(no subject)

Everyone here gets up really early. They keep chickens and the roosters start making a racket as soon as the sun rises and don't stop until it sets. They don't drink tea just tisane and there were pancakes for breakfast with blackcurrant syrup and then Oliver dragged me out in the drizzle to practise flying.

The rest of his family doesn't care much for quidditch which is odd, considering how much he likes it. He started by having me try to throw quaffles past him but I guess I was way too easy to block, because after a while he switched to having me play catch with him instead with us both on brooms. He kept telling me I wouldn't fall off, which is easy for him to say as I don't think he'd fall off his broom unless both bludgers got him at once, but after a while I realised that the broom he lent me is better at staying under me than the school brooms are and I got a bit better at it I think.

And then he set up an obstacle course and we raced, only he gave me a head start because he said otherwise I wouldn't be much of a challenge.

Then his mum came out and said that it wasn't fair to make me sit on a broom all day long because maybe I wasn't as mad about quidditch as he was? and we should come in for lunch. In the afternoon she took me around and gave me another tour, and I was less tired this time so I remember things a bit better.

They have the chickens and also some sheep and they grow things, but nothing so big as what the Strettons had, I think the Woods and their neighbors mostly grow things for themselves. They have about a dozen muggles who help manage the sheep and weed and so on and a few mudbloods to help with the housework, Mrs Woods showed me where they all sleep, which is in a stone cottage close enough to the wizards they can keep an eye on them but far enough away that the muggles aren't in the way. There's a shed out back for the mudbloods. Half the shed is for mudbloods and the other half is for brooms.

After lunch Oliver told his mum that he wanted to give me a tour of the area and his mum said he was just trying to come up with excuses to put me back on my the broom and he could drag me around tomorrow. I asked if they were near the sea and everyone laughed. It turns out we're so close to the sea I could have seen it when we were flying earlier if it had been a clear day. I said I'd never seen it and everyone started talking at once and I thought maybe they'd take me right away but then they decided they'd wait until tomorrow. I guess they think tomorrow will be sunny. Mrs Wood said that if someone has gotten to be twelve years old without ever seeing the sea she should see it properly the first time she does, and then everyone laughed, and she told me I should go to bed early tonight.

Which I did but I can't sleep so I thought I'd get up and write about my day.