One word? When seven would do…

Even though it is actually Saturday and I’ve only just finished Thursday 😳

I worked today; Ady was home with the children in the morning and my Dad was here this afternoon. I think they all spent most of their day outside judging by all the chalk drawings on the paths.

I had a nice day at work – Baby Rhyme time this morning was is growing in size each time, over 20 adults and over 20 babies today so nice loud voices :). We had the two sets of twins who came along to the Dads special one last Saturday both come along with their respective mothers today so that was nice to see them back:). Talking of twins Julie hit 41 weeks today with still no news (she’s not having another set of twins, it is just one baby this time). The afternoon would have dragged as it was very quiet but I found a jo to get stuck into of sorting out all the cds which took a couple of hours and kept me occupied.

When I got home we spent some time out with the chickens, Davies and I read a party invitation that had arrived in the post for them and I made their tea. Due to me chatting to Davies we ended up leaving late for Rainbows and actually missed the first five minutes including the song. This was a bit of a shame as Lucy had brought Rebecca for the first time and I’m sure it would have been better for Rebecca if Scarlett had been there from the start. So Scarlett got stuck straight into the decorating two paper cups taped together with some sort of pulse or seed inside to make a shaker. Now this does not offend me even though I probably now have lentils or split peas in my house because collage or shaker making is the proper use for beans and pulses and seeds, NOT EATING THEM! 😆 They then sat in a circle and sang songs and rattled their shakers and then got to use various other percussion instruments too like tambourines, shakers, triangle etc.

Lucy and I stood at the top of our road chatting awhile and then Scarlett and I had a race home – she won! 😆 Strawberries and cream for both children and then story and bed.

And there, I’ve caught up! 🙂

We did indeed go today 🙂

I do enjoy it there, it’s a really good day out. The first time I went was with the school when I was about 12 and I remember loving it then. This will the fourth year I’ve been with the children I think and both of them recalled it from last year. Definitely our most expensive trip yet as Tarly is now fee paying being over 5 and of course as I went on my own with them I paid for the petrol and the whole entrance fee myself whereas my Mum normally goes halves with me on that. Still well worth the £23 it cost to get in IMO and we barely spent the remaining change out of £30 either, only buying ice creams and a quid each for the children to do a Cats Protection League prize every time thingy where Scarlett won a little black kitten (cos we need more soft toys ;)) and Davies got a little catnip mouse which he has been trying, and failing, to get Candle interested in :lol:.

We had a very straightforward journey, it’s about an hour but the traffic can be hideous on show days but we left home after 10 and were there before 11am so that was good. We talked about driving and how it is more than just the physical act of driving as in operating the car but you need to be alert and aware of other things around you outside the car too.

First port of call (after the loo) was the foxhounds which are just inside the entrance. Scarlett was enchanted and would have happily stayed there all day patting the many dogs wagging their tails at her and giving her doleful looks through the bars of their cages.

We decided to try and stick to a logical route around the stalls although I very much doubt we saw everything and we definitely deviated from our path a few times. We started walking and the first thing that caught our attention were some amazing wooden sculptures. Some were roughly finished and some highly sanded and polished and treated but all had utter charm and beauty. There were various animals – sheep, owls, cat and so on, some still life type stuff like an apple core and flowers and a couple of fantastic lifesize humans including one entitled Motherhood of a pregnant woman with a baby on her back. The grain of the wood went all round her swollen tummy and breasts and almost gave her facial features too, so cleverly had it been worked with. I thought it was beautiful. We chatted to the stallholder for a while and learnt it is a family business and he showed us a video of a couple of the sculptures being done – all with chainsaws! The rougher finished ones are completely chainsawed but some of the more finished ones have sanding done at the end. He was saying what a great spectator activity it is with the noise of the chainsaw, the danger element and all the smells of freshly cut wood and chainsaw oil etc. Sounded excellent :).

We moved from there to the Bee and Honey tent where we tasted various honeys, looked at pollen under microscopes and finally sat down to watch the beekeeping demonstration where they dismantled a hive and talked us through it. It was fascinating and we got to see drones, workers, the queen, larvae, pollen and honey and honeycomb. The children were really rapt and Scarlett particularly asked loads of questions and made good observations. I learnt quite a bit I didn’t know too.

