One word? When seven would do…

Ady took Davies off to work with him today. It was a last minute arrangement made last night at Davies’ request. It’s one of the advantages of A’s job actually that he can do that every so often. He couldn’t take both of them off really as they’d prevent him from actually doing his job but one at a time gives him a bit of company on the long drives, them an idea of what Daddy actually does when he goes off to work and a bit of a rest from me for the day 😆 and that wasn’t a typing error ;). They had a good day apparently, McDonalds for lunch, introductions to several of Ady’s regular stores inlcuding the whole Home Ed chat when D was repeatedly asked about going back to school next week and some precious one to one time with Daddy, which Davies, quite specifically rarely seems to get but definitely seems to crave.

Scarlett scrambled into bed with me when they headed off early this morning, bringing with her a little seashore spotters book from last weeks car boot sale. It has sea creatures and plants to be seen on the coast around the UK with little bits of information about them all so she started off showing me all the ones she knew or had actually seen (cuttlefish, some seaweed, shorecrabs, spidercrabs, starfish, jellyfish) and then we went through the whole book and named everything. Some of the descriptions she wanted me to read in full and after a few noticed that ‘English Channel’ and ‘North Sea’ kept coming up, so we talked about how the whole of our country is surrounded by water but off different bits of coast it is different seas – the sea here at home is the English Channel, in Kessingland it is the North Sea and when we used to go to the beach from Manchester (usually Southport or Blackpool) it was the Irish Sea. She thought about that and then asked ‘but they all join up don’t they?’ which I agreed to and then pondered privately about territory out at sea and where one ocean starts and another ends. Must google that actually…

We got up, she drew pictures on my back with moisturiser while I put my make up on and then got dressed and we came downstairs for her to have breakfast and watch some tv. I’d told her that we needed to go into town to go to the bank but after that she could decide what we did. We headed into town and parked slightly out of town to walk in as there used to be a kitchen shop on the way where I was hoping to get a few cake making bits but it appears to have long sinced closed down. We went to the bank where we spent the time in the long queue guessing which cashier would be free next, then walked through town to the other bank via various charity shops. I paid the mortgage and then we wandered around town for a while. There was some sort of foreign market on (Worthing frequently has market days, about 3 a week I think, one of which is a regular swap market with one of the French coastal towns where their market traders come and set up here and ours go and set up there for the day, wonder which is the most successful?) so we looked at the various foods before ending up at The Works. I’d been after some gold and silver paint but they didn’t have any. Scarlett chose a couple of bits from their ’59 pence each or 2 for a pound’ area and got some scented gel pens and a little notebook set, which has delighted her all day so was well worth a quid. We carried on walking to the other end of town where there is another kitchen shop but they didn’t sell what I wanted either, but were able to recommend somewhere else to me. We were then only about 5 shops away from the charity shop my Mum works at so we called in to see if she was working today and she was. She was delighted to see us and plied Scarlett with a pretty pink basket and showed her off to all her workmates :). Scarlett was a bit overwhelmed without Davies to deflect the attention and spent a lot of time buried in my shoulder. 😆 We left there and headed back to the car with Scarlett needing a carry for some of the way as she’d worn her other crocalikes which were rubbing.

We stopped at the recommended sugarcraft and cake decoration shop on the way home, which although was only carried very depleted stocks (wonder if they don’t bother replenishing after the wedding season or something) did have what we wanted (blue food colouring pigment, gold edible glitter). As we pulled out of our very tight parking space the bloke in the car infront, who I’d vaguely registered as he drove by suddenly turned around in his car seat and started waving frantically at me, which totally threw me for a minute until I realised it was my brother :lol:. We drove past my parents house to see if my Dad was home and then drove past him too, but he wasn’t on his way home as he didn’t turn into their road.

Next we stopped at Sainsburys to get a few bits for dinner tonight and for Scarlett to choose whatever she wanted for lunch. Turns out her needs are few and aside from a pink iced cake from the bakery she was happy to have the pastry off my chicken and ham pie. We had a look round the aquarium shop next door and a lengthly look at the jewellry stands in Sainsburys though and it was quite nice bowing to all her requests for once. Home for lunch, she played with her notebook and pens and I had a quick play online and then we debated painting the dalek or going out to the beach. She was happy to go with the dalek so we started that with me in charge of the spray paint and her in charge of brushing the excess in so it didn’t drip. It was quite windy so I needed to spray closer to the surface than recommended otherwise the paint was getting blown away before it made it onto the dalek! We ran out of the first tin of paint and the second tin I’d bought was in no way a match for the gold and we quickly realised we’d be needing at least one more tin even if it had been the same colour so we hopped in the car and set off on a paint hunt with our empty spray can for colour matching.

We went into Lancing first, with me still wearing my paint and paste splattered jeans much to Tarly’s amusement but only found one tin which we knew was probably the wrong colour, so we drove up to B&Q where we were able to get a perfect match. We came home and finished the spraying bit and then tried to start the contrasting bubble bits but really struggled to spray without getting it all over what we’d just finished, so settled for spraying it into a pot and then applying with a paintbrush. That tin quickly ran out and wasn’t giving much coverage so we tried mixing some paint with yellow and white and some gold glitter but that didn’t work either. So we set off again to try and find some contrasting colour. We tried a different DIY store but gave up and went back to B&Q.

When we got home Ady and Davies were back so the three of them snuggled up on the sofa together playing xbox while I got some more done before realising the gold we’d bought was almost the same shade as the spray paint :roll:. Ady was going back out again anyway to collect some logs off a workmate he’d helped to fell and chop up a tree in return for the firewood (and a crate of beers 🙂 ) so he went off to change my paint for me too, while I did all the various other coloured twiddly bits and finished off the sink plunger bit. Oh and made the kids’ tea.

Ady came home and bathed the children while I did the last few bits of the dalek before announcing it finished (Davies is very chuffed with it, totally worth it 🙂 ) and came in to cook dinner for us.

My wrist is really painful again. It started hurting about 2 weeks ago and I thought I’d laid on it funny during the night but it’s not really gotten better. I do notice it twinges at work when I move a shelf full of books along at once, or lift several hardbacks in that hand (which you just do, when you are moving a pile of books even if it’s just briefly to gather then into the crook of your arm) and I guess the painting today has aggravated it which has happened before when I’ve done something like wallpaper stripping or painting when I am bending my wrist a lot. Annoying low level grumble pain rather than anything to take painkillers for. Might tiger balm it and go to bed.

I worked this morning. It would be my full day to work this week but as they owe me hours for bank holiday Monday (we all get pro-rata’d hours back from the library being closed for the day) I finished at 130 instead of 5pm. F, my favourite colleague was working so we had a good laugh together and aside from an incident of me getting caught with a very smelly man who came in to use the photocopier and wanted to tell me his life story (I was rescued by one of the others interupting to tell me I had to go to lunch 🙂 ) it went really quickly.

I was greeted at the gate by four children all chanting ‘Mummy’ or ‘Nic’ depending on whether they are related to me or not, which was very nice 🙂 and then thanks to the lure of lego, chickens and jaffa cakes Lucy and I were pretty much left alone for several hours to chat, which was lovely. We discussed all sorts of things from hairstyles to home education before they headed off and I sorted Davies and Scarlett some tea out. They watched the Doctor Who Christmas special with Catherine Tate in it which they hadn’t seen before (it was before they started watching it and although they have gradually caught up with all the episodes with Rose in I’d forgotten that special and not ordered it in until now). Some of the one liners and facial expressions went over their heads but made me snigger, I do like Catherine Tate. Also on the disc is the Music and Monsters Doctor Who Confidential with David Tennant talking in his scottish accent (which makes all the difference to me, I can start to see what the fuss about him is about when he talks like that 😉 ) and the music being played the orchestra so they watched that too and really enjoyed it.

Earlier Lucy and I had removed the space hopper from the dalek so I brought it in the lounge and spent a couple of hours putting on the last few ‘twiddly bits’ including the second sink plunger as it’s eye. It just needs the last few bits stuck onto that eye piece tomorrow and then it’s ready for painting :).

Ady is planning to take Davies to work with him tomorrow if he’s up early enough so I will just have Scarlett with me. I need to go into town to the bank but other than that I plan to spend some time doing whatever she wants to do which will be nice.

that bloody dalek! I can’t say I wish I’d never started as I am enjoying it and I do think it will look pretty good when it’s finally finished but if I’d known just how long it was going to take before I started it I may well have had second thoughts. Thankfully it’s only cost the price of 2 sink plungers (that’ll be £2.76 then) and 2 bags of Tesco value flour to make the papier mache paste (about 50 pence) as the boxes for the frame came from Ady’s work, as did the plastic circles which I cut out of plant trays, it’s taken an old Thompson local directory and several free copies of AutoTrader in newspaper and a borrowed space hopper to frame the domed top. Hopefully the domed top will be dry tomorrow so I can take the space hopper out and put the second sink plunger in for the eye piece, add the final few bits of embellishment tomorrow and Friday and spray paint it all over the weekend. If I were to tot up my hours spent on it though, even on my current rather modest (in comparison to hourly rates I have commanded in years gone by) library wage it would already be heading towards the £200 mark 😯 I have rather enjoyed getting my hands all messy, wearing the same vest and pair of jeans which by now are multi-layered with paste dried on and having smears of flour all over me though, in a different life I could have quite gotten used to the artistic way of life having an airy studio covered in paint splatters and dried on clay. It’s acting as a curiosity for the neighbours and people walking by anyway – that and the chickens who have worked out how to get onto the front lawn and wander around the dalek clucking 😆

I had an interesting conversation with Scarlett this morning about heart attacks and death. She is a funny mix that child. She does not worry about physical pain and is very ambivalent about death – when we lost Malice and Feathers while Davies went into full on black armband wearing, weeping wailing mourning Scarlett was very philosophical saying she ‘was sad but wasn’t going to cry’ and showing great interest in what happened after death. She is always brave in the face of hurting herself and doesn’t think twice about lashing out at Davies with a slap or a kick but rarely goes out to hurt someone’s feelings. She told me last week that ‘I don’t care about you!’ (I was trying to get her to shut a window she was hanging out of by telling her I was cold), then dissolved into floods of tears almost as the words left her mouth sobbing that ‘the word came out wrong, I do care about you Mummy, I do’. One night over the weekend we let the children stay up late watching a sort of Baby Einstein style animation on one of the kids channels on tv with basic cartoons set to music and she was in hysterics about a baby chick who was lonely and didn’t have his mummy or daddy or any friends – she’d got that from her interpretation of the cartoon as there was no real plot line as such and was devastated about it being a sad story. It took several nice books being read and lots of cuddles to get her over it so she could get to sleep, bless her. Anyway, she was asking about heart attacks and what happened while I was doing the washing up and she was sitting on the worktop getting her cereal so I did a little diagram of a heart, talked a bit about ventricles, chambers, pumping blood and oxygen and how it can go wrong. She seemed really interested and I realised that so few of the things she gets to talk about are original Scarlett ideas – her general knowledge is very wide but mostly Davies-initiated. Feeling inspired by the Skylark book I’m reading I’ve pledged to follow their interests a little more and try and follow up on conversations with books if I can to supplement my often sketchy explanations. This was a good example of something I’m sure Scarlett would be happy to hear more about – although I was saved from having to do much by Supervets being on tonight with a dog having open heart surgery so plenty of her questions about what a real heart looks like were answered very conveniently by that. 🙂

I wanted to finish a blog post on Monster & Teeny this morning so Davies sat with me for a while I started that and then wanted to look at his Monster Movies Blog which led to watching his chicken film again. This led to Scarlett hearing some music in the background of the movie from the barbie.com website (she must have been playing it while Davies and I were videoing) so she used Ady’s laptop to play on that and Davies spent some time on the xbox – it’s been ages since he played, I’m so glad we’ve not invested loads of money in a game consule and games as although he enjoys it for an hour or so whenever he does play it’s really not something he does often enough to justify any more money than we spent on it. Also while Ady and I will sit transfixed at the amazing life like graphics on xbox games Davies expects that level of quality on games as it’s all he’s ever known and is more happy on gamesgarage logic games that playing some fast paced action x box one.

