More assorted outings.

Bronte Parsonage Museum. There are two major Bronte sites in Yorkshire. There's their birthplace, which also operates as an AirBnB so you can SLEEP IN CHARLOTTE"S ROOM. We went to the parsonage in Haworth where they spent most of their lives. It was an appropriately dreary day. An hour before we were supposed to leave, I got an alert that our train was on target to arrive on time. Great news! Just as I had finished threatening my children with the fires of hell if they didn't put their shoes on, I got an alert that our train was canceled because of a schedule change. Surely that can't be right, I thought, and frogmarched everyone to the station. It was right. Conciliatory hot chocolate, eventually followed by two trains, a bus, and a walk up an extremely picturesque but perilous cobblestoned hill.

The museum was crowded when we got there, and a school group was hard on our heels. "Boring! Boring!" sang the chorus beside me, reasonably questioning what they were getting out of our journey. Guys, one day you'll be able to say you saw the couch that Emily died on!

Things turned around for children at Mrs. Beightons Traditional Sweet Shop, where a very patient woman guided them through their purchases. Our choices: Kendal Mint Cake which is sort of a firm chocolate-free York Peppermint Patty. Popular for twentieth century hikers and brought by Sir Edmund Hilary to Everest, the factory workers donating their sweet rations so they could make enough in time for his expedition. Anise drops. Sarsparilla drops for T. Fry's Orange Cream, a dark chocolate covered orange fondant. Not my preferred chocolate to fondant ratio, sadly the Lee's brand that I liked more is out of business. N got a tube of sour and luridly orange candy spray, B got a ring pop. Tablet, sort of a toffee-burfi-fudge, a little softer than I prefer. Rhubarb cream chews, the shopgirl's favorite. Reasonably content and very sticky ride home.

Liverpool. My friend from high school came to visit and we went to Liverpool to see our other friend who lives there now. We met for lunch in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, a gorgeous pub where N had a cheeseburger with a hashbrown on top.

On to the Hardman House, a rather offbeat National Trust property. It was a photography studio in the fifties, and when the owner's wife died and he became too infirm to climb stairs the upper floors were essentially a moment of midcentury life preserved in amber for decades.

I glazed over a little when the guide showed us the cameras and developing rooms, although a week later one of the children made a remark about the photos on display that Hardman had been commissioned to take at a cookie factory so someone was paying attention. But it's very easy to see nothing here but the homes of the high and mighty, so I appreciated the look at everyday life.

Chetham's Library. A few months ago I was on a tour at the Quarry Bank Mill and got to talking to a woman from Lincoln who comes over to babysit her grandchildren every week. We realized her son lives just down the street from us, so we exchanged numbers and made loose plans to set up another outing during the school day. We landed on Chetham's Library, the oldest public library in Britain. The building had lived a thousand lives, from the 1400's onward. It's still a working research library