We visited various stalls including Red Cross (I was given a free parents child first aid cd rom), NCDL, Cats Protection League (where they got their toys), NCDL, an independant school stand where the children paused to play giant noughts and crosses while I sniggered and accepted the leaflet when the bloke tried to tell me how bright they were (noughts and crosses?! :shock:) and had I considered their schooling! We stopped at the Peugeot stand where they had a mini driving school set up, similar style to the one at Legoland which was free so they had a nice long go at that which was timely after chatting about driving in the car earlier. They both got their driving licence lanyards to say they’d passed and we moved on.

We stopped for ice cream and sat at the main arena where horsejumping was going on which was exciting to watch and then we debated what else we wanted to see. Whenever we go with my Mum the main attraction for her is the stalls selling things (my Mum loves to shop, *really* loves to shop!) like shoes, handbags, posh jumpers and jewellry so it was nice not to have to bother with any of them. We all wanted to see more animals and I wanted to go to the food fayre and the NFU stand.

We spent quite a while at the local agricultural and farming college stand as they had a variety of animals such as tortoises, ducks and hens and were very keen to chat to the children and bring the animals over to be petted. Scarlett petted the hen she was offered and then asked if the students could catch a duck for her to feel. The ducks were in a smallish created pond and it took 3 of them but they persevered and caught one each for her to stroke :). She learnt that these particular ducks had curly tails if they were male and while the student was struggling to think of the word Scarlett provided it for her ‘breed’ which made all the surrounding students and visitors giggle :lol:. We moved on to the Soil Association stand next where there was an activity to draw a farmyard animal and stick it on their giant farmyard background. It hadn’t been very well patronised (not many children around yesterday really) so they welcomed Davies and Scarlett very warmly and told them to draw as many animals as they could. Scarlett drew a sheepdog which she then decided was a poodle and was training to be a sheepdog and she followed that with a chick

Davies got utterly carried away and urged on by me and the Soil Association woman clearly sharing a love of the surreal and fanciful to rival his own created ‘Sheepy the Supersheep’ who baa’d loudly to create visible soundwaves to distract onlookers while he changed from his mild mannered sheep alter ego into Super Sheep with a cape, eye mask and pants on the outside. He drew an open mouthed cockerel (called ‘Cocky’) to look in wonder at Sheepy flying by, a pointing farmer (who would of course be asking ‘is it a bird? is it a plane?) and a fox to be the baddy stealing chicks who Supersheep would rescue. He then wanted to draw one last animal and chose a pig, which by then as things had gone to ridiculous levels he adored with spectacles (and yes, Davies did call them spectacles too :lol:) and said he was a teacher in school. The SA woman and I liked this idea and could see the merits of highly trained pigs doling out prescribed curriculum in bitesized chunks but we then quickly realised the pigs would revolt and get power crazed and take over. But of course Supersheep would save the day anyway.

As we bade her farewell she had changed her ‘patter’ from ‘come and draw a farmyard animal to stick on our background’ to ‘come and create a superhero farmyard creature!’ so I think we left a lasting impression along with Davies and Scarlett’s artistic masterpieces :lol:.

Food fayre was next and in that weird way that children will try all sorts of things off toothpicks or crackers that they’d never dream of eating at home they tried a wide variety of sausages and cheeses, fudge (gorgeous red hot ginger one), ginger wine, smoothies, honey, lemon curd and more. They each bought a tiny jar of honey for 50pence of their favourite sort.

We moved onto animals next; sheep, cattle, pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks and geese.

I managed to capture on camera the very moment Scarlett disolved into tears after ‘that one’ sheep rammed her fingers against the bars having taken against being petted 🙁

As usual she quickly recovered though and was petting the next cage down again 🙂

We walked past a fur covered car which rather delighted them both:

I told them about there being a furry mini driving round our town when I was a little girl and also having seen an astroturf covered car before too. They liked that idea 🙂

We walked round the Flower Show and they both loved the idea of bonsai trees and demanded I take this photo of them infront of one of their favourite gardens:

It was getting on for 330pm by then and we were starting to flag slightly plus I wanted to leave before the mass exodus and traffic jams all the way home so we worked our way towards the exit. The NFU stand is right next the exit so we went in there. As we walked in Davies said ‘oh I remember this stand last year, they had this big union jack all made out of vegetable…..ah!’

