The Beast of Bodmin

Not a great night. Tom coughed through most of it. He was asleep during his spluttering, but we weren't. With hindsight, we should probably have moved him into the lounge in his cot when he started, but we didn't. We will tonight though.

Still, the cough doesn't appear to have affected his well-being, and he woke up as chirpy as ever. We'd planned to visit Tom's Great Uncle Paul and Great Auntie Shirley down in Cornwall today; Paul's father was my Great Uncle Leslie, after whom Tom was given his middle name. The weather was lovely, so we decided to take the scenic route to Bodmin, down some roads that were so narrow that I had to fold the wing mirrors in just to get along. Beautiful area though.

Sadly, we didn't get to see Shirley, as she was out at work, but her parents were there and gave us a good lesson in how to speak West-Country-ese. They're from deepest darkest Somerset (and are expecting their 13th great grandchild any day now). We had a nice buffet lunch, although we had to create a huge exclusion zone around Tom or he would have had all the food on the floor. Still, he did a great job of charming everyone, as usual, and definitely made some new friends. We watched some footage from Paul & Shirley's recent trip to Kenya, including the moment when they witnessed a giraffe being born in the wild. Quite a hazardous arrival in the world. Apparently, the shock of landing from such a great height gets the breathing going. The calf (?) was walking 40 minutes after birth. I pointed out to Tom that we're still waiting for him to achieve the same feat after nearly 11 months, but he just laughed at me and clapped his hands.

We left about 2.00 and came back to Crapstone via a strangely empty Morrisons. Nik and Tom went for a lie-down (Nik's tum is playing up) and we all then had a play in the lounge before tea, which Tom hoovered down with his now customary zeal. Soon be time for bath...