One word? When seven would do…

By 9am I had already gotten dressed and had a beef stew cooking in the slow cooker.

By 10am I had already got a load of washing on the line, the children were dressed, a picnic lunch was packed.

By 11am we were standing in the car park at Highdown Gardens awaiting the two families coming to join us on our Activeo event of a Spring Walk.

I did think about taking some pictures and making it a photo blog day but decided against it as a) it is far from typical and b) I realised that I’d dressed Scarlett in an identical outfit to the one she wore last year for photoblog day and Davies was wearing the same trousers as last year too…hmm, spooky coincidence!

We had a nice walk round Highdown gardens although the woman and her daughter who’d come along too seemed to enjoy it the little girl (I think she was 8 ) clung to her mother and didn’t talk to us. She was really interested in new group though so that’s promising. She was a nice lady, full of questions and story-swapping about HE and actually it’s been a while since I met anyone new so it was quite nice to be doing that again. She has a 10 yo boy who does one day a week in school but would come along to HE group so that will be nice too.

She left after picnic lunch to go swimming with her daughter leaving me and Julie and the children. The children were fully engaged with some complicated game involving stripping a big stick of all it’s bark and chasing butterflies and bees. They got a range of looks from the large amounts of elderly people out enjoying the gardens from indulgent smiles to frowns at their noise and boisterousness but Julie and I enjoyed sitting on a picnic rug and chatting. 🙂 We left around 2pm when Scarlett decided she needed carrying.

Since arriving home the children have disappeared off into the newly spacious playroom and are playing with the megablocks and the cars on the car playmat, I’ve done a couple of emails, taken a scary money phonecall and made some snickerdoodles as we were lacking anything sweet in the house that isn’t chocolate and egg shaped 😉

I’ve started Catch 22 but failed to get into it although I’ll give it a full 3 chapters before deciding against it and I also looked at the first bit of To Kill a Mockingbird before deciding that having seen the film at least once during school days perhaps I’ll leave that one for now. I was reading stuff on the website for the Pay It Forward movement last night and feel quite inspired to re-read that again actually. I read it and loved it, watched the film and thought it was a good film but not actually that representative of the way I’d interpreted the book and I think I’d like to read it again – actually I think I might suggest it for reading group too.

Right, another cup of tea beckons, maybe with a snickerdoodle on the side…

Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Hope you’re having a lovely day, lots of love from Nic, Ady, Davies & Scarlett xxx

I got most of what I needed to get done done today but none of it was particularly spectacular so I am without any great sense of achievement really. 🙁 I hate bank holidays. When I was a child my parents always seemed to spent the extra time off work as an opportunity to row more and from the age of 14 I worked in Mum’s restaurant so bank holidays were an extra working day, leaving there to go to retail meant bank holidays were worked in the early days to get the time and a half and day off in lieu deal, latterly when time and a half didn’t exist any more in retail management they became a miserable chance to beg and plead with my staff (who had lives outside of work) to work them. In all the time Ady and I have been together he has worked pretty much every single bank holiday and I have only ever had two years worth of different office jobs where I got bank holidays off. Since having the children they feel even worse as everywhere you look is full of families doing family stuff together so you either risk feeling like a single parent and join in with the family activities or stay home and mope!

So today Ady was off and gone before I even woke up, I faffed around reading blogs and waiting for a load of washing to go through the machine before hanging it out and going food shopping. The children got out loads of different paper (tissue, corregated, construction, textured and printed) and made a beach for their toys to play on with it. We went to Sainsburys where they were both very well behaved and did lots of counting, spotting different groceries and so on. Davies spotted some collect tokens and send away offer for a Wallace and Gromit modelling kit on ‘tip top’ cream products so we worked out the cheapest way of collecting the required amount and bought them (tokens duly removed from packaging and me and Davies walked to the post box to get it sent off when Ady got home from work).

Home again for lunch and more hanging out of washing. I went through the big pile of paperwork of creditors stuff and sorted that out including sending a couple of emails to CCCS to update them.

The children played with various things although nothing for very long. I sat and did some drawing and colouring with them for a while of Madagascar characters, Davies did some writing but he is very tired and hasn’t got any great attention span at the moment, he so needs an early night or a late morning and can’t seem to manage either. 🙄 We got out the marble run and I built them a huge run which amused them for all of about ten minutes before it got knocked over. Scarlett then spent some time playing with that by herself. Davies got out his k’nex but then put them away again, got out some magnetic word tiles and stuck some on the fireguard to spell out obscure and nonsensical sentences before putting them away too.

They were amused for a while by the colouring in online again from yesterday but even that didn’t last more than about half an hour. I offered to read to Davies, watch a film with him, sit with him while he read to me, do some more writing, do a jigsaw but none of it appealed. I refused to ‘play’ at making Wallace and Gromit with geomags or get the plasticine out as either of those activities would have had me more bored than him. I also offered various websites or pc games all of which were refused. But I kept my patience and temper at least. Scarlett painted my toenails and her own fingernails and eventually they did disappear off to their bedrooms for a self created game for the last hour or so of the day and I started Catch 22.

I’m popping out shortly to give my Dad a tow – again 🙄 as his van has packed up again and is booked in at the garage tomorrow but needs to be gotten there and hopefully evening bank holiday traffic will be quieter that early Tuesday morning traffic. Then tonight we have my favourite dinner of stir fry followed by chocolate! Tomorrow I’ve organised at Activeo event at Highdown Gardens but the only taker so far is Julie so I expect it will just be us with our picnics. And in the evening I have reading group.

I’ve had this post bubbling in me for a couple of weeks. I’ve chatted to some of you in real life about a conversation with a woman who insisted she had the definition of ‘autonomy’ (except she called it autonomative, which really annoyed me! 😉 ) and was not up for debating it. My definition of autonomy is very different.

