One word? When seven would do…

I didn’t get to sleep til about 3am (not going to bed til 2am probably had something to do with it, must get back into better nocturnal habits) so it was gone 9am when I woke. Davies and Scarlett both came upstairs while I was getting dressed but I heard Davies’ bedroom door shut and assumed they’d gone back downstairs. When I passed it on my way downstairs I heard low voices so opened it and peeped in to find them both sitting on his bed deep in conversation.

The sun was shining and they were trying to work out how to use mirror and other glass things like photo frames and the clear plastic end of a metal detector to beam the sunlight onto the bedroom door so they could reflect it into our bedroom. They managed it in the end bouncing it off the metal detector Scarlett was holding on the bed, into a mirror on the wall, onto a mirror Davies was holding next to his dalek and out of the door onto my bedroom wall. I think if I’d let them carry on the plan was to see if the could bounce it down the stairs but they were hungry for breakfast so came downstairs with me. I love moments like that though :). I love the impromptu challenges, the team work, the working out how to make things happen and gathering together all sorts of odd stuff to assist and of course all the incidental learning that goes along with it.

So breakfast, dressed and pizza dough on for dinner then off to Tasha’s. They were supposed to be coming to us but were having a new boiler fitted so needed to be home – what it is with boilers at the moment? That’s the 4th including our own I’ve heard of playing up in the last few weeks. We got there just after 11am and aside from a brief wandering downstairs to claim they were hungry before eating and disappearing back upstairs again we didnt’ see Davies, Scarlett and Toby for the whole 5 and a half hours we were there :). Tasha and I sat and chatted, I knitted and it was all very nice. For all the things about Tasha and I that are very different we also have a lot of things in common and today sat and chatted about baking and crafting and potential business opportunities from either or both.

We came home to get Tarly ready for Rainbows – she claims it is the last time she’s going to need me to stay, which will be nice :). I did some making up of the jumper which is finally finished and drank tea as the plumbers at Tasha’s had meant a ration of just one cup as they were in the way in the kitchen preventing her from making more – she usually drip feeds me tea for my entire visit :). The kids got the lego out for a quick play before Rainbows and Ady got home in time for me to take Tarly. I sat and read my book while the Rainbows did an assault course. I noticed Scarlett being a lot more confident and vocal which is good but I suspect she will come into her own just before she turns 7 and is due to leave :lol:. We fell out in the shop on the way home where I called in to get some eggs but she apologised when we got in (I will tolerate a lot of things that many parents wouldn’t accept from children but rudeness is something I won’t tolerate from anyone. Question and challenge by all means, act ignorant or plain rude and my back will be well and truly got up) so that was quickly forgotten.

They had tea I read them the booklet for tomorrow’s Magic Lantern club which is screening The Princess Bride and talked about genres and parodies and what both mean. It’s been a real find that club, they love going :). Then we had a chapter of Humphrey before bed. Davies reappeared downstairs several times including while we were eating and led to him working out what time it was (didn’t realise he knew all the roman numerals on my big clock) and disciphering words such as ‘late’ and ‘bedtime’ when I spelt them out to him. Hey if he’s going to be around he needs to work for it ;).

Pizza for tea for us too and as it’s back to work for me tomorrow I really should try and get to bed at as respectable an hour as I can.

I managed a fairly good night’s sleep (aided by drugs) and woke feeling much better this morning. I was definitely right not to be at work today, I don’t think I could have pulled that off but I had lost all my acheyness and inability to do more than make a cup of tea without needing to sit down to recover.

I’ve been coughing and sneezing lots and am still far from 100% but it does appear to just be a cold, albeit one that strikes you down badly on day one (much as it did with poor Davies on Monday). Davies was cross with me for not being at work as he’d said to me yesterday I should have waited til this morning to see how I was feeling. He said he was pleased to have me home but the boy clearly has a strong work ethic and didn’t like the idea of me skiving 😆

I got several loads of washing sorted including hanging them outside (it’s been lovely here today) and made some flapjacks. I finished the first sleeve of my jumper so that is almost complete too now :).

Davies and Scarlett made a start on their display for the library drawing and colouring some animals – foxes, badgers and hedgehogs and Davies did some rubbish too – a crushed drinks can and a toothpaste tube. I chose the pictures to be printed off and they’re planning some Charlie and Lola style mixed pictures of drawings and photos together which I think will look really good.

