An early start to the day and picnic packed (or as I like to call it picNic ;)) we headed off. I’d not really checked train times as Lancing to Brighton are always pretty frequent and our meeting time with EOFF was pretty loose. We were planning to walk to the station (which is less than 15 minutes away, so we really should walk to the station) but it was really cold yesterday and I was worried that at the end of the day that 15 minute walk home from the station could prove testing. I battled with the on platform ticket machine which didn’t like my card (I could well have been putting the chip up the wrong way, I really try not to use plastic anymore having spent more than my share on it over the years ;)) so then I struggled to unfold a £20 note sufficiently to get that accepted. All of the stickers showing which way up to put cards and cash in had been peeled off and I was aware of Davies and Scarlett playing chicken with the big yellow line on the platform :roll:.
We didn’t wait long for a train and got seats with two next to the window so there was no battling for window seats either. We did conduct a fairly high volume conversation for the whole journey (neither of my kids have settings other than Loud and Very Loud indeed – no idea where they get that from ;)) about what we could see, the most amusing of which was Scarlett mishearing ‘Portslade’ as ‘Porkslade’ and asking if that was wear lots of pigs lived? 😆 This led to discussion of all the other places we could think of where we could substitute port for pork such as Pork Talbot, Newpork, Shoreham Airpork, Porksmouth and so on, which led to Davies speculating on what sort of port was in each place – air or sea. As we pulled into Brighton station we had a discussion about bombs and luggage . As public transport goes it was fine. Actually in fairness it was better than fine – the £5.80 it cost for the three of us was way cheaper than parking would have been, let alone petrol, it was quicker than driving into Brighton and utterly hassle free. I am definitely guilty of driving by default to get anywhere rather than thinking of alternatives, Brighton is certainly easier by train.
We walked to the Pavillion, cleverly avoiding the lanes where all the best shops are, thinking we might have a wander round them on the way back (which I then avoided by walking back with Ali and Cintha -gone are the days when I would have been using cunning to ensure I did visit shops rather than using cunning to ensure I don’t.) and reached the museum. We had a quick look round the first bit which had lots of African masks and costumes, mummies and things like staffs and other ceremonial things. D and S were quite interested in them and I was called upon to read the little labels on how old they were and what they were used for. We also looked at the tiles round the walls which were tesselating shapes and the mosaic floors. Then I got a text from Cintha to say they had arrived so we met up with them and went into the children’s area. Unfortunately Cintha’s two girls and Davies and Scarlett are the combination of children with least connections and all four children were being demanding of attention and being loud so we managed very little in the way of conversation. Eira arrived next with her two children and a spare (neighbours daughter on half term) which raised the noise level even more.
I did manage to look at one bit with Davies and Scarlett individually – a mosaic painting called a Dream Pattern with a white space and a load of magnetic shapes to create your own dream pattern.
Davies liked the idea of a man in his and took quite a lot of inspiration from the original
Scarlett was more interested in the shapes to use and liked the circles – she said they reminded her of The Very Hungry Caterpillar
and I was itching to have a go so when they’d finished I made an owl which I was inspired by the oranges and browns in the colours to do:
We decided the children really needed the opportunity to be noisy and run around aswell as eat something so we went out to the Pavillion gardens for lunch. Mel and her daughter and Ali and F had arrived in the meantime. In the gardens was a young woman dressed in white with white face paint doing that live statue thing where you stand as still as you can. She was mostly doing it with her eyes closed, which I’m sure helps with creating the utter stillness and not blinking but must be a very odd and vulnerable sensation standing, blind in public knowing you are the centre of attention. The children decided she looked like a weeping angel (she did, rather) and the adults had a variety of feelings about her such as wanting to protect her. When we get the chance to have conversations it is a very interesting group of women with diverse life experience and social, political and various other demographic backgrounds but surprisingly similar outlooks on various things. We decided the museum was not really a hit for a meeting place for that group as it didn’t really accomodate the childrens’ need to run around, be noisy and just ‘play’ when they are together so are planning to support them more and find places they can do just that for future EOFF gettogethers. Hopefully our next session at a soft play place will allow more time for the adult chat which makes that a nice group of friends. We did manage a discussion about stranger danger and how to tackle it though which was good. The children mostly fed the pigeons (which Ali suspected may have been illegal :lol:) and then watched the living statue woman again. She broke her stance for a while when we went back over to her and thumbed her nose for my camera when I tried to photograph her and held out a hand for the children to shake (none of them wanted to :lol:)
It is lovely there and it was a blue sky but actually it was bloody freezing and I was totally inappropriately dressed for it in a flimsy jacket.
The children all put some coins in her cap and we went back into the museum. This time we all split up slightly and Davies and Scarlett and I spent some time on a knock down pegs game which was good and then went upstairs where we found a punch and judy theatre that they played with for a while. I was starting to feel both intolerant and fed up by then so we decided to work our way towards home. We ended up at the lift at the same time as Ali and Cintha and caught up with Eira and Mel on the way out so we did all get to say goodbye and we walked back to the station with Ali and Cintha. Scarlett and Freya were in giggly girlie mode together which was cute and said goodbye with emotional cuddles :).
The train home was busy and rather than fight for seats we stood in the door space between carriages which is fine but does mean you get a bit battered about by people getting on and off. It was otherwise uneventful and we were home fairly speedily. By then I was feeling shivery and fairly rough and realising that I was coming down with a cold and headache so my general intolerance of loud children, sitting on the grass in February wearing unsuitable outerwear and deciding I hated museums was probably related to that more than any genuine problems with either the children, the weather or museums. I drank three mugs of tea one after the other, told the children to leave me alone for a while and just about roused myself sufficiently to take Tarly to Rainbows.
Rainbows was about puppets with four tables set up for them to work their way round in small groups. One had finger puppets, one soft animal glove puppets, one hard headed people glove puppets and one marinette string puppets. Funnily enough I have been thinking about making puppets with Davies and Scarlett, having found a cool doll making idea on a craft site using air drying clay and had decided to modify it to make voodoo style puppets of all of us with strings. There were puppets at the museum yesterday so Davies and I were looking at them and watching a video of some master puppeteers doing all sorts of extravagent puppet movements from above, so Scarlett got to have a go at puppets with strings and I told her about my idea to make mini-us puppets so she liked that lots. 🙂 She thinks she will be ok to be left there after half term which is good. I don’t actually mind sitting there watching Rainbows, it’s a nice little group and they do nice activities but I am already less invisible to the children sitting there each week and at least one or two of the girls talk to me every time which isn’t what I want really – it’s the only thing Scarlett does away from the rest of us and I want to cultivate that side of it for her as much as possible.
We came home, she had a bath (Davies had already had a lengthy one in our absence) and then I read a couple of chapter of the last of the ‘The X who Y’ books – The Gorilla who wanted to grow up before they were both off to bed. I think for the first time in months they were both asleep by 830pm. I had a bath, cooked dinner and was asleep on the sofa by about 1030pm myself! Barely managing to wake to stagger upstairs to bed around 11pm.