Friends, family, a funeral and a fun day out.

On Wednesday we had friends round to play and the four girls, aged 6 to 10 had a lovely time, while J & I had a lovely chat and a cuppa and then K & M had their swimming lesson.

On Thursday, we packed and headed down to stay with Granny and Big Grandad for a couple of nights.  They weren't actually there until the evening, as they'd gone up to York for my Great Aunt's funeral.  I read some more of Tom's Midnight Garden and M asked me to test her on the flags and capital cities of the European countries from the Flags of the World game.  She got 39 out of 46 on the first attempt!  That's with both correct and a couple more with either one or the other, and then 40 and a few more partly correct ones on the second go.

Then we got Big Grandad's atlas out to try to find them all!

We found most of them, but the atlas was published in 2004 and a couple hadn't yet achieved independence.
Then we took a picnic tea up to Great Grandma's (my Grandma) and spend some time with her, as she hadn't felt up to going to her little sister's funeral.  We had a lovely couple of hours with her, mostly happy but a bit emotional at times, understandably.  Grandma had been up to Great Aunty E's 90th birthday in the autumn and had found that very difficult, as she was in a nursing home and having had a stroke a couple of years ago and although her daughter cared for her at home for quite a time, it had become to difficult.  They were very close and it's only a few years ago that Grandma moved back down to the town where my parents live, having lived only a few miles away from her sister for over 20 years.

On Friday we planned to spend the day in Stratford.  Originally the reason for our trip down to stay was to go to a workshop at Shakespeare's Birthplace that they were putting on for home edders, but they didn't give much notice and the numbers were too low for it to go ahead.  We decided to go anyway though, because we really like the Shakespeare Aloud actors there and as we've got an annual pass, the more we go, the better value it becomes!  The regular actors recognise us now and are always happy to chat, particularly if it's not busy, in between posing for photos with the tourists and doing their extracts of various plays.  We arrived a couple of minutes after opening and found one of the three Jens there.  We talked about various things and K & M recited the Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits version of the 'All the World's a Stage' speech from As You Like It.  While we were chatting one of the actors we'd met on our first visit (and numerous times since), Rich, arrived, so they recited it for him too.  Jen recommended we check out a museum that has recently moved to the same street as the birthplace: The MAD Museum.

We did.  It's a brilliantly bonkers art gallery; all of the things there are kinetic art, most have moving parts that you can start by pressing a button or waving your hands in front of them.  There were several that were variations on the theme of intricate, in some cases scaled up, marble runs, like these.

M spent quite some time with this exhibit.  I don't know how well it'll come out, but there are little hammers attached to each of the glasses, with wires coming from them....

...to a type writer, which you could sit down and have a go on and 'play' the sideboard of glasses!

M typing away.

The straps on this watch flap up and down like a bird's wings when you press the button to activitate it.

It's called 'Tempus fugit'

This ones was less interactive than most of the others, but I really liked the way it combined a moving image projected on the wall, with the ever moving shadow of the sculpture that was shown in the image thrown onto it.

This one sparked a conversation about the story (such as I could remember it) of the Trojan Horse.

'Das trojanische Pferd'

After the MAD Museum, we went and had some lunch and I told the girls about how some of the machines reminded me of how people used to believe that a perpetual motion machine was possible and attempted to build one.  We talked about different types of energy, such as kinetic energy and potential energy and how you can change from one type to another, but that forces such as friction cause some of that energy to be changed to heat and therefore 'lost' as it disperses.  We also had a few rounds of Shakespell, which is a brilliant game to keep in your bag, although unfortunately the print on the dice or ours is wearing off.

After lunch we returned to the Birthplace, but the actors were nowhere to be seen (probably on their lunch break!), so instead we popped back to the Mad Museum, because both K & M had decided to spend some of their money on marbles (one in K's case, two in M's).  Then we had to nip back to the car park, to put a new ticket in it.

I had given the girls a choice between a pudding with lunch and hot chocolate and a piece of cake a bit later.  Having seen a photo on facebook posted by an old school friend, there was consensus to go for the latter here.

Rather impressive, the hot chocolates!

The 1940s theme meant conversation about the period and rationing in particular (not something that was in evidence here, even though the decor was good!).  We agreed that we should try to remember to ask Nana about it next time we see her.

We returned to the Birthplace for a third and final time, stopping to chat for a good while again and watch Jen and Rich perform the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet (having seen Jen's solo version 'with no kissing, no dying and no boys' earlier!) and a bit of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream with help from various members of the visiting public (K turned down the chance to play Thisbe).

We didn't head straight home, but went to call on a friend of Granny's who the girls had lent various toys, that they'd grown out of, for her to keep at her house for her grandchildren.  She wanted to return a few of the toys, most of which have now been passed on to a different friend for his grandson when he comes to visit, but they did decided to bring a wooden Noah's ark back home.

Once back at Granny and Big Grandad's after tea, I finished reading Tom's Midnight Garden to them, which had a very satisfactory ending (which we had anticipated, but it was none the worse for that).  We had been hoping to meet up with Uncle M, since it was his birthday, but he was a bit busy, so we called on him on Saturday morning before heading back to Nottingham in time for lunch.

This afternoon, M, A & I had a game of Forbidden Island, then A & M tested each other on the flags and capitals of Europe.  M went first and got 40 completely correct and either the flag or the capital on all but one of the remaining 6.  A did pretty well too, but not as well as M by quite some way.  M also decided that she would like to try Perudo, a dice game of bids, bluffing and deduction to some extent, so first she and I had a go and then A joined in for another round.  While playing, M suddenly remembered that we could pick up the things that we had painted last week from Funky Pots, probably because I had suggested that we could have eggs for tea.  We finished the game and then K, M & I popped to get our works of art.

M's pig egg cup!

K's replacement plate for the one that she broke to go with the remaining cup.

And my spoon rest.