the grounds of where we stayed in Barrington
We spent a weekend in Cambridge in early Feb, or should I say 7 miles out of Cambridge in a place called Barrington. A cute little village, with not much more than a church, which has a perfect set of hand pulled bells that we heard ringing out through the countryside. Turns out it’s a hobby for bell enthusiasts, seems they have them in churches and people love ringing them so they rotate through the counties till you’re the lucky ones who get them clamouring (in a good way) away for hours in your village. We know this as we went over and had a chat to the bell pullers. Though it does appear I spoke to the man with dementia and found out mostly rather detailed information on delayed train journeys from Essex, than about the bells and was filled in with the bell story much much later when I could extricate myself from the old man’s tales, which not even a whining child pulling my arm from it’s socket to the tune of ‘let’s go mummy’ seemed to deter. But I digress majorly there, for the trip was lovely as we caught up with our first time round birth friends.
more on the grounds, giant sized trampoline fun!
M and R were first time mums with me, and we spent our last few months before children drinking hot chocolates and eating bonbons together, and then the first year of motherhood baking cookies and muffins and eating them over playdates together (ofcourse the kids were too young to eat so you can imagine where they all ended up). They were marvelous days together, and I look back at it all so very fondly. Second time round was not so perfect for friends and babies for me, for while I did meet some lovely people, suddenly I was also school bound with the boys, and really E’s babyhood had more to do with running errands for or picking up boys over lolling around playing babies with my friends. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, thinking I was busy juggling twins, which I probably was, but I was also not busy with anything else and thus did do a lot of playing about with my beautiful friends M and R and their lovely baby daughters. It was a truly wonderful time and introduction to motherhood.
the park near M's place in Cambridge - no free swings in Paris so our kids are in heaven
Things have changed dramatically now though, we were 6 adults and 7 children this visit (three extra girl children in the picture now). M lives in Cambridge with her family now and is an amazing full time working mother juggling it all, and R is in London with hers. It was amazing and fun and beautiful to see all the kids playing together 4 years later, incident free (except for the wrestle mania between H and O, but their injuries don’t count, or what I mean is, as long as they don’t inflict injuries on other peoples children I am fine about it). Although O did steal a bike light from S that I must post back soon… seems he is rather light fingered, a point I am trying to ignore until it becomes kleptomania for sure, over two or three incidences of toy envy… is there a difference?
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