Project 52 2025 week 9

It’s been a much brighter week, largely thanks to the better weather. Generally it’s been sunny and blue skies, plus some of the daffodils are coming out, so hopefully this is a sign that Spring’s properly on its way. Here’s our week 9 of Project 52.

Sunday – Just another weekend day. Had to nip to town for a couple of bits, but otherwise had a nice relaxing day. 

Monday – back to work was a bit of a shock only after 3 days off.  I was in the office for an afternoon training course. Then quick rush off to Oxford afterwards to see the musical Chicago at the New Theatre.  It was a brilliant show, Kevin Clifton and Fay Brookes were in it who I should have seen in Strictly Ballroom (but only saw Fay as pretty much everyone else in the show was an understudy the evening I was there). The dancing and singing was so sharp and precise. A really enjoyable evening, although it was a late night back home.

Tuesday – it was carnage in the village at drop off time. The damn Porsche is still parked on the corner in the way of everyone needing to turn. Our bus was early so turned up at the same time as the earlier school bus. We arrived in the nick of time, but then had nowhere to park sensibly and turn round, the car behind me was trying to drop off too, and one of N’s friend’s totally missed the bus and had to catch it at the next village. After work I had line dancing. We learnt another new dance to an awful track – cross between sea shanty and gaelic jig. The dance was ok though.

Wednesday – Had to order new tyres. I’ve been meaning to for ages because my MOT had said I’d probably need some in a few months. I find it much easier when they just say, do them now. I need something checking on my brakes too – either disks or pads (hopefully the cheaper part), so we’ll see what they say when I take it in for the tyres. Good football training although it’s their last training inside. The school won’t let them have a couple more weeks in the hall training, and it’s still not light enough in the evenings for outside, so not sure what will happen the next couple of weeks til the clocks go forward.

There was fun on the village Whatsapp mums group as someone finally mentioned the dumped Porsche. It took 4 hours for someone to finally say their husband might know who’s it was. But in the meantime a note was left on it, with the agreement we’d report it to the non urgent police in case it really had just been dumped. By afternoon bus pick up, it had been moved to one of the roads by the green instead. 

Thursday – busy work day. The bus annoyances have started again. After 3 years of us all using the Oxfordshire Stagecoach bus passes and them being accepted, Midlands Stagecoach who run the bus route for Warwickshire County Council have now put their foot down and told every single kid on the bus this morning as they got on, that next week they wouldn’t be let on with those passes.

Our choice is basically going from an £11.50 young person’s 7 day Oxfordshire pass to the £38.50 one for the Stratford buses (that covers about 5 different counties rather than just the route/local area like the Banbury/Oxfordshire one does). Or we can use the £3 single cap, which annoyingly is probably more expensive than a child single would be but they no longer offer because of the cap, so £30 a week. Still nearly 2/3rd more expensive. Drives me nuts as they’re only travelling 7 miles from our village, but people can pay the same price and travel 30 miles if the route allows them. I had a bit of a moan on twitter about it, but really we haven’t got a leg to stand on given we’ve got away with the cheaper pass for 2.5 years.

Friday – busy day at work getting lots of bits ticked off.  The bus drivers made the kids all pay for their tickets today on the standard rate, rather than letting them use the remaining pass. It was a lovely day though – blue skies all day, sunshine. N even went out wearing shorts on the farm after school.

Saturday – a busy day. N’s football match was moved to early, so luckily I’d been able to move my hair appointment to later. A beautiful day, frosty first thing, but sunny, lovely to watch a football match. Instead of the 10 men we only had last time and just lost the match, this time we had all 16 of the squad. Let’s just say it ended 5-0 to our boys, but could have been at least 2 more that hit the crossbar. They played really well. But next week, 4 of the kids are off on a school thing and another can’t play, so we might struggle to put out a full team again. I wish people would confirm further in advance, then they’d be able to postpone the match with plenty of time. With school events, that’s one of the reasons they’re allowed to postpone, so it’s frustrating when we have to go ahead with only 10 players.

I then had my hair appointment.  I decided to go a bit shorter than normal because it’s getting so tangly, I’m having to tie it up at night. I did fancy some layers, but ended up my usual blunt bob. Maybe next time. The rest of the day I just had time for baking a cake for pudding, putting on 2 loads of washing, folding, and prepping tea.  It’s going to be busy weekend with not much down time.

New posts this week:

• Money making ideas for teens

Things I’ve enjoyed this week:

• Sunny weather and blue skies. I even went out without a coat on Saturday afternoon
• Watching a very successful football match
• Chicago!

Things I’m grateful for:

• Ticking off everything I needed to for this week, which means starting afresh on Monday at work. Yay
• Watering my cyclamen which are still going strong
• Finally having a bit of turning space in the village again.