in a week. He's had AZ and me being a few years younger (under 40) had Pfizer. Between both our families we've had a mixture of the two and Andrew refers to the ones of us who've had Pfizer as "the chosen ones"...

• My 'Shows I've Seen' Twitter thread came to an end. I started it on 7th June 2020 and finished it a few week ago. Now I need a new project for Twitter! 

• Some bits of sewing I've completed over the last few weeks - a skirt for me, a tshirt for Lily and Paw Patrol-themed dress for Lily. Don't look too closely at the seams but they're wearable and she seems to like them :-)

• Good books I've read - A Beautiful Spy by Rachel Hore (all about a woman who becomes a spy in the late 1920's/early 1930's - also based on a true story), Becoming by Michelle Obama (a really interesting look at her early life and time in the White House) and Failures of State: The Inside Battle with Britain's Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert (both fascinating and horrifying to read).

• My favourite theatre company decided they were going to close. Which is incredibly sad but also understandable (the guy who founded it was 70 last year and decided to step down as artistic director earlier this year). This article in the Guardian is really good - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jun/16/running-away-with-the-circus-thrills-shocks-genius-kneehigh - and sums up the company I think. 

• Good TV we watched recently - Feel Good on Netflix and Bristol Old Vic's 'Touching the Void' theatre show (they streamed it both as a live performance and also on demand). Andrew's watching The Big Bang Theory from the start - the characters in it are very much like some people he works with! I'm also watching the Great British Sewing Bee on iPlayer; I'm only up to week 4 so far although I already know who won from Twitter. 

• We managed to see the partial eclipse the other week using Andrew's welding mask. Amazingly the clouds actually parted long enough to get a good shot!

• We have several tickets for shows in the autumn which were rearranged from 2020 but I also booked tickets for a new show - Wise Children's 'Wuthering Heights' at the Bristol Old Vic in October. It did feel a bit weird booking them but they're obviously not going to run the show if it's not safe so either it'll be okay to attend or the show will be postponed. 

• We're looking forward to our summer holiday to Scotland and hoping it doesn't get cancelled and it's okay to go! Our holiday style is 'road trip', 'car picnics' and 'sightseeing by driving' so we're not really planning on mixing with other people anyway. 

• We had a nice walk around a nature reserve near Bristol - Golden Valley Nature Reserve. I've been using ViewRanger to find walks and also creating my own on there. My Golden Valley walk is here. 

• Back in January I decided to listen to every song on my 'liked songs' playlist on Spotify. You know how you add a whole album when actually it's only one or two songs you like? And then never get round to removing the ones you don't like? Yep, well I thought if I listened to every single song then I can remove all the ones I didn't need. There's almost 2200 songs on my 'liked songs' list and I'm up to 'R' at the moment. The idea is that when I've done the whole list then every time I press 'shuffle' I will only ever get good songs I enjoy. 

• We ordered a some food gift boxes for Father's Day for the various dads - all were very good so I'm told! We used Georgie Porgie's Puddings, Warren's Bakery and Made Marion Gluten Free.

• And lastly, Lily took part in her very first exam - LAMDA Solo Introductory Stage 1 - where she had to recite a poem, talk about how to play a game and talk about her favourite toy (a dinosaur, obvs). She came out of the exam saying it was lovely! 

How was your June?

 

Have Baby, Will Travel: Doing Glastonbury Festival

So the title's probably a bit misleading as we didn't actually camp (the joy of living 20 minutes away and working at the festival) but we still tried to made the most of all the child and baby friendly things on offer.

 

 

 

Friday evening we went into the festival about 5pm and took Lily in her little rucksack. Her changing bag was actually a large 35L rucksack which went on my back and contained everything she needed plus extra clothes for both of us. We went and sat on the hill overlooking the Pyramid Stage (along from 'that tree' for anyone who knows the site) and spread out the picnic blanket my dad had brought - we then had a sit-down welly-free area to ourselves :-)

 

 

 

  

I did buy Lily a pair of ear defenders (mainly so she wouldn't get too distracted whilst feeding) but I don't think she was too keen on wearing them! She stayed awake for Jess Glynne, bits of ZZ Top and Foals and then slept through 90% of Muse.

 

 

 

  

Having assessed the mud situation on Friday, we decided to take the pushchair in on Saturday, stripping it back to just the frame, car seat and the pushchair organiser (I have this one which is very good). We went in about 2pm and headed straight to the Kidzfield.

 

 

The NCT tent was our first stop, where they provide pretty much everything you could possibly need: space for feeding; high chairs; tea, coffee and biscuits for the adults; baby food; changing tables, wipes and nappies; sun cream; cheap wellies and sunhats and probably lots more I didn't notice. They also do baby bathtime every evening (which we took part in) and they provide the water, bath, bubble bath, sponges and towels and on top of all that, just like most of the Kidzfield tents, the place is a 'no welly' zone.

 

 

 

Next stop was the Baby Zone tent while my sister-in-law (Lily's Auntie J) went off to watch Madness. Lily had a jolly good mess around and I watched the older children play in the massive sandpit - which we will definitely be visiting next year.