The washing machine did overtime catching up on yesterdays backlog and then we spent some time outside. Davies and Scarlett played with the chickens while I daleked. We came in again for an early lunch before heading down to Brooklands for the circus skills have a go workshop. It was packed with a mix of really small toddlers who’s parents wanted to have a go and some unsupervised but not much older than Davies boys who tried to nick a load of juggling balls at the end. Scarlett and I threw balls to each other, they both span plates and Davies went to chat to the woman about her trapeze act and how she has callouses on her hands and just how her dad does the trick with the cups and balls and lemons (she said she didn’t know :lol:). It was too chaotic really to talk to them about workshops so I’ll email them for more details. The children both wanted to stay and play at the park and then go to the show starting at 2pm again but I persuaded them to come home as Ady was due home early and I thought if we were going to go to the circus again it would be nice if he came with us.

Davies and Scarlett played with some wooden blocks and toy animals (specifically a kangaroo which has a removable joey in it’s pouch) and I made some tardises while we put Superman on. I thought they’d really enjoy it but actually 20 odd years on I found it quite slow paced and plot rather than action heavy and it just didn’t hold their attention, so we listened mostly to the music (which they both recognised from the Noisy Kids concert) and carried on with our pursuits.

I did some more daleking while the children did some more playing with the chickens and then spent some time creating little graves for Malice and Feathers complete with headstones, crosses (‘for Jesus’ apparently) and flowers – bet the chickens eat the flowers and scuff all the rest up tomorrow 🙄 Ady came home and helped me glue some bits on to the dalek then very kindly bathed and fed the children while I continued to wrestle with a tricky bit and then tidied the garden up. I came in and hoovered while Ady washed down the chickens area, then I watched Supervets with the children before they went to bed.

Ady and I have been watching back to back River Cottage programes because when we grow up we both want to be Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (yes, I am aware there are several glitches with that vision 😉 ) and now I must go to bed, I’ve got work in the morning.

I guess I do get a fair bit done, it just never feels like it til I sit and write it all down at the end of each day.

First thing this morning I did some work on the laundry pile – putting away clean stuff. The washing machine has been out of action for 36 hours (it’s working again now, Ady did something to it using a tool and now it works – wahey, my own personal handyman! 😉 ) so there is a huge pile of dirty washing big enough to have it’s own postcode sitting in the bathroom but I was excused from worrying about that today. The children had breakfast – Davies had dry cereal because there was no milk and no skippy for his toast, Scarlett had a toasted bagel that was kicking around from Friday night’s dinner and only edible toasted. She only ate half actually as Candle licked some of the butter off the second half, so she ended up feeding that to the chickens – a real community caring sharing feel to breakfast time here today! I had tea with cream cos we had no milk. Tea with cream is disgusting. I either need to learn to drink my tea black or start to like coffee I assume is more acceptable with cream than tea is. Tea with cream is disgusting, I may have mentioned that. So no bread, no skippy, no milk… once I realised we had run out of loo roll too it became obvious we’d need to go shopping this morning :lol:.

On the way to Tescos we talked about bus routes – Davies had spotted the bus we were behind had a number 7 on it and we talked about routes and destinations and how the bus does a certain route repeatedly and at different frequencies. If I hadn’t also been about to run out of petrol we might have followed the number 7. But we didn’t because that would be a) a really unecologically sound way of using public transport b) a bit mad c) really annoying cos you’d keep getting caught behind it at every stop and even if you were following it and therefore wanted to pull in behind it each time there is a certain period of being behind a bus after which you simply cannot tolerate it stopping every few 100 yards and d) we barely had sufficient petrol to get to Tescos. Might get an all day travel ticket one day and show the children the routes though, or pick up a couple of timetables from work to show them.

We got our various essential bits at Tesco and a few other items including paper cups and plates for Davies’ party, some cake decorating bits and then came home. They’d been squabbling in the car on the way home so I’d told them to sit quietly and watch a film without arguing for an hour while I did some dalek making (making the skirt stronger and fretting about the dome and the plunger). I’d picked up a value frisbe at Tescos for 46 pence as the children had been looking longingly at the whizee noised frisbe our camping neighbours had in Swanage so I’d planned to get them one next time I saw some. They decided to play with that rather than watch a film but worked really hard to get on with each other on threatening of not going to the circus from me if they disturbed me. They then decided they wanted a water pistol that The Thank you Neighbours had brought over for them and we’d shoved in the garage (did I mention that David apologised for seeing me in my nightie the other morning and then made it all worse again by telling me how lovely I’d looked in it! :shock:). So they got the garage door key down from the high shelf in the kitchen (would have required clambering but I’m not thinking about that) then walked round the house to try and unlock the garage which they couldn’t do because there is a real knack to it that I only learnt when I was about 28 and had sat a NVQ level 2 in locksmithing 😆

I came in and we had lunch and they watched some Cat in the Hat while I had some pc time, whereupon I discovered that B&Q sell sink plungers for £1.28 so we shot up to B&Q to purchase one. I thought we’d managed to sneak through without being spotted by anyone we know but got caught at the tills by Gwen who has been there for years and wanted to chat. She asked me how long it was since I’d left (that store, it was 12 years ago) and said that for years after I left customers would ask after me and say I was the only one there who seemed to know what she was doing! A fine accolade indeed to have been championed as the best part time checkout operator B&Q Worthing had ever known! 😆 If only my Dad could have been there to hear that I know he would finally have been proud of my accomplishments and be prepared to overlook all my crapness with money and failure to send my children to school. 😆 She asked what I was doing now and I explained that I work part time in the library and spend the rest of the time at home with the children, which led onto her asking if they were at school yet and me explaining they ‘should’ be as they are school age, but aren’t because they learn at home. She wanted to know all about that then and how I ‘make them learn’ 🙄 I did a quick sketch of how they are still very young yet and so far are very motivated without giving her the full overhead projector, case study and illustrated with a dance routine, a jingle and costume characters production on autonomy because we were running late for getting to the circus. Which made me smile to myself as having torn ourselves away from making a life size dalek to buy a sink plunger whilst on our way to the circus pretty much sums our life up really and makes me think being the best checkout chick in B&Q 12 years ago was probably pretty good grounding for something 😆

Freds Flying Circus is playing at the local laked park for a bargain £2 per person admission. We’ve actually ‘met’ them before as they were holding the circus skills workshops at Sompting Festival. Lucy and The Rs were already there with excellent seats so we squished in next to them and enjoyed the show. Davies sat enthralled for the whole thing, Scarlett lost interest slightly towards the end and wanted to sit on my lap. They are running free workshops at 1230 each day so we’ll go down tomorrow so Davies can have a go. He’s been asking to learn circus skills for a while and I’ve been very slack in sorting it out so I might have a word with them there tomorrow as they are clearly local-ish and if Davies is genuinely interested maybe I can arrange something or at least get some contacts from them. We chatted on the way home about our favourite bits and they came straight into the garden and set up a circus act while I started inserting my sink plunger into my dalek.

Lucy and The Rs came back to ours, having detoured home to collect Rebecca’s space hopper which she’s very kindly lent me for a couple of days to form the shape of the domed bit of the dalek. So I carried on making that while chatting to Lucy and the children occassionally played and mostly argued – Davies and Scarlett continuing to do that thing of wanting to play with each other and not being able to just leave each other alone, but irritating each other and then arguing. 🙄 Lucy and The Rs left, I finished the bit of dalek I was on and then a huge grey cloud looked certain to burst so with the children’s help I got the dalek inside in to the playroom. They suddenly clicked into a game they could play without arguing so we had half an hours peace before we decided to do the baking I’d planned to get done before the apples and blackberries spoiled that we picked last week. They both had a go at peeling apples and deemed it too tricky, so I gave Scarlett pastry ingredients in a bowl and got her to rub them in and gave Davies crumble topping ingredients in a bowl and got him to rub them in. I peeled and chopped the apples and then Davies put apples, blackberries and crumble topping in his bowl and was very proud to have almost entirely made it himself :). Scarlett greased the pans for me while I rolled out the pastry and made little individual tarts, they put blackberries into the pastry bottoms while I cooked down some of the apples with some sugar and then made criss cross tops for them. By then they’d got bored so wandered off to play while I made an apple bread and butter pudding style creation and then finally cooked their tea. Ady arrived home and was very pleased to find the kitchen smelling of apple and cinnamon. 🙂

Doctor Who came on followed by Doctor Who Confidential while they were finishing their tea so they got to watch that while I popped to Sainsburys (forgot cat food :roll:), then bath and dinner for us. Tomorrow I have further dalek construction planned and a visit to the library for the children to finish the BWR and back for the circus skills workshop. It’s all go here. 🙂

Order new contact lenses online – just realised I only have a week or so supply left – decided to wait until A get’s paid on Friday

Get to Tescos and buy bread, milk, loo roll etc. Supplies running very low here – done 🙂

Find something to make dalek’s sink plunger style bit (but not a sink plunger at 3 quid!) and the domed top (beach ball?) and get that done this morning so I can start putting on detailing tomorrow ready for spraying by the end of the week – really want that done this week so I can concentrate on food for the party next week. argh really struggling with this. I’ve just lost my temper with it trying to put a flat front bit to put the sink plunger bits on and I’ve sort of ground to a halt without something to make the domed top bit. I’ve just put a ‘wanted’ email on freecycle for a sink plunger and a space hopper or giant beach ball but I’m sort of running out of ideas otherwise without starting to spend money on it which I really don’t want to do. 🙁 Grr.

Do something with the apples and blackberries we bought at the PYO last week – pies, crumbles? something I can bake and freeze, not enough blackberries for jam really. maybe later…

I’m taking D&S to the circus this afternoon and there is a free circus skills workshop at 1230, but I think I might aim to do the circus show only today and maybe take them back for the skills workshop tomorrow after they’ve actually seen a performance. If I haven’t done them severe physical harm for getting in my way when I’m losing my temper with the dalek we’ll be off to the circus in a little while. Why don’t people (and I know plenty of adults who struggle with this too) read the signs and know to stay out of the way of someone in a black frame of mind?! @$*!!

Washing machine appears to be broken though so no laundry angst today – although there is a sufficient pile to be fretting about I can’t do anything with it. Ady is worrying about that on my behalf and is planning to pull the washing machine out later today and see if it’s something he can fix or whether it’s time to look out on freecycle for a new one. Our’s is 8 years old next week and although it’s taken a bit of a battering in those 8 years it would be nice to get a couple more out of it.

see what I did there?!

We errected the new tent today – we’ve been debating what to call it, the first tent was ‘ChrisAndAlisonsTent’, then we had ‘The Crap Tent’ which we have to thank for introducing the word ‘crap’ into our childrens’ vocabulary. So far we’ve come up with ‘the big tent’ (Davies) – which to us it is but put it next to a Kyham and it’ll be dwarfed again, ‘the fab tent’ which seems a bit expansive when we’ve yet to camp in it and ‘the top tent’ ditto. Anyway, it is in pretty much immaculate condition, the living area is bigger than the crap tent and the bedrooms are all spacious what with the outer not sagging into them and all. It has all these little features like little storage pockets, a hook for hanging a lantern in the middle of the living space, poles to create a porch, adjustable tension straps between poles to brace it square and you know, gimmicks, such as not ripping when you try to put the bedrooms in, zips that actually shut the tent and don’t gape open in places and a flysheet that seems designed with the poles in mind :lol:. Really want to go camping again now to test it out but I don’t think September’s finances will stretch. Fingers crossed for a warm October? 🙂

Off car boot sale perusing again first thing today. It was busy but not a lot worth having really. We got a Where’s Wally pocket book, I found some more clothes (another couple of dresses for Tarly, but for next summer, a couple of fleece tops and a dressing gown for Davies), a load of toy snakes, fish and lizards and a couple of books. Yesterday we got given three bedding sets for free from a seller who was packing up – a Care Bears one, a Tweety Pie one and a Victoria Plum one. I was explaining how Victoria Plum was a toy from when I was a child and Scarlett and I found a book about her today :). Davies then spotted a Mr Blobby bedding set for 75 pence so he’s got new spare bedding too. Oh and I got Body Bits kitfor a pound too, which the kids had a bash at constructing but I’ve not had a proper look at yet.

