We're going on a leaf hunt

Typically the children’s half term holiday has heralded the onset of diabolical weather, thankfully I am at work this week until Thursday, which is due to see an upturn in the conditions, hopefully. The weekend was spent at my childhood home, picking up Heir no.1 straight from school and setting off directly meant that we missed most of the traffic. Part of my mission this weekend was to get a leaf for another blogger’s daughter’s school assignment. I thought it would be better to procure a leaf from the Lake District rather than the city of Manchester, where we normally reside. It struck me on the way up to the Lakes that my yearning for a leaf may take some explaining. No-one knows that I am doing this blog, and I quite like the anonymity that it provides. I don’t think that I’ve put anything down that I wouldn’t want people to know, but if I knew that people in my day to day life were reading it, then I might start to self-censor. Does that make any sense? So, back to the scenario in question: how do I explain away why I am collecting a leaf to my wife? “I’m collecting it for someone in a different country, who I’ve never met, so their daughter can add it to a school assignment.” There were going to be too many supplementary questions to field there! Suddenly the Blogging Gods came to my aid. Out of the blue my wife said to me “Oh by the way, can we collect some leaves this weekend? I want to do some leaf rubbing with the kids next week. I can’t believe Heir no.1 hasn’t done it at school yet, and he seems really keen”. “Yes!” he piped up from the back seat “I want to do that next week!”. I kid you not – that’s exactly how it happened! So the good news is that the leaf has been duly collected. I did contemplate collecting different ones, but I thought that a lone specimen might carry more gravitas in the end. I did try to employ some thought as to what might add more value to the specimen chosen. There were a multitude of possible locations that I could have chosen. I settled on a leaf from a tree in the road where Stan Laurel was born (of Laurel and Hardy fame), the only famous son of the town I grew up in. All I need to do now is wait for it to dry out properly and then it can begin it’s journey to it’s final destination. I actually enjoyed this “mission” and hope that my contribution can add to the end result. The power of blogging….