Playground

 It was another lovely day. Though there was a smattering of clouds in the morning, the afternoon had clear blue skies from end to end.

We had a nice chat this morning with Cousteau-cub. Her teeth are still giving problems but the acute problem caused by the abscess had eased. It looks like she will need to have a tooth removed and a denture provided. Despite the problems, she sounded quite chirpy.

The Gorse Fox headed across to Worthing for football. We had a good turn-out. This meant that we had to split into three teams and play a round-robin. The Gorse Fox was able to sit out the first game, but then played in the remaining games. Unfortunately, we lost both games 2-1. The Gorse Fox was not too dispirited - he played well, intercepted a lot, and managed to stray into the attacking half occasionally.

He beat the system. The Gorse Fox always looks at Google maps when he prepares to leave. this determines the route he will take home. Today, no routes looked sensible. There was a huge tailback at Crossbush, and the roadworks around Angmering were at a virtual standstill. The Gorse Fox used his local knowledge from 14 years at Kingston Gorse. He switched off the A259, slipped along to the level-crossing, then headed through the edge of East Preston towards Rustington. Then he looped back onto the A259 having missed all the traffic. The expected 49 minutes run home was reduced to 35 minutes. Result.

The Silver Vixen had collected Ellie. She will stay with us until the morning. After some lunch, we took her to the playground where she started playing on the apparatus before switching to running games where she hurtled around the park with the Gorse Fox in tow. This carried on until some more kids arrived and then she joined in with their games. It was lovely to see that though they were clearly of Afro-Caribbean origin, she just merged in with their games without a thought and similarly, they accepted her without a thought. While this was going on, the Gorse Fox chatted with their dad.