We came home and I did a bit more dalek-ing – patching and strengthening the top section and then we headed off to Lucy & Colin’s. We pitched our tent and had a barbecue. Davies (and to a lesser degree Scarlett) were both very tired (three late nights in a row 🙁 ) and quite waily which made it not the relaxing afternoon I’d hoped for. I’d caught the sun on my shoulders and back so stayed inside out of the sun while Ady sat and was clambered over and wailed at by most of the children, bless him. At six pm when Davies and Scarlett were involved in yet another sibling related tussle we decided enough was enough and called it a day. Ady wrangled the children into bed while I put a skirt on the dalek, then sat with Davies for a while as he was in better humour once he was actually at home, in pjs and in bed. They’ve both fallen asleep nice and early and are on a promise of being taken to the circus on at Brooklands tomorrow afternoon if they let me get on with the dalek tomorrow morning.

I’ve read another chapter or two of And The Skylark Sings With Me which is continuing to inspire and enthuse me about Home Ed and will no doubt lead to a post at some point. And now, because we’re already bathed, fed and so on so very early I think I’ll watch a film 🙂

We went to our usual car boot sale this morning but a combination of it being rained off so many weeks this summer, a brilliantly hot August day and the long weekend meant it was heaving. Heaving with sellers aswell as buyers though and many a bargain was to be had. 🙂 I’d taken about £7 with me and spent every single penny. Ady had some left over but we probably spent a tenner between us. Ady and Davies walked round together and got various bits and pieces including a couple of little Wallace and Gromit figures (for Davies’ playhouses) which we’d only ever seen on ebay at well over £5 each before – for 10 pence! They also got a book for Scarlett on Spirit which is a firm favourite of her and Maisie and something they play at most times they get together. We also got a superplexus ball which I’ve been hankering after for ages for 25 pence. Scarlett got a mosiac coloured tangram puzzle for 26 pence (the bloke wanted 50 pence but she had 26 pence clutched in her hand and smiled sweetly so he gave it to her for that 🙂 ), we got a little Polly Pocket playset with some tiny dogs for 50p but bargain of the week was the clothes this week. At one of the first stalls I found a man selling his two daughters outgrown clothes for 50 pence an item. All the stuff was immaculate and Next, Monsoon etc. Most of it was little stuff but I got 5 items for £2.50, all gorgeous frilly skirts, mirror and bead bedecked tops and so on. If I’d had more money with me I’d have bought loads of the smaller stuff off him to ebay. A bit further round we found someone selling every item for 20pence so got a full length fleecey lined winter coat, a reversible fluffy gilet and two black dresses for 80 pence. Finally we came across a woman packing up to go home who first of all told me 50 pence an item and then said I could fill a bin liner for two quid. And fill it I did! I actually gave her £2.50 because I was so pleased with what I’d got and when we came home and laid it all out we’d got six pairs of trousers, three fleeces, three jumpers, two skirts, a tracksuit, two dresses, seven tops, a coat, a gilet and a long cardigan for the princely sum of £5.60 – so that’s Scarlett sorted for winter then :). I’d picked up various items aged up to 6 years including most of the trousers (she’s currently wearing 3-4 in most trousers but they’re all cropper summer ones) so we had a trying on session when we got home cos they all looked huge and I was preparing to put lots of the stuff away for winter next year, but everything fitted now! She has been looking quite long of leg lately and all her skirts have been a bit on the short side so she’s been wearing them with leggings but I had no idea she’d grown quite so much! Also the style of the jeans is that of a girl rather than a toddler so suddenly every last trace of a toddler is long gone. Davies looked at her and said ‘those trousers make her look all tall and thin, she’s like Barbie!’ 😆 and indeed she did suddenly look like a child who could well be about to start school in two weeks 😯 But she’s my baby!!! Final bargain was a Wallace and Gromit pop up book – the full story in cartoon strip of A Close Shave with all sorts of pop ups and moving parts. She wanted £2, took £1.50 and Davies was utterly delighted with it. Id planned to smuggle it in as a birthday present but he spotted it in the bag and wanted it there and then. He’s spent the whole afternoon entranced by all it’s moving bits and planning how to make pop up pictures of his own. 🙂

Home for lunch and then I headed back into the garden taking my papier mache dalek with me. I got a load more done and am now up to the domed top, which I’m still unsure how to tackle – it’s too big to use a balloon but I think a beach ball may do the trick to papier mache over. I’ve then got all the detailing to do, so am hoping for a nice couple more days as it dries so quickly outside it is making the whole project loads quicker. I spent about 4 hours outside, with music playing and found it all very theraputic. Both the children came and helped at various points – Davies grew bored of it very quickly, a thing of this size isn’t very exciting as it’s lots of repeptive tearing and sticking strips of paper. Scarlett stuck around for longer, although she was more interested in picking dried bits of paste off of my skin and clothes (she loves picking at things that child, never did grow out of that) and then making up more paste with the flour and water and chattering away to me about nothing. There’s another car boot sale on in the morning so we’ll be looking out for a beach ball and a sink plunger to complete it. Davies has decided he wants it to be a gold dalek rather than a black one so I’ve been googling for images for the detail.

Came in around 7pm for roast beef cooked by Ady and we all ate together. Davies had roast beef with potato waffles and yorkshire puddings – he loves beef but doesn’t like roast potatoes. Scarlett who is a total carboholic had mashed potatoes, yorkshire puddings and pasta! She filled the yorkshires with mash and then filled all the pasta shells with mash too – strange little girl! 🙄 We all watched Child of Our Time together with various comment and conversation about it. I’ve enjoyed watching that show since it started when I was pregnant with Davies and it’s great to be watching it with him now.

Tonight I’ve been doing some more Tardis goody bag making and started reading And The Skylark Sings With Me in the bath. I borrowed it from work ages ago when I did a subject search for Home Education books and whilst I’m probably coming to David Albert pretty late so far I’m finding it an inspiring and interesting read. I discovered when Mum took me out for dinner last week that Dad is still very much opposed to Home Education, which probably bothers me way more than it should. It’s not that I value his opinion on this topic particularly because I don’t. I think he is being ignorant and arsey by not talking to me about it properly, not learning more about the idea and not having any sound basis for his opinion. I just think it’s a real shame that he doesn’t get what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’m also aware that the older the children get and the more obviously different they start to become as a result of our autonomous style the more I may be called to question over it. Again, I’m not terribly bothered what people think of it as such but I do feel very passionate about what we’re doing and would like to have as much information over and above simply presenting the children as living, breathing, learning examples of why it’s the right way for us to cite at people as evidence. Also it is always a pleasure to read such positive, convinced parents filled with joy and passion about their children and how they approached home education.

Didn’t blog yesterday, partially because I was at work all day and I never have much to say when I’ve been at work, partially because I’d made a start on another blog post which I still have in draft but was planning to post first but mostly because I got paid yesterday so after 10 days of scraping together coppers for bread and milk we were able to buy alcohol again and I got stuck into the wine pretty early so wasn’t capable of coherant typing after about 930pm! 😳

Julie was here with Davies and Scarlett in the morning and my Mum was here in the afternoon. They’d been to the park with Julie but stayed in with Mum – not sure what they all got up to other than that although I know they watched some Doctor Who. Davies had started making a Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory with an old box and some old loo rolls on Thursday night in bed so he’d finished that. I must get some photos of it actually, I was really impressed with it. It’s like a polly pocket playhouse – it all folds out and has various bits on it including the vast gates that swing open to let the golden ticket holders in, the chocolate river complete with waterfall and outside it has the swirly whirly chimneys all made with telescopic loo rolls all torn to shape. It’s ace 🙂 He’s made little figures to go in it of all the main characters and some oompaloompas too. He’s so creative and imaginative, he is able to visualise what he wants to make and work out how to make it happen, he has real vision and is great at making it all come together. 🙂

I had a good day at work, the morning flew by and I was on later lunch so the afternoon went quick too. I spent an hour or so on the enquiry desk which I really enjoy – I helped a woman who was from NZ and wanting to get back home for Christmas but without any internet knowledge and had been to a travel agents and gotten no help at all. She told me I was wonderful 🙂 And I researched and ordered in a load of books and photocopied loads of information for a woman on behalf of her 13 year old daughter who is interested in a career in midwifery or social work, and ordeed some large print sagas by Lesley Pearce for someone among other things. I really like working on the desk, you get a really varied selection of stuff to do (plus I feel quite important sitting behind it 😉 ).

Today has been very productive. Ady and the kids were already out in the garden (Scarlett in her nightie) while I was still getting dressed. The doorbell rang twice which I assumed with one of the children so crossly pulled a nightie on and stomped down the stairs. I hadn’t quite pulled it all the way down before I reached the bottom of the stairs to find David – the Thank You Neighbouur – standing in the hall looking a bit nervous and cooeeing. He looked even more nervous once his eyes had moved back up my body to meet my eyes 😆 I told him everyone was out in the garden and he scurried back out of the house again looking very scared and muttering apologies as he went! And I stomped back upstairs again to get dressed! 😆

Ady did some chicken maintennance and sorted out the coop me and Dad made with the run attached and the freecycle rabbit hutch as a nesting box for them (they are due to start laying in 3 weeks 😯 of course we’re still not 100% sure they are hens, but I guess the first egg will be the proof!) and moved the whole thing onto the concrete. Me and the children finished painting cardboard boxes blue to make a tardis for Davies’ party and I did some white and black detailing on the dried ones. We had lunch and then I grabbed the bull by the horns and began my most ambitious papier mache project yet with a dalek. Not at all sure how it will turn out but I’ve made a good start on it today and will try and get most of it finished this weekend.

Then we headed off to go and collect the ebay tent we won last week – about an hour’s drive away. We’ve not taken it out of the bag yet, will do so on Monday when we plan to pitch it to check it is ok, so now idea what we’ve bought really as yet.

Home again via Tescos and various shops in Chichester to grab some bits for Davies’ birthday. With the exception of one gift we have finished buying which is good, and I’m feeling quite organised for his party too. We also called in to the chicken supply shop for more chicken food and to chat with the man there about what we feed them longterm with things like grit and oyster shell and whether layers mash is better than layers pellets etc. all very interesting to chicken keepers and pretty irrelevant to the rest of the world ;).

Once home we finished what we were doing (me, papier mache-ing, Ady chicken run sorting), fed the children, then all watched X Factor (I still cried once so it can’t all be about hormones, I must just be a sap!) before packing the children off to bed. Tomorrow I’m planning to do more dalek-ing and I think we might be carbooting in the morning too.

Another day, another free event in the Goddard household! 🙂 I think I may have mentioned this before, but as I’m only repeating myself for which I cannot be sued and it gives Chris something to snigger about I’ll do it anyway, but it really is amazing how much free stuff is laid on when you care to cast around and look for it. Working at the library has been a massive source of information for me about what’s happening locally, and not so locally from the Pagham Harbour beach beasties event to the Noisy Kids concert – and a month or so ago I spied a poster about Green Diggers – the children’s wing of the local, council run gardening club so I sent off the application form for Davies and Scarlett and in the post came a kids fork and trowel, some seeds and membership cards and an Usborne gardening book. Last week I got an email from them to say the first Green Diggers event would be held today at a local garden centre.