We had lunch and my Mum rang to see how I was feeling and tell me that my brother has been offered a job :). This is excellent news as he’d been out of work since just before Christmas when the long term agency job he’d been doing (for about 3 years) finally came to an end as the company closed it’s UK branch having outsourced all the work to a Korean firm or something. He’s been feeling pretty low I think so this was great news :). It sounds like a job that will be interesting and offer him something of a challenge and prospects of a proper career too which is excellent, I’m really pleased for him :). Mum asked if she could come over as she’d been due to look after D and S today anyway and didn’t see them last week as Ady had them for the full day I worked. I think a 2 week break was enough for everyone and she is currently on a mission to improve relations with us so is trying very hard.

In the end the kids disappeared upstairs pretty much as soon as she arrived (at my suggestion, they were connected on Lego Star Wars DS which involves lots of noisy interaction and is very distracting when you’re chatting). Mum hadn’t long been here when the doorbell rang and it was my Dad calling in to see how I was having been told by Mum last night I was poorly. Odd how hard it can be to get either of them here for childcare when I work but they both ended up here on an afternoon when I was off sick :lol:.

We had a nice couple of hours chatting while the children remained upstairs having moved onto playing Star Wars with a ‘Star Wars playset’ created by Davies. It was so lovely to hear their chatter and laughter drifting down the stairs and I think it did my parents good to see how life here generally is as often they see the worst of the children when they are vying for my attention because I’m chatting to my parents. They came back downstairs and Scarlett told my parents all about a salmon she’d drawn and cut out and showed them it leaping ‘upstream’ all around the house avoiding bears, then the kids brought in a load of teddies, a blanket and the pretend food from a Very Hungry Caterpillar game and proceeded to set up a teddy bears picnic while I got their tea ready.

They sat down to eat and my parents headed off together. Davies and Scarlett ate dinner and then disappeared back upstairs together again.

Ady came home, I coughed my way through a couple of chapters of Humphrey during which Davies lost a tooth. It’s been wobbly for ages but only in one direction so I told him to push it as far in the other direction as it would go and out it popped! He’s put it under his pillow along with a note he wrote himself ‘To Toof Fery. I nid a poont’ (to tooth fairy, I need a pound). He knew he’d spelt pound wrong and asked for the correct spelling. I told him, along with the suggestion that a ‘please may I have?’ might have been more appreciated by fairies ;).

The kids went to bed, we had baths and dinner and watched the Margaret Thatcher programme which swooshed me right back to where I was and what I was doing (and with whom) back when all that happened. Can it really be that long ago?

Davies was upstairs in bed making up a story about fairies for Scarlett – so far all I’ve seen is the first page which is setting the scene of a fairyland with little houses inside toadstools. I told him he really should be doing these things during the day and going to sleep when he’s in bed at night to which he replied ‘I can’t sleep! My head is far too full with all these stories and pictures I have to do!’ – who am I to argue with creative genuis like that I guess!!

Actually really quite properly ill 🙁 I started sneezing last night and feeling rough throated and stayed up til nearly 2am on the basis that all the time I was blowing my nose every 2 minutes there was no point in lying down and disturbing Ady too. I was right and I seemed to have barely slept four hours later when Ady’s alarm went off at 6am. I did manage to get a couple of hours sleep and emerged just before 9am feeling utterly dreadful.

Scarlett took it upon herself to ‘look after me’. She had the very best intentions but this mainly consisted of her piling about 7 blankets on top of me and warming two wheatbags in the microwave (with me feebly calling from the lounge to be careful), fetching my pillow, bringing me a pile of books (funny mix of cookery books and knitting books) and lamenting not being able to make me a cup of tea. I was able to manage a firm ‘no’ to that. Aswell as to her wanting to light me a fire. Bless her.

Davies has been equally attentive if a little more low key.

At 11ish I realised we had no bread or anything for lunch and there were no drugs in the house either so we had to walk round to the local shop. Davies did offer to go for me but I said I thought they wouldn’t sell drugs to children which Tarly was very indignant about. I do think sending a small 8 year old during school hours to buy over the counter remedies might have attracted some unwanted attention though 😆 That small excursion really took it out of me and actually the stuff didn’t really have much effect anyway. I’m hoping the nighttime one will help knock me out in a while though.

