Long overdue is still due ...

Well, it's been a while ... how times fly in the non-digital world beyond the humble blog. Work, life, World Cups and small babies have a habit of making even the most assiduous chronicler's intentions dissolve into the usual unfulfilled promises.

Livvy, meanwhile, has developed from the tiny scrap she was when last I wrote here into the archetypal "bouncing" baby girl. Her current breast-fed, pre-crawl form is a chubby, chuckly bulbous bubble of vitality and joie de vivre, as the Germans say.

And she fits very neatly into one of her toys, which is proper handy for going out shopping and the like.


Trick photography, I hasten to assure any passing Grannies, Social Workers or members of Her Majesty's Most Royal Constabulary.

Livvy and Tick took themselves off to the Lake District for a few days earlier this week, along with Lucy and Zoe and their respective sproglets. A fine (if decidedly warm and sticky) time was had by all, it appears, whilst the daddies of the piece remained at home, slaving over a hot dayjob.

It's a laugh a minute at the Lake Windermere Junior Xtreme Games Festival!!

Summer is reaching its peak, as measured by the exit of England's football team from a major international competition and Britain's tennis hopes from Wimbledon and Family Clark is gearing up for holidays, which this year will take us all to France, for a couple of weeks of wine and weather. Livvy's international travel portfolio was opened with a trip to Spain in May (extensively chronicled by her Aunties Fiona and, most memorably and prose-aliciously, Tina). So she's got the first stamp in her passport (Passports!! For babies!!! Talk about stealth taxation ...) and is well used to the dusty slog along the long and winding open road (and/or snoozing steadfastly in the comfort of an air-conditioned people carrier). For our second holiday of the year, we plan to spend a week with the Bates side of the family in a Gite somewhere near Bordeaux, before striking out on our own (in another of the aforementioned charabancs) to spend another week with old Clark family friends Catherine and Jean-Marie in their house up in the hills of the Cote d'Azur.

Which is at least something to sustain the spirits on yet another early-morning flight to Brussels ...