I chatted to a woman about the Year of Food and Farming and Home Education while the children tried smoothies from the dairy association stand. They’d wanted to grind their own flour like Davies got to do last year but that stand was unmaned so we tried some rapeseed oil and sunflower seed oil instead and talked to the farmer about his business pressing oil. He had a machine there doing it and the seeds are pressed so the oil comes out and is drained, as is, into bottles for sale while all the ‘waste’ is shaped into pellets by the machine which is used for cattle feed. Excellent for the children to see the produce of the amazing golden fields we were admiring a month or so ago.

They then went to the grain stand and got to make hedgehog bread rolls

We were told to come and collect them in half an hour so we wandered off for a final look round the nearby stands where we got free samples of hand cream and a free croc-shine by a leather polish selling stall :). Finally we went back to collect their rolls freshly baked, which they ate on the way home in the car 🙂

(Davies is enjoying the freshbaked bread smell).

They both practically skipped back to the car saying what a fab day they’d had and thanking me so much for taking them. It was great, possibly our best trip there yet :). The traffic was fine and we were home just after 5pm where we spent ages out in the garden with our own chickens and looked through the bagful of goodies and leaflets we’d brought home :).

The children had a bath, Ady arrived home, stories for them and then bed while Ady and I watched I Am Legend which we thought was an ok film made watchable by Will Smith but still had us both jumping in fright fairly regularly :oops:.

Off to work for me this morning and a very pleasant morning I had too. Wednesdays are always busy; we shut at 1pm, a hangover from the days when every shop had half day closing on Wednesdays which sleepy little town libraries are still clinging onto. Also we always seem to have massive deliveries on Wednesdays which is probably due to more reservations being placed on Saturdays which then get sent to dispatch on Monday then forwarded to us on Tuesday and arrive on Wednesday. So I was on the counter for the first couple of hours which was nice and busy, then an hour on the enquiry desk which was also pretty frantic before finishing up changing my display in the junior library. It was for National Year of Reading in May which the theme was ‘Mind and Body’ for and I’d done head and hands of two children holding books up to read and surrounded by other books, using the senses as my theme. I pulled down the ‘May’ and the ‘Mind and Body’ banners and put up ‘June’ and ‘Escape into Reading’ which is this month’s theme and then changed the books the children were reading to things like Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Doctor Who and various other sci-fi and fantasy type things instead.

Ady had taken Davies and Scarlett to work with him to a couple of garden centres. He skillfully managed to avoid both the whole Home Ed debate and the being on childcare duty while he was supposed to be working by claiming it was ‘bring your children to work day’ to everyone he met and as such the children were treated like minor celebrities! 😆 They got guided tours round the garden centres, a free go round Paradise Park (usually refered to here as The Dinosaur Place) for which our season tickets ran out in January so they were very pleased to have a free visit to and take Ady round too. 🙂 I got regular text updates including the rather scary ‘just bought a life size Timmy!’ from Ady mid-morning. Davies has been hankering after a Ben 10 sticker book and as he had been getting really crap at going to sleep (regular midnight and still awake episodes despite being in bed by 8pm :rolls:) I’d said if he went to bed and to sleep for 5 nights in a row he could have it. And so he pulled that off, thus proving he can get to sleep and allowing me to yell at him over it in future. So I doled out the £3 to him this morning to take out with him to get the book. Tarly got a pound to spend just because she likes to buy things. She spotted a life sized cuddly dog in the window of a charity shop and begged to go in. It was priced at £3 but she apparently sweet talked the woman in the shop into letting her have it for a quid! Result! Although it wouldn’t have been bought if I’d been there and her room is rapidly resembling one of those tacky fairground stands where you have to get 101 in 3 darts to win a deformed looking Tweety Pie cuddly toy standing 5 foot high.

We all met up back at home for lunch and then Ady headed off to work again and we headed round to Lucy’s. The four children had a great time, ate loads of popcorn, played inside and out in various combinations and generally were lovely. Lucy and I chatted and also ate popcorn. It was lovely :).

We finally left just before 5pm with just enough time to dash home and get changed to go out to Badgers. I’d foolishly got D and S to check their Badger clothes were ok this morning so although they could find them all they’d been put away by them 2 weeks ago and looked just like they been balled up and shoved in cupboards, which is pretty much precisely what had happened! Still they were both rather shamefaced about looking so crumpled and it was a good reminder of why they need to put their clothes away properly :). It was really funny to see them bouncing in full of happiness and with comments from the leader on how they’d caught the sun and were looking all browned and bleached haired, while all the others had suffered a wet half term and were looking depressed after two days back at school (training day for pretty much all schools on Monday I think).

