The chickens have escaped!

There’s one sure way to get the kids out of the house on a cold February Sunday… all their dad had to do was ask if they wanted to have a camp-fire!

All children are latent pyromaniacs, and there hasn’t been such a rush for the wellies the entire winter. Both of them worked as hard as they could for the next hour clearing up the garden collecting kindling. Ian pretty much left them to it; they built a perfect fire, lit it themselves and then looked after it. When gnawing hunger distracted them they had a bowl of chilli but never left their positions on either side of the fire.

They decided to do some experiments in cooking fruit, and set up a production line chopping up fruit, mixing in raw cane sugar and wrapping them up in tin foil before placing them carefully in the embers. They quickly mastered the timing and Ian and I ate delicious caramelised apples followed by sticky toffee bananas (apparently they tried oranges too but didn’t like the results).

All in all the kids were outside for almost 6 hours; they didn’t come in until it was almost dark and the fire had all but gone out. They were covered in soot and ash and smelt of smoke, but they had such a lovely day!