I am still recovering from Robyn's party - all those very late nights - but it went really well and we all had so much fun. We were a bit worried about the weather but fortunately the rain held off. At the moment, for a change, it actually is raining -and quite convincingly too.

There was so much cool stuff it was hard to say what the highlights were, but some which come to mind were the secret message written in pig-pen code, the clues frozen inside blocks of ice, the one where they had to spray Peter with mini water-pistols, the marshmallow roasting, the brick carrying, riding down the rather steep bank behind our house, the darts challenge, climbing the litchi tree to pick apples, and matching a key to one of a whole bunch of padlocks locked to the fence.

Thanks so much to my faithful friends and family who helped.

As always, it convinced me that I should be looking at a career change. However, I definitely have to put all thoughts of that on hold for a while now that we have a bond to pay off again. I'll keep accumulating the ideas though.

Having just got over the party, large parts of today have been spent shopping for and wrapping Lauren's presents, as tomorrow she turns six. She is finding the excitement almost unbearable. I had almost forgotten what that was like - being so excited about your impending birthday presents you thought you simply couldn't stand it any longer. She is getting roller blades, a socker set, a basketball, Ker-Plunk (I didn't realise it was a new release of a successful older game, sounds like the new version is less durable so I hope it survives), a straw hat with a red ribbon, and a set of little fairies.