We had a lovely idle weekend…pootled around on Saturday, wandered down the boat club during the evening and found Julian having a 40th birthday party with a great band from Colchester - thanks for the dancing! Lazy morning Sunday just enjoying the sheer pleasure of being together with nothing in particular to do…collected son and grandson and had a happy adventure picnicing in Thetford forest and exploring Grimes Graves, Norfolk’s amazing iron age flint mines.Back to work on Monday I was chatting about idelness to my colleague at Voice Hayley who is also a talented writer involved in the Slow movement and recently published Slow London which I highly recommend for anyone living, working or visiting the capital (which must cover most poeple I know at some point!)So Hayley told me about slow ambassador Tom Hodgkinson who has written The Idle Parent and I felt that lovely thrum of vibration when you find somone in harmony with your own values and meaning. I tried to be a slow parent and now grandparent and to encourage all our family and good friends to enjoy the slow life too. In a world focussed on success and achievement it can be really hard not to get sucked into other agendas and I know most of my friends think I work too hard and am not slow enough! It’s true at the moment the allocation of time - how much work, how much relaxation and home - is working towards meeting slow values rather than arrived! But when enough work is done for the week our down time is definitely idle; walks by the river, picking quince and making jelly, cycling to the local craft fare, shopping at our farmer’s market. What I love best is the time that gives me to dream and stretch my imagination, which seems to be at the heart of slow parenting. We had hours of fun recently inventing as many different ways as possible to route the water from a simple solar-powered bubble fountain Ivan just made in the garden, playing with odd bits of copper pipe and sea-smoothed pebbles from the beach. Archie at 5 years led the experiments and needed no interference from us to invent a rainbow of variations. Wtare, sun, imagination…what else is there?So I’m off to gather as many slow parenting ideas as I can to pass on to our children and young firends - do share yours too!