I was talking to my boss yesterday about how different people view the library service in different ways. Some of our borrowers are full of praise, filled with awe and wonder at this FREE service open to all for borrowing 20 books for three weeks, all the top titles, reservations that you can be emailed or phoned to say are in, very cheap dvds, cds and the unabridged audio books on cassette and cd that you simply can’t buy anywhere else. Other people are aware that in the same way as streetlighting, the police force, state education and refuse collection this is a service that we pay for, in our council tax and whilst all this may be great value for money and it’s a bit odd that more people aren’t making use of these services, we are the consumer of these services rather than a recipient. I sort of sway between the two really – I’ve always been a user of the library service, since childhood – one of the first things I did when we moved to Manchester along with registering with the local gp was to join the local library. But I still think it’s a great service. Bloody hell, I’m almost a socialist! 😆

Anyway, back to today. We did our usual trick of scrambling out of bed with moments to spare to get dressed, fed and out of the house but managed to be bang on time arriving at the garden centre at 930am. It is a garden centre my Mum used to go to lots when we were kids so it brought back all sorts of memories walking across the carpark, as I’ve not been there since I was probably not much older than Davies but it didn’t appear to have changed much. We were ushered into an area with cacti where there were already about 10 children waiting – I guess there were 20 or so children altogether in the end. Odd how most of them were in the 3-5 age range even though the green diggers is for under 12s. I would say with the exception of two older boys Davies and Scarlett were the oldest children there. What a shame that parents of 3 plus children seem to lose them to the education system and become so less involved with them, even in holiday time :(. I’m slightly kicking myself now for not responding more enthusiastically to the friendly approaches of one of the other mothers, but I’m a bit out of practise of making friends with ‘normal’ people 😆 I was also amazed at the couple of parents who dumped and ran, despite the literature being very specific that no childcare would be on offer and parents would need to remain on site at least 2 mothers dropped their children off with a cheery ‘we’ll be looking round the garden centre – see you in a couple of hours’ :shock:.

We started off with all the children being given two terracotta pots (clearly I couldn’t touch them 😉 ) and loads of brand new paintbrushes and lovely acrylic paints to decorate them. Davies took time to plan his first one and did a lovely blue rim with various flowers and plants around the pot including daisies, cacti and so on. He took so long that he was the last one left to complete his second and most of the paint on our table had already been artisically mixed by the small boy sharing it with us, so we came up with the idea of a ‘splodge pot’ with dabs of all sorts of marbled effect paint and then he wrote ‘Davies’ on it with his finger mixing it further – it looked fab and was second prize winner in the competition!. Scarlett did one pot with various blocks of colour and was then taken with the different colours the water on the table kept changing to as brushes were washed out so we made a rainbow pot (I thought of you all as I encouraged it 😉 ) with the whole ‘between red and yellow comes orange, between yellow and blue comes green’ type stuff mixing the colours on the pot as we went.

Splash fm radio (local radio station down here) arrived with a keen young woman and her furry green mic and they homed straight in on Davies. She asked his name, how old he was, complemented him on his pot and then asked how he felt about the end of the school summer holidays, to which he replied that it didn’t matter to him as he didn’t go to school and was home educated! 🙂 I was also interviewed with a soundbite ‘oh I love the end of the school holidays – it’s a real relief! I home educate my two children and we get everywhere back to ourselves again when all the rest of the children go back to school!’. Davies took his first pot off to leave to dry and got chatting to one of the volunteers helping with the event who then came back over to me to tell me what a wonderful child ‘your Davies’ is. She said he was telling her all about his pot, describing in great detail what all the pictures were and what an intelligent and charming boy he is. She said she’d gone to the radio woman to tell her to talk to Davies and sure enough there he was, back with furry mic thrust back in his face, in his element with his hands gesticulating and his face alight with whatever he was talking about (turned out to be home education and his pot when I asked him later.) – was very proud 🙂 🙂 :).

While they painted their second pots and Scarlett and I were discussing colour mixing the photographer turned up and also homed in on Davies asking him about his pot and snapping away as he talked, then he asked if Scarlett was Davies’ sister and asked if she’d like to have photos too – which she did, so they posed for ages in various ways for him. He made sure I’d signed one of the consent forms for their pictures to be used and said it would almost definitely go in the local council colour newsletter next edition (ooh which we hold at the library 🙂 ) and that it would probably be picked up by local press too. They finished painting their second pots and spent ages washing their hands as one of the older boys had worked out he could blow bubbles with the washing up liquid water and they all spent a while doing that. Then the photographer came back over and asked if Davies and Scarlett would please pose some more for him so they went off to a roped off area and had a load more pictures taken 🙂

By this point the rest of the group had already set off on their guided tour of the nursery so we were escorted speedily to join them, catching up as they reached shrubs and were looking at lavendar – which clearly Davies and Scarlett know all about, given it is something they sell from our garden 😉 :lol:. Then we moved onto herbs and the photographer appeared again, snapping them sniffing herbs and naming several (fennel, thyme, mint etc – always amazes me how they pick this knowledge up :shock:). We then walked back to the aquatics department with Davies making me laugh asking about ‘the refreshments’ he’d heard mentioned. I said to him ‘Refreshments!? You really are turning into Milly Molly Mandy!’ which was when another mum turned round and struck up a conversation with me about MMM and the charming words it had put into our children’s vocab. 😆 The fish area was fab with various amazing tropical fish to coo over and then back to the coffee shop for the much promised refreshments. Fruit juice, water, chopped up fruit and chocolate brownies. 🙂

Then it was back to the pots. They had laid out about 12 types of compost in big tubs for the children to feel the difference and really get their hands dirty, they learnt about various types of bulbs and then got to plant up their pots with compost and bulbs to bring home.

Then we had a tour of the cacti while they waited for the local newsteam to arrive so it could be on tomorrows evening news show. Davies and Scarlett were both really interested and by now lots of the children were getting bored or restless so they really stuck out with their asking intelligent questions and showing lots of interest in what was being said. Lots of the cacti there were night flowering and in the wild would be pollenated by bats, and one example by hummingbirds. This amazed me as I had no idea creatures other than bees (and birds by way of eating berries and then the seeds being spread in their poo) pollenated things.

Finally it was time for the prize giving – the local news team had not yet arrived but anyone wanting to appear was welcome to hang around to be on tv – we decided not to bother, thinking that radio and newspaper pictures would be sufficient ;). The first prize for best pot was either a fork or a spade – child sized – donated by the nursery. Although very nice and probably very expensive it wouldn’t have been much use to us here, so with great relief and pleasure Davies collected his second prize for 2nd best boys pot decoration of a worm world 🙂

But in true Bullseye fashion, no one went away empty handed and everyone got given a seed planting kit to bring home along with their two handpainted pots planted up with bulbs. Davies and Scarlett went off to thank the woman from the council who’d organised it all and the manager of the nursery and we headed off with our bagfulls of stuff. An excellent event, hope they organised loads more, it was fab. 🙂

We left the nursery and headed straight to Lucy’s for lunch – and as it turned out a whole afternoon and tea for the children as well. None of the children were on top form – Davies and Scarlett had clearly used up all their wonderfulness for the day in the morning, but they all muddled through for a couple of hours together – all wailing if we simply offered to go home instead of play together :roll:. Lucy and I managed some good chats about dream lifetstyles if we won the lottery though which was nice :).

We came home and Ady had just arrived home to find all the chickens in the front garden – we opened the front door and Punzel made a dash for it and ran clucking round the lounge for a few minutes like, well a headless chicken I guess, before Scarlett grabbed her and evicted her again 😆

they are funny creatures 😆

Then Davies and Scarlett sat on the doorstep and assembled the worm world with layers of soil and sand before going off worm hunting round the garden and finding 8 lucky worms to come and perform a sort of Big Brother style period of time living in Worm World and being observed every day – maybe we should set them tasks to complete and offer them a diary room space to rant 😆

That done, I finally persuaded them in for a much needed bath and then we all listened to an old Doctor Who cd I borrowed from work before it was bed time for them. I’m working all day tomorrow, with Julie here in the morning and my mum in the afternoon so they’re looking forward to a good childcare mix for the day before we all enjoy a long weekend. 🙂

Thanks for all very welcome comments of sympathy, empathy and brackets for yesterday :), you’re all lovely.x

Off to work this morning, so predictably the alarm at 8am woke me before the children which meant a mad dash with them still in pjs mid-breakfast when Lucy and The Rs arrived. We so couldn’t get out of the house to get to school in the morning 😳

It was a really busy morning at work, I like Wednesday mornings, it’s a nice colleague mix and the Childrens Services Librarian for West Sussex was in doing the BWR too, which was good cos I really like her. I got the course details through for my baby rhyme time and childrens story time training in a couple of weeks, after which I’ll start doing storytime on my Thursday shifts which I’m sort of looking forward to. We have to come with our favourite nursery rhyme (need to think of one), a favourite children’s book (need to think back to pre-school age books rather than what I’d read now, probably We’re Going On A Bear Hunt I think) and a teddy or dolly – I imagine that won’t be a problem to select from our house :lol:. I had tea break with my boss which we spent talking about how the library could improve it’s marketing at new adult borrowers which was interesting – definitely an area I’d love to move into working in long term if the opportunity arose, if life pans out that way over the next 5 years or so.

Home to a fairly chaotic couple of hours. Lucy and I really wanted to talk and went to extremes of moving into different rooms but kept being followed by interupting children, and not even interupting for decent reasons, it was like that interupting sheep knock knock joke. I lost my temper and shouted at all of them when they were discovered ritually treading hula hoops into the lounge carpet which finally seemed to buy us 10 minutes for the end of our conversation. Actually Davies has been a bit craving of my personal attention the last week or so and I realised we’ve not had any days without seeing other people really so I’m hoping for a quieter week next week. A drive from home to the PYO farm and back again with me chatting to them both in the car rather than trying to talk to another grown up seemed to almost magically sort him out temporarily so I’m pretty sure that’s what his problem is. It’s just that he tends to show his attention seeking in a clingy way which brings out a very strong urge in me to run away rather than meet his need for lots of cuddles and attention. 😳 I’m a bit crap with neediness.

So Lucy and The Rs left and we headed over to the PYO to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie, who we’ve not seen for a couple of weeks although we’ve caught up a few times on the phone. We rode round on the tractor and picked eating apples, cooking apples and blackberries – planning some Milly Molly Mandy style endeavours for the blackberries and cooking apples – and the eating apples have already had serious tracks made in them – they are lovely picked straight off the tree though :). Having explained that we needed to pick off the tree rather than the ground and that the higher up the tree the more sun the apples would have had and the nicer they would be I was most amused to find both D & S up the trees picking 😆
. We spent so long at the blackberries, with the children finally running up and down and entertaining themselves while Julie and I picked and chatted that we lost track of time and suddenly a landrover appeared with the owner of the farm inside saying that they had closed and all the staff wanted to go home please! Our two cars were the only ones left in the carpark and they’d done a circuit of the farm looking for us, finally finding us in the blackberries. We all piled into his landrover and he took us back to the entrance to pay with all four children munching away on his not paid for yet apples 😳 which just made him laugh! 😆

We parted company and we came home with the children eating yet more apples on the way. They had toast for tea (far too full of their five a day to be wanting proper tea!) and watched Polar Express before having a bath to wash PYO dirt off them, while I got ready to go out with my Mum. Every so often she decides to take me out for a meal – she did about this time last year. This time we went to a chinese restaurant with an eat all you like menu so we chose three starters and six main courses, a bottle of wine and totally troughed out on lovely food 🙂 It was really nice, finished off with a couple of Baileys and door to door dropping me off. Couldn’t ask for more really. Ady enjoyed a night off to eat pie (a dinner I don’t like) and watch Band of Brothers on dvd with the prologic on really loud (I could hear it outside the house :roll:) so everyone was happy.

today 🙁

We all overslept this morning which meant I had to text Mel at the time we were supposed to be pulling up outside their house to say we were running half an hour late. I am *always* late when we meet Mel – she once told me she now plans to arrive at least 10 minutes later than we arrange anyway 😳 but actually although I am often running late it is something I really hate so that put me at a bad start.

