Hola! Como estas?
Whenever we visit Mrs As mum in Milton Keynes its a bit of a schlep up and down the M1 so we thought we'd incorporate a visit to somewhere else as well. There's a National Trust property near by called Canons Ashby so we decided to go there and just as we were turning into the car park saw a sign
Royal Oak 2 miles
So we carried on along the lane and found the Royal Oak, which turned out to be a fabulous country pub run by a family with about 6 children - possibly more, it was difficult to know whether some of the staff were also children of the proprietor. It was a proper pub with proper beer and excellent food - well worth a visit if you're in the area.
Canons Ashby has a history which stretches back to about 1100 when the priory on the land was built. It is now one of only 4 Privately owned churches in the UK. The house is like many National Trust houses, but they seemed a lot more chilled at this one and allowed us to sit on some of the chairs which is normally verboten.
As you will know if you've read this diary for any length of time, I've been learning Spanish on Duo Lingo. I have made progress, but it doesn't involve much speaking. There is some reading Spanish on the screen, or repeating Spanish that you hear, but when I try to bring to mind some Spanish it is a veeerrrry slow process.
So, I've been umming and ahhing about signing up for a Spanish course. I had done the free assessment to see what level I was. Whilst it said I could go into a class a bit above beginner, it recommended starting from scratch.
I had been ruminating about this and suddenly realised the term starts this week, so I took the bull by the horns on Monday and signed up.
The first class was on Wednesday - Spanish - Beginner 1.
Hola, Como estas?
So far so good - I've been able to keep up! despite the assessment maligning Duo Lingo, it has given me a decent amount of vocab, so we'll see how far I get before its starts to become more difficult.
Our teacher Alba started by asking why we were learning Spanish. Mostly it is people with plans to travel in South America or with partners who have Spanish speaking parents or relatives. My reason was to stave off dementia as long as possible and to talk to my Grand daughter Little Ray of Sunshine.
In years gone by, people often did an evening class as a way to meet and befriend other like minded people. That seems to be a thing of the past - at the end of the class everyone was off like a shot.
I've got some homework to do and fortunately Mrs A already has the book they use from her Spanish lessons.
On the family front, we popped round to see Hija and LRS on Thursday. LRS's nursery had a harvest festival theme, so she went dressed as a very convincing water melon and was still in costume when we arrived - very cute.
It did mean there was a clean up job to do on the extensive red and green makeup she was covered in, so it was a bath night. She insisted we all come into the bathroom, so Hija, Mrs A and I all squeezed in.
During bath time she was rather preoccupied with what's between her legs - she seemed to be looking for something and was saying 'tail'. It seems at her 2 year old swimming session they all get changed in the same room and she had noticed that one of her friends had a tail and that she didn't!
There’s a technique called ‘the five whys’ which is essentially what it sounds like -keep asking why until you get to the root of the matter. This is something children do instinctively - No doubt the difficult questions will start soon!
Our son Hijo has a new job - he started about 3 or 4 weeks ago as a producer at LBC News on the late shift - between 3pm and 11pm. That does have the downside that it makes it difficult to see him during the week, but we can catch up at weekends, or brunch.
We had the excitement of hearing him as continuity announcer on the radio late at night - he records these and they are played on a loop through the night.
Very proud parents!
That's it for this week.
Have a good 'un!
Jerry