One perfect day

I spend a lot of time whinging, so I thought I'd balance that up, and tell you about yesterday.

Ben was at a kids' art day on Wednesday and left his backpack there. It was in Darlington, and I thought rather than making a chore of collecting it yesterday morning, I would take Ben with me and we could visit the book shop in Newtown I rather love (Better Read Than Dead), and then go and buy him some sorely needed new shoes.

We got off to a great start with him deciding he would rather stay at home, but I dragged him out, whinging, anyway. After 5 minutes he was chatting away happily and the day really started. We collected his bag (from a much nicer person than had been there the day before) and headed up to Newtown. I performed the perfect reverse park. This bears mentioning, since I can't reverse park to save my life.

We went to the book shop and were slightly disappointed to discover that the book I wanted was out of print in hardback - looks like I am going to have to buy it from the US. Ben loved it, though - as he was browsing the picture books he asked "Why isn't everyone in here?". He picked one book to buy and we headed off for lunch.

He decided on pies, and then chatted with the woman in the pie shop in such a way that I felt it necessary to point out that his lovely nature is all his doing, I don't take credit for it.

We had a wander through Pentimento, a fun little shop with stunning books, jewellery, handbags, crockery and various other odds & sods. Ben was engaged and interested in everything. Back on the street, he was pointing out the mosaics in the foot path in Church St and the fig in the church yard.

We headed out to DFO to buy him some shoes, and we managed to find him 3 pairs of shoes for $45 at Rivers. He tried on about 7 or 8 pairs. He didn't whinge or resist or anything! I can't even manage that when buying shoes. It was just so damn satisfying.

Later on, our babysitter relieved us of our parenting duties for an evening and we went back to Newtown and spent the night at Zanzibar. We'd had a pretty good day work-wise, so we were celebrating that as well as having an evening to ourselves. Fantastic tapas and very fine cocktails made by very fine cocktail waiters. Possibly one too many of those very fine cocktails in fact. And a lovely, relaxed night chatting and enjoying each others' company.

One perfect day. There should be more of 'em.