I walked down to the beach while talking to Julie (still pregnant) on the phone and then did some running / walking along the sand which was lovely :). I then had half an hour sitting back in the car while my trousers dried out and I read my book which was equally lovely :).

Home for tea and stories, Ady arrived shortly after us and then Apprentice watching.

Tomorrow is the first day of The South of England show which we’ve been to every year since we moved home. Tomorrow is the only day of the 3 that I’m not working although my Mum (who ususally comes) is working tomorrow so it would just be me and the children. They are keen to go and it is always a really good day out so depending on the weather and how quickly we all get moving in the morning we might go.

Today I spent yet more precious, never going to get them back again, once they’re gone they’re gone, could have been doing constructive or world changing or at the very least meaningful hours of my life on Dolphin feckin’ Island. And I can’t get past day 29 when a virus is unleashed on the water pump and all the sealife needs medicating. And then feeding. And then medicating again. And unlike all the days before it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I go round each enclosure and feed and medicate all the buggers they keep needing yet more feeding and yet more medicating until eventually the marine control board people come along and tell me I’ve failed and need to go back to the beginning again. Eventually (and yes it has taken a full 48 hours) I decided to check on the internet to see if there was a walkthrough or even, so help me, a cheat code to use – oh and get me knowing what cheat codes and walkthroughs are anyway, two children and several years of exposure to gaming didn’t do it, I was able to resist tetris when I had a facebook account, I have merely toyed with Zoo Tycoon when it came already loaded onto my laptop but a week of Dolphin Island in the house and I’m practically a gamehead! And what did I find? Just several forums, blogposts, reviews and pleas for help from various other people scattered around the world also unable to get past day 29. I feel liberated and freed and able to move on with my life again.

I’ve long been of the opinion there is little point to games even when they are something you actually can achieve, when they become quite literally impossible there is clearly no point at all. This doesn’t mean I will be able to leave it alone of course, my fingers are twitching with stylus withdrawal, the electronic music is whirring round my head and tomorrow at work I’ll be ordering in such titles as ‘Orcas and how to look after them’ ‘you and your pet flamingo’ and ‘sharks, a users guide’.

So what else have we been up to aside from DI on the DS and being the neglected children of a DS obsessed mother? Well plenty actually.

Scarlett is being rather tricky at the moment. I could bring out all sorts of reasons and excuses for it but I suspect it is mostly a combination of being 5 and a hefty dose of my genes as she has a beligerance and attitude I recognise all too clearly. I think she’s been getting her own way a lot lately and have plans to realign things a bit as I’ve seen a few glimmers of the steely side of her character lately that I’ve not much liked and suspect she has the ‘baby of the family’ act off to such a fine art she could do with being challenged on it a little. Today she was quite annoying with demands and baby talk and rather too much of the spoilt brat about her, but we’ve had a chat and I will continue to talk to her about it as and when she displays behaviour that she is fully aware isn’t ok.

As is the law of more than one child Davies has been practically perfect in every way in contrast (how do they do that? do they have a rota? draw lots? earn points?) although today was much more the sort of day he enjoys and company he loves, which no doubt helped. 🙂

So, after a fairly lazy morning we filled the car up with petrol and headed over to Ali’s. On the way we changed the lyrics to Razorlight’s America to reflect things that are really in America, we started with ‘Americans’ and ‘dollars’ and then moved onto words they use for things that we don’t so we had ‘sidewalks’ ‘garbage’ ‘freeways’ ‘trunks’ ‘pants’ and so on. Amused us anyway 😆 It was music, literature (lyric writing?) and cultural differences all rolled into one ;).

At Ali’s Davies settled straight into xboxing, mostly alone, sometimes with Freya and plenty of eavesdropping. He is at that dangerous age of knowing how to make himself ‘invisible’ by not interupting or drawing attention to himself but quietly sitting there taking in every word. I remember doing the same myself and overhearing all sorts of interesting things, some of which didn’t make complete sense at the time because I was too young. Scarlett and Freya did some playing together, mostly hatching plans to make mess I think and when she wasn’t being needy and distracting Scarlett played nicely with some of Freya’s very pink toys such as ponies and dolls house furniture.

