Together again.

Well all went well with K's visit to Granny and Big Grandad, I'm happy to say, she had a lovely time.  Granny took her swimming one day and she did some colouring in the club house while Granny played bowls another.

M and I joined them on Sunday and in the afternoon we went into Stratford and went to Shakespeare's Birthplace again (our tickets to the 5 Shakespeare Trust properties last until early July and we have certainly been getting our money's worth!).  We also found somewhere else that both K & M want to return to, just a couple of doors away from the birthplace.

On Monday K, M & I went and had a mooch in the local charity shops, where K bought a furry monkey back pack for 75p.  Then M spent some money in the old fashioned sweet shop that is in the back of the card shop.  In the afternoon K, M & Granny swam while I sat and read my book.

Tuesday we got even more out of our Shakespeare properties ticket, first with a return visit (our 3rd I think) to Mary Arden's Farm.  We got there almost as soon as it opened at 10am and when we arrived at the farmhouse kitchen they were still lighting the fire, as they would have in Tudor times, which wasn't particularly easy!  The women were using a flint and charcloth (old worn out aprons, that have been sealed up in a tin and heated in the fire), but having problems, probably because the hearth fairies weren't happy with them.  We learned that the Tudors not only believed in fairies, but in the case of hearth fairies, tried to keep them happy, leaving food (a 'fairy cake'), ale and water for them to wash and linen to dry themselves every night.  Sometimes the offerings would have disappeared in the morning other times not and if the fairies were pleased then it would be easy to light and keep the fire going.  They were making lunch, which was pease pottage and griddle cakes.  I asked the girls if they fancied having a go at making and trying these and they said yes, so we'll have to see if they are still up for it when it comes to getting the ingredients.

Preparing the dinner.

Griddle cakes ready for cooking, plus some fairy cakes on the left.

Frying bacon for the pottage and cooking griddle cakes

Previously both K & M have always liked going round and looking at the animals, including watching the falconry display.  This time they did join in with the Easter Egg hunt (looking for hens' eggs for the kitchen), but apart from that they mostly wanted to stay in the kitchen, watching them cook and talking to them.  We had a quick lunch in the cafe there and then went to watch the Tudor dinner and learned about some of the rules of the time and there were many, as well as the origins of some of our expressions.  Pretty much anything with the word 'board' in it, such as bed and board and boardmeeting, date from Tudor times before the word table came along.

Serving dinner in strict order of importance.

After this we headed into to Stratford and went back to the Birthplace to say a quick hello to some of our old friends in the garden.  Then we went to the Creaky Cauldron, which is the place that K & M really wanted to go back to.  We had a hot chocolate and cake in the cafe behind the shop part (they serve butterbeer, but K & M decided not to go for that once we'd found out that it was fizzy).  Then paid to go upstairs in the 'attraction' part.  K & M liked most of it, but K found some of it far too scary.  It's obviously cashing in on the whole Harry Potter, magic thing, but was mostly pretty well done.  It lead to a discussion about trademarks, when the girls couldn't find Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans but something similarly named.  After a walk around town, we had one last visit to the Birthplace and, since it was not far off closing time and pretty quiet by now, we had a nice chat with some of the actors again.

K & M were invited to tea at Great Grandma's, which was, to quote K 'the treatiest tea they've ever had'!  They started off with tinned peaches and ice-cream, then had double chocolate cookies (which Grandma had won in a raffle!), Swiss roll, jaffa cakes and then some bread and honey!

This morning we managed to get packed up and away in time to get home for ice skating.  Then this afternoon, we watched a fairly dire adaptation of A Little Princess and we talked about how it was a bit like in Dumbledore's notes on The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which mention a highly sanitised version written by a witch for small children, which takes out anything that could be considered unpleasant and thereby loses the whole point in most ways.