There was a knock at the doorbell this morning. As I walked towards the front door, a couple of heads could be seen through the glass panels. One was Sophie, who we were expecting. Normally, the other head would have been Tom but his head is covered in black, curly hair and the second head was light brown. When I opened the door, I was almost knocked over by a very happy to see me, Boris.
The girls were hiding in the library where Mirinda was Skyping with Fi and her dad. When I let the girls out they didn’t take long before jumping up on the same dining chair, trying to avoid our four legged visitor.
We hadn’t expected Tom, so his non-appearance was no surprise. It turned out that he had accompanied his mother, but she’d dropped him in town to go charity shopping.
I’d booked us into The Lost Boy at 1:30pm, so Sophie told Tom to meet us there. Mirinda suggested not telling Tom where the restaurant was, so he had to use his wits to find it. This ploy wasn’t entirely successful. That’s not to say that he didn’t find us, but that he didn’t so much use his wits as taking instruction from his mother, over the phone, as I gave instructions to her.
In the meanwhilst, and following a lovely chat at the dining room table, we headed off into town via the park, Long Garden Walk, the Lion and Lamb, the churchyard and, eventually, the restaurant.
Obviously, we took the dogs with us. And I have to say that our girls were incredibly well behaved. Boris was very keen, pulling on the lead, wanting to say hello to everyone and everything. I was amazed at Sophie’s upper body strength as she, almost constantly, held him back.
There were a lot of dogs, out and about, today. It may have been because there was the usual monthly market as well as a craft market closing off the roads in Farnham. It was great seeing so many people and so few cars. And a lot of dogs.
At the restaurant we had a delicious lunch after Tom finally found us. He’d been to the castle as well as the charity shops. I think he enjoyed himself. It’s hard to tell through all the hair.
We spent a lovely couple of hours discussing all manner of things including Tom’s aspirations as he heads into his GCSEs. It doesn’t seem so long ago that he wanted to hug the bears outside the Orvis shop and now, he’s 16 and thinking about the future. Tempus fugit.
Obviously, being a teenager, he doesn’t like his photo being taken, so the above is a bit of a coup. Also, I have no idea who or what Emma and Freya are looking at, but Boris is posing perfectly. I should also mention that it wasn’t as cold as Sophie’s outfit seems to imply. I was dressed in shorts and t-shirt.
