Look Who's Here!

Well, Anna did eventually wake up on her birthday. She has never been one of those children who are shaking you awake in the middle of the night at birthdays and Christmas and this was no exception. The photo shows what, or rather Who, she saw as she went into the lounge. I have to confess that I couldn't believe that my husband had blown £30 on what is basically a bit of cardboard box, but hearing Anna's squeals of delight, hysterical laughter and shouts of "cool" and "awesome" made it all worthwhile. She loved all her presents, but the lifesize Doctor was by far the best. She told all her friends at at choir and drama about it and won herself quite a bit of kudos from the boys in particular.

This was quite definitely a Doctor Who birthday. Inspired by Jennie, I'd made a last minute purchase of The Five Doctors. As I said before, Stephen had given her the K9 box set and her daddy had also bought her some proper grown up Doctor Who magazines while he was in the Forbidden Planet. I know that there is more to come, too - a Destiny of the Daleks DVD from my sister which Amazon didn't quite manage to get to us on time.

By the time Anna had gone off for her long day of rehearsals and performances on Saturday, I was exhausted and had to go back to my bed for a couple of hours. Then in the afternoon we went to watch her in two concerts. I'm going to write about them separately, because I am concerned that funding for things like the National Youth Choir of Scotland needs to be preserved, but here they are on stage:


Unfortunately by the time we left the theatre on Saturday tea-time, the Summer weather had given way to rain, but we got changed and headed out for pizza with Anna's friends Molly and Emilie.

By the time we left the restaurant, rain had turned to monsoon, if you can imagine a monsoon without anything like heat. The car park had about 2 inches of water in it - just what you need when you have 3 girls wearing glittery pumps.

Anyway, when they got home, they all changed into waterproofs and wellies and went outside splashing with great enthusiasm. When Anna came in as it was getting dark, utterly drookit, dripping everywhere, she proclaimed it was the best birthday ever.

Once she was in warm, dry clothes, we settled down to watch Vincent and the Doctor - Curtis is a genius - which was a fitting end to the Doctor Birthday - or at least the first one. Doctor Who geekery doesn't tend to be something you grow out of.

As she'd had to work so hard on Saturday, we'd always planned to extend the celebrations to Sunday. We both slept really late and didn't get out of bed until after 11 and then snuggled up on the sofa with bacon rolls to watch "The Invisible Enemy" the Doctor Who story where Tom Baker and Leela meet K9 for the first time. We both really enjoyed it. It confirmed Anna's love for Tom Baker. It was quite funny, though - she was amused by the reference to the first cloning experiments taking place in the 40th century when in fact Dolly the sheep came along less than 20 years later, before Anna was even born.

In the afternoon, we went to Ocean Terminal. Can you guess which shops we went to?