We got to Paradise Park really early – just before 10am and it was really quiet. The woman on the desk was really surly, not giving us enough stickers to get in and then looking like it was my fault when I drew her attention to it and asked for another one. Then she didn’t push the button to let us in so we sort of stood around for a few minutes looking like spare pieces. Just odd, but not annoying enough to actually complain about. Also I noticed there was some sort of treasure hunt type thing but there were no forms to take round and fill in and I didn’t like to ask after the other small incidents.

The children were all in a high state of giddiness and being rowdy and noisy in turns with both Davies and Scarlett deciding to be clingy at the same time every so often and wanting to hang off me. I like cuddles, kisses and strokes but I can’t bear just being crowded and clutched at. There was almost constant debate about which way to walk next and lots of jostling for first goes at pushing various buttons all of which I just found really wearing today. I like Mel a lot – I met her a couple of years ago on netmums but I’d really class her as the mum of the kids’ friends rather than my friend. We always manage to chat easily enough in a catching up on certain topics sort of way (my job, her job, her kids school, my kids HE groups, extra curricular activities, her studing, Ady’s studying – all very safe and not particularly personal or ‘interesting’ chatting – the sort I would imagine is done at school gates a lot) and today that wasn’t easy company to be in where I felt I was making an effort – I’d have been better off alone or with someone close I don’t feel the need to say a lot to other than ‘I feel really blah today’. We ended up having a big conversation about how well the children got on as siblings with me saying D&S are really close and play well together pretty much all the time – which they then totally disproved on the way home by both ending up in tears for pulling each others hair :roll:.

Mel bought the children all an ice cream and us tea and coffee in the cafe there which was nice, but then paid for Liam and Lily to go on a mechanical horse ride each, so I couldn’t really not pay for Davies and Scarlett to go on it. Then I gave D&S the choice of the train (at £2 per person or something it would have meant no bread or milk for the rest of the week at home) or a few tokens each in the amusements which are only 20 pence each. Fortunately they chose the tokens so we headed there and I gave them four tokens each, told them that was all I had money for and to spend them wisely. I was really proud of them (unfortunately only briefly 🙁 ) as they were all pleased and grateful spent ages weighing up what they wanted to spend them on, except Scarlett then made a big fuss (her second already since we arrived) about wanting more 🙄 So we went off to find somewhere to eat lunch, which quietened things down a bit, then we went into a small area they’ve set up as a ‘classroom’ with loads of crayons, pictures of kids tv characters to colour in and plain paper to draw on. That was quite peaceful for a while actually (aside from Ady ringing to say he’d be picking us up around 5pm – it was still only about 130pm by then and I’d already had enough really so started to feel really trapped). They all did loads of colouring and then we made some paper aeroplanes and they spent ages trying to fly them through the rafters in the room. Made me think of wet play at school when we weren’t allowed out in the playground when it was raining and everyone used to get a bit stir crazy in the classrooms.

There was a bit of a gap in the rain then and Liam and Lily wanted to play crazy golf (another quid a go per person), fortunately Scarlett didn’t so as I didn’t have any chance Mel paid for Davies (which I didn’t feel too bad about as she had got in for free on our ticket and we picked them up and took them there). It started to pour with rain while they were playing (and I use the term playing loosely – Liam was getting really, really cross with the ball for not doing what he wanted, the club for not hitting it right, everyone else for laughing at him and the people behind for wanting him to hurry up and have his go so they could get their turn, Lily was picking the ball up and putting it wherever she fancied and then hitting it and Davies was scooping the ball along with the club – I’m not very indulgent of children not doing things right at the best of times (aside from slides of course 😉 ) and today I had no patience for it all, in the rain) so Scarlett and I went back inside for a while. I sat squashed inbetween a row of mothers all shrieking at their children (the only time I almost smiled was when the woman next to me hailed her children with ‘Harmony and Nikita!’), which was the point I rang Ady and begged him to come as soon as he could and rescue me before I went back into the ornamental gardens and found some poisonous leaves to ingest.

The others came back in to join us, Liam and Lily complained they were bored, Davies got stroppy that Liam didn’t want to play with him, Scarlett got stroppy that I didn’t have any more money for the amusements. Mel bought loads of tokens and have some to Davies and Scarlett who then kept coming and asking her for more, despite me telling them not to while I sat and watched some grandparents who had brought their two grandsons out try very hard to control themselves from not smacking their frankly horrid oldest grandson – the rage on the grandad’s face was obvious. Finally Ady rang to say he was mere minutes away so we made out way out to the carpark, running the gauntlet of the gift shop as we went (can I have…..? NOOOOOO!), piled into the car and then listened to four children do their full range of ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I’m thirsty’ ‘are we there yet?’ ‘I’m too hot’ ‘I want the window shut’ be generally horrid to each other, tell knock knock jokes with no punchlines, adapt ‘I know an old lady who swallowed a fly’ to include the words ‘bum’ ‘wee’ ‘poo’ and ‘t rex’ with Liam and Lily giving me a constant middle row of seats running commentary on what dreadful things Davies and Scarlett were doing from the back seat with me initially feigning interest to barely bothering to acknowledge them by the end of the journey.

Once we’d dropped them off I bawled out D&S who were then guilt ridden and have spent the hour since we got home trying to cuddle me and apologise when all I actually want everyone to do (Ady included) is fuck off and leave me alone. And we’ve got no milk for a cup of tea. And yes, I might have my period!

You can see most of what we got up to listed below. Washing, baking, chatting and playing. I got pretty much everything I wanted to achieve done and we had Lucy and The Rs over for most of the day too, which meant Lucy and I managed plenty of chatting which was nice. 🙂

We’ve had long standing plans to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily (D&S’s schooled friends) tomorrow at Paradise Park but Mel emailed today to say her car is off the road and could they come with us instead of meeting us there or come over to ours for the day. To save petrol (my car’s been running on fumes since about last Tuesday) Ady had arranged to visit Paradise Park tomorrow and then pick us up again on his way home, so now we’re all going together and will be there at 930am for when Ady’s first meeting is meaning a very long day. Better hope for good weather 🙂

We watched a film tonight from the library – Frequency – which I really enjoyed. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that various choices create various split parallels of outcomes. I know the idea is a fairly tried and tested one but I quite often make choices and then retrospectively think about the crossroads effect an alternative choice could have meant so that and the sufficient levels of pretty things to look at in the film kept me entertained :).

Stuff I really must get done today:

Make some attempt on the laundry mountain – last load in now, all the rest hung out. But it looks like rain so it may well be staying there on the line for the rest of the week!

Some baking – we have no ‘nice’ food in the house and no money for buying anything, a picnic lunch tomorrow will require some cakes or biscuits – made chocolate chip rock cakes and jam tarts – fed some to small children today and plenty left for picnic tomorrow and treats for next couple of days

Sort out final balance for NicCamps and get everyone emailed about it – done!

Another coat of paint on the tardis – done! Looking pretty good now, but will probably need yet another coat

Ring Julie (SIL) Done! Arrangements for childcare, meeting up, birthday gatherings etc. all sorted 🙂

Work out guest list for D’s party – sort of done – about to email all expected guests and ask for confirmation figures

Start planning food and games for D’s party and make a list of what I need to get still have some ideas, need to write them down really so I feel properly organised 🙂

Try and get D to decide what he wants for his birthday – and talk him down if it’s excessive 😉 will talk to him later, but Lucy had the brilliant idea of keeping back any presents people bring to his party for him to open on his actual birthday, which is great as it will mean the first half hour of the party isn’t him opening presents and strewing the place with wrapping paper. Last year him opening all the presents diluted both the party and his actual birthday as it meant he had very little to look forward to once the party was over. And ETA again 🙂 We sat and looked at Argos online as he genuinely does only want Doctor Who stuff for his birthday apparently. I’m actually quite happy with this idea as it means not too much stuff coming into the house, quite specifically for him rather than just to be added to the toy mountain and stuff that will actually get played with rather than shoved in a cupboard. We looked at various things available and he compiled his wish list, explained about the idea of opening any presents given to him at his party on his actual birthday which he liked the idea of too and am generally feeling better that his birthday is on the way to being organised 🙂 Hurrah!

Email some local HE folk to see if any of them want to join the scrapstore sent email to local group yahoo list

Depending how well I get on with that I need to gather together the many things that need ebaying and make a start on that. I’ve a feeling September is going to be a very tight month money-wise (we’re already a party, presents and a tent over our budget :shock:) so if I could bring in a few extra quid it might mean we will still be able to eat after the 15th of the month! 😆

We were all up early this morning as we were off to London. A while back a leaflet had come through the door with the free paper advertising the Pops in the Park concerts from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Crystal Palace Bowl. One of the advertised events was a free Noisy Kids concert so once we knew we couldn’t make Jan and Jonathan’s this weekend I phoned up for tickets – day out in London, to see an amazing orchestra and totally within our budget :).

It was advertised that there would be 2000 free parking spaces on a first come first served basis so although the dreadful weather was likely to put lots of people off we decided to get an early start and were on the road by 9am. It was a really easy run up there, we found it pretty easily despite not having a full postcode to stick into the satnav, drove straight into a parking space and joined the small crowd making their way to the event. We’d taken camping chairs, waterproofs, umbrellas and a picnic and as one of the first families to arrive set ourselves up right infront of the barrier with umbrellas propped on our chairs keeping us dry and cosy. The weather really was crap and meant numbers were in the 100s rather than the 1000s I’m sure would have turned out on a sunny day, which was a shame because it was a fab venue and a very interactive concert which greater numbers would only have helped the atmosphere of. The RPO were on a stage with a big lily pond infront between the grass and the stage. We could easily spot a harp, violins, cellos (‘so that’s what they mean in HighSchoolMusical’ :lol:), double bass, trumpets, trombones, french horn so even though we were sitting for a good half an hour before it started there was plenty to look at and chat about. It rained on and off throughout but that was fine, we had our umbrellas – Ady lent one of them to a family sitting behind us who had nothing to shelter them from the weather and we were fine squished under two massive golf umbrellas.

The presenter was excellent – really talked to the audience, had the musicians dressing up in funny props and chose five children from the audience to come up on the stage, gave them a baton each, draped them in the conductors tail coat and had them each conduct an instrument to create a new intro to the Harry Potter music. I thought Davies might have wanted to do that but he sat really low in his chair when they were asking for volunteers :lol:. They played the William Tell Overture (which made me teary – bloody hormones :lol:), Festival March from Aladdin, Ride of the Valkyries, Firebird finale, Harry Potter theme, Simpsons theme and finished off with Superman theme. The audience joined in with a song he taught us, loads of movements, clapping, ooohing and so on and all the instruments were introduced and singled out. Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed it and I thought it was excellent :). A really good event.

It had finally stopped raining so we dropped the chairs, umbrellas and picnic stuff back to the car and had a walk round Crystal Palace Park. Looking at the website we only managed to see a small area of what there was there actually as we found The Maze and then spent a mad half hour trying to get the craziest self timer shots, with cameras set up front and back and us running towards the camera in a quiet tree filled corner. Having completely worn out Davies and Scarlett who were still not recovered from our mad week we then headed for home.