I looked on dictionary.com for some definitions too and found these:

Main Entry: au·ton·o·my
Pronunciation: -mE
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -mies
1 : the quality or state of being independent, free, and self-directing
2 : independence from the organism as a whole in the capacity of a part for growth, reactivity, or responsiveness

(pleasingly there was no listing for the word autonomative – but I guess that means she gets to write her own definition if she made the word up!! 🙂 )

Now this lady was very inspiring in many ways, she is passionate, had achieved great success in giving her quite severely disabled child not just an excellent quality of life but an independance and education far far beyond what would have been expected by the medical profession at her birth. She is someone a journalise would describe as ‘a powerhouse, unstoppable and unshaken in her belief in what she is doing’. I admire her and what she has done so far and indeed what she intends achieving in the future, her approach and dreams are not all that dissimilar to what mine might have been in a different reality. She is after setting up a very small school type set up for Home Educated children to get lessons from tutors in subjects that she feels she cannot offer such as science, PE, art and language. She explained how the ‘lessons’ are to be set up with the children experiencing physics rather than being taught, nothing is written down and so on. It did sound a very interesting approach and I imagine I am not doing it justice in my re-telling anyway but I think if I knew more about approaches like Steiner and Montessori I would probably be able to equate it better to those. I am cheerfully ignorant of educational readings like these as in the same way that Gina Ford and the What To Expect books pissed me off no end when I had tiny babies in presuming to know what my baby wanted and should be doing at 7pm or 8 months old I refuse to accept that it is possible to ‘raise’ children according to someone else’s teachings or findings or studies or ideas, I don’t even want to spend time reading about educational approaches as the most I could take from them are a few ideas which already fit with stuff we’re already doing. In which case I don’t need to bother really. But this lady is, IMO, utterly surrended to her children, she lives for them, through them and I suspect that there is very little of ‘her’ left. Whatever my personal feelings on that sort of life it is something I would be incapable of doing even if I’d wanted to try.

I’d love to live my life according to the sort of proverbs on teatowels and fridge magents which explain why you shouldn’t shout at a child, why one should have endless patience blah, blah, blah. But I can’t. I’m an individual, each of my children are individuals and our family is unique so what works perfectly for us would fail horribly for others, what is perfect for one family would be our idea of hell, even methods of parenting which are splendid for one of my children are rubbish for the other and whilst Ady and I share our ideals on how we want to do things sometimes our approaches of achieving them are even different. Which is why I don’t think school works. Anyway, as usual I have veered far from my original point. So I went to write this post on autonomy and then realised from reading a few bits of my blog that I already wrote it, about 8 months ago!

I realised in reading that that it had been the starting point for where we are now and that in the main I am very happy with the way things are going. Davies is two terms into what would have been his reception year and so far I would consider Home Education a huge success for us. The hands off approach to areas such as reading, writing, maths had been proven to work for him really well, he’s learning letters and numbers and playing with the oral and written concepts of both when he needs to and because he wants to and I have total confidence that as his needs for greater understanding and ability in both grow he will meet these needs accordingly.

The one area I still feel the need to tweak and adjust slightly is my own ability to listen and react to his needs. He is sometimes resentful of my failing to get down and play with him more – this is something he will probably have to live with as I am simply not a sitting on the floor playing with children sort of person and I don’t think he is being in any way harmed by me not doing so, but I do think I sometimes miss opportunities to impart knowledge, show him a new skill, demonstrate a point in the very best way or simply follow up a question or an answer at a later point with research, books or activities. This is a combination of selfishness, busyness, abent mindedness or on occassion apathy on my part and I think better organisation of my own time and maybe conscious dedication of periods of time would ease this slightly. The more I am having real demands on my time outside of the children with my CV work etc the less justifiable it feels not to have times when I focus solely on the children. I remain pretty sure that as they pass being dependant and needy small people and become more self sufficient bigger children my overwhelming feeling will be relief that that period is over and we can get on with the far more interesting business of getting to know each other more as people and engaging in things together which we share common interests in rather than me faking passion in megabloks or 6 piece jigsaw puzzles. So, I’ve re-evaluated, like what’s happening and have a plan for continuing in a very similar vein. All good. 🙂

with apologies to everyone who now has that ringing in their ears!

We’ve had a blissfully people free day today, having had my parents around for the last two days and for dinner both nights we have really appreciated not having to be remotely sociable today. 🙂

The children were awake early, Ady got up with them and as I’d had a dreadful nights’ sleep with cold sweats, tossing and turning and weird dreams I followed not too long afterwards at abolut 7.30am. We’d hidden small chocolate eggs around the lounge which they collected in their papier mache eggs and they had one small egg each – Scarlett’s came with a Dora cup, bowl and spoon and Davies’ came with a little box of K’nex. A friend had given Ady a tenner to get them Easter eggs from him but we spent the money instead of buying them Madagascar on dvd which has been watched twice and all of the extras much explored, including the learn to draw the characters bit which Davies sat for ages doing. 🙂 I got a Green & Black’s egg and I was extravagant and bought Ady one of these, which no, we probably couldn’t really afford but he’d been drooling over the adverts on TV and the look of utter delight on his face when I gave it to him was worth it. 🙂

The children have only gotten out of their pjs today long enough to have a bath after dinner and get back into clean sets and have spent time playing, eating chocolate and singing about ‘move it move it’. I also spent an hour or so getting my old laptop and Ady’s work laptop set up on the new wireless thingy I got yesterday so they spent some time sitting at their little table and chairs with a laptop each infront of them playing online Madagascar colouring in from the Dreamworks website. 🙂

Aside from doing that I have also almost finished my reading group book – Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling which I’ve found hard work but got quite into towards the final third of the book so at least I’ll be able to speak about that at reading group this week. I also spent some time in the playroom sorting through the cupboards but it was slightly half hearted as I was not in the right frame of mind for it really.

Ady has had a hugely productive day and removed the defunct pc from the playroom, taken down the table it was sat on, removed the computer chair and various pc related stuff and reshuffled the playroom so it looks like a real playroom. We’ve set up a car mat on the floor and have plans to bring an unused set of drawers from Tarly’s room to set up as a second set of craft drawers as the first set is constantly overflowing and I’d rather the children had access to pens, paper etc whenever they wanted it as it seems to occupy so much of their days. He’s also taken down and put back up all the various photos and posters in there including a load of ‘educational’ ones such as times table and number squares which once adorned walls at Joyce’s 🙂 It looks great in there now actually, don’t know whether the children will soak up any great mathematical skills but Ady is delighting on testing me on my times tables! 😉 Our final plan is to set up a clothes rail to hang the dressing up stuff on rather than it staying screwed up in the chest as it is at the moment.

Tomorrow Ady’s back at work again and I am as yet undecided as to my plans. We need food shopping which is slightly tiresome on a Bank Holiday and poor planning on my part really but hopefully if I get there early it won’t be too busy. Other than that I imagine the children will be watching Madagascar lots more and I intend starting on Catch 22 now I’ve done with my duty read.

