Museum visits

On Friday Mark went in to school to do some more work and found it completely shut, rather than bother one of the caretakers at home he came back here, but couldn't get any work done coz he'd left everything he needed at school on Thursday. Hooray for the rest of us! So we decided to make the most of our 'extra' day and went here for the afternoon. It was excellent, everything's crammed into one room and initially you wonder if you've just been conned out of £6 per person. But there's so much to see and there's a guide who gives you a demonstration of basically everything they have. It takes about an hour, and you don't have to wait for the next tour to start or anything you just jump in at whatever point you happen to arrive at. The guy onFridayy was excellent; very enthusiastic, very personal, veryknowledgeablee, very taken with Caleb! Who, by the way, was an angel, we were very proud of him. I should mention that Mark was very excited to see the original plate for the music from the musicbox in Labyrinth. My favourite bit was the early predecessor of the Jukebox (no rock and roll here!) And the shop is excellent- we'll be going back there when we have gifts to buy. If I hadn't already started on my Christmas shopping I think we could have come out with something for every one of our nieces and nephews! There's tons of books and art kits and memorabilia, and not just stuff related to music or clocks (which they have a little sideline in.) We'd highly recommend it.

Well, that got us in the mood for knowledge, so yesterday we popped over to the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. I had been years ago on a school trip, but it has recently been refurbished and was well worth a second visit. It's mostly about the Romans, with a good bit of of the Anglo-Saxons, and some Medieval religion for good measure! This one wasn't as well suited to a toddler- too long looking at strange little bits and pieces that weren't very interactive. To be fair there was a decent amount to hold his interest, but we just wanted to take longer than he did looking at things. We enjoyed it though, and that's really why we went, let's face it! In a couple of years I think he'll get a lot more out of it.

We also stumbled upon a lovely little Christian bookshop in Cirencester, where I managed to find a couple of books in the sale and a couple of presents for friends- all in one hit, that never happens! Cirencester is lovely, we'lldefinitelyy have a little jaunt there again in the future...

Yesterday we rounded off the lovely holiday feel with a BBQ with Mum and Dad, nice and relaxing...