Madeleine really enjoyed getting ready for the messy playdate - making the jelly, cooking the pasta, making the cloud dough, getting out the paint, and she really, really enjoyed it. However I make no bones about this - having a messy play date in your house is a really, really BAD idea. Someone please remind me to NEVER do this again!
Yes - of course we did the Fringe!
We went to Malta and Gozo. It was searingly hot, the beaches were horrible, some of the food was okay, there were zillions of churches and Valetta was nice. It's a 2 day per island sort of place, but we were there for a week. Madeleine didn't care. She'd only recently become brave after dropping her "everything frightens me stance", and spent her holiday jumping in the pool, taunting the suits of armour and sticking her hand in the lion's mouth.
Madeleine's first camping trip up to Glencoe, onto the Ardnachmurchan penisular and back down to the Red Squirrel site in the valley. It could safely be said that she loved it with almost equal measure to her father's loathing. However, it had to done -
Scotland was actually having a summer, with temperatures soaring into the high 20s, it would have been practically criminal not to have gone. Even if we did get eaten alive by the midges, at least we were warm.
