Windy.

The day began with rain, not a good start for the first day of summer but then it brightened to what constitutes a British summer's day. The British view is 'never mind the cold wind, at least the sun is shining.'

I went to the zoo all togged up for rain but it wasn't long before first the coat came off, then my jumper and I began wondering if I should have had a sun hat with me. Today I had a thorough weed of the big play area. Last weeks' hoeing and raking would have been more effective if we'd had hot dry weather. The wet weather we did have only encouraged some of the weeds to start growing again so I went over the whole area on my hands and knees removing every weed and fluffing  up the woodchip at the same time. 

It took nearly five hours which is probably too much for my back but I wanted to get it all done. There were lots of visitors at the zoo and the play area was very popular with the children. While I didn't stop for a coffee break with any of the other volunteers I did have some fun conversations with the children. One little girl, aged about 6 years old, told me she was going to be a (sub)marine biologist and another even younger and quite petite little girl told me about going to gymnastics as she hung from the monkey bars. One toddler, able to walk but not talk came and stood by me as I dug over the woodchip with a long handled hand fork. He obviously wanted to have a go with the fork so I handed it over, he gave a couple of digs and then gave me back the trowel, so sweet. (Granny was standing close by). It was interesting to see how the children tackled the climbing tasks and how their parents interacted with them. One mother came over and told her child ' There's no such word as can't', and then gave the child advice on how to tackle the obstacle. I was also impressed with the father who asked his son, who had been getting too boisterous and ignoring an adult, to sit down by him in time out for a while. 

When I came home I sat outside with a cup of coffee for a while. I was just about to go back inside when I spotted two dolphins quite close to the cliff. I'm always excited to see the dolphins. There were a couple of walkers going by on the grass so I called out to let them know about the dolphins and they got a chance to see them too. 

I realised that yesterday's biscuits were a bit too pale so after a test run I put them back in the oven for another 8 minutes to crisp them up. Then it was time to decorate them, lemon icing and sprinkles on one lot and chocolate on the others. Instead of the usual palaver of melting chocolate and having messy bowls to wash up I just put a square of chocolate on each hot biscuit as soon as they came out of the oven, swirled the chocolate around to spread it and then added some chocolate sprinkles. So much easier. I haven't tried any of the decorated biscuits but Peter was very happy with the chocolate one he had after supper.