Ady cooked dinner while the children settled down to watch a film and I painted some big cardboard boxes with a first coat of blue paint. Ady’s bringing me some more home tomorrow so I can fashion a tardis for Davies’ party. Having already picked up some cheap party bag bits I was trying to decide the most original idea for the bags themselves and managed to make up some little tardis boxes. I need some more blue paper though – and to tot up the actual expected guests – so I can work out how many more I need to make. Davies came and did some drawing too, doing an excellent picture of a flying rooster, a hen sitting in her henhouse watching a special chicken tv while laying and an invention to get the eggs to the house without having to go out to the henhouse if it’s raining, all powered by water mill. We’ve all been talking lots lately about different life styles and all seem to be hankering after a similar type of set up. We need to see quite where the latest venture at Ady’s work takes him before making any rash decisions but we said we’d give our current financial situation 2 years which we are rapidly approaching and whilst it has in many ways proved much easier than we feared it is also a sort of half life between our old way of living with all the downsides of that, and a more frugal and simple existance without any of the real joys of that lifestyle. No idea really what will happen in the coming year or so, but I can definitely say we won’t still be sat here doing the same thing as we are now this time next year.

The children had a bath and then we all had dinner – roast beef. Child of Our Time was on and so Davies (and Scarlett although she wasn’t paying much attention) got to watch it for the first time. Ady and I started watching it just as we were expecting Davies and although the children on it are a fair few months older than him it has been very interesting watching them grow up alongside him and the different parallels those children and Davies have gone down as they’ve gotten older. I thought last year that we were mostly closely equated to the farmers in our parenting style and thought that even more this year with their very hands off relaxed approach to child rearing, with plenty of scope for their daughter to take on responsibility but no pressure from them. She seems to be rising to the challenge of that expectation very well and I again thought that Davies is probably most similar to that child in terms of his attitude too. Interesting to see her pop to the local shop on errands just as we are starting to let Davies do compared to the children who seemed so much younger and immature in comparison. Interesting programme that – I think so every year.

Tomorrow I have various bits I need to get done, emails to answer, phonecalls to return and more party planning to be getting on with. Hopefully we’ll catch up with Lucy and The Rs at some point and then the rest of the week is spoken for again already with various meet ups with friends and working. Ady’s been spending some time watching shopping channels which amused me, no doubt picking up tips for selling and getting an orange tan, manicured nails and a fine line in meaningless drivel to fill time 😆 I can’t help fretting he may morph into that bloke Bridget Jones’ mum ran off with if I don’t keep a handle on him ;).

I was woken this morning at 6am by Scarlett yelling. I did manage to persuade her to get into my bed and snuggle back up to sleep but she’d already woken Davies too so by the time I’d gone and fed the cat who was making a big fuss once she’d realised there were humans awake they were both in my bed. I did sort of doze off back to sleep but they both kept talking to me so it didn’t seem long before the alarm went off for me to get up and I felt really tired all day.

Dad came to look after the children while I headed off to work. It was a really quiet day which stretched even longer as I had an early lunch break and would really rather have been somewhere else today – we were really sad not to have made the Off The Path gathering but I couldn’t get the day off work due to two other staff already being off and Ady ended up at QVC last night and this morning anyway. He had a great time, really enjoyed it, liked the buzz of the place and is very upbeat about the whole thing, so that’s good :).

Ady only beat me home by about half an hour so tonight has been lots of tidying up, getting tired children to bed (although Davies crept back downstairs for one last cuddle and saw the X Factor was on so stayed down to watch it), having dinner and baths and watching a mad programme on Challenge TV. I cried at least three times at X Factor – I’m such a sucker for the lifetime struggle to be stood infront of Simon Cowell sob stories. And now, because we have a busy day tomorrow and because I am still really wiped out from a busy week I’m off to bed.

Yesterday Ady and I were both back to work. My day was pretty manic, with the morning being extremely busy. We do Storytime on Thursday mornings every week for under fives, with it extended to pretty much all ages but mostly suitable for youngsters during school holidays. It tends to get quieter normally though with lots of people on holiday or otherwise busy, but yesterday as part of the Big Wild Read we had Zoolab to take over storytime with a tale about Speedy The Snail with a real live African land snail to help the story along. Oh and a toad, a rat, hissing cockroaches, a small snake and a couple of tarantulas! And it was packed with children! The adults all had to come out of the children’s library and stand outside to watch. Meanwhile the library itself was busy anyway, loads of the children combined a BWR visit with coming to storytime and we had several Important People from the library service along to attend the event too. I didn’t get involved in any of that (thankfully – it all looked pretty full on and whilst I don’t mind any of the creatures on show I wasn’t exactly desperate to meet them either ;)). The afternoon was a bit quieter but it still felt very much like I’d done a full days work by the time I got home.

Lucy and The Rs had been here in the morning and Frazer in the afternoon – which meant the children had been taken to the shop for chocolate and had him pandering to their every whim – he is a very indulgent uncle :). Frazer left, I tidied up and got some pizza dough going and then Em, Eve and Rei arrived. 🙂

The children were rowdy and crazy in the garden for a while, then came indoors and were rowdy and crazy in the house for a bit. Ady came home and we settled the children down with Aristocats and a variety of pizza based foods. Ady sorted Davies’ bedroom ready for a sleepover and did stirling work reading bedtime stories while Em and I sorted food for us and drank wine and chatted. 🙂 After a typically late Goddard hospitality dinner, a move for Eve back downstairs into Scarlett’s bedroom and more chatting and wine drinking the last child (Davies) finally fell asleep about 1130pm, followed by Ady and Em and I sat up til about 2am. Em headed off to bed and I sat for another half an hour or so before going to bed myself.

This morning was a predictably slowish start with tired children. They created a ‘lifeboat’ with all the sofa cushions on the floor and had a game with plenty of sealife creatures, followed by some dancing by Rei wearing a new and very pretty and suitable for flouncing dancing flowery dress :), Davies and Scarlett ate their way through half a packet of weetabix and then the children dug all the sea creatures out of the toy animal box and made an ocean of the lounge floor complete with ‘Scorpion Land’ :lol:. Everyone finally got dressed, I hung some washing out, the children went out to play in the garden, Em tidied up the ocean floor and we all headed round to Lucy’s.

We had a nice couple of hours round there given the amount of children and the amount of sleep they’d had 🙂 with Em heading off to deliver Eve and Rei to Weymouth and us staying for an hour or so afterwards to properly catch up after our holiday with Lucy. Ady was home for the afternoon as he’s headed off to QVC this evening to dress his first set for a 1am show, followed by another one tomorrow lunchtime before coming home – so he has a very expensive hotel room booked which I doubt he’ll actually spend much time in tonight, so we came home to spend a couple of hours with him before he headed off. Davies and Scarlett played low key games with betty spaghetti and geomags while I googled for Doctor Who party game ideas as it’s suddenly dawned on me that Davies’s party is only 3 weeks tomorrow and aside from booking the hall and buying a few bits for party bags I’ve not done anything about it. I’ve also realised we have a NicCamps type situation with more families staying here than we have rooms but having read about precise numbers I think we can squish everyone in 🙂 and as I’m working the whole day the day before I need to make sure I don’t leave too much last minute stuff to do.

D&S have just finished watching The Magic Roundabout (the movie – the bits I was aware of looked every bit as random and loony as I remember the cartoon being :lol:) so are being packed off to bed early while I have pasta for tea, drink the last of Em’s pink wine and have an early night myself. Another whole day at work tomorrow followed by a day up in London on Sunday lie ahead so no time for slobbing on the horizon for a while yet!

My very drawn out holiday blog – I started it when we got back last night but have only managed to finish it tonight so it now included today as well. It’s good to be back and it was a lovely break :).

We’re back a night early from the first holiday we’ve had just the four of us in several years. It had initially started as a holiday for several of us, at a different location, but ended up just being us and actually was rather nice that way. It took a bit of shaking down, with quite specifically a few fall outs between Scarlett and I – I think things have been sliding between us for a couple of weeks now with me failing to react in the positive and calming way I mastered earlier this year to much success. After a particularly unpleasant episode on Friday, followed by a big meltdown on the beach on Saturday (Very Public Parenting – yuck!) we had a Big Chat on Sunday and things have been fine ever since with her really trying to modify her behaviour and me really trying to modify my reactions – feels better already, although of course I anticipate it always being a work in progress…

It also takes a while to adjust to the changed dynamic of having all four of us together, both parents around full time and all of us getting used to new surroundings. We are still fairly virginial in the whole camping and outdoorsy stakes and we’d gone away with a budget of £100 for the week meaning food and entertainment were pretty frugal pursuits, so that posed an added challenge. I won’t lie and say the week was all sweetness and light and without it’s tense moments, but we did by far outweigh the sticky bits with lots of great times and as it is the first ‘holiday’ with the big label of ‘holiday’ hanging over itself rather than ‘home ed camp’ since we severely readjusted our financial situation it was pretty much a success I would say. 🙂 We all came home today having agreed we’d enjoyed it and looking back at pictures it was certainly filled with loads of good trips and adventures. In all, we had a lovely time but I didn’t want to skim over the bits which were slightly more trying in favour of a rosy picture.

Thursday We got away dead on time at 10am and the route finder anticipated us arriving at midday (it is only just over 100 miles so 2 hours is about right) which sounded perfect for going and finding some lunch before heading to the campsite. Unfortunately we hit traffic at Chichester and then again about 15 miles from Swanage so it was more like 1.30pm by the time we actually arrived. The campsite was through a rather rough looking area which had us both silently with sinking hearts (I’d booked it online with no real idea of what it would be like and it was very cheap so I sort of feared the worst) but the woman who booked us in was really friendly – all the camp wardens were sitting on a bench together outside the office and all looked really outdoorsy types – full of enthusiasm, showed me an aerial view picture of the whole site and explained we’d paid to camp at the bottom of the hill near all the facilities (showers, loos, chemical loo point, launderette, kids playpark etc.) but if we wanted to we were welcome to drive to the very top where the views were amazing. We thought we’d drive around and explore the site and then decide, but once we reached the top and saw the views we decided straightaway to pitch at the top of the hill. It would have been slightly cheaper (and at £90 for six nights I thought it was pretty cheap already) to have booked for there as it was away from the facilities but as we have the portapotty anyway and passed the washing up area and showers on our way out of the campsite every day it was fine to be a bit further away from them. The Crap Tent went up pretty well, although we still didn’t manage to pitch it totally square, unlike Chris and Alison’s Eurohike which we’ve got on long-term loan (;)) and seems to almost pitch itself despite our lack of experience the Crap Tent seems to need a protractor and set square and someone with a maths degree to work out the angles for us, and of course as soon as you put the inner pods in it pulls it all out of shape again anyway. We got pretty much set up and then headed back down the hill to Swanage to have an explore around.

We had bakery sausage rolls for lunch, eaten sitting on the beach, perched on the only few square centermentres of sand which didn’t have people cooking themselves squashed onto it. I guess living with a beach at the end of our road sort of spoils me for wanting to join the masses, and as I don’t really ‘do’ sunbathing or flaunting myself in swimwear sitting on a crowded bit of sand while overdressed and feeling my skin fry is so not my idea of fun. I do adore the beach and the sea, but actually I think I like it most of all during the winter when it is all windy and rainy, with just the odd person about and you just get contrasts of grey rather than blue. It is a lovely beach, just made massively less attractive for me by it’s likeness to one of those ‘saucy’ seaside postcards filled with windbreaks, people with knotted hankies on their heads and way too many giddy with excitement crazily barking at everyone dogs. Yes I was having a moment :blush:

We got a windbreak and had a play in the park. Now despite my documented dislike of parks this was quite a good one with an excellent swing with a full seat including back, moulded with straps so children could *really* swing and a massive seesaw with room for about 4 people on each side. So even I had a go on the seesaw. Then we gathered supplies from the CoOp and headed back to the campsite to finish setting up camp and have tea. We gathered lots of brochures and leaflets about things to do nearby and the campsite had given me a magazine aimed at tourists to the area too, but actually I wish we’d done a little more advance research on what there was to do as I’m sure we missed things and could have been slightly better planned. Curry for dinner eaten looking out over the sea, watching the sun set and finally the stars come out, people watching the rest of the campers (only a handful that first night) and congratulating ourselves on our luck at such a good campsite based on pure fluke!

