Our arrival coincided with not just warm weather and sunshine, but also calm seas. It meant that Cori was able, one happy evening after dinner, go out for an evening swim before bed – how lovely!
A happy problem for us in the move was that the van with all of our stuff was not to come until a couple of days later, leaving us a weekend free and without the possibility of getting stuck into doing anything. So we decided to use the time wisely and go to the Agricultural Show at Knockaloe. Here the boys enjoyed themselves with the heap of exciting things on offer for young boys to gawp at…
One of the key attractions was the bouncy castle, which they both went on (which is rare):
We were delighted to discover that the two other brothers on the bouncey castle at the same time were named Finbar and Orry. We laughed at that coincidence only hours into our first day’s activity on the Island… Though we would only about a month later discover that Finbar was soon to be met again at the school gates, as Finn’s new school-mate!
Sadly, the best we can do with their first group shot is Orry & Orry:
Finn was very excited about his school from long before we even got to the Island. So when we got his school uniform amongst one of the earliest tasks, he grew even more excited. He was delighted to be able to put it on as soon as he got home (and was upset not to be allowed to wear it every day following):
I had a couple of weeks on the Island before my work started, but Finn was very pleased to hear that he’d be next door to my work. Though, not for his benefit; rather so that I could look in at all the great things he was up to! On my first days at work I would send him pictures of the school, which he enjoyed – especially when there were chickens at the place in the children's’ stead!
We had lots of things to organise, including: flat, phones, banks etc. Getting these organised was not made easier by the flat needing a phone number, the phone needing a bank account, and the bank account needing an address. However, we kept at it miserably, though making sure that we did exciting things with the boys, such as going out on a trip to Maughold Head (via Kirk Maughold and Hall Caine’s grave):
Irritatingly our sandwiches were interrupted on the top by a freak cloud of flies and we retreated to the village green, where we bumped into granny, making the trip all the more special!
Another trip was with the cousins to Port Cornaa, where we enjoyed sandwiches, built towers to knock down and paddled in the stream (though absolutely not the raging sea!):
Also with the cousins, we had a trip to Peel, coinciding with a viewing of a flat on Douglas Street. The flat was ok, but the beach was excellent:
The sea was, of course, very cold. It was shocking for us all to see Finn in the water, but perhaps it was just being with the braver older cousins which made the difference. But even more amazing was Orry in the water. He was fearless and Cori almost had to pull him back from running in head-first into the waves! The only real problem was getting him away from it all at the end – what a grump!
It transpires that Orry loves the beach, and is fearless about getting in the water. This meant that Ramsey beach was effectively Orry’s favourite place in the whole world, which is nice, since it was just outside the flat!
If you thought that that last picture appeared to show Orry dumping sand down his own back, you were right:
Knowing that we were very likely to move to Peel once we found a flat, we remained in the East or North for our outings, including one to the rocky shore below Kirk Maughold:
Finn was especially fond of this place, as there was “a machine” on the shore, which I knew of and which was one of the key draws to get him on the rather long walk there in the first place!
[pic]
We also went to Rushen Abbey for a special children’s event. It was fun enough, but, we painfully felt, it was nothing like what they used to do at the Museum of London…
At Rushen Abbey we bumped into my work colleague, Chloe, and her daughter, who is to be Finn’s schoolmate. This was the second time we’d bumped into them, after seeing them at Maughold a few weeks earlier. It was good to have Finn silently eye-ball another child to be at the school – the normalise them and to have at least one known face there. It was steeling Finn ahead of that first day nicely.
The final trip of August was out to the Ayres Nature Reserve, which we’d never been to before but which was very beautiful:
However, there wasn’t really much there to do other than to throw a couple of rocks in the sea and wander up the observation tower – not too thrilling for children:
Inspired by “John Dog” and his Manx crafts at the Abbey the day before, Cori fancied making a Bumbee Cage:
and got some suitable reeds (with Orry standing guard)…
… However, Orry’s suspicion was probably justified, as the result proved:
To be fair, the failure was almost certainly due to the freshness of the reeds, and not at all due to Cori’s ineptitude (says Cori).
Then we returned to melt in the heat in the sheltered park at Bride – a lovely day out.
One of the oddest though impressive things to report from our first weeks in the Isle of Man was that Orry, one day, decided that he wanted to wee on the potty (he had seen Finn use it when caught out in the bath). So we got it out, he sat down and concentrated, and a puddle of wee and a poo was left behind. Phenomenal! It’s not been repeated though, and we’re all not too convinced that it would be worth the effort to push it, so it was just a shocking flash in the pan (or maybe “poo in the pot”):
Finn and Orry were fine about being in the Isle of Man and not London. Finn expressed a regret about not being able to see this person or do that thing once or twice, but nothing more than just a passing regret; nothing like a whine or an accusation. But we knew that the real difficulties would begin when I began work, and perhaps when school disrupted things.
My first week or two of work came in August and went by without problem for Finn and the family. All were happy enough (though Cori stressed and tired by the lot of them and all the organising to be doing!). I, however, was in my first new job for 10 years, and very much enjoying it! All looking good for the first Manx weeks!
