April Scrapbook

Bits and pieces from a sun-soaked April.

There’s nothing like starting a series, sharing a couple of posts, and then letting it abruptly disappear to make my type-A personality feel like a failure. In a bid to share more here and try to ease my self-imposed sense of guilt (I doubt if anyone reading noticed the short lifespan of this series), here we go again. Our favourite moments from April.

Centre, Alison Watt, Study for 'Lying Down'. Right, Jethro Buck, Soaring.

We had a free day in Cambridge on Good Friday so decided to be brave and took the kids to the Artists for Kettles Yard exhibition. We wished we could afford many of the pieces for sale (a couple of favourites here), Nora loved standing and drawing in the calm space as she always does, and Jasper was a menace and it was a challenge to keep him away from the pieces hanging at exactly his head hight.

For Easter weekend we imposed ourselves on my parents in Norfolk (it’s on my to-do list to make a guide for our favourite child-friendly places and spaces here). We had a lovely morning at Gressenhall — Jasper was thrilled to partake in a tractor ride and a horse ride — hunted eggs round the garden, walked from Glandford to Natural Surroundings for coffee, biked round Holkham and spent a long time in the sand pit at Pensthorpe.

It was hot! We ate a lot of ice cream at Jack’s. Raspberry was the kids’ flavour of choice this month. We also loved admiring the beautiful flowers I order every week from Cathy. Pops of colour are making summer feel a little closer.

The annual family formal at Queens’ College was as chaotic for us as ever. Maybe next year we’ll manage to sit down beyond the starter? But it was a sunny evening and we ran round and round the quads, played in the President’s garden, did some origami with napkins, banged the gong, and waved at many passing punts.

Last Sunday we hopped in the car and drove to Stratford to finally pay a visit to the V&A Storehouse (we all loved this). Jasper now wants an antique red car for his birthday. Nora wants a Victorian dolls’ house. They’re already David Bowie fans so that part was a win for everyone. We then nipped over to the shiny new Café Jikoni at V&A East for lunch. It was heaving and yet again our kids failed to sit down, so it was a slightly manic but also quite delicious meal. The cardamom mandazi was our favourite.

At the bakery I’ve worked my way through 3kg of Pump Street chocolate, tried to satiate everyone’s rhubarb cravings, made some pretty birthday cakes, and played with some new gluten-free treats.

That’s it. We did it! Let’s hope May has more sunshine, maybe some strawberries, a few picnics, and a peaceful half term…