Friday I’m not sure if we had a plan in mind or not but we drove past Corfe Castle
which only a few miles from Swanage and visible from our campsite, so parked up and walked up the steep hill to the castle. It is a National Trust property and cost £13 to go in, so deciding that at best it would probably only make for a few nice pictures and half an hour of engaging the children we passed on that and had a look round Corfe instead. Having come home and seen prices for joining the National Trust online though we’ll join up next month as free entry into the various places just local to where we were staying would have made for a good week and I think there are plenty of other places locally we could visit too. There was a shop dedicated to Enid Blyton’s works in the village called Ginger Pop (which I can find a link for but it keeps crashing my firefox so I won’t put here :roll:) with a Wishing Chair and loads of Enid Blyton books, toys and other bits inside – all very expensive and touristy but nice 🙂 Apparently Corfe Castle was the inspiration for Kirrin Castle in the Famous Five and the railway station from Swanage to Corfe, between which runs a steam train was the one Anne, Dick and Julian arrived at when first they met George and Timmy. There was a small museum (one room with two open doors to walk through) with lots of bits and pieces on the history of Corfe including some policemens truncheons, helmets and stocks so we looked at that before getting cakes from a bakers and taking them to the station to sit and eat them while watching steam trains puff in and out. There was a small railway museum too with various relics from trains and stations so we looked at that and weighed ourselves on the platform scales to see what a family of Goddards weigh :). Then we walked back to the car over the hill again. Corfe castle is very high up on a very steep hill which would have made it a bugger to invade, Davies and I scaled it while Ady and Scarlett stayed below. Climbing up was alright, if slightly daunting, but all the time I was aware we’d need to obey gravity and be coming back down again. Ady stood, camera ready while we descended but I managed to remain on my feet (knees very bent!) and Davies – who does not have to worry about grass stains on the bottom of his shorts – slid down on his bum! We also had a look in a lovely church while we were there -we like churches :).

We left there and had something of a hiatus about what to do next. I’d been insisting I wanted to find a ‘proper’ supermarket to get value tins of food to stretch our meagre budget so Ady had found a Tesco on his sat nav which we started to drive to with the children making a fuss about wanting to go to the beach, me getting cross because I didn’t want to go back to Swanage beach (due to it being full of people and quite specifically people who sit on crowded beaches 😉 ) and ‘we have a beach at home and didn’t come all this way on holiday to sit on a different strip of the same beach!’. So we turned back and went to Lulworth Cove which looked lovely in the guidebooks but cost £2.50 to park at, which was way too much of our budget when I was already in a bad mood so we pulled away from there too. Scarlett and I then had a major falling out about her putting her seatbelt on, which is best with a triple line drawn under it but I think shocked both of us with the strength of my temper 😯 😳 After all that we ended up back in Swanage, found a free parking space and walked to the opposite end of the beach to the crowds. I did some sand sculpting which Ady and the kids were most complimentary about until we saw a life size sculpture of a figure lying down which was so excellent it almost looked real and made mine look very amateur. Scarlett did some drawing in the sand which was very good too. Davies redefined ‘paddling’ into going out to the depth of his neck which meant me getting him to take his shorts off and go in in pants and T shirt was a bit pointless :lol:. We walked all the way along the bay in the sea and then all the way back again alongside the rocks looking for fossils. We found some steps up from the beach a short way before we’d come down so walked up them and found ourselves on top of a cliff which led to the roads and eventually back to the car, by way of a sweet shop to spend 20p which Scarlett had found on the beach. Then back to the campsite for dinner. The site really started to fill up ready for the weekend with loads of people arriving and plenty of people watching potential including one very entertaining argument about someone pitching and then parking their car too close to someone else’s tent and ‘ruining their view’ 😆 I sat and mostly read my book.

Saturday We spent a very nice morning lazing about the campsite – I read most of a book and indulged in loads more people watching and tea drinking. Chris and Alison were coming to visit but their journey took way longer than expected, so although the lesser time spent with them was a shame it was nice to have nothing to be doing. Ady even took Davies and Scarlett down to the little park on the campsite which meant I had total peace, aside from twitters ;). They arrived, we spent ages more lounging around and chatting before heading down to the beach for an hour or so, via the shops to stock up on barbecue food, before coming back up to the campsite for a barbecue. They stayed until it got dark – and a bit later before heading off for yet another epic journey home, meaning they spent more time on the road there and back than they did with us, so thanks, for coming, for the horrid journey, for the company and of course for all the food 🙂 😉 xx. We dragged Davies and Scarlett away from the posse of small children roaming the campsite in the dark with torches and put them to bed.

Sunday We decided to head along the coast towards Weymouth and see if we could spot any car boot sales along the way. I spent my first mini break away from home in Weymouth, staying with my then boyfriend and his family, so the town has many memories for me (from, gulp 15 years ago!). I was telling the children about it (not all about it, obviously, Weymouth was after all the scene of my infamous vomit inside my jeans adventure!) and how my ancient Ford Escort had to make the journey along the coast in installments cos it kept running out of water in the battery. Odd to stand on a bridge I’d stood on drunkenly exchanged promises to love each other forever with someone some 15 years later with my children by someone else! 😆 We had chips for lunch and having seen some lads crabbing over the side of the marina wall and doing pretty well we bought the kids a crabbing line each from the pound shop, but having no bait were unsuccessful in catching anything.

We decided to head across onto Portland for a look round, it being somewhere we’d never been before but knew of. I had in my head it was a complete island with no road access for some reason which it isn’t so we drove across the road with beach on both side and up to the viewing areas for amazing views of Chesil Beach. We’d spotted a boat in Weymouth harbour with the name ‘Davies’ on it and there was a war memorial at the viewing point with another ‘Davies’ on it, so we talked a bit about war and memorials. Ady and I also talked a bit about just how beautiful England is. I know the sun was shining which always makes things pretty but we are quite used to sea and hills where we live and often acknowlegde how lovely Sussex is but Dorset is particularly lovely I think.

We drove along to Portland Bill lighthouse and parked with the intention of getting some photos from outside but it was only £6.50 for a family ticket to go up inside so we did it. There is a museum / tourist centre in the base with various interactive bits and then you go up the stairs to the very top. The children did really well given it is quite head swimmy going up steep spiral staircases (Scarlett was only just tall enough to be allowed in to climb it) and then the final 19 steps from the viewing platform up to where the actual light is are ladder style. That done and photos taken we all had to climb back down again! 😆

We came down and found the amazing rocks to clamber on. Now Davies and Scarlett are rock clamberers extrodinaires so they wasted no time at all in scrambling about on them. There is an amazing rock at the end called Pulpit Rock which actually has hand and foot holds so you can climb it (which people do and then jump into the sea afterwards). I think Davies and I might have had a go if we’d not been wearing crocs and if the way down – jumping into the sea or back the way we came – hadn’t been so daunting. We amused ourselves by dangling our legs off the side, laying down close to the edge and leaping over the big gaps between rocks with waves crashing below though, so still felt quite brave :).

We then had a very entertaining half an hour where we tried to get some self timer shots of us with the lighthouse in the background. Entertaining because the place was swarming with (mainly foreign) tourists who saw Ady taking off a shoe to wedge the camera in the right place, or balance it on rocks, or leave it in the middle of the grass and run back to us and kept offering to take the photo for us. Which we sort of couldn’t help but smile gratefully and accept really. Except not only did that mean it wasn’t a genuine self timer, it also meant that in every single one of the taken by someone else shots (and I think there were about 5) they’d managed to chop the top of the lighthouse off. So we have a selection of nice shots of us with half a lighthouse and less good ones of us with Ady swiftly leapt in at the last second but with the lighthouse in shot!

We picked up a leaflet while we were there about Marine Week happening currently including various events such as glass bottomed boat rides from Fleet lagoon, which looked fab and very reasonably priced. Somehow I completely missed the bit saying booking was essential, so we planned to do that the next day and headed back off to the campsite hoping for a good nights’ percy thingys spotting. The weather which had been clear all the time to that point and stayed clear while all the stars came out suddenly clouded over at 1030pm with the visible stars shrinking from a panoramic sky view to the tiniest patch, to nothing pretty much at about 11pm when it was all due to start happening. We gave it ten minutes or so to clear up before rain set in and we gave up and went to bed.

MondayWe all slept in in the morning and showers followed by washing up the previous nights dinner made for a slow start to the day. We headed back to Whke Regis for the glass bottomed boat, picking up stuff for a picnic lunch at Asda on the way. We located the jetty where the boat left from and sat nearby picnicking and then spent some time watching people crabbing using bacon in a washing powder tablet bag on the end of a line. This was the method we’d been told was successful at Pagham Harbour last weekend and sure enough they were pulling two or three large crabs out every few minutes. The boat pulled in with the previous tour all getting off and saying how wonderful it had been. The fisherman running it (who looked just like Captain Birdseye!) asked if we’d booked and when we said we hadn’t radioed to the booking office to discover it was fully booked for all the rides that day :(. They were not expecting to run on Tuesday due to the bad weather forecast and we were coming home on Wednesday so that was that – no glass bottomed boat ride. 🙁 I was the mostb upset I think, it had looked so good, although having peeked at the boat to see that yes, it really did have a glass bottom panel the children were very keen too so I’ll have to see if it is something that we can do locally at home.

We stayed and watched the crabbing for a while before deciding to go back to Lulworth Cove again and see what it was like there. This time someone kindly gave us their carpark ticket as they were leaving with over an hour left on it, so we walked round the museum centre and then down to the cove. It was very pretty and we watched a crab being dressed in one of the little shacks selling freshly caught fish, paddled in the rock pools and found some tiny crabs and a teeny tiny octopus like creature before deciding we had budget left over from not doing the boat ride to spend on ice creams. We found a shop selling fantastic Dorset ice cream and as the sauce machine wasn’t working properly she gave us the flakes for nothing 🙂

The children are still at the stage of ice cream eating where they need an adult on hand to keep licking it into shape for them so Ady took on that role while I had a whole one to myself. 🙂 It almost made up for the boat ride.

Back at the campsite the rain suddenly set in while Ady was cooking the kids’ tea. We battened down as best we could, took our tea in the tent too and sat reading Milly Molly Mandy stories until the children went to sleep, then chatting for a while longer before trying to sleep through as much of the howling wind and lashing rain as we could. We suspected the tent would not hold up well to the weather and had evacuation plans in place ready should the worst happen but we did manage to make it through the night.

Tuesday In the morning though it was apparent that all three bedroom pods had leaked and bedding had started to get soggy in places. The tent, which had already got a few tears in points of tension was showing distinct signs of not being able to take much more so we put towels around the outsides, stuck marquee poles in to keep the outer off the inners and planned that if the weather didn’t dramatically improve through the day and dry out then we’d pack up for home that night rather than the following morning. We had a speedy breakfast and headed off down into Swanage to find a free parking space as close to the bus station as possible. Donning waterproofs and wellies we ran back to the bus station to catch the first bus to Poole. For £14 we got a family explorer ticket which was unlimited travel for the day on Wilts and Dorset busses. Some were open topped, although the one we got on wasn’t, but it was double decker so we sat at the top and watched the countryside go by as we drove through Dorset, over the chain ferry and towards Poole and Bournemouth. We pulled up behind an open topped bus just outside Poole so leapt off our bus and onto that one and sat at the front on the top getting blustered about in the wind and rain. Ady and Scarlett decamped downstairs but Davies and I lasted it out, laughing the whole way. 😆

We stopped at Poole and got off to find some food and tea and coffee as we’d run out of milk and water at the tent so hadn’t had a caffiene fix yet. More bakery goods and hot drinks later we headed back to the bus depot to find our bus had just left and the next wasn’t due for another hour. The depot was at the back of a large shopping mall which we’d walked through to find the bakers and found ourselves feeling like country bumpkins in. Not only were we camping, which always gives you a slightly ‘simple life’ look and feel, it’s also been a while since we frequented shopping malls really. For once I wasn’t filled with a sense of longing for plastic to go and thrash in the all the shops, I was filled with almost relief that I don’t feel the need to do that anymore and a slight panic and the frantic-ness of the atmosphere, which used to excite me and encourage me to spend but now makes me feel out of control and likely to do something silly – like an alcoholic in a pub or a gambler in a betting shop I guess – I know the high of spending could so easily be submitted to again but I also know the price of it – on all levels and it’s nice to feel I can walk away without longing for it and head back to my tent! 😆

So, not wanting to spend an hour back in the shops we caught a bus back to Swanage by a different route past the castle rather than on the ferry. This was a regular bus, with steamed up windows you couldn’t see out of, miserable people not talking to each other and tutting at the childrens’ laughter and chatter and that depressing feeling that public transport can sometimes give you. It is that aspect of busses and trains that makes me long for my car, with the music on, the ability to choose my own route and not worry about how many traces of bodily fluids a swab test might find on the seats. I apologise now to all green minded bus users but I spent the journey wanting to retreat into my coat and glare at anyone wanting to sit within three chairs of me :lol:.