We had lunch and I decided that there was very little hope of a proper recovery before tomorrow when I’m supposed to be at work. The very thought of doing Storytime, reading books and singing nursery rhymes to a load of under 5s had me feeling queasy so I decided to let work know today rather than wait for the morning to let them get cover and also set my mind at rest that I don’t need to set an alarm when I go to bed. It’s early closing day for most of the local libraries on a Wednesday so it took some time and a couple of phonecalls to track down one that was open and had a senior member of staff to report my intended absense to. She was very stressed and I felt quite guilty but I’m sure it was the right decision, and better made today than throwing them into chaos just before they open in the morning.

I also rang my Mum who should be here tomorrow afternoon with Davies and Scarlett. She was warmly sympathetic and said she’ll ring me in the morning and will come over anyway if I want company. 🙂

Davies and Scarlett did various things – drawing, legoing, DSing, Xboxing.

At 4pm Ady rang to say he was on his way home so could cook their tea and take them to Badgers at which point I gave in and went to bed with a hot toddy (spiced tea, honey, lemon and brandy). I didn’t manage to sleep but did rest and read a book for a couple of hours while Ady sorted out pancakes for their tea and organised them getting changed for Badgers. He did send Tarly up with a hair bobble for me to do that though ;). After they’d headed off I ventured back downstairs and enjoyed the peace that an empty house gives.

They came home, watched a taped Clone Wars episode in lieu of stories although Ady then read them a chapter of a Ben 10 book Davies has got too and they went to bed. Scarlett is coming down with it too and fell asleep really quickly, I’m hoping she doesn’t feel as rough as I do tomorrow. Davies still isn’t asleep and just appeared with a notebook filled with a 15 page illustrated story about the adventures of a recycled paper bag at the recycling point 🙂

I had a bath, Ady cooked a curry, which I didn’t manage to eat much of but was very nice anyway and we watched the earthship Grand Designs which I’m in love with.

Right, going to take one of these knock-you-out-at-night tablets and hope for a decent nights sleep and a less snot and splutter filled day tomorrow.

Yesterday evening I got sidetracked with knitting and picpic (DS game) and never got round to blogging. I tend to do that, get utterly immersed in something, (set up a blog about it ;)) then totally exhaust it. Picpic has an end (although I’m not there yet), the current knitting project (a jumper for me – I’ve done the back, front and am halfway through the first sleeve) will also have an end and then I’ll be back. I’ve always gotten bored with jobs after a year or two, friends have come and gone. My relationship with Ady and decision to Home Educate Davies and Scarlett definitely qualify as my sole long running passions. Ever!

So, yesterday. Davies was coming down with a cold and felt progressively more crap as the day went on. He had two doses of medicine (practically unheard of) and spent a lot of the day either snuggled up on my lap or next to me on the sofa. He’s fine today although has the cold properly :rolls: but is back to himself, albeit a snottier version.

In the morning there was some DSing, some drawing and some Kung Fu Panda watching. We also watched a bit of CBBC including Whizz Whizz Bang Bang about a girl who wanted to invent and build a robot horse and Raven.

We had lunch and then after a text exchange Lucy and The Rs came over for a couple of hours. Davies was a superstar – he’s managed to identify that it doesn’t work when he tries to play with them and it only ends in clashes of personality. He’s now reached the stage where he is able to deal with this effectively by simply taking himself off and finding something else to do. I asked both kids if it was ok if they came over when I got Lucy’s text and he said ‘That’s fine Mummy. I know you want to see Lucy, so I’ll just go and play in my bedroom while they’re here’. He’s actually done a fair bit of taking himself off for a while to his bedroom lately anyway. Not in any sort of stroppy way, just clearly identifying himself as needing some time and space to himself and going off and getting it. I can see that this is another stage in development that he’s managing really well by knowing himself and his needs :).

Lucy and I had a good chat and catch up. Scarlett played with Richard and Rebecca and they seemed to get on well although I suspect Scarlett was doing some host bossiness ;).