The weather forecast for today was lovely. It wasn’t lovely of course, it was windy all day with heavy showers happening from about 2.30pm onwards but it is a bank holiday after all.

So we’d had this plan to go to Devils Dyke for a wander about and my parents had said they’d come too. We headed over there (it’s only about a ten minute drive on a good traffic day) and I was overcome with the nostalgia of visiting the place for my second only time – the first being when I had my first kiss on UK soil with my first real love – Ady was overcome with the beauty and photo opportunities, the children were overcome with the wide open spaces and my Dad was overcome with a fit of mardyness and flatly refused to walk anywhere in ‘this bloody wind’ so buggered off back to his car to wait for us! 😀

We trekked almost to the bottom, then turned around and walked about halfway back up. We drifted up from the trodden path slightly to let some people pass and decided that actually we could probably continue to clamber up the steep bits and rejoin the path at the top. We indeed could, which was just as well cos if we thought climbing up was hard work then trying to scramble down would have been murder! Davies plowed on at the front for most of the journey, closely followed by Mum, followed by Ady in the middle with the camera with me and Tarly at the back – Tarly collecting a variety of small insects and creatures all of which she exclaimed over, carried for a short while, demanded that everyone wait whilst she caught them up and admired and then let go again. We had ladybirds and caterpillars among other things. At one point she asked for a piggyback which I agreed to and then promptly slipped in the mud and fell forward onto my knees, bringing her speedily to a landing on her feet, which she found hilarious 😀 Ady was just sad he’d missed the moment with the camera! We collected Dad from his car and went into the pub at the top for chips and wine (oh we do live well!) and then came home.

Ady and Dad watched and listened to football on the radio / TV, the children by the looks of things ran amok and me and Mum went back out to PC world for me to get a wireless modem router thingy doobrey wotsit (which with only fairly minimal swearing I have gotten working, hurrah!) and to collect a few bits of food shopping for tonight’s dinner.

Home again and I swore at the wireless thing, Ady and Davies did some pyrography using a kit I’d had years ago (Davies wrote ‘Davies’ on a leather key fob for me really nicely with it) and then they all played a game with an audio cassette of various noises to tick off on bingo style photo cards.

Kids went to bed (although have only just gone to sleep), we watched Doctor Who (not bad but no Christopher Eccleston is he 🙁 ) and traditional Easter Eve wine drinking in preparation for drunken mini egg hiding commenced. Which will explain any typos here 😉

Some photos on flickr but here are a couple of my faves:

Some traditional self timers and arms length shots

A particularly lovely one of Davies

Bit of scene setting Chez Goddard this morning for a tale which for once needs no embellishment or creative licence from me 🙂

Scarlett and I had just had a bath together so she was naked with dripping wet hair and I believe wearing lipgloss, Davies and Ady had been tidying up the playroom and Ady had just turned the mad guitar intro to Michael Jackson’s Black or White up really really loud so Davies could listen to it. A bath was running for Ady and Davies which Davies had got loads of bath bubbles from to create a foam beard and was playing air guitar. I was upstairs getting dressed. Ady had had a busy morning, he’d had his toenails painted by Scarlett and was sporting one foot with bright pink and the other with bright purple, his old and rather snug tracksuit bottoms and an inside out T shirt. We’re expecting my parents over this morning so to amuse and entertain my Dad Ady had cut out a picture of the Queen’s head from some 80th birthday celebratory pull out picture bit of the local freebie paper, so her disembodied head was sellotaped to our front door.

The doorbell rang while we were upstairs so Scarlett answered it, naked and dripping. Davies brought up the rear sporting his foam beard and Ady leisurely followed to ensure it was indeed my parents to find two ladies trying to give Scarlett a copy of Watchtower and Scarlett trying to give them money for it (a 2p coin) which they were shouting over Michael Jackson’s song that they didn’t want, they just wanted to leave the magazine with our 3 year old. She lost interest and just chucked it at them, Davies went back to his air guitar playing and Ady smiled apologetically at them and agree that yes, it might be better to call at a more convenient time just as he followed the line of both women’s eyes down looking at his cheerily painted toenails….

Yep Jehovah came a-knocking but we were not home!

Really tired today, it feels like Friday’s been a long time coming and I feel drained and knackered but in a happy and positive way. Bring on the weekend! 🙂

We didn’t get to Blockbusters as Ady drew my attention to the fact there were already loads of films on TV being Good Friday we could watch instead. Davies appeared upstairs with me as I went to put away some clean laundry and get dressed and sat rubbing moisturiser into my back and chatting to me. Funnily enough I remember I used to go and sit on the side of the bath and wash my Mum’s back for her when I wanted to chat to her about something – I distinctly recall blurting out a load of saved up questions about periods one evening while doing it and writing her secret messages by tracing my finger on her back with the words…where did that closeness go I wonder?

So Davies came and sat chatting to me about The Easter Bunny coming. He wandered round the houses a bit and then asked ‘so who *really* hides the eggs then?’ so I asked him who he thought did it. He went all bashful and said ‘you?’ so I agreed and said yes it was and asked him how that made him feel. He said it was a nice feeling, like a good secret and it was nice to pretend. We seemed on a bit of a roll so I asked him if he thought there were any other things a bit like that where we all pretended something fun and he said without really thinking about it too much ‘Father Christmas?’ so I agreed again and he went on to say ‘and I think that when we leave a carrot out for the reindeer you cut triangles in it with a knife to pretend it’s teeth marks really’ so it’s clearly something he’d thought about, deduced and was fine with all by himself. I kind of guessed he might have done prior to last Christmas as he is normally a child who needs full details on every little aspect of everything and although he has an active imagination he is also very clear about it being imagination and has a very good understanding of what is real and what is pretend (which should probably make me all the more worried about him believing in God really 😉 ). I asked him about the tooth fairy too (in for a penny eh!?) and he said he thought that really I got a penny from my purse and took the teeth away. So I guess that’s that then really! 🙂

