A Week of Events

I intended to write every day or to at least post a picture. My excuse is that life got in the way. The events were (not in order of appearance)

 

Event 1: the new nephew arrived! No proper pics or details of him yet (he is a little new to be broadcast yet). Believe me though he is lovely and has that old man feeling about him that newborns often do. It is as if they are wise. The question that remains is though how do they go from wise old creatures to the crazy under threes?? He has been welcomed into our family (well at least everyone has viewed him) and found him to be satisfactory. The boys (you saw them last week), generally agreed he was good and then turned to the business of leaping about on the hospital bed and running down hospital corridors holding hands. Far more fun to be up to no good when there are two of you! 

Event 2: Germany beat Argentina. Now I don't have England to support (and we now theoretically beat Argentina 2:0) I can support Germany (at least a little bit). You have to acknowledge that they are playing very nicely, thank you very much. The whole country is a state of black, red and gold and serious excitement. Next round is Wednesday. 

Event 3: wild storm with flooding. About an hour before the match the heavens opened. We'd been in the garden playing and reading before hand. I was swinging Yorck and we were listening to it rumble around. It sounded a bit like far off artillery fire (we spend quite a lot of time near a Belgian military range. It sounded very much like that. My parents-in-law were reading the weekend papers. At some point we went inside as it was too dark to read and getting really quite threatening. All of a sudden, down came the rain. Stair rods are positively bend in comparision to what we saw. We stood for ages and watched the water lash across the garden. 

After about 20 minutes I went down into the cellar, just to check. And it was pouring in through the door. About 10 cms in places. What fun we had mopping it all up. Well the cellar floors are now clean. It turned out that all the houses in the area had water in their cellars, thorough their front doors, wherever there was a little crack to pour though, through it came. 

Event 4: discovery of the Pomodoro Technique A spectacularly effective way to increase your concentration skills. After just three "pomodoros" (yes the idea of measuring time in plastic tomato egg timer units is somewhat bizarre, I used my phone timer) I had reduced the amount of distracting thoughts to half. Just writing them down as you go highlights how many there are! It's worth a look, even if you can concentrate well.