During the course of the day I realised my self-suffish blog had disappeared. I was getting the error message ‘this blog doesn’t exist’ and a poke around the blogsome forum had a few posts from people who had experienced similar all of which had replies from Blogsome to say their blog had been identified as a ‘splog’ by an administrator and deliberately deleted!! 😯 I am guessing they have some sort of software that flags up blogs with identical text to commercial websites and my second to last post had been recreated, in entirety, on Ady’s work website, with my agreement. I posted on the forum but was anticipating it having been deleted without trace and was really upset at the prospect of all those months worth of blog posts having been lost. Ady and some of his workmates were all really pissed off on my behalf and I had some lovely emails from them all indignant! Apparantely the ‘legal team’ were poised to try and fight on my behalf too :). In the event the blog got restored and a reply to my post simply directed me back to it. I assume they delete them without looking and then deal with any they get complaints on an individual basis. Whatever, I am very relieved to have it back.

Davies came and helped me make Tarly’s tea of pasta and quiche for Ady and I. He didn’t want to actually eat anything and I think he just wanted to be whereever I was but he was quite helpful and we talked a fair bit about fractions while weighing out the flour, lard and butter for the pastry. He has a really firm grasp of mathematical concepts like that and as soon as I give him the mathematical concept it makes sense to him. Today he and Scarlett both had a tube of Smarties and he dropped two. I overheard him telling Tarly that if she gave him one of hers then they’d both have one less than they started with and the same amount as each other. He’s also doing lots of ‘reading’ numbers and manipulating them for measurements like time and money. I can really see how left alone to grasp the idea of how numbers relate to each other I could wade in at some future point and help him put that knowledge and understanding into proper mathematical concepts; just like the way those building blocks for reading have been slowly falling into place.

Anyway, it was nice to do some baking with Davies, so often it is Tarly who drifts into the kitchen while I’m baking. Davies weighed out and cut up the lard and butter, speculating on which was heavier and why, whizzed it in the food mixer and then added first one splash and then a second of water and watched it change from ingredients to pastry. I rolled out one half and he rolled out the other to make quiche cases. Then he went and got the cream and cracked the eggs and grated the nutmeg for the quiche custard while I chopped up the bacon. He started to grate some cheese but got fed up of that and drifted back into the lounge again.

Davies slumped again after that little exertion and we snuggled up on the sofa til Ady came home. We had several chapters of Humphrey and then they went off to bed.

Today Ady had to do some filming for work. Part of the website for his company is a blog and video tutorials of planting things out. You can see a previous blog and no doubt some of todays stuff will make it there soon – plantconnections
First he needed to do another price survey so we all headed into town to visit Wilkinsons. We’ve been needing a hoe so we got one of those and the kids chose a water sprayer bottle each (bargain 59p) then we headed up to the allotment.

More of that over on the newly reinstated Self Suffish for anyone interested. We had a very nice couple of hours up there digging and planting and filming and chatting to various allotmenting neighbours, it was busy up there today :).

What I won’t put up there is these couple of video clips though – Ady did a couple of films about planting out potatoes and then finished with one about garlic. He wasn’t so fluid with the garlic one and after I’d laughed at his 5 or 6 takes he told me to have a go – so I did! The camera ran out before I got to the end but I reckon there’s nothing to it 😉

will add link in later

After observing this Davies asked for a go – so we let him, here’s the results 🙂

We left there and nipped home, via the supermarket to collect swimming things and headed off to the pool. Ady had originally thought he’d come in with us so I’d told the children we were all going in but then he decided as he was getting so many phonecalls from work (turbulent times there atm) he’d better stay contactable as he was in theory still supposed to be working, so he sat and watched instead. The kids were disappointed and I possibly didn’t support him very much as privately I agreed with Davies’ indignant questions about ‘what is more important – family or work?’

We had a nice time though. Davies and I did several lengths together then spent some time playing it. He got a couple of goes on the slide before his lesson and then Tarly came and joined me in the big pool. Ady said Davies’ lesson went really well and he was surprised at much he’s improved. I don’t think he’s seen him swimming properly since Claudia’s pool party last year though. He said Scarlett just seemed to be loving it so much he didn’t really get any idea of whether she was any good or not. I think she’s really improving though and her water confidence is huge :). She and I did plenty of swimming practise and she had loads of goes on the slide.