 

 

 

We also joined in with a baby and toddler rhymetime (which Lily napped through half of) and had a go with some soft play equipment before taking a wander round the rest of the field.

 

 

There was lots of other things to do - face painting, making stuff, storytelling, theatre, fairground rides, live performances and a huge fairytale adventure castle - but that'll all be on next year's itinerary when she's almost 18 months!

  

 

The Kidzfield is only open from 9am to 7pm but outside these times there's an absolutely brilliant Rest 'n' Recuperation tent near the Acoustic tent which does the same sort of thing as the NCT tent but overnight - and all staffed by volunteers! Just before Adele played we stopped off there to change Lily, add extra layers, have a cuppa and sit in what seemed like the comfiest sofa ever to give her a feed.

 

 

On Sunday, we stayed home and had a rest!

  

So, what did we learn? Any top tips?

• A picnic blanket is incredibly useful.

• Make the most of all the free stuff from the NCT and Rest 'n' Recuperation tent.
• I'd recommend our pram - an ABC Design Cobra - as it did brilliantly against the mud.

• If it's very muddy and the baby's in a sling or rucksack, I reckon one of those ski pole/walking thingies would be useful.
• The toilets in the Kidzfield are much nicer (and sweeter-smelling) than the rest of the site.
• You don't look out of place whatsoever whipping a boob out to feed.
• Babies really will sleep through anything.

• Can I be a kid again just so I can play in the Kidzfield?

All in all, a very good weekend and one that hopefully will be even better (albeit more of a handful) next year when we've got a toddler running around!

This Little Big Life: Lily's First Glastonbury

This Little Big Life is a weekly link-up started by Sarah and Louise - all about capturing the little moments which make up a big life from the previous weekend.


Saturday was all about the Kidzfield at Glastonbury Festival, playtimes and rhymetimes, snoozing through Art Garfunkel and Adele, and mud, lots and lots of mud.

 

 

Sunday was all about resting after two late nights (watching Muse on Friday and Adele on Saturday), a bit of playing and a lot of hosing down the pram.

Pop over to Sarah's blog and Louise's blog to see what they got up to...

 

This Summer at the Duckpond

Questions, questions...

How have I managed to do no blogging whatsoever over the summer?
How am I already over halfway through this (still fairly unbelievable) pregnancy?
And the eternal blogger cliché - how is it already September?

Answers on a postcard please.



So that was summer 2015. I honestly had no idea back in May at the start of the summer that by the autumn I'd be well into the second trimester and expecting a Findus in January. I mean, we'd started the treatment for our frozen embryo transfer at the end of March but it didn't even cross our minds that it might actually work.

We still managed to get up to a lot of stuff though, even if at times I had to take things a bit more slowly.



Findus went to his/her first Glastonbury festival (I was 10 weeks and 5 days); I did two shifts working down there and then went in on the Sunday evening to see Paul Weller and The Who. I did feel a bit tired during Paul Weller's set so I had a doze while he was playing - I'm sure it looked perfectly fine down there at Pilton!

Oh yeah, and did I mention we met Lionel Richie? (rather than being chauffeured back to the helipad (which is along the lane we work on) he decided he wanted to walk and "enjoy the English countryside")


Me, Andrew, my parents and brother spent a lot of the summer Shaun-hunting in Bristol. Following on from the 'Gromit Unleashed' trail back in 2013, this year it was our woolly friend who descended on the place for the 'Shaun in the City' trail. There were 70 Shauns in total and we managed to spot 59 of them - a fairly respectable number methinks considering my condition! (oh yeah, that's being wheeled out as an excuse from now til January...)

Me and Andrew had our usual trip to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival at the beginning of August. Back at the start of 2015 we decided to go for the whole week which in the end, proved to be a very good decision indeed as we could spread out the number of shows and I wouldn't get so tired. We still (somehow) managed to pack in 28 of them though, including a live recording of Radio 4's 'Just a Minute' at the BBC Potterrow tent and a blogger meet up with some truly lovely ladies - Denise, Gwen, Alex and Elise (who is an absolute darling and had knitted Findus some gorgeous little booties!). We did well for celebrity spotting in the street too - not including the ones we saw in shows, we also walked past Nina Conti; Rory McGrath; Josh Widdicombe, James Acaster, Mickey Flanagan and Ivo Graham (who were all going to see Jon Ronson at the Assembly Rooms - who was fab); Rob Beckett; Matthew Crosby; Janey Godley; and spot of the week - Richard Osman.

And a Findus update...
Well, he/she is still alive. Despite being a fairly positive person for the rest of my life, I can't help but worry about this little one. I clearly have no trust in my own body. We had our 20 week scan last week (at 19 weeks and 1 day) - it was 8am in the morning and this baby is obviously not a morning person as it spent most of the scan curled up in a cosy little ball asleep. The sonographer was lovely and got me to do some kind of belly dancing move to try and wake the baby up - all you got then was it shuffling round for about 10 seconds and then going back to sleep. It did a perfect impression of someone who really didn't want to be woken up that early! Long story short, we have to go back on 18th September for another scan so they can complete all the necessary checks (and hopefully find out whether it's a boy or a girl!).



Hope you've all had good summers!