Ali and I managed plenty of chatting and tea drnking and then we all had a go on the wii fit and the wii sports. I was shite but Davies and Scarlett seemed to fairly quickly get the hang of it and loved playing against each other at the boxing 😆 I can see what an investment buy a wii would be, allowing them to get all their sibling angst out on each other without actual bloodshed 😆

We came home (LSoH music on the way), they got changed into swimming stuff, I had another go at Dolphin Island, plaited Tarly’s hair and then we headed off to swimming. Ady rang as we reached the bottom of the road (Davies takes my calls while I’m driving, hopefully it won’t be long before he can text and twitter for me too :lol:) to say he was a few minutes behind us. I dispatched the children poolside, then Ady arrived and about halfway through the lesson when we were both holding our heads in our hands at Tarly being rubbish at listening and waving madly at us instead we heard a voice behind us say ‘no she’s waving at me!’ and it was my Mum. 🙂

She had popped in on her way home from work to watch so met us upstairs when they were dressed and dry for a quick chat before heading off home. Ady took the children home while I nipped to the chip shop for chips for their tea. Chips, stories then bed for them. Some more DI and finally closure on the whole thing for me followed by Martian Child on dvd which I thought was excellent.

Tomorrow Ady’s taking them to work with him in the morning while I work, then we swap over at lunchtime. I’ve no idea how long we can quite literally juggle work and the children between us but with enough practice we may well reach circus standard, maybe encorporate a little human pyramid type stuff into our act, train the chickens up too and all our financial, work and childcare issues will be taken care of as we take to the road in brightly painted caravans and travel from town to town as Goddards Amazing Circus – all very Famous Five, maybe we could solve mysteries along the way as a sideline!

We had nothing planned today other than going to the bank to pay the mortgage. We did that and not a lot else really. We played on DSs, the children watched Ben 10, I did a bit of baking (chocolate and banana muffins), they played their current fave George and Timmy from Famous Five meets Ben 10 game using geomags and Betty Spagetty, I chucked them outside for half an hour before tea to run off some energy. I read lots of Marian Keyes latest book and pondered on alcoholism.

I have failed to engage with them for lots of today but they are just fine with that every once in a while and it was still interspersed with cuddles, singing, laughing and me looking up every so often from what I was doing to throw a comment into their conversations so I probably engaged plenty overall.

We finished with a couple of chapters of story before bedtime.

Oh and just because it amused me Candle (the cat) fell asleep on a half finished and should have been put away properly bar of chocolate which melted into her tail, side of her face and whiskers and two paws. She reminds me of an ex boyfriend I had who used to regularly fall asleep clutching his kebab and wake with it all smeared into his cheek with pieces of lettuce in his eyebrows. Classy eh?! 😆

Today was Open Farm Sunday and last year we simply went to the nearest farm which was at Lancing College (posh private boarding school up the road from us), this year I arranged for us to go to an organic farm. It was a bit further away but whilst Lancing College farm was great for the Old McDonalds farm experience with all the classic farmyard animals this looked to be far more interesting and educational.

And it was 🙂

The farm is pretty big and has been owned by the family for 9 years during which time they have made it organic and focused on all sorts of interesting farming methods such as crop rotation, creating hedgerows, field margins and beetle banks and building up their flock of sheep. They had created a trail around the fields with information sheets along the way and regardless of Davies and Scarlett I learnt a hell of a lot! Actually Davies was pretty interested in it all too and as he knew very little about farming anyway and organic farming seems so much more logical – based on working with nature rather than blowing it all away with chemicals it was a nice introduction for him. I had decided we wouldn’t need wellies (well actually I don’t have any wellies, something I really must remedy) and actually we didn’t but the last bit of the field was long grass which was irritating both children’s ankles (they both have hayfever and get rashy with prolonged contact to cut or long grass) so I gave Scarlett a piggyback and Ady gave Davies a shoulder carry. I was just thinking it wouldn’t be too long before they were too big / far too averse to the idea for it to happen anymore when cgf twittered something along similar lines.

Back at the ‘welcomming field’ we had the picnic we’d brought along with paying just £1.50 for massive amounts of organic salad, an organic burger and organic tea, coffee and fruit juice (spot the pattern?) from the hueg woodburning in troughs barbecue they had going on. The children went off to play with the lambs.