Ady went off to the chip shop to collect them fish and chips for tea while we got dried and dressed. Back home for their tea and then a bath and hair wash (and brush ;)) for them. We had a couple of chapters of Humphrey and I rapidly started to decline. I’ve been sneezing 100s of times and my throat is feeling rough and scratchy. There is so much illness around I’m really not surprised and am hoping I’ve got what Davies has got which only knocked him down for yesterday but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

We managed to completely forget it was pancake day so we’ll probably have them tomorrow instead. I’m fairly sure we’ve almost always ended up having Pancakes on the Wednesday every year anyway… 🙂

Ady did some planting out of potatoes first thing while the kids played in the garden and I drank tea and knitted. I then took a very long phonecall from my Mum (well over an hour) which is giving me lots to think about. I do stongly believe that mother / daughter relationships are the most complicated one there is. It’s the main reason I was so desperate not to have a daughter of my own really. Of course now I have one I wouldn’t be without her and I firmly hope and will strive to do my best to ensure my relationship with Scarlett is as uncomplicated as possible but while I’m busy with that I have to remember I play the other part in the relationship with my own mother. Hmmm. Might need to bend someone’s ear for some impartial advice on this one.

Ady got the dinner on and then we headed up to the allotment for an hour or so. We got the raised beds covered over to warm the soil ready for the things we’re planning on planting soon, chatted to a couple of other allotmenteers up there and were given an armful of leeks and parsnips pulled out of the ground before our eyes by one kind man :). Spring is definitely in the air and it’s exciting anyway but all the more so being up at the allotment seeing buds and shoots :).

Back home I put the two WAA activities the kids have already done towards their silver award into reports and emailed them to Ady for him to print off at work tomorrow. Davies and Scarlett were DSing, they’ve been playing Sims Animals lots today along with connecting on Lego Star Wars. Lots of reading from Davies and nice cooperative playing together as a result :).

We had roast chicken and Davies decided the topic of conversation today would be what gifts we’d all like from each other on our next birthdays, with a theme of homemade according to people’s skills :).

Ady went to clean the chickens out and clean his car, I did some more knitting and the kids did some more DSing. I like weekends like that when I feel like I’ve had a chance to spend time doing what I want to do rather than what someone else feels I should be doing. I ran the kids a bath and then sat and brushed all the tangles out of Scarlett’s hair (there were lots) and we watched the Natures Great Events programme about the salmon run. The kids asked if they could draw while watching and they both did some fab pictures of what they were seeing on screen. Davies did a bear catching salmon and Scarlett did wolves catching salmon. Her picture had a sun but also the moon as you sometimes see during the day and as it was a full moon she also drew a rabbit in it according to a folk tale we once read. Davies also did a poster proclaiming ‘I LOVE MY DADDY’ and one based on Kung Fu Panda.

I read one chapter of the next Humphrey book by popular demand, well tears actually when I said it had gotten too late for stories and they went off to bed. My evenings seem to be being eaten up with knitting and picpic.

Friday Work day for me. I’d wrongly assumed as it was half term there would be no Baby Rhyme Time as it is term time only but the session had been advertised and we actually had a good turn out. As we were singing wheels on the bus an older man walked past the junior area and glared in at us with such a look of disgust on his face. The mother next to me noticed and whispered to me about it and I whispered back that I’d seen it and we should sing louder! So we did 😆 I had everyone, parents/ carers included issued with instruments and on the count of 3 had them shaking them as loud as they could. We then sang rousing choruses of London’s Burning! I hear Thunder and The Grand old Duke of York at the very tops of our voices ;). Apparently Yvonne took a phonecall from another library and had to tell them to ring back later as she couldn’t hear them over the singing. Yep, that was the result we were after. See how I lead parents and carers and their under 18 month old charges in acts of small rebellion and anarchy to the soundtrack of Incy Wincy Spider clutching tambourines from the Early Learning Centre.

Quiet? In the library? I think not.

It was otherwise fairly glum there actually. The news that the council is looking to cut £150,000 off library staff costs resulting in loss of hours has hit everyone hard. No idea quite what the impact will be on me personally or the rest of my colleagues at Lancing and I’m not going to speculate or assume worst case scenarios as it’s not productive or useful. I will simply see what happens and decide what action, if any, to take from a position of knowledge rather than sumising.

We had quite a laugh in the afternoon taking funny book titles and trying to weave them into conversation. We found ‘For the love of trains’ and ‘Think like your horse’ on the trolley of shelving to go upstairs to non-fiction which entertained us for a while. We decided thinking like a horse would mainly consist of ‘neigh’, ‘got any carrots?’ and ‘mmm, nice polos’.

