Empty House Again

Family visit is over, so it’s time for a bullet-point catchup round!

• I complain about this country’s attitude to urban design (basically: “how do you want to die today, pedestrian?") a lot, but fair is fair: Americans really do know how to make a park. This summer, in addition to the smaller (but still very reasonable: have you ever seen a British council-provided playground that has covered seating and a barbeque?) parks, we’ve also been to Summit Park, West Chester Splash Park, and as of last weekend, Tower Park in Fort Thomas. The latter in particular is pretty impressive: multiple multi-storey adventure playgrounds, a zipwire¹, puzzles, swings (of different types covering all ages from toddlers to adults), a garden with musical instrument flowers, and a covered area where you could reasonably fit an entire street inside. I also see that the forest that is a few blocks from our house² is getting a bike park later in the year. For all their faults, Americans seem to put a lot more effort in than your typical British council…

• New iPhone has turned up after they decided to attempt delivery on a Friday night just as soon as I put Maeryn in the bath (and didn’t even try the doorbell). I am therefore undergoing the familiar journey of “oooh, shiny new iPhone! Look at the new camera!…and now it’s just the phone that has lost all my Kindle bookmarks” At least this time it’s a shiny new orange colour?³ (update after writing this - it did not copy over my iMessages, so I’m attempting to upload 1m messages into the cloud before I have to send the old phone back)

• I do wish my family could have a flight either from Heathrow to Cincinnati and vice versa without something going wrong. I have never known any other flight that consistently seems to not get a jetbridge (at Heathrow!!!?).

• Although I seem to have avoided adding a new collection to my life by simply buying a fancy (well…Chinese copy of a Mont Blanc, so fancy at $50 instead of $1000) fountain pen, I was not prepared for all the possibilities of different inks. Which is why the house now has…a lot more fountain ink in it than you might expect. I have, so far, resisted buying Ohio River…

• Thanks to Dad, our cardboard mountain has receded, and I now have a working garage door opener. Frankie Says You’re 73% American.

• Mum continues to be the best interrogator that MI6 never hired. At various points during their holiday, I left her alone in a shop or restaurant for under a minute or two, and she had extracted the lifestory of servers, checkout assistants, random people in the street…

• We had to print stickers of the family (especially ‘GRANDDAD!') after they left for one sad toddler.

• Bonnie can move quite fast in an electric wheelchair.

• Hades II on Switch 2? I’ll take two!