I know this is something there was discussion about at Okehampton and I was in a conversation with several people about it at Melrose too and I can see various takes on the when to tell the truth opinions and of course one must do what is the right choice for one’s family, indidvidual child and the impact on siblings but personally I’ve always felt slightly uncomfortable with the concept of keeping up pretence for very long on such things. Quite specifically because we HE and as yet Davies has only really had me or Ady to pass him his knowledge or at the very least confirm or deny or answer his questions I feel we need to maintain a very clear channel of truth and trust between us. It is fun to pretend and I am not after taking away childhood magic or anything but I would never have been able to vehemenantly defend the existance of Father Christmas et al if faced with a volley of Davies style questions and interogations so I’m glad we had the understanding about it that I thought we had. Scarlett was not around for this conversation although I’m sure Davies will feed it back to her at some point anyway but I imagine she is confident enough in the ability of Ady and I to provide money for teeth, chocolate for Easter and presents for Christmas that it is unlikely to devastate her either really 😉

That done and clearly sensing truth and potential weakness in toeing the parent line on all politically correct hot topics he pressed me to choose a favourite offspring and got fairly pissed off with me when I couldn’t. I did explain that I have different relationships with each of them, there are things in them both that I adore and which irritate me and that although I love them both equally there are times when I would choose one of them over the other to spend time with or do certain things. Not what he was looking for but the best he’s gonna get out of me on that one! 😉

We went back downstairs and they had popcorn for breakfast 😉 and watched some Cbeebies for a bit of a retro kick. They quite like The Upside Down Show and we were also enjoying Tikkabilla (even though it had the dreadful Sarah-Jane in it) while I read some more of my reading group book when Dad arrived unannounced. He stayed for coffee and then went home to collect Mum, promising to be back in a couple of hours.

I have some pondering on my parenting and educational approach to do but I am pushed for time just now so it will have to wait but as part of my master plan I did indeed put my book down and do some drawing with them for a while. Davies had done an Easter card for David (thank you neighbour) and written ‘Happy Easter’ on it with me just telling him which letter to write next and then written ‘Davies’ inside and was doing various other pictures quite happily too. He wanted to make a book and for me to do the writing and him to do the drawing so I suggested we read a book together and then did some drawings to go with it and he wanted Very Hungry Caterpillar. So we dug out one of our copies and made a book each by folding large sheets of paper. We both copied the first page ‘In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf’ and drew a picture to illustrate it. I did the next page writing but Davies had had enough of writing so we changed our minds about the project and I got out a large roll of plain paper to make one long story illustration instead. I wrote out the title and the writing from the first three pages, told him what it all said and then popped out to hang some washing out. He had made a very good start but came out to me in the garden in tears because Scarlett (in a sort of jealous rage apparently) had scribbled all over it with black pen. Not altogether sure what had really happened as she was quite upset about it all too and seemed fairly contrite so we packed the drawing stuff away and got some hama beads out instead. That was all going very smoothly and cooperatively when Mum and Dad arrived so it got abandoned in favour of chocolate eggs and Easter gifts arriving slightly early.

Davies got a Spiderman egg, an egg with a red toy mini car and a magicians set complete with hat, wand and a few tricks. Scarlett got a Bang on the door egg, an egg with a pink mini car and a Barbie peel and stick dressing up scene thingy with a case to play with it in the car and a Tinkerbell dressing up outfit. So they were all opened, some consumed and enjoyed and the rest played with while we had lunch.

They are also very tired and were not really on top form or that willing to be fawned over by Granny or teased by Grandad so keeping them occupied has been challenging by necessary. We ended up getting out a couple of enormous sheets of paper each (from the scrapstore) and the paint pens and they did a couple of massive pictures each. Davies drew himself eating his tea complete with his name totally in mirror writing from right to left – which I’ve noticed a couple of times lately but I’m sure I’ve heard people mention enough to write off as normal and fine – and a road scene for his mini with houses, churches, factories, a river complete with all the underground pipes for plumbing water back to the houses and a fire engine putting out a house fire – very detailed! 🙂 Scarlett did a rainbow on one sheet and a piece of toast with various toppings on the other. Actually I have taken some photos of Davies’ most recent pictures which I will upload soon as they are very good. He is now colouring in the whole sheet of paper with background colours and so on, using black to outline everything and then adding colour and paying attention to detail and things like perspective. I’ve introduced him to Illustration Friday, last week it was Speed and he did a good racing car picture and we chatted lots about my interpretation of it with a drawing of the race of the hare and the tortoise. So I’ve told him about this weeks theme being ‘spotted’ and we’ll see what we get from him for that. He really doesn’t get on with watercolours or paint in general really but I think he’d enjoy getting to grips with other materials as he loves his playdough and plasticine, he likes pens and crayons and chalks (not in the house of course 😉 ) and when he’s not making brown I think he’d like to learn more about texture and colour mixing. Any suggestions for other arty ideas or links gratefully recieved – actually computer aided drawing or design might interest him, will have to look into that…

Ady’s now home, my parents are staying for the dinner I really should be downstairs cooking and my wine awaits.

Probably the week after next (I’m semi planning for Tuesday 25th) I’m taking Davies up to London to go to the Pixar exhibition at the Science Museum. Anyone fancy joining us or meeting up for lunch / play in the basement / wander round afterwards?

Also planning a Legoland trip, probably sometime in May. Does anyone want to be included in that – we get excellent discounted rates as HEors if we pre-book. It’s closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays in May and we do our badger thing on a Monday so it would be a Thursday or Friday trip but I’m open to suggested dates if people are up for coming along.

I’m also aware I’ve not mentioned the October Halloween thing for a while so I’ll chase that up next week and get some idea of where would be available and ask for numbers again.

When you’ve had a houseful of up to 9 children, a drip feed of junk food and snickerdoodles, various adults bribing you with things to go and play and films, games, inside and outside play all with minimal supervision for three days to go back to normal and spent time with your cousins instead. And of course for me too 😉

But we tried. I had 6 CVs come through which must have come on foot from Brighton as they were postmarked 9th April but didn’t arrive til yesterday with a note asking for them back Wednesday/Thursday so I managed two last night before my eyes started to get too blurry to see my laptop screen. I got another one done this morning and the last three this afternoon so I still managed to get them in on deadline though. 🙂 So a CV, packing a picnic and getting slow cooker chilli on before leaving by 10am was pretty good going considering none of us were up at 8am. 🙂

We were meeting Julie, Jack and Maisie in Bognor at a park which years and years ago used to be a zoo. I remember going there on a school trip and being upset about a black panther pacing up and down in a really tiny cage and having something like 3 tokens to spend on ‘attractions’ such as the mini train. All of that has gone now and it is just a big park with a fairly cool playground bit in it. So I spent the journey there reminsicing about how I used to do that journey every single day (I used to work in Bognor managing a well known card and gift retail shop) and the rest of the time reminiscing about school trips.