I developed a headache during the course of the day which drinking lots of water failed to shift. I very rarely get headaches and try really hard not to take painkillers for anything after a dramatic incident in my teens involving rather too many for period pains (plus I think I abuse my liver enough in other ways really ;)). I really should have come home to bed but Ady rang just as I finished work to see if I wanted to join him and the kids at McDonalds for their tea and having missed them all day I agreed so they came and collected me from home and I’m guessing McDonalds on a half term Friday teatime isn’t the best place to nurse a headache really.

We bumped into some friends and had a nice catch up chat with them though which I’d have missed if I’d not been there I guess.

Ady had taken Davies and Scarlett off to work with him for the day, we’ve managed to avoid all childcare this week which has been good for the kids who were struggling with my Mum last week. He was on the road doing price surveys at supermarkets and garden centres so they actually helped him with his cover (it’s like mystery shopping) and it being half term he was happier to be out and about with them without gaining too much attention. They all had a nice day together. 🙂

I finished reading the last couple of chapters of the Humphrey book we were on, had dinner and was in bed not long after 11pm, which doesn’t sound it but believe me is a really early night for me.

Todaywas Davies’ first session with the local Young Archaeologists Club (YAC). We didn’t really know what to expect and I’d agreed to stay with him this time – they say in their literature that parents are welcome to stay as long as they remember it is a young archaeologists club and the events are for the children. They expanded on that today at the session and I get the impression they have had pushy parents who’ve not let their children speak for themselves or get on with the activities. I was actually the only parent there and have already agreed with Davies that he’ll be fine on his own next time. The leader did say they are always looking for proper volunteers to actually help if parents are interested but quite aside from not always being available on a Saturday morning as I often will be working them anyway I have neither knowledge nor particular interest in archaeology :oops:.

There were 12 children – 8 boys and 4 girls, 3 leaders and a helper (who I think was the main leader’s wife) and Davies was by far the youngest. I reckon there were several 15/16 year olds and probably noone else under 10 even allowing for Davies being little he was by far the smallest there. The kids were very much of a ‘type’, quite earnest, a bit geeky but seemed nice kids and certainly very well looked after and managed by the leaders. I’d be quite happy for Davies to be there without me.

Today’s session was indoors, most are not but Feburary weather dictates they plan indoors. They spent the first half an hour or so talking about shoes and footwear through the ages and handed round various things including some leather that had been found in bogs, some that hadn’t been preserved and some that had been restored, a shoe found in a stream and believed to be 1930s, some cobblers tools from 100 or so years ago and some hobnails from 1800-2000 years ago. Which had Davies mouthing ‘WOW’ at me across the room as he held them :). The main leader works at London Museum as a conservator so has accesss to all sorts of cool stuff to bring along.

They then had some fruit juice and flapjacks (Davies asked for water :lol:) – which Davies very amusingly described to Ady when telling him what they’d done as ‘a break for refreshments’ – his own words 😆

Next one of the older lads talked about the cobblers stuff he had bought off someone as a collection and then handed out some paper templates and some felt to everyone. The felt was to be used instead of leather which was what shoes would have been made from. They all cut out the paper templates, traced round them onto the felt and then cut that out. They had 3 pieces to sew together to form a shoe.

Davies isn’t particularly good with scissors but did fine and was then helped by a woman with the start of his sewing. I overheard her asking him ‘Have you done sewing at school?’ and him answering ‘Well I don’t go to school, but I do know how to sew!’ 😆 I helped him a bit by holding the pieces together for him while he did the sewing and he did an ace job 🙂 Then eyelets were put in and I cut him out a lace from a scrap of felt to thread in. It looked really good and was actually one of the best 🙂 Amazing how so many of the kids had never done any sewing before and got in a right old mess with it.

Next time it’s an outside mini dig on the seafront and as I’m working Davies will be at that one on his own although Ady and Scarlett will probably go for a walk fairly close by. He really enjoyed it and thanked me several times for finding out about it and taking him :). It’s great when I feel like I’ve really managed to find something that is SO Davies or SO Scarlett (like the art display at the library for Davies, or Tarly’s keeper for the day) :).

We met back up with Ady and Scarlett and took a circuitous route to kill time to Ali’s. We had a quick look at an orchid nursery and a pop into Tesco for a couple of bits for dinner tonight and then arrived at Ali’s. It was a Doctor Who fest and the kids had all picked their favourite episodes for us to watch as many as possible of.

