So, instead of being boring and dull at home, we went to a friend’s surprise 40th birthday party in Bristol. The theme was James Bond so we all glammed up…

..and somehow managed to not pull faces for the camera.

Some atmos shots from the party…

my men…

and the fabulous cake

click to embiggen – it’s worth it! Joel was angling for the angry birds piece, but I think someone else whipped that one. And by the time Daddy was acquiring cake he was in no fit state to be identifying Angry Birds through napkins…

On the way down we stopped at the services. I don’t think this picture makes us look like bad parents, do you?

To be honest, they were fascinated that under 18s weren’t allowed in the area where the slot machines were. Especially when a little boy wandered in there, and apparently triggered an announcement saying “Only over-18s are allowed in this area. If you are under 18 you must leave immediately!” I think that’s when they took up prime viewing position to see if anyone else was told to leave…

The following day, on the way home, we took this bridge (worth every penny of £5.70)…

…to Raglan Castle, which Steve and I went to in the autumn, but as we’re English Heritage members of more than one year’s standing, we get free entry.

We like this one. It’s huge and very ruined because the owners were on the losing side in the civil war.

I went a little bit hipstamatic crazy – sorry about that… I love the 4th picture here, which captures Joel mid-explanation. He’s telling me that he thinks the big hole (probably foundations/cellars) was probably a garbage dump as there’s a bit of garbage left there. Didn’t really have the heart to correct him.

We played hide and seek, starting with finding Daddy, then Mummy, then Joel wanted a go. When we started counting, he shot off over the bridge and headed up to 7 storeys of spiral staircase up to the top of the very tall broken tower. He got very disappointed when we stopped him, and henceforth insisted on him being accompanied by a grown-up for hiding. Which had we thought about it, was an obvious rule really. Heaven forbid he should be anything but dangerously adventurous…

So we ended up with a trip to Ikea (which is what we would have been doing, had we stayed home – I like to think of it as a win-win!) – both Wednesbury and Warrington as the first one didn’t have the shelving unit we were after.

And now back to work, to relax!