At the Garden Centre

Busy day today. In the fifty million degree heat.
I'd arranged to meet Mrs L and Miss T at Gawcott Park while Miss E was at an 11+ lesson first thing. It's not too far from her teacher's house so I met them after dropping her off.
After ignoring each other completely for a while Miss L and Mr T had fun playing together while Mrs L, Miss M and I sat chatting. 
We were chatting so much that I completely forgot that Miss E was at 11+ and I had to go and get her! 
Once I got back with Miss E we all headed to the garden centre for lunch. Mr K was working at home today so he came to join us.
It was lovely that he could come but it did mess my plan for him to let in the cleaner at 1pm.
I shovelled down my toasted cheesy fish panini (as recommended by Mrs L), then popped home, let in the cleaner and introduced her to Archie before heading back to the garden centre. I took Archie with me and he was giddy to be on an outing with everyone!!
Mrs L, Miss M and Mr T left not long after I got back. Mr K, the Little Misses and I obviously couldn't go home because the cleaner was there so we stayed sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade and diet coke. It was a billion degrees so I stayed there while the Little Misses went back and forth looking at plants, pots, chickens, ponds, strawberries and, mostly, the woodland figurines inside.
Miss E always visits the kestrel - who she's called Pixie - and today they spent hours naming all the other hideous figurines and imagining their world and adventures. A cross between The Animals of Farthing Wood, Watership Down, Percy the Park Keeper, The Wind in the Willows, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Incredible Journey. It was brilliant!!!
I took a photo of all the shelves and Miss E and I are going to write down all the names and stories and come up with an award-winning series of children's books.
Miss L is looking a bit teary in this photo because she'd gone off on her own to the loo while we looked at trees and we weren't where she'd left us when she got back. She went off to look for us and by the time I went to look for her we were going round in circles. I found her with a Garden Centre man bawling her eyes out. Bless her, it's the first time she's been proper lost. 
I told her she'd done the right thing finding a grown up who worked there.
Just after this photo was taken we bumped into Mrs D who was Miss E's teacher when she did Waterbabies. From the age of seven weeks!! It was lovely chatting to her. She was with her daughter who I remember Mrs D tasing about when she was only a year or so over than Miss E is now. She went to both the Little Misses' schools and hated both,  failed the 11+, did fantastically well at the Buckingham School and has just got a First in her first year doing Human Biology.
Everything always works out in the end!!