Some Spanish exchange students came for a week. My children sang "Don't Look Back in Anger" for them at assembly.

I didn't realize I had limit for historical and cultural learning but now I've hit it. I went to a performance of a rock opera about the Peterloo massacre in a union hall that was the site of "the world's first trade union congress, and if it had happened in London you'd have heard about that already!". I realized almost immediately that I was too distracted by all our various moving tasks to fully appreciate the prog rock performed by sixty year olds in Georgian costume in front of illustrations from a graphic novel about the event projected on a screen. Peaced out at intermission. They deserved a fully engaged audience.

On the last day (late July!), most of the school migrated over to a nearby park and camped out for a few hours. Soon a lot of the boys were shirtless (the Red British Male frequently sheds his outer layer to regulate body temperature) and my children always seemed to be gravitating toward a group congregating in the shrubbery. I struggled to maintain vigilance through a haze of canned cocktails. Other parents v. startled to learn that American parents are not at liberty to crack open a bottle of prosecco at the park.

My sister-in-law's neighbor in Vegas is a professional golfer so she got us tickets for the Women's Open at Royal Lytham & St. Anne's. We were joined on the train by many, many men pregaming on their way to a soccer game in Bolton. I am no longer phased by morning drinking, but they were rowdier than usual. "Oh no," B said disappointedly. "Another bad word." We took a cab to the golf course through Blackpool, the sea on one side and every kind of beach resort flash on the other. "This is the best place," said B. They didn't get to see much of it, maybe we owe them a trip to Coney Island. I'd twerked something in my foot so I read by the food trucks until the children had had enough golf and I could hobble home with them while T watched the rest of the tournament (I cannot overstate how many times I have dragged T to wool- related events and his near-constant good humor about same). We were just in time to make it to Storytellers and the woman who writes the newsletter was not there, so I was spared the agony and the ecstasy of interacting with an Internet Person.

Our priest at home has the same name as one of America's most notorious mobsters, matched with a demeanor so intimidating you could never dream of mentioning it. The priest here is very low-key and the kids see him all the time at school, so I mustered up the nerve to invite him for dinner. He showed up 15 minutes early and my younger son was so excited that he acted like an absolute maniac, but overall it went smoothly. When we arranged the dinner Fr. J. had said he didn't eat anything spicy, so I made Finnish meatballs with boiled potatoes. Dessert was good ol' Atlantic Beach Pie and an improvised crumble, latter a failure. We discussed some of the historical sites we've seen on our trip and he was very perturbed when I told him about Westminster Abbey's ticket prices. He drily remarked that one silver lining of the Reformation was that the Catholic Church in England is not saddled with the financial burden of maintaining all the ancient churches and abbeys that Henry confiscated.