A pet and a party

On Wednesday this week Giles was planning to get the bus to work (he usually cycles despite the distance, heat and hills...brave boy) but there were no buses because of the T8 warning which means a typhoon was coming our way so he had to come back in and wait for a lift. However he did not come back alone but was accompanied, unbeknown to him, by a large green insect which had hitched a lift on his bag.
We put him out on the balcony (the insect, not Giles) and after a couple of hours of watching him sit on the edge in the wind and the rain decided to put him in a shoebox and bring him in. He turned out to be a Chinese praying mantis, about 10cm long, and was in fact a she, not a he, as she had 6 segments on her abdomen. We called her 'Beady' but as she was a carnivore, only interested in live insects (not bacon, we discovered, or broccoli...) we decided to set her free after 24 hours. Elizabeth has started making a scrapbook about our Hong Kong pets so watch this space!

On Saturday we celebrated Jemima's half-birthday as we usually do in June because her actual birthday is on Christmas Day. We had hoped to have a swim and a picnic but, because of the wet weather, had a birthday lunch in the flat instead and have postponed the swim till Friday. It has so far been the wettest Hong Kong June on record and I'm pretty sure the same was true of Cardiff last year when we were trying to have a paddling pool party. We had a lovely party with friends from the campus, gymnastics, home-schooling group and church and Jemima is very pleased to be five and a half.