We got off at Swanage and had 45 minutes before the next open topped bus went off and headed for Bournemouth so we went to the little museum and heritage centre in Swanage for a look round. I wish we’d been before actually as it was pretty good with various interactive bits for the children to do and we could have spent more time there. We came out and looked at the sea for a while – a distinct contrast to the same beach two days previously with an odd double wave thing going on where the water hit the sides of the walls containing it and bounced back into the breaking waves on the beach.

Then we dashed back to the bus station and got the bus to Bournemouth. Another place I’ve never been to before and as it was raining with blasts of sea spray coming at you down on the front we ended up having a quick half hour wander before getting back to the next bus back to Swanage again. We did find a really cool surf board attached to the wall to pose for pictures on though – we’d have all had a go but a gaggle of students appeared and neither Ady or I wanted to do it infront of them 😳

One stop in on the way back to Swanage we were joined on the top deck by a woman who wanted to share her whole life story with us. Ady and the children ventured to the back of the bus but I stayed to chat with her as she was quite interesting and obviously lonely. There is something rollercoaster-like and thrilling about open topped busses normally, let alone when it’s windy and raining, so the ride home was good fun, especially the ferry.

We got back to the campsite, the children changed into pjs and got into the car to watch a film while Ady and I packed up. The Crap Tent was a real casualty of being unpitched in the wind and got further damaged, Ady and I got drenched in near torrential rain but we’d stashed dry clothes ready in the car so as soon as we’d packed up we drove to the shower block and got changed before starting out for home. We stopped at the chip shop to get food on the way and got home about 930pm which was at least half an hour earlier than I’d dare hope for so that was good. 🙂 The cat was utterly delighted to see us and sat purring, on my feet for about 5 hours. The children got changed into pjs they hadn’t been camping in all week and I read them another Milly Molly Mandy story before packing them off to bed and then relaxing in a very deep, very hot bath. It was a shame it ended in the wet but having spent the whole week at Kessingland in similar conditions it was fine to tolerate it for the last hour.

Today We spent the morning being very lazy, unpacking the car, sorting the washing out and not a lot else before having lunch. It rained all morning but cleared up at lunchtime so I was able to get a couple of loads of washing out before we left to go to the bank. I’d found some washing powder bags in the cupboard so set up the kids’ crabbing lines with bacon in bags and we drove to a little place just near the point that the River Adur joins the sea to do some crabbing. Davies and I pulled about 5 out of the water but with nothing to put them in we couldn’t get a proper look at them before they scuttled off back into the sea so I nipped home to get a bucket. By the time I got back the tide had gone out, reducing our water to a sandy muddy bank so we drove round to a different bit of beach but decided it wasn’t the right venue either. We collected some pretty shells washed up along the beach and then popped over to see my Dad and brother for an hour.

Three good things have happened today – I had a message to ring work and phoned to find out that my least favourite colleague has handed her notice in for the end of September. She works Saturday mornings when I work Saturday afternoons and they wondered if I’d like to change to mornings once she’s left – well yes! 🙂 This means even the Saturdays I do work I will be finished by 1pm so it won’t ruin the whole weekend – so hurrah for that :). Secondly I got a rabbit hutch off freecycle. The chickens are all tucked up in it tonight although I’m slightly concerned its a bit small. I know they would have about a 50th of the space each if they were battery hens and it is only at night as they free range during the day but at the very least it will be wood to use and a design blueprint for a bigger scale version if it’s not suitable. And finally having idly bidded on a tent on ebay because it was an Outwell which we like, and cheap, and the right size, and collection only (but only down the road really) we won it – for nearly a tenner less than my highest bid :). Have arranged to go and collect it next weekend. It looks to be around the same size as the Crap Tent – which is idea, we were happy with the dimensions of the Crap Tent, just not it’s weatherproofness or ability to pitch so hopefully this will be the tent for us. No idea if we’ll manage to use it this year as all our weekends seem to have filled up again but fingers crossed we’ve got something that will work for us this time.

And that’s it, I think I’m up to date. Back off to work tomorrow and Lovely Em is here tomorrow night so I expect I’ll be playing catch up again later in the week. It’s been good to have the break, we’ve done lots of chatting about where life might take us next and lots of planning maybes for the future, but at least, unlike Kessingland we really do feel like we’ve had a break this time, I feel refreshed and ready to get on with things again. 🙂

So what a happy coincidence that we’re off on one tomorrow :).

I worked this morning and it was really busy. Wednesday’s often are actually as the library is only open 930am-1pm – most of Lancing still closes on Wednesday afternoons as used to be the case in lots of towns I think. So we have to pack all the normal days stuff into four hours (staff start at 9am although the library doesn’t open til 930) like unpacking the days delivery, processing anything on it and packing up stuff ready for collection tomorrow to go to other libraries. It’s the one shift I work where noone seems excess to staffing requirements either as we normally run with 4 people on – one to man the counter, one the enquiry desk, one to shelf returned books and one floating. Today I was supposed to be shelving first thing, then on the counter (issuing new books and discharging returned ones) and then on the enquiry desk, but I was all over the place as and when needs arose. We had loads of children in for the BWR so that desk was being hot-desked by whoever was free at the time, which meant the counter or the enquiry desk was often unmanned. It’s so nice to have been there long enough now to be able to deal with most things – even basic stuff like the printer running out of paper when everyone else was busy so I just fumbled around with it til I worked out how to reload it without having to interupt someone else. I did six lots of BWR chatting to children – a real contrast between them all. I had one boy who had read all six books and come in for his medal and other bits and pieces, one childminded brother and sister who made me really sad. They don’t belong to the library but the childminder really wanted them to join in the BWR so brought them in but said to me that she’s tried to get their parents to come in and join them to the library but they have the attitude that if they are paying her to childmind them then she should take care of all of it. The little girl was really sweet, bright, articulate, really fluent reader who clearly adored books and happily chatted away to me about her choices but her little brother was a really unpleasant child who sat being rowdy, wouldn’t talk to me when it was his turn to do his books but wanted to interupt her all the time when she was talking about hers, demanded pens and paper to do more colouring after I’d kindly given him one lot to shut him up while I talked to her and then stabbed the felt pen down until the nib went in despite me asking him about four times not to do that please. And then went off and left all the lids off ON PURPOSE. Git! I often think that we don’t spend enough time reading aloud with D & S but actually seeing how passionate my children are about books and stories in comparison to some of the children who come in the library we’re clearly doing a whole lot more than a lot of parents. And the children – it’s shocking how unable to talk to grown ups they are, they can only be rude or shy, so few of them are happy to chat away and talk to us. I found myself having to really drag things out of two boys today and ending up talking to them like really little children in what even I considered a patronising tone and then when they left realised they were actually older than Davies and Scarlett at 5 and 7 – I couldn’t imagine talking to D&S or indeed any of the other children I actually know like that – they’d look at me like I was mad! Now I understand why teachers and childcare workers have to adopt that sickly sweet tone and ask seven year old to be ‘quiet like bunnies’ or ‘if you were an animal what sort of animal would you be?’ because I found myself resorting to similar measures 😯

I came home for lunch and then took Davies and Scarlett with me up to Truleigh Hill for a look round the room sizes etc. for December NicCamp. There was stunning downs and sea views all the way up there which made me feel a bit better about having booked a holiday just 5 miles from home. The rooms are all decent sized although the living area is a bit on the small side, but I’m sure we’ll have a great time there, so aside from a few small ironing out matters which I’ll deal with when we get back next week that is all in hand and sorted. 🙂

We came home and Lucy and The Rs came back again, having been here all morning looking after Davies and Scarlett while I worked. Scarlett and Rebecca cleared up Scarlett’s room after some ritual trashing of it which had it looking like it had been ransacked by burglars – I hate it when children just trash a place, I can deal with mess made by playing with stuff, but just chucking bedclothes on the floor and throwing toys around for the sake of it really pisses me off. 🙁 They did a good job in the end with some assistance from Lucy though. I realised I’d missed Lucy’s birthday last week so felt like a crap friend for that, particularly when I discovered she’d spent the morning here looking after D&S while I worked 🙁 Will do something belated for you Luce, I promise :oops:.

Ady came home, Lucy and The Rs left, Davies and Scarlett came in and had some tea and then went off to bed while I packed clothes etc. and Ady loaded the car up ready to go in the morning. We had a really late dinner (but it was lovely – sausages from Jimmy’s Farm brought for us by one of Ady’s work friends) and I’m about to unplug myself from my laptop and go to bed. Back in a week 🙂

When Davies was about 2 he loved Toy Story. He had Buzz Lightyear pjs, pants, soft toys, hard toys, books, towel – you name it. He watched Toy Story and Toy Story 2 over and over again. He went out dressed as Buzz regularly and for days would insist that we call him Buzz while we were addressed as other characters in the film. The Christmas he was 3 Disney On Ice came to Manchester where we were living at the time and featured Toy Story characters so we took him along. Front row seats with the chance to shake hands with the characters at the end. I’d never seen a child so entranced and for weeks afterwards he would recount, with wonder in his eyes and words, how he’d shaken Buzz Lightyear’s hand. It was fab. 🙂

Davies has always been a fairly literal child – although he has a big and vivid imagination he is also very clear that it is indeed his imagination and as such doesn’t have much time for fairies, Father Christmas and so on. He decided when his tooth fell out at the weekend that ‘we won’t do fairies Mummy, I’d rather keep all my teeth in a box’ (bloody hoarder, just like his father :roll:), but today, even though he was talking about what good costumes the characters were wearing there was still something really rather magical about him ‘meeting’ Wallace and Gromit. I’d put out his W&G T shirt to wear – which was a good move as he was imediately hailed as ‘Oh look, your biggest fan!’ when the costume characters helpers spotted him. He went to three of the appearances and stood for the whole half an hour each time entranced, touching their hands, hugging them and chattering away to them even though they could only communicate back in sign language.

He was also giddy with excitement and drove me mad, but that’s beside the point 😆

We had a lovely day at Drusillas, with plenty of time in the pool, some walking round the animals, some flamingo challenges which we even had random passers by joining in with (stand on tiptoe, on one leg and tuck your head under your arm :lol:), some time at the play area, some ice creams (thank you Ros 🙂 x). Oh and did I mention the giddy excitement? 🙂

Scarlett was rather shocked at how big they were, which threw her enough for her not to want to go anywhere near them, but thinking that she would only come home to regret that we persuaded her to come and meet them and for the last half hour she too was chattering away and hugging them as well

Home for tea and a watch of Doctor Who which my mate Dayve was in as an extra to see if we could spot him (we didn’t) before a bath for D&S and off to bed. Ady and I watched Miss Potter which we both really enjoyed and now I’m off to bed too, as I’m working in the morning so need to be up at a proper hour :).