Davies and Scarlett were tired, fractious, generally not at their best with Tarly wanting constant attention and to be carried round the place (WTF!) and Davies has just been used to slightly more freedom this week than it’s feasible to give him when he’s with three three year olds so he was getting reined back in again every few minutes which we were both finding wearing. The plan was to have a play, have a wander round, find somewhere to eat lunch and then go to the local library. We did all of the first bits but when we went back to the cars for Julie to collect some books to take back I decided – and the children both agreed – to come home instead.

I set them up with some readymix paint, newspapered the lounge floor and gave them their papier mache eggs which have sat with small amounts of Floam pressed onto them but otherwise unfinished for weeks. I hung some washing out (it’s been intermittently cloudy and sunny here but with a strong blasting wind all day perfect for drying clothes) and then settled down with a cup of tea and the rest of my CVs.

Now I believe it might have been documented before that I have contol freak issues in some areas. Laundry, packing food shopping into bags, putting the lids back on felt tip pens, the indoor or outdoor classification of toys being adhered to, jigsaw puzzles being put back in their boxes and the lids not being trodden on and finally the mixing of colours of items which can have their colours mixed. We’re talking playdoh, plasticine and paint. Oh and the nibs of things like felt tips or paint pens on top of each other. I’m all for autonomy, learning through experience and so on and of course the educational and cause and effect style benefits of colour mixing. I know that the very best way for children to grasp primary and secondary colours and shades is to create them for themselves. So for a time I rather enjoyed listening to them say ‘oh, look, red and yellow make orange’ and ‘Look, look, I’ve made pink with red and white!’ and ‘if I add more white to this pink it gets lighter’. Which would all of course have been fab if they’d used their newly created colours to embellish and decorate their eggs as planned. Instead there was further mixing until we reached that most logical of all conclusions when small children and colour mixing combine. Yep, brown. Brown, brown, brown. Slightly different shades of brown in every pot granted, and a translucent sort of brown in the water pot but brown nonetheless. And whilst I don’t mind the cause and effect of create brown and you can’t uncreate it when it’s being learnt using cheapo plasticine or home made playdoh (well actually I even mind that a wee bit but I can let it go 😉 ) and even the paint being ‘wasted’ was a lesson in the ‘well its a finite resource so if you want to use all these lovely bright colours to make one big old goddam (;-)) stash of brown then feel free but know this, you will not have green, yellow, white, pink, red, blue or black to use next time you want to paint anything. Nope, your painting scope will be limited to brown dogs eating chocolate standing beside a tree trunk on a woodland floor covered in conkers singing don’t it make my brown eyes brown. But splashing it all over their eggs seemed a bit of a shame. 🙁

So they got a lecture, which went over Tarly’s head and Davies headed off into the kitchen bringing me a peace offering of a plate with a chunk of cheese on it and a glass of water 🙄 and we chatted about why it wasn’t really what we had in mind when we set out and I helped them finish them in shades of brown having decided we could further decorate them on a brownish base with glitter or something tomorrow.

I finished my CVs, Ady came home and sorted out their tea and bathed them while we all watched Ice Age and they continued their pattern of the week of late to bed. 🙂 Which is at least making for later to rise than normal too.

Tomorrow Ady is working, at least for the morning and I think we need a quiet end to a busy week so we’re planning to head off to Blockbusters in the morning and rent out a few films, come home for Hot Cross Buns for lunch followed by some of the microwave popcorn I’d bought and forgotten about for earlier in the week and watch films for the day. Looking forward to cuddles on the sofa. 🙂

Just finished Catcher in the Rye and have utterly failed to see what the fuss might be about. I found it like a olden times version of listening to Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard doing a written monologue (the yeahbutnobutyeahbut teen). The repetitive ‘slang’ and dialogue feel to it irritated me, I’ve found myself wanting to parody it to people and call everyone ‘old – ‘ and start using the word ‘goddam’. It was one of those books I kept wanting to flick to the back page of just to see if it ever really was going to get to a point and of course it didn’t really.

I’ve only read the first chapter of Evil Cradling and book group is Tuesday night so I need to concentrate on that really but I have Catch 22 and To Kill a Mockingbird waiting ready for me so I hope they inspire me a bit more than this did.

With the absence of Chris and Ady the usually most photographically documented children getting together is fairly barren image wise, BUT Davies and Scarlett have both been showing loads of interest in the camera recently. They both had a play with it this morning, Davies taking a load of images around the place which had refelections of some sort in them. So I’ve signed them both up with a flickr account although they are far from being able to do that side of it it is nice to have somewhere to keep them just for them.

A few photos from me of the last couple of days:

I love this one – dancing to Grease, like mothers like offspring 😉

And then some of Davies’ reflections:

Monday

Spent the morning getting in some food shopping (seriously over estimated on the milk, seriously under estimated on the bread, got the alcohol quantities about right! 😉 ), tidying up a bit, getting the children to gather any precious belongings and stashing them in our bedroom and batch baking snickerdoodles.

Layla and Alison arrived by car and train within about half an hour of each other, we banned the children from the room for a good hour and a half and set about drinking tea to line our stomachs for wine later!

Ady got home in time to take over shepherding children away from us, I pulled off a feat of management of pierce film lid type readymeal finger foods, we started drinking wine and Ros and Ali arrived. I think all readers either have first hand experience of such evenings in such company or are able to draw pretty good conclusions as to what it might entail. We pined for Joyce, spoke with great affection for many of the rest of you and of course not having an audience of Chris to perform to didn’t hold us back from making the most of the music channel to sing along to. I recall once saying to Layla that it’s not a good night unless you offend at least two people – Alison and I had to go to the pub to find likely suspects to uphold this law and even then I don’t think we really bothered the barman and the sole customer! 😀

Tuesday

Dawned earlier than it should for people who didn’t go to bed til 3am (which is actually fairly early for such nights really!) – I had no children in my bed but could overhear a very loud conversation about Centerparcs drifting in from Davies’ room and involving children from 3 families all trying to tell their CP stories at the same time. I then had a true HE moment when Claudia and Tilda appeared in the room, sat on the bed and we talked about African tribespeople who stretch their necks with multiple necklaces and Oriental children who have their feet bound to keep them dainty. (Which went some way to restoring my own confidence in my geography, culture and history skills having been laughed at for talking about Indian jungle dwelling tribes living along the River Nile the night before! :roll:).

