When I suggested to Sabine and Gerry that they might like to leave Amélie with us for a couple of nights, so they could have some time to themselves, they liked the idea but were slightly worried that she had never been away from them even for a single night, let alone two.

She had always got on well with us whenever we’d looked after her for a few hours, so - this last Bank Holiday weekend - they decided to risk it and left her with us at the cottage on the Saturday before heading off to a hotel outside Bath, agreeing to meet at our local pub for lunch on the Monday.

The photo above (where she has commandeered Jane’s favourite summer hat) gives a pretty good idea of how the weekend went: lots of sun, games in the garden, sheep and lambs in the field, and a walk to the top of the hill from where we could look down on the cottage,

                                                            

Back in London she wasn’t really aware of where the sun rises and sets, so it seemed a good idea to teach her the points of the compass and that ‘the sun rises in the east and sets in the west’.  This was easy to do, since we let her sleep in our room which faces due east, which meant that on both mornings the sun came streaming in through the trees and, each evening, on the other side of the house, the sunset allowed us to teach her  ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’.

Although we didn’t have a single whinge out of her all weekend, keeping up with an active, inquisitive five-year-old was slightly tiring. So, on the Sunday morning, I gave Jane a break, strapped the lass into the car seat and headed off to the Odeon for the 11 o’clock junior showing of ‘Tinker Bell and the Pirate thingy whatsit’.   Sabine had warned me that Amélie (on the rare occasions that she is taken to the cinema) expects some popcorn as an extra special treat, so I asked the nice chap behind the counter for the smallest portion I could get away with.  He pointed out that this would set me back £3.75, whereas for 50 p less she could have a special deal amounting to popcorn, Smarties and a drink all packed in a special kiddy-friendly container.   (Since I was going in with a coffee and pain au chocolat I could hardly complain, could I?).

I had imagined that I would be seriously bored, but had to admit that - while it was no ‘Bambi’ or ‘Snow White’ - I enjoyed the film more than I would have imagined, though I would have preferred a little more variety in the inner group of fairies, who all conformed to the standard pattern of slim curvaceous beauty, differing only by one having marginally darker skin and another somewhat reddish hair.  Anyway, as Mark Kermode says, I was not exactly part of the target audience, and Amélie (who already had one of the Tinker Bell films on DVD) was simply enthralled.

So, all in all, a pretty successful weekend, and I’m looking forward to the next one.