We had snacks, ice cream, tea, wine and lots of David Tennant :). We watched 5 episodes although Scarlett wandered in and out, Freya joined her after a while and Davies didn’t finish watching the last one with us, which was probably as well as Ali and I were well into the wine by then and laughing at silly things and of course I cried at the end of the last one when Rose gets taken back to Bad Wolf Bay and Donna gets taken home with her mind wiped.

It was a fab afternoon though, thanks Ali and J 🙂 xxx

Back home to put chickens away, feed the children (despite offers of food and indeed plenty of partaking of sandwiches, crisps and ice creams at Ali’s) and have a bath (me).

I have now undone any good I did by going to bed while it was still Friday on Friday, so will take myself off to bed on Saturday even though it is now Sunday.

This morning Davies and Scarlett played with some foam blocks. And watched Wall E. And Kung Fu Panda, well the films were on in the background really as a soundtrack to their games.

I did some knitting and some online stuff including talking Davies through the HE consultation and typing in his answers for him. It was a fairly collaborative effort between the two of them and resulted in lots of discussions and outrage on their part (once I’d explained what child abuse and domestic servitude was). They decided that if someone was going to monitor them they they’d want to be sure they spent enough time with them to get to know them properly and ‘make friends with them’ and to be sure to give them a good idea of just how much they are learning. I’m really pleased they are so proud and certain of their HE status. I do so hope testing doesn’t become a reality in the near future.

We had lunch and then as the sun was shining and we’ve been meaning to do it for ages we headed off into Lancing armed with a camera. One of the WAA activities is to ‘put on a display’ so naturally we’re going to use the display space at the library. Davies has long been outraged at the dog poo and general litter in the alleyways and has said several times he wants to write to our MP about it. As one of the other activties is ‘write to your MP’ and another is ‘get in the local paper’ we’ve hatched a plan to do the display about litter in the alleys and pavements, write to our MP about it and possibly do some sort of big clean up event armed with bin bags and gloves and write a press release / invite the local paper to come along. The only trouble is the wildlife link is slightly tenuous although I know litter can cause problems for wildlife. I guess it’s no less indirect a link than recycling and walking instead of using a car though and it is something Davies has been quite vocal about for a while.

So the first step today was to get some photos of all the stuff we encountered that shouldn’t be there along the pavements and through the alleyways on the mile or so walk to the library. It was quite disgusting – broken glass, crisp and sweet wrappers, dog poo, cigarette butts and packets, loads of cans and bottles and fast food containers. The children took all the photos themselves and although the subject matter is unpleasant the quality of their shots is pretty good. It’s all a bit worthy but I am proud of their outrage about people not caring about where we live. I wonder if they’ll forever hold those values or if like most of us as they get older they will care less. I remember being the most vocal anti-smoker I knew for years before starting to smoke myself 😳

In Lancing we had a quick look in the supermarket for free range chicken – sold out – before going to the wool shop for a couple more balls for my jumper. I really need to find a cheap wool seller. We then popped back to the newsagent as Tarly had brought her purse with some coppers and wanted to buy some sweets. We walked home again and chatted about ideas for their display.

Back at home Davies took himself off to his room for a while and Scarlett painted my toenails for me. I did some more knitting and have now finished the back of my jumper – only the front and sleeves to go ;).

They had tea and I made some cookies and some cupcakes while they were eating as there is a distinct lack of sweet stuff in the house. Scarlett and I had a falling out but it got resolved fairly quickly and then we had a few chapters of our latest Humphrey story before Ady came home.

Work all day for me tomorrow and Ady is taking the kids off to work with him for the day as he is doing price surveys in supermarkets and garden centres all day so they will actually help him with his cover (mystery shopper type stuff) which they are both very happy about :).

A funny old day today.

Scarlett had her Rainbows Art Day. Previously she’s not been interested in any of the outside of normal time Rainbows events, particularly if I can’t go along with her but when the Art Day was mentioned a few weeks ago she was really keen. We established that it was all day (well 10am -3pm) and that I definitely couldn’t stay with her and she remained keen and has been really excited about it. Ady dropped her off, with a packed lunch and she happily ran off without a backwards glance. When Davies and I arrived to collect her she was looking tall, confident and very happy, full of all the things she’d made (they did painting, collage, line drawing and air drying clay sessions) and the new friends she’d made. It was the most schooly environment she’s ever been in and she had a great day.