After multiple toast cooking we gathered ourselves together and walked down to the seafront to the local park. It was every single one of the 15 minutes walking I’d promised it might be, and perhaps rather a few more too :oops:, into the wind but bracing for hangovers and wearing out for children nonetheless so still a good idea (well I thought so!). We did some shivering on a bench while watching the children in the playground and then half decided to spend their £1 each budget on the bouncy castle and the rest went on the train with the 6ft bunny and chick in residence. And then we walked home again.

I dashed out for supplies (including more bread) and the children scattered around the house watching Grease, drawing, playing and so on while we drank tea, ate pringles and then got a very nice dinner of chicken curry, rice, naan breads, poppadums, assorted indian snacks and bombay potatoes cooked. Ady and Simon arrived home within about half an hour of each other, children were sent upstairs and more wine drinking and curry eating commenced. An early night of around midnight was required to restore visitors for their journeys home today.

Today
Garden playing, drawing, indoor playing (using seperate toys to the garden playing, naturally 😉 ) and some film watching for children, further tea drinking and chatting for adults. I went out for more bread and Lucy came round for an hour or so with Rebecca and Richard increasing her real life experience of meeting Home Educators hugely. My Granny appeared at one point, innocently brandishing a four pack of chocolate eclairs and asking if it was a convenient time to call – the chaos and naked children wandering around in the background behind me and me explaining just how many children and how many adults were inside the house and how 4 cakes would not stretch too far was (thankfully) enough to send her packing and will hopefully put her off ‘dropping in’ again for a while (I *hate* being dropped in on).

We waved guests off in two stages but the house feels very quiet and for once in its life pretty large 😉 Davies is putting effort into his parting instruction from Poppy to grow before she next sees him while drawing pictures, Scarlett is painting my toenails, the house has been hoovered and everything restored to it’s usual home. I have six CVs to do which arrived in the post this morning (woo hoo) and tonight it’s The Apprentice. Thanks for coming one and all, it’s been a lovely, lovely few days – looking forward to Chris and Helen’s next. 🙂

It’s been a very long day today, we seem to have had loads of stuff crammed into it.

Scarlett ended up in our bed with a bad dream in the night and around 5am when I woke to find her sleeping on my head – snoring 🙄 – I decided I’d make use of her empty bed instead so I decamped there.

We were all up by about 8.30am and decided to get out early to go car boot sale hunting but somehow we didn’t make it out until nearly 10.30am so we didn’t bother and went over to Chris and Julie’s straight away instead. Ady had a yen to go to Goodwood with a picnic which we’d hoped to persuade C & J to join us on but they remained unmoved so we stayed with them for a couple of hours and then we headed off to Goodwood. We ate our picnic in the cold and had a wander round but there was no racing going on so we gave up on the idea and went to my parents instead. We did call into Tangmere Aviation museum and had a look round some of the outdoor planes and Ady spent some time infusing the children with his enthusiasm for all thing aviation.

At my parents I happily ignored the children and read more of Catcher in the Rye – reserving judgement thus far but will blog when I’ve finished it… Dad and Ady watched the football and Mum ran around after the children with much sighing and eye rolling all of which I happily pretended not to hear. 🙂 She also fed them some tea so we stayed to watch the second half of the match and came home to put them to bed.

So lots of family stuff, lots of fresh air and lots of enjoying being the one to say ‘well she is only three’ and ‘yeah I know, he does it all the time’ to other people having to sort out the children instead of me. Love it! 🙂

Can hardly wait for tomorrow and am quelling the desire to dash about shrieking in a girlish manner as we have a gathering of some of my most very favourite people here so I don’t expect to be around much in blogland for a couple of days. Joyce, you will be missed 🙁

Happy Birthday Helen!

Hope you have a lovely, lovely day 🙂

Look forward to seeing you soon for real life glass clinking xxx

Had another lovely day here 🙂

This morning we mostly lazed around and then I remembered I’d promised ebay buyers I’d get their wins in the post today so I dashed around parcelling up three loads of outgrown clothes and headed off to the post office. Came back for lunch and then Ady took the children out in the garden to mow lawns, ‘tidy edges’ (I put that in inverted commas cos I don’t actually know what it means :oops:!) play in the sandpit and run around getting muddy. 🙂 I stayed in the house and made a bright yellow sponge cake with some eggs Ady brought home from our friend Bruce who has very free range ducks and chicken. I used chickens eggs for the cake and it is lovely. I made some snickerdoodles which I am sure you will all be delighted to hear rose, cooked properly and are delicious, quite the best I’ve ever made.

I decided the weather forecast of light rain was clearly rubbish so I stripped the childrens beds and got them washed, dried and back on again as well as a couple of other washes and then I made coffee for Ady and took it out with a plate of snickerdoodles to my adoring family, pulled up a garden chair and sat reading ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in the sunshine. Scarlett was potting up some herb plants into bigger pots, Ady and Davies were painting a wall in the garden which we last painted when we moved in 12 years ago so was in dire need of being done. When we did it back then we painted ‘Nic and Ady’ on it – it’s a three panel wall of about 8 x 6 foot sections of brieze blocks and faces a fairly main road so we thought it would endear us to our new neighbours to graffiti it like that at the time. It clearly had no impact as the man next door called Ady ‘Michael’ for the whole time he lived next door to us – he died last year – and the neighbours on the other side called him ‘Andy’ for about 5 years too. 🙄 Which reminds me we got an Easter card from David et al this week. Now I never send Easter cards. Ever. But I just know he will take it as a snub if we don’t send him one back, which means we need to send one to at least two of the other neighbours who all talk to each other and David will brag to about getting an Easter card from us and then will make them feel left out – and I bet they all get the kids Easter eggs too. So I must get Davies to make some Easter cards to deliver thus freeing me of the cost and religious implication of purchasing them and providing an educational activity in the art, craft and religious belief and tolerance tick boxes for my child. 😉

So I’ve done baking and Ady’s done gardening. I am further perpetuating this by cooking smashed up potatoes with red onions and garlic (boil the pots to mash stage but then smash them up with a wooden spoon whilst frying off with red onion, garlic, butter and herbs in the pan used to cook the sausages, with a splash of red wine to deglaze the pan) and toad in the hole made with duck eggs. I guess we’ll be calling each other ‘Muvver’ and ‘Farver’ soon like in Milly Molly Mandy and I’ll have to get myself a floral housecoat ;-). My granny sat watching me prick my finger every three seconds and swear bad words at pieces of material while slaving over Wallace yesterday – a tribute to the mother with no feminine skills at all with his badly sewn already needed patching bits and pieces, his one hand twice the size of the other and his much embroidered and over embroidered face (but made with much love nonetheless) and seriously asked me if I’d thought about selling home made toys for a living. Well clearly only if they’d been made by someone else!!!