There was then a sheep shearing demonstration and talk which was interesting too with loads of great questions asked by the various children who were all there and had organised themselves between them into height order so they could all see ok :).

We then left and spotted signs for another open farm just along the road open for another hour or so. We decided we would have a look and chatted about different dairy produce (it was a dairy farm). It was a very different, more ‘commercial’ set up with stalls selling various things from honey produce (got some lovely lip balm for £1) to chicken runs. We got various posters and booklets about farming and then went to try cheeses and buy some icecream. As the woman infront of me at the icecream stall was chatting and I was eavesdropping I realised it was the dairy farm featured in the ice cream challenge show on The Apprentice. And as they were selling the toffee apple flavour as featured I had to choose that one really :).

We came home and the children played in the garden with the chickens, Ady dozed on the sofa and I cooked dinner (retiring the garden with book and glass of wine for times inbetween checking on it). Ady bathed the children and I served up roast beef.

The children went to bed, I watched the season finale of Lost and Ady had a long bath. It’s been a nice weekend :).

We all walked into Lancing together this morning; I went into the library and did more photocopying of songsheets while Ady, Davies and Scarlett had a wander round to look at the rest of the festival stuff happening. They bumped into our next door neighbour who gave them children a pound coin each which is now burning holes in their pockets and then they came back to join me at the library when Rhyme Time had finished.

I had 20 attendees of mostly Dads and their babies with a couple of Grandads and two sets of twins one who came with their Dad and his sister (and it only occured to me afterwards to wonder if they were twins) and another set who had both parents. It was a good sized turnout – not too big to be unmanagable and not too small as to feel like it was just me and two blokes singing to a couple of babies :lol:. The age range was fairly wide with a boy somewhere between 5 and 7 who had very slow speech and I suspect some learning difficulties but was incredibly friendly and chatty and delighted to find someone who was interested in his chatter and knew what he was talking about (Lazytown mostly :lol:). Anyway it went well, we all sang and shook instruments, it sounded very different singing with just a couple of women and a load of men than the usual all female voice sound. Plenty of them hung around to drink coffee and eat cake and whilst I strongly believe it should be utterly normal for fathers to take their small children out to things it is still a rare enough thing to see to enjoy the novelty of it.

We popped to the supermarket for a few bits for a barbecue and then came home via Mick the butchers for some sausages. We had lunch in the garden, the children did loads of chalk drawings (including a big picture by Davies that he and I tried to jump into Mary Poppins style but it just didn’t work!) on the paths and then we walked along to the village green for Sompting festival.

There was an exhibition of photos of old Sompting in the old school which is now a community centre. We didn’t linger long there as the children were restless but we did have a look inside the schools air raid shelter, which was interesting.

The green was slightly disappointing; it’s usually got loads more happening and more stalls than this year which was a big fun fair with very expensive rides and attractions. There were a few stalls; a big church one, some guinea pigs and the biggest draw which was a stand with about 10 owls -all different sorts and different ages from a 9 week old chick to a 12 year old small owl. I got to hold the small owl on a gauntlet so D and S could stroke it and then after they wandered off I stayed a bit longer holding it while other children came over to stroke it and found myself being asked loads of questions about it 😆 Beautiful creatures.

We had ice creams and watched the two local pubs have a tug of war competition and then it clouded over and we decided to come home. Davies and Scarlett carried on playing with chalk and created a ‘Chalk Wonderland Special’ for us to visit complete with spotter sheets for us to look for and tick off, chalk ocean, bridges over it and ending with two camping chairs and lemonade in champagne flutes for us to sit and drink :lol:. More emergent spelling happening and Davies did little bits of reading today of things like the guinea pigs names at the festival (he read Cheerio).

I’ve spent ages playing Scarlett’s new Dolphin Island DS game as all she actually wants to do is play with the sealife without the pressure of ruining the game so I need to complete all the levels so she can do that. I’m doing well with it although the appeal of gaming / DS in general is still rather lost on me. I played some of Davies’ Ben 10 game and just found that annoying and fiddly.

Davies and I watched Doctor Who and Doctor Who Confidential while Ady read Scarlett some stories, then Davies went to bed. They were both (finally) asleep pretty early tonight. Crap weather put paid to our barbecue plans so Ady cooked burgers indoors while I did more Dolphin Island and watched Neil Diamond.