A good day

First thing this morning Rob moved the clothesline out from under the tree, so it will dry things faster now. And we assembled a picnic and took the trike and my new bike out. Yes, I have a new bike. It has TWO wheels and is very wobbly and also I can't relax at traffic lights because it doesn't hold itself and me up while I rezip my jacket or whatever. BUT it is lovely. It's a little old-fashioned red town bike for cycling about town on, only a smidge of a fraction too big (I can touch the ground with the tip of one shoe when on the saddle, barely, which is fine for solo cycling but not adequate for a child seat on the back), and has only two gears and neutral, which suits me fine.

So we cycled down to the river, Rob on the trike and me on the bike, and I revelled in being responsible only for my own safety, and then we stopped at Kings Meadow and had our picnic, which was beans and eggs, followed by pickles, followed by still-warm onion bagels, with tea and smoothies to drink. Then we went to the Kings Meadow playground, which has a safari theme, and the climbing frames are done up to look like Jeeps and jungle hideouts and stuff. We went on straight slides and bumpy slides and bowl swings and zip slides and climbing frames and roundabouts and a climbing frame which was a roundabout.

Then we found that Linnea had wet herself, just as we were starting to look for a public toilet, and so we went to Tesco to buy new pants for her. I hope whoever told me Tesco are industry leaders in ethical garment production was right because these don't seem like fair trade undies to me. In fact, I don't believe they are and if the layer of production immediately before Tescos warehouses is humane and non-exploitative I doubt the next layer is.

However. We also bought a bike lock for my bike.

Then we cycled to the Forbury Gardens where there was a silver band playing various Sunday Afternoon In The Park type bandstand music. Emer boogied and Linnea grooved, and when Freya arrived they all ran around and around in circles, doing various dance steps with the grace and agility of one pot-bellied round-bottomed four-year-old, one skinny bumless wonder with trousers at perpetual half-mast, and one cloth-nappied toddler almost exploding from excitement. They played follow-my-leader with Linnea as leader, until the older girls went so fast around the bandstand that Emer was leader (the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and lo the wonder of their pink underwear and extraordinary "fairy wings" arm movements shall stun multitudes) and they did hula-hula dancing and they ate ice lollies and played chase and and and.

And then we came home again and Rob put dinner on while I fed Emer, who went to sleep at the worst possible time. Ho hum.

Dinner will be roast stuffed porksteak with potatoes and carrots, I think, and I look forward to it very much.

Dream

Last night I dreamt I was playing pool on a green table using oranges instead of balls, and one pocket kept popping the balls back out. I forced two or three into it and they came out and then a tiny black hand came out and waved. I realised there wasa child in there, trapped in the table, and we unscrewed the four huge phillips head screws holding the taqbletop on at the corners and I lifted out a skinny black boy dressed in faded shorts and shirt. He had one almost withered leg which had been broken but never set properly. Someone wanted to take him away from me to deal with in the proper way, because he shouldn't have been in the table and he was in trouble now, but I wouldn't let them. We raised him with Linnea and Emer and he grew up to be huge and muscular and a little fat, and his leg was fine, and at the end of the dream we were all in the swimming pool, my black foster-son an adult and my white daughters still 4 and 2, and he was delighted and strong adn still desperately sad and afraid because of being locked in the table.

I still felt guilty for shoving the oranges into the pool-table-pocket when I didn't know there was a person in there after I woke up.

But I was glad I'd been able to rescue him, in the dream, and that no-one had been able to take him away to a proper detainment centre.