Wet weekend in Edinburgh........

.........so no change there. We are having typical Edinburgh high summer weather here: more or less constant rain and a temperature that rarely gets above 14 degrees. I think it was 10 degrees on Sunday. Tropical. This may go some way towards explaining why I am presently fixated on organising next year's holiday in Nova Scotia - it gives me some time in more pleasant conditions to look forward to (Daysgoby: please don't shatter my illusions! I know it rains in NS too, I just prefer to pretend it doesn't).

Anyway, I think we are now sorted on what we are doing next July: 4 nights in Liverpool on the south shore, a week in a cottage on the beach on the Northumberland shore and then 3 nights with Mary. Bliss. And I am quite looking forward to telling people that we are spending our summer hols in Liverpool and Northumberland!

The rest of the weekend was spent doing useful stuff. We had planned to go through to Troon to see my father-in-law but Husband has developed a stunningly impressive cough and we decided not to risk inflicting this on FIL. The trip to Troon has therefore been deferred and instead I spent Saturday making a start on the monumental exercise known as Getting the Boys' Stuff for Going Back to School. Both need new school shoes and new trainers. My credit card started to whimper as we entered Clarks. With good reason. £122 later we left with 4 new pairs of shoes.

First Born has had to get school shoes with laces for the first time as they don't really make proper shoes with Velcro now that he has feet only a size or two smaller than mine. Due to his dyspraxia we have not yet managed to get him tying shoelaces but that hurdle now needs to be overcome - he starts rugby at school this year and I am pretty sure they do not make Velcro fastening rugby boots! This explains why this morning you would have found myself, my mother and Husband sitting in a row in our living room comparing how we all tie shoelaces. We thought it would be wise to check we all do it the same way so we all teach FB the same way otherwise chaos, tears and recriminations would ensue. Results of survey: method basically the same but Husband and I form the loop with our left hand, Mother with her right. She is therefore outnumbered and has gone off to practice swapping hands. FB however doesn't see why the world cannot just bend to his will and outlaw shoelaces altogether. That would be so much easier, apparently, than him having to learn to tie them. We'll call that plan B.

After the great shoe-buying expedition (which also involved the acqusition of new school shirts and trousers for FB) we celebrated with home made pizza and ice cream. (I didn't make the ice cream, I hasten to add. I'm not that good.) We also watched the third Pirates of the Carribean film which the boys loved and I thought was pretty ropey. Apart from the obvious benefit of multiple Johnny Depps.

On Sunday we met Husband's sister's ex-husband, ie my ex-brother-in-law to go swimming. Husband doesn't do swimming due to an unfortunate chlorine allergy and ExBIL likes to keep up with the boys so we often take them swimming and kill two birds with one stone. The pool we go to has a little flume and for the first time FB felt brave enough to try it. SB has been brave enough to try pretty much anything since he started to crawl and we started having to pull him off 10' high climbing frames while he screamed in protest. The two of them and ExBIL therefore went round and round on the flume and left me to float about quietly in the pool swim laps and get some much needed exercise.

Boys are off to stay in Livingston again for a couple of days so Husband and I might go out for a low calorie healthy meal tonight. Or maybe not.