Up there

This will be up there as one of the best days of the summer.

I looked and felt a bit shit. We left the house a bit late. Richard and I quietly stressed all the way to Exeter. But it was still a good day.

We took Tess and a friend to a climbing centre, and Gemma met us there. I had a tea/coffee with Gemma and we watched through the glass for a few minutes and then I went to take photos. I told Gemma I realised listening to Tess's friend in the car just how bad our family is at small talk. Other people just say stuff!
After their climbing session, we all went for Pizza and I actually had a really good pizza! We were looked after well by a really nice girl and that always makes all the difference.

Then we walked over to Exeter Cathedral, where we happened upon a Punch and Judy show that was just starting on the lawns in front of the Cathedral. It was cringe-worthy - and I've always found Punch and Judy really creepy, weird and violent, but we waited to see how the girls would react. They silently sat themselves down on the grass with no discussion, and began to watch.
After a while I asked them if they wanted to stay and watch or if they'd like to look inside the cathedral and they both agreed they'd seen enough Punch and Judy and would rather visit the cathedral.

Gemma said goodbye to us and went off to look for a dress for her cousin's wedding - which is later this week.

We spent a bit of time in the cathedral and then the girls cartwheeled on the lawns for a while. Then, when we thought we were heading back to the car, we all got suddenly seduced by a tiny 1-minute ferry crossing across the quay, so did that instead of going straight home. The girls had icecreams and I had an "essential" hot chocolate and we were tourists for a while.

From tomorrow Richard will be working for 2 weeks non-stop with no days off. He's losing his usual days off to cover the Bank Holiday and then a surf contest that he's sponsoring at the end of the month. The best days will be Thursdays when he doesn't have to work until 5pm, so we can try to do something on those days.

I'm not looking forward to it, but I don't want to wish the summer away either and I realise it's something that needs to be done. So I'm going to take each day as it comes and hope everything behaves itself and remember that we won at squidging the life out of our few days together this year. It took 20 summers, but I think we finally nailed it.