Event 12: The mad house goes on holiday

My mum, dad, bro and I went on holiday to the lakes, along with my bro's friend Murray (a very brave boy indeed). And we took our usual madness and nonsense along with us. Here is a summary of the events, laughs and general daftness we got up to during the week:

We stayed in a nice terraced house in a little village called Braithwaite. We even had our own private carpark! But it wasn't exactly easy to get to, being just over a very small steep bridge and a sharp right turn. "I get the impression this village wasn't made for cars!"

Mum had an infected foot since just before we came away a very unkind little bug decided to bite her. As she couldn't walk or stand it meant Dad and I had to cook, with mum shouting instructions from the sofa and getting increasingly frustrated with our incompetencies. But we managed. We decided the boys should cook the next night and put in our request for a roast dinner, with stuffing and yorkshire puds and the full works. After choosing to have beef as the meat my bro replied, "do I have to stuff the beef?"

We did lots of sudokus and crosswords to keep us entertained. Mum read out the clues and we all tried to help.
Mum: Hollow and cylindrical
Bro: Tube
Mum: No, longer than that
Dad: Hose

Dad and I went on some nice little walks, including one in Grasmere which had everything we could have wanted. Ups, downs, streams, trees, views, history (a house where wordsworth had once lived) and wildlife. We had a guide that told us about all these things, including explaining the symbiotic relationship that the trees were supposedly having with some mushrooms. Only, as far as we could see they'd got divorced.

We also played games, where Murray won a trump with an 8!, made pennies stand on end, sang songs to sheep, talked to cows, discovered that tubes of pringles are too small for big boys hands, tried apple crisps (very, very odd) and, of course, had plenty of nonsense conversation. We spent nearly a whole meal time discussing what would happen if we could dig a tunnel to Australia and dive into it. Until Murray pointed out that you wouldn't get to Australia from here, you'd end up in the middle of the pacific ocean. So plans for the tunnel have been aborted for the time being.
Me: What happens if you take a vacuum cleaner into space?
Bro: You suck up the stars.

We managed to fool the boys into loading the dishwasher all week by claiming we didn't know how to do it.

We saw a red squirrel :)

I had a spider nearly on me one time when I stood up (or, as Murray kindly pointed out, it could have been just off me...) and since we didn't know if it was a him or a her we called it Vivian.

And some other great quotes from the week:
"The water's a bit strong up here."
"Do you have a heart?" (Mum to bro)
"Thank you, my foot feels much better now it's had a good laugh."