• Back in the UK. The trip was exactly what I expected: 8 hours of moving from car to queue to uncomfortable seats somewhere to queue to other uncomfortable standing to queue and so on.

    UK passport control (“UK Border”, as its passive-aggressive big signs read) at Gatwick was a trial. As we approached an agent directed us to a queue just for families. Great, I thought, they’re kindly allowing people with impatient kids to go first. Except they aren’t at all: families can’t use the e-gates so they all have to queue up to be processed by hand by a single agent. The queue took about 40 minutes to get through, which is better than some visits to the US I have made, but that’s a very low bar.

    I suppose this is down to staff shortages but since Priti Patel is in charge of the Home Office I’m just going to say it’s her fault.

    We also realised we forgot to take Nanda’s BRP with us. Apparently carrying this while travelling is mandatory but if you don’t it doesn’t seem to matter anyway. Then what’s the point of taking it? Half-enforced rules are the worst kind.

  • Second kiddo has suddenly learned to roll over and blow bubbles. Bllpphhhhhpp.

  • The house we moved into in January has 4 bamboo plants. They look nice (ooh, tropical) but it turns out that bamboo is, in fact, dreadful stuff that will take over your garden given half a chance. I have already hacked out a big load of rhizomes and new growth but I bet this is just the tip of the bamberg. I got someone round to look at getting rid of it but a) there’s no access for a digger, b) killing it with herbicide will take ages. I want to dig it up myself but I have been told that this won’t help with other pressing matters like convincing a baby to take a bottle.

  • We had a barbecue with friends and their kids. Until you have a baby and a toddler it’s easy to underestimate just how much of a task doing anything but keeping them out of trouble is, let alone entertaining others, but we managed to pull it off. The living room was a sea of toys dismantled in ways I didn’t think was possible afterwards but everyone seemed to have fun, us included.

  • My toe is now fine.