Today we went shopping for shoes for the new school year. Five kids surrounding a pram holding a baby, marching the streets and mallways on a mission to find four pairs of the most practical, comfortable and stylish shoes. All the kids were really good for the most part, except for Eleanor, but that's just because she's two. She refused to get in the pram, insisted on walking and on pushing the pram on her own, climbed all over the benches where the children needed to sit to be fitted for their shoes, ran around the shoe stores, seemed to be perpetually climbing on those stools that they use when they are measuring your feet. Anyway, we survived.

I am beginning finally to fulfill my many-year ambition of teaching my children ancient Greek and Latin. For the past few weeks this summer we have been working in the Cambridge Latin Course I book, and even Georgiana is paying attention and enjoying it. We're also reading the Caroline Lawrence books together as a family, which educates the children in all sorts of ways on the world of ancient Rome.