Scarlett and I came in and snuggled up to read some stories including Dr Seuss ‘Wacky Wednesday’ which for anyone who’s not read it is a sort of spot the odd thing in the picture type read rather than a story, so we enjoyed doing that and I was unbelievably tickled to hear her saying ‘look at that, that’s wacky’ whilst pointing at things. 🙂 Davies and Ady came in and Davies joined us in some books while Ady served up the sausages I’d cooked for the kids’ tea and I carried on reading to them while they ate. Then we all had some of my wonderful cake.

Tomorrow we’re over at C&Js in the morning and are debating inviting my parents over for roast dinner in the evening. Weather permitting we’ve half a plan to take a picnic lunch and go to Goodwood in the afternoon and I am ridiculously excited about a get together on Monday night! 🙂

with four generations of females all in the same room. Ady went off to work at some ungodly hour, Scarlett woke around 6am and a had a fit that Daddy wasn’t there to pander to her every whim. I left her to it and within ten minutes she’d reappeared beside the bed for a cuddle, told me she was tired and needed a nap and snuggled down next to me and we both went back to sleep. Davies woke us both at around 8.30am stage whispering to her that he ‘needed her to help him bounce on the sofas!’ 😀

My Mum rang around 9am to ask if she could invited Granny over for the day too and then Ady rang shortly afterwards to say he had just had a breakfast costing fifteen pounds in a motorway services that was so big he didn’t think he’d need to eat again until at least next Tuesday so to factor him out of the meal planner for a while! ;-). I had a CV to finish and the children wanted to play with assorted things including geomags, plastic animals and hama beads. Davies had a plan to make a Wallace out of hama but our bead supplies are depleted too far to have enough of any one colour – Merry might have to squirrel away coppers and make a small order for Kessingland to save postage 😉

Then Mum and Granny arrrived and the interesting dynamics of four lots of females at various stages with tantrums and mother/daughter stresses was all taken in by Davies 🙂 Actually I pretty much left them all to it actually, when Mum got here I dashed to the Wizard store for a £1 cushion to pull apart for toy stuffing and have spent the whole day making a Wallace for Davies using scrapstore material bits. I now have very sore needle fingers but a very happy small boy 🙂 He even waited until nearly 10pm when I’d finally finished sewing his slippers on so he could cuddle him to sleep.

So I sat and sewed while Mum and Granny engaged the children in a variety of games including snakes and ladders, Monkey Business, Kerplunk, Buckaroo and a quickly abandonded game of Battleships when Davies realised no one except him or I knew how to play it. How can this be? Me and my Dad spent hours playing it when I was a child and I once had an office job in the quietest office in the world where the manager was off long term sick and me and the secretary used to spend hours every day playing battleships across the office. I still have the little grid drawn in gold pen and framed in a little gold frame that she gave me when I left that job…

I cooked a roast chicken for lunch (BOGOF at Tescos atm – clearly getting shot of all their stock before bird flu induced boycotting of chicken sweeps the nation) so we had that in sandwiches followed by chocolate eclairs brought over by Mum. The children both decided they wanted to learn how to sew so I cut out a square of material each for them, threaded a needle and showed them how to do a running stitch. They both did pretty well actually despite me trying not to laugh at the outraged expressions on Granny and Mum’s faces – outrage at showing a BOY how to sew and outrage at giving a sharp needle to a three year old – and not just any three year old at that! Funny how they didn’t blink an eye on Mothers Day when Scarlett was knocking back dry white wine! 🙂

Granny left around 6pm and then Mum kindly offered to bath the children so I could continue sewing, so she did that, got them into pjs and then left about 6.30pm. I said the children could stay up til Ady got home as they’d not seen him this morning so they were very late to bed, which we can only hope means they might just be late to rise too. I now have a catalogue of orders for things they want me to sew for them next (almost all of which are very unlikely 😉 ) but hurrah for ending a pretty crap in places week in a nice way. 🙂

I spent some time being educated in exactly what the Wallace and Gromit on Holiday game was all about. What happens is they gather all sorts of essential items (books usually although sometimes changes of clothing, pens and paper for drawing and assorted toys) and load the stair up with them. A map of the route is drawn with various landmarks and Tarly usually drives which means she sits on the bottom step, while Davies navigates from the map sitting about halfway up the stairs (rather like Kermit’s nephew Robin). Then they arrive at ‘holiday’ where upon they need to check into their hotel, find out their room number and get their key, completing details such as name and nationality for fire evacuation policy at the front desk and then they unload the car (stairs) into one of their bedrooms by which point they have either gotten bored or distracted or I have yelled about safety hazards of books, pens, paper and soft toys on the stairs or we have gone out for the day instead. The W&G aspect was Tarly being Wallace (which explains why she was driving, maybe) and Davies being Gromit. They brought me a few pieces of paper with a room key with the number 10 drawn on it – very well I might add, and their names written on another piece of paper where they’d booked in. I’m fairly stunned actually at how in depth and accurate the game is in terms of booking into hotels – just goes to show how much attention they do pay when we do the Travelodge thing. 🙂

So I did get my washing hung out and I did make a picnic but we didn’t get to the library before going to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie. We drove all the way there listening to Michael Buble really loud and singing along. 🙂 We had a lovely time actually, exactly what I needed. The sun shone, the kids had a whale of a time running around in the woods, playing with sticks, being free and running ahead and sometimes out of sight and not needing to hold my hand or get nagged at constantly to behave. They met and played with dogs along the way, got utterly filthy and muddy jumping in streams and puddles, saw bees, beetles, slugs, snails, worms, birds and butterflies. They followed a little stream, clambered over tree trunks, climbed trees, turned lumps of wood over to see what creatures where hiding and living underneath, both had a go at taking pictures with the camera and generally loved being outside and being children. I walked along with Julie, catching up, having a good old moan about my week and laughing at all the things I’d previously been only able to rant about – very theraputic. 🙂 We spent about an hour walking about, then went back to the cars for lunch and then went back into the woods again for an hour or so.

