Against the odds, I’ve managed to keep alive the tomato plants my mother gave me back in May.

I really didn’t think they were going to make it. The poor things got hardly any sunshine. It rained so much they got waterlogged and their leaves went brown and started dropping off. I found out too late that I was supposed to be offering them tomato feed (and in the end never bothered).

Despite all that, I’ve actually had a fairly decent crop out of them. Not enough to stop having to buy tomatoes in my weekly grocery shop, but enough that we’ve been having them at whim when I wouldn’t have bothered otherwise – having some fresh tomatoes with pizza one evening, or with our sandwiches.

Not only that, but my eyes have been opened to the FLAVOUR. So that’s what tomatoes are supposed to taste like, instead of the watery pap that usually passes for tomatoes.

So I’m encouraged – if I can get things to survive and get something useful off them, then anyone can. I can see the point to this sort of gardening. So I’m thinking of branching out next year.

I’ve bought myself this great book called Crops In Pots – okay, it’s probably more aspirational gardening than practical as it appears to have more glossy photographs than text, but to be honest I don’t want to be scared off by complicated instructions. I like the “bung it in pot and harvest” approach.

The only problem is – what to choose next year in addition to tomatoes? I’m tempted with some dwarf runner beans – but would I ever get enough at one picking to feed the four of us? Maybe I should grow sweet peppers instead – I only ever need one of those at a time…

Decisions, decisions.

You may remember that back in February I wrote about a lovely dad called Peter who had been on the heart transplant list for over two years.

Recently it all got rather scary. The LVAD machine that was keeping him alive started to get old with higher risks of clots and breakdown. Peter suffered a couple of minor strokes and the decision was to put him on the emergency transplant list for three weeks. After that point, they would have to replace the machine meaning more long stays in hospital and a dangerous operation when he was already very weak.

There was a phone call which got everyone’s hopes up. It turned out to be a false alarm – the heart that could have been his was diseased – not suitable for transplant. Things looked very bleak indeed and time was running out.

That was until last night, when the call they were waiting for finally came. Peter went into theatre early this morning and after a lengthy operation he is now in recovery with a brand new heart and an excellent prognosis. The next 48hrs are, of course, critical… but all is looking very positive indeed.

It’s bitter sweet – someone lost their much loved family member last night, but their generosity gave someone a life today.

My very best of love to Misdee, Peter and their three beautiful little girls. Time to be a proper family again, guys :)

If you don’t have a donor card yet. Get one.

Now.

No excuses.

I made a fresh fruit salad for tonight’s dessert in the first time in ages. It was really delicious. But as I ate, I couldn’t help thinking…

… what a waste of sangria ingredients!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of days now, but somehow life got in the way.

The nice part of being in West Dorset is that you have easy access to Dorset, Devon and Somerset for your daytrips and we certainly took advantage of that – although the roads were slower than we are used to here (especially when stuck behind a line-painting lorry on a small windy B-road!). Here’s where we visited:

Barrington Court, Somerset

Barrington Court is a National Trust property near Ilminster in Somerset.

We didn’t actually see inside the house (we’ve learned the hard way that small children find historic properties rather dull and it becomes a battle of wills between parent and child to get through it with sanity and delicate precious objects intact) but the gardens were absolutely gorgeous.

There were formal gardens, orchards, an arboretum and lawn areas to explore.

If that wasn’t enough to keep you interested, there was a historic quiz with the questions hidden all around the grounds. Okay, so Akra Jr was a little young to know his English Kings and Queens for the quiz, but he did enjoy hunting for the questions and writing down the answers and it kept the two of them entertained running around hunting for the hidden signs while we enjoyed the scenery.

Pecorama, Beer, East Devon

If you have young children and are ever visiting the Devon coast, you must go and visit Pecorama.

Pecorama has five things that make it just magical for small children (and, I suspect, many children-at-heart!): a comprehensive model railway exhibition (Peco are the people who make railway modelling products) with some amazingly detailed scale models, a light railway that takes you for a half hour trip around the grounds, beautifully landscaped gardens, some well thought out play areas and an open air theatre with a show from a children’s entertainer.

I normally skip children’s entertainer shows, but we did stop by and watch Elfic the Jester to rest our legs, and he was just superb – all of us were thoroughly entertained.

And the best news? It only cost us £16 for all of us to get in (under-4s are free) and the face painting was completely free too. An absolute bargain.

Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre, Dorset

How I wish Monkey World had been as value for money. We’d actually planned to go and see the SeaLife Centre in Weymouth, but given that the car park charges were going to be around £5 before we’d even bought our entry tickets, we felt that was a bit of a rip off and drove straight past.

While wandering the campsite, loads of people had raved about Monkey World, so this seemed a great plan B, despite the fact it was raining. Given that it was a rescue centre and charity, we thought it’d would be fairly reasonably priced – but a family ticket for the four of us was £30. We paid our money (internally grumbling) and hoped that it would live up to expectations for that price.

Sadly, it didn’t.

My top tip is that if you do go to Monkey World, do not visit it during wet weather. All the monkeys were wisely sheltering indoors, while piles of wet and grumpy tourists crammed together to look through the minuscule windows into the indoor enclosure. The boys spent most of their time complaining that they couldn’t see and even the monkeys looked depressed. To be honest though, I’m not sure how much they would have seen even in good weather as the enclosures were large with lots of hiding space – great habitats, but not so good for monkey/ape watching.

