What a difference a little sunshineyness makes.  I think we're all feeling the love today, are we not?  Smiley faces in the playground, smiley faces on the street, neighbours standing outside their gates chatting, people cleaning their cars and singing along to the radio.  The first day of Spring might not have been today, but certainly this feels like the real beginning.  Ohhhhhh, I have never looked forward to warm weather so much as this year.  It's been a Winter of illness, and not just for my mum (though, of course, she has had the worst).  It's been a Winter of the most colds, snotty noses, ear infections, bronchitises, tonsilitises and laryngitises that I have known.  Not that I'm complaining, because poorliness is always the best excuse to have cuddly times on the sofa and plenty of DVDs.  But I am ready to brush away some cobwebs this Spring.

I've got my novel-writing head on now; I'm going to do it; this is it (as I say every Spring!)  I've found my principle characters, and I know what they look like so they can't give me the slip this time.  I've found my plot, and I've found my baddie, and I've found my baddie's motivation, and I've found a few sub plots that might be worth exploring, I've also firmly decided on the rules for magic in my world.  All that remains is to write the bloody thing.  Five chapters down, roughly twenty-five to go!

Oh good grief!  How to spoil a person's productive mood!  I said that my neighbours were singing along to the radio whilst cleaning their cars?  Well, my next-door-but-one neighbour has just turned Blondie up full blast, and I am mightily vexed!!!  I cannot abide Blondie, so I am going to have to shut my window until it's over.

Just goes to show - you should always stick to the original plan!

Things I have learned today:

• The M55 takes you right to the Central carpark in Blackpool - no need to go down the A6 and try to figure out your way through the town centre! How old am I? How many times have I been to Blackpool? Why has it take me until now to realise this simple fact?
• The Sealife Centre is extortionate - especially for such a small place.
• The Sealife Centre is extortionate - it's such an important point that I needed to say it twice.
• The Sealife Centre makes mums sweaty.
• The Sealife Centre makes children hyper.
• Never put off plans to do something outside just because it's raining - it will invariably brighten up when you decide to do an indoor thing!
• The sharks at the Sealife Centre are worth the sweatiness of the mums and the hyperactivity of the children :) We loved the sharks.

We did have a nice day, don't get me wrong. The boys behaved beautifully in the Sealife Centre at Blackpool, and they loved seeing all the fish, and particularly the sharks. We just sat down on the treasure chest and watched the sharks circling above us for ages - they're very beautiful (although Thomas was not as impressed as the rest of us, because these sharks weren't big enough for him). But cor bloody blimey, I don't like paying more than £10 per child for somewhere that only takes an hour to get round. It's incredibly overpriced. It's a shame, and I know that places like this cost a lot to run, because the animals need looking after, and there are conservation projects and stuff going on. But the zoo at Dalton is about the same price, and it's much, much bigger and is a place that you can spend all day in, and you can see lions and tigers feed, and you can handfeed penguins!

The real trouble is that I completely spoiled the boys in the Sealife Centre shop, and now I can't afford to take them to the zoo! I didn't tell them that I might take them to the zoo though, so at least I don't have to break a promise :) And they're very happy being little pirates with their new swords and wee pirate hats! No, honestly, it was a lovely day - I just always feel guilty when I've spent a fortune like that, and it skews my view of the day.

Now, what can we do tomorrow that won't cost anything at all? Ugh, I really don't know, if it's raining. Might have to be a visiting grandparents day if it rains again. I know that I said that I love the rain, and I do, but I do hope it'll bugger off soon, because I'd like to do some of the things that we used to do in the summer like taking a picnic to Lancaster Castle, and going for walks by the river or the canal - things that we don't need the car for, things that we can do every single day without spending any money at all. Playing at home is great, but it's better when it can be in the garden.

Come on sunshine, show us your smile!

I love where I live!

Next week we're going to see the house that I saw for sale. I was driving around that area again this morning, on my way to the chemist to get some medicine for my poorly Thomas. And I felt such a sense of rightness - I don't know whether we'll buy the house that we're viewing, I suspect that the garden will be too small for us, but it still got me thinking.

The area of Lancaster that we live in is not the poshest! Well, the street I live on now is a bit more posh than those I've lived on in the past, but it's still on the scummy side of the river :D But I'm proud of where I come from, very proud. I was driving around some of the little terraced streets while I was waiting for the chemist to open, and I have such fond memories of growing up there, of noticing all of the cracks in the paving stones on Gardner Road, of playing with friends on Broadway and Pinfold Lane and Norfolk Street, of belonging to a little community of people that squash themselves and their families into those beautiful tiny terraces with their postage stamp back yards. It was nine o'clock in the morning when I was there today, and the mums were all on their way back from dropping the older kids off at school. All of the mums had prams and there were lots of little children playing dangerously close to the roads, but always still having enough road sense to not to step off the curb. I can remember being one of those kids, though I didn't go near the road and stayed by my mums legs, and listened to her chatting to the neighbours, taking it all in and learning about people. All of this morning's mums were shouting at their kids, and they were all shouting to each other across the roads, and they were all looking absolutely perfect in their Ugg boots and their skinny jeans and pushing their Quinny Buzz 3-Wheelers. And it all just made me smile. The trappings change, but the people do not. There was bright sunshine, and everyone looked happy, everyone was smiling and the scummy bit of Lancaster was up and about, alive and loud.

Before we bought this house I had put in an offer by myself for a house on Gardner Road - you know, in the days when first time buyers could just buy a house without making themselves bankrupt - and was very excited about the idea of returning to where my parents had started out, where I had spent the first eight years of my little life. I had little dreams of decorating the two-up-two-down exactly how I wanted it, of having my own huge space, which was very tiny really, but still enormous to me who had been living in a box room with only enough space on my bed to lie curled up in a ball! In the end Kev decided he'd quite like to get on the property ladder too, so we bought this big house together instead. But I have always felt that I missed an opportunity in not living on Gardner Road for a little while - an opportunity to feel like part of a little community, to make some extra friends, and to have a place that was absolutely my own and not shared with anyone else (and not to mention making a small fortune on the house, as prices rocketed soon after we became home owners!). Those little streets with their ginnels and wonky paving, stone front doorsteps scrubbed clean (as they used to be, perhaps not so much now!) and their back yards remind me of The Family From One End Street, and Cider with Rosie a bit too.

It's good to be alive, even when life's getting too busy and too hard. If we can just get to a place where we can think clearly and slow down and find a smile everything is easier - even if that place is only in our mind. I'm glad I can make myself find something good in every day - even if it takes a bit of searching sometimes :)