The children were in need of stripping off their bottom halves by then so I changed their trousers and we drove home the scenic route through various nice little villages and green bits of the Sussex countryside, commenting on the view and playing I Spy. We stopped outside the library and I dashed in to collect the books before coming home. My Mum pulled up about five minutes after we did bringing Hot Cross Buns (now refered to as Jesus Cakes :roll:) so I sent the children to continue their holiday game so we could chat. I called them back down for tea and bowls of strawberries and then Ady came home.

I wanted to go to Tesco for various bits and pieces so Mum ended up coming with me while Ady did the bedtime thing with the children. Depending on the weather we’re doing something with her for the day tomorrow, lots of ideas for outdoor stuff but the weather is forecast to be raining so we may end up staying in.

Had dinner and watched Grand Designs (repeated on More4 at 10pm Thursdays for anyone with the same Wednesday night dilema as me 😉 ) and Ady and I chatted for a bit about a workmate of his who passed away from cancer this morning. Very sad, he has been ill but managing well for a couple of years and his wife also works with Ady. They have four year old twins too. It’s just sent everyone at Ady’s work into shock and sadness and of course puts all of one’s own small woes right into perspective. 🙁 so I am very very glad to have had the opportunity to have had a better day today really…

Had a ranty session at Ady when he got home last night. Ady, like Davies the day before is really rather good at dealing with ranty females. He listened, nodded in agreement at all my woes, smiled reassuringly when I listed things I thought I was doing well and looked aghast at anything I tried to say negative about myself. He shepherded the children away from me for a bath and brought me an icecream cone. 🙂

I then had further fall outs with both children – Davies simply would not stop being noisy and leaping about so I sent him to bed. Scarlett was discovered lying in her bed painting her nails!! 🙄 so she got very screamed at and lay there sobbing for a while. 🙁 I then calmed down and went back to each of them and we had chats about behaviour and how much nicer it would be if they tried really hard not to do stuff which they know will make me cross and grumpy. I know they’re only children, I know they’ve been poorly, I know that I have been a bitch mother from hell all week but even at their tender ages they also do *know* what is and isn’t likely to be acceptable or get them yelled at and threat.ened with adoption.

Then I drank several glasses of wine which I had not done the rest of the week due to feeling ill. And magically I started to feel much better, at peace with the world, fuzzy with love for my children and postive and happy about the future. I shall not dwell on whether this means I have alcoholic tendancies or am guilty of substance abuse, or indeed whether the week had been dreadful precisely because I was not drinking wine. I will decide that I do not have a problem worthy of a 12 step plan or sitting in a circle with other people standing up and saying ‘My name is Jemima and I am an alcoholic’ (yes, Jemima, I wouldn’t use my real name would I? And I’d wear a brunette wig and a raincoat and big tinted glasses too) and clapping everyone else whenever they spoke. I will not fret about my reliance on wine any more than your average woman’s dependance on chocolate, Eastenders or cigarettes. Until the day I am spending more than 1/4 of our monthly food budget on supporting my drinking, sneaking to the fridge before lunch to have just one glug straight out of the box, using wine ‘in cooking’ for baking cookies and snickerdoodles to eat at 10am or tipping a small measure into my bottled water to get me through the day I will pat myself on the back for giving up spending money, shopping for clothes, shoes, make up and Lush products, not reading celebrity magazines any more and being clean of Book People orders for six months now (applause).

Anyway, I digress (and no, it’s not the drink talking 😉 ) so I drank some wine, got two more CVs finished and ate a rather lovely dinner of stuffed jacket potatoes with cheese and bacon and steak marinated in Jim Bean sauce with peas dripping in butter and watched The Apprentice while shouting at the TV and waving my fork around to really make my point! I’ve just been looking at The Apprentice website actually and was reminded of Celebdaq which I used to play loads a few years back, might go and have a look at that later for time wasting potential ;-).

So today the sun is shining, it’s only 9am but I’ve got a load of washing waiting to be hung out, the children are playing Wallace and Gromit go on holiday really nicely together. I’m about to go and get dressed and make a picnic and then we are heading off to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie for a walk in the woods via the library to collect the books I ordered which have come in. I’ve only got about 10 days left to read this months reading group book and so far I have managed the first chapter and already decided I don’t really want to read it, so I need to try a bit harder with that one too.

Back later. 🙂

As in do I really have to say the same things again and again and again. If my middle name was Again then my initials would be NAG which would be very apt right now. 🙄

But let’s do some focussing on the positive shall we? Went to the scrap store today with my Mum, stopping for tea and cakes on the way. It is OK, not really any different to the one on the industrial estate down the road from me here, but it costs £60 to join the local one (unless I can get together enough of us to make a group membership) and only £8 for the one in Portsmouth. I probably won’t go again unless I’m over that way anyway but Ady is there most weeks so he can keep popping in and grab anything worth having. We got various bits and pieces including some wooden boxes (thought they would look good painted or Floamed), some giant sheets of card for Davies to do some poster size drawings, some ribbons and scraps of gold and silver metallic cards and then me and Davies (Mum stayed in the car with Tarly) rummaged through the material scraps and got all the bits and pieces of different colours we’d need to make a cuddly Wallace and Gromit, which I will probably make a start on tonight.

I’m feeling slightly better today and the children seem to be on the mend from their colds so that is good news. I had a letter from my insurance company today to say they will pay an invoice we’ve been arguing over in relation to my departed laptop.

Feeling quite worn out and tired of life in general at the moment. It’s been a long old winter and as much as I normally like the winter I think that used to have more to do with the spending excesses of Christmas, the January sales and the retail opportunities of woolly jumpers and winter boots than anything else. I feel in dire need of a holiday or at least some sort of change of scenery. Weeks like this when I just sound like some sort of 25 years on echo of my own mother with constant mithering at children and the desire to just slam a door behind me and keep walking until I can’t hear anyone saying the word Mummy are fortunately few and far between, but I suppose 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in the company of anyone is enough to make even the most loving of parents dream of long hot summer days lazing in the garden while the children’s presence is merely distant voices playing.