Also, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of variety. There seemed to be several chimpanzee and mueller’s gibbon enclosures and not much else. It was quite a relief when we found the orang-utans to make a change. We left very quickly even though the rain had stopped, simply because we saw everything there was to see very quickly. Akra Jr seemed to prefer the gift shop anyway (more expense!).

Corfe Castle, Dorset

Corfe Castle is another National Trust property and this we were really looking forward to. Akra Jr in particular wanted to visit the dungeons (although, I wasn’t sure if there would be any) after reading lots of Famous Five books with Kirrin Castle in it.

Sadly, the property is undergoing a lot of renovation at the moment, with most of the interesting parts (i.e. the whole of the keep) blocked off for safety during the conservation work. Also there were no signs anywhere describing which part of the castle was which, so if you visit, make sure that you purchase a guide book otherwise it just becomes a pleasant view while strolling through a heap of stones.

Perhaps worth a revisit next year once the keep is reopened.

Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset

We popped by to see this on the way back from something else and we were amazed at how popular it was – the tiny carpark at the viewing point was packed solid – the small icecream van at the location surely didn’t justify that?

When we took a look though, we suddenly realised why it was pulling the crowds – and no, it wasn’t just for the prospect of a 99 flake.

The Cerne Abbas Giant had been Simpsonized!

Honestly, apart from the rather obvious sign of spots all over him, you’d never know this boy was sick.

Well, to be fair, he’s been slightly more easily upset, and comes in for a cuddle and another dose of Piriton once a night, but other than that Li’l Bhaji is his normal cheerful self thankfully.

Not totally sure I’m going to breeze through it quite so easily if I catch it in a fortnight’s time…

Now look what I’ve gone and done… I’ve gone Simpsonized!

It’s quite simple to use – you just need to upload a photo of yourself then tweak according to preference.

No, I don’t quite know how I ended up with that lovely tan… suspect I pressed the wrong button somewhere, was going for a nice sickly yellow colour.

Well, you can’t fault his timing…

… youngest son came down with chickenpox this morning.

Against all the odds, we certainly picked the right week to go camping.

As our holiday drew nearer and nearer, I started to haunt the online weather sites – comparing one off against another, preferring to believe the one with the best forecast. In reality though, I didn’t hold out much hope – the webcam for our destination (the Golden Cap site on the West Dorset coast) was showing a gloomy, rain-soaked vista right up until the day before we were due to leave.

Our first night didn’t bode well with the first spots of rain starting before we’d even attempted to get the awning up. By the time our camp was finished, the rain was bucketing down, the awning groundsheet was just a sea of mud and we were running about two and a half hours late (for that, blame the M5). Dinner that night was scavenged at Dorchester’s Little Chef while I hoped that we wouldn’t return to a soggy camper without proper waterproofing (we didn’t, the waterproofing was fine).

Fortunately, the next day we woke to bright sunshine and all days except Thursday were dry and warm. Just as well, as the boys’ favourite activity by far was a late afternoon run round the beach followed by an ice cream.

The site itself had excellent facilities, with a shop opening long hours, tourist information room, clean toilets and shower block, and a laundry room (which, thanks to a couple of “accidents” we saw rather a lot of during our stay – still, at least we didn’t have as much washing to do once we got back home).

The staff were lovely and helpful – we were directed to the driest pitch available whereas normally it’s a free-for-all – and we often saw the little tractor zooming around the site to tend pitches and to help people tow off muddy ground.

The location also couldn’t be faulted – areas of interest in West Dorset, East Devon and South Somerset were all within easy reach, making it a great base for sightseeing.

However, the site did have a downside – it definitely had a much more commercial feel than say, Aberafon and the pitches were much more crammed in and less sympathetically arranged. The static caravans were given the best views of the bay, while the tourers pretty much just got to look at each other – a great shame when it was the seaside location we coveted most of all. I couldn’t even hear the sea from where we were at night when the site was quieter and for me, that’s the whole point of camping on the coast.

Also (and I appreciate this is going to sound really picky, and in no way in the remit of the site’s management) the sea off the Dorset coast just didn’t smell right. In North Wales, you get this lovely smell of rotting seaweed and brine (that’s nicer than it sounds!) whereas the sea at Golden Cap just didn’t smell of anything. You might as well not be standing by the sea at all – it’s a very odd, sanitized sort of feeling.

So, despite the much superior facilities and more convenient location, I think Aberafon wins hands down every time for me.

The family Naan have just come back from a week away in our new Pennine Pathfinder. Well, I say new… it’s a 2001 model, bought second-hand – but feels very new and luxurious compared to our old 1991 Conway Cruiser.

We now not only take a kitchen sink with us camping, but also an oven, a small washroom and proper sprung mattresses on the beds (and the front bed is a little bigger too).

We’ve also learned our lesson and bought one with a full awning – giving us much more wet weather space to play with.

So how did the maiden voyage go? Really well. It was really noticeable that this was a top of the range camper – being able to run hot water into the sink was something I wasn’t initially fussed about but did actually make a huge difference while living in it.

The beds were as comfortable as the ones at home – most mornings I woke up and then had to remember where I was. It’s slightly longer than the old cruiser (to fit in the washroom) and having that extra space did make it feel much less cramped when we were all inside (although having an awning to kick the kids into and have the table in for meals was a vast improvement).

The big disadvantage with this camper though, is that it won’t fit in our garage. Well, it will… we just can’t then open the internal door to the house once it’s in. So it’s going to have to live outside on our drive, losing us our only off-road parking space and blocking access to our garage. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

So where did we go on our camping trip? I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow.

In the meantime, anyone want to buy an old Cruiser?