If Tarly had been our first child we’d probably never have considered Home Education at all and I do think she’d have been fine at school actually. I think she’d have had to fit a mould a lot more than she does now and I think a lot of her energy and focus would have gone into being Scarlett At School rather than her varied passions and interests. This was quite a big step into independance for her really though and I’m so glad she made it, it was all she’d been hoping it would be and she was able to take it in her own time at her own pace when she was happy to do so.

Davies had an hour at home alone with Ady and then they came to the library. Davies read Ady a book and then Ady went off to work and Davies stayed at the library. It’s always been a back up plan that the kids could just be at the library while I was working for a brief time although I’ve thought it would be less workable if they were both there. Davies started off fine playing on the kids computer and reading a couple of books. He came to tea with me but then I stuck him on one of the pcs hooked up to the internet and as all he wanted to do was play games and we don’t have flash on them specifically to prevent people from coming in to play games he got upset. 🙁

It was mad busy in the library and I was on the enquiry desk with a steady flow of people wanting my attention for various things. He tried to hide his teariness but my boss spotted him and was concerned. Which was so not what I needed, as I was trying to play down his presence and assure her he was fine and independant and not likely to pose any problem in distracting me from my work. Poo 🙁 He did perk up and sat with his DS for the last hour.

When we finished at 1pm we had a brief wander round the charity shops, picked up a cake each (and one for Tarly) from the bakers and came home. We put some beef in red wine and stock in the slow cooker for dinner. Then I let Davies decide what we should do and he chose DSing so we played picpic together and then he showed me the Kung Fu Panda games and then it was time to collect Tarly.

We came home via the petrol station, the charity shop and the supermarket. Back at home they connected on the DSs and played with the geomags. I sat with a wheatbag on my tummy (bad stomach cramps 🙁 at least explains my increased grumpiness the last couple of days), drank lots of tea and knitted.

They had dinner followed by a bath. Ady came home and was treated to a showing of all of Tarly’s artwork. Davies asked her for her autograph so a long conversation about signatures ensued with practical demonstrations and reasons why you might have one. Then we had a couple of chapters of Humphrey before it was bedtime for them and bathtime for us. Boiler seems to be behaving today but the novelty of hot water coming out of hot taps won’t run out for a while yet.

and how very directly my frame of mind and it’s little blue pilot light are connected.

This morning I was all efficient with phonecalls (made dentist appointments, checked to ensure we were booked on an event at Littlehampton museum, rang and left a message on Julie’s answerphone) and emails (3 to friends we’ve not seen in too long and I’ve been meaning to do for ages, cleared my inbox). I made a good start on my third attempt at knitting a jumper, I sorted out some washing, made breakfast, fed and let out the chickens, took out meat to defrost for dinner tonight and tomorrow and generally was all organised.

Davies and Scarlett were watching Kung Fu Panda back to back repeated so they can now recite large chunks of the dialogue. I borrowed it from work for them and they watched it several times and then Davies said he’d like to get our own copy. Ady found it in Sainsburys yesterday for a fiver so got it for them. They were both a bit aimlessly wandery today which is rare and unusual for them and were also a bit squabbly but we were looking forward to the museum and I think that would have done them good. Especially as I’ve now found out Toby was there today so we’d have met up with them there too.

But, just as I’d made their lunch Mum rang to say the plumber was at their house and handed me the phone to talk to him. I explained the boiler saga and he said he’d come over. It was only midday and we didn’t need to leave for the museum til 1pm but I explained to the children it might mean we wouldn’t be able to go but getting the boiler sorted had to take priority.

It all looked very promising as he arrived, declared it needed a service and would probably be fine and set about doing so. At 1245 he was packing up to go and the kids were getting changed ready to leave at 1pm when he just checked to make sure the heating was working as well as the hot water and realised the light had gone out again. He thought he’d knocked it out putting the casing back on but no, it then wouldn’t relight. Or it lit and then went out again. He got his tools back out and decided it needed a new part (something to do with a thermostat to control overheating and shutting off valves). He promised to try and get the part and ring me later to come back in the morning.

I managed to relight it again after he’d gone although it went out twice more but then I relit and about 230pm, and it’s still lit now having run a full bath, washed up several sink fulls of washing up and run the heating all afternoon. So who knows? And he’s not rung back yet so no idea whether he got the part.

But it did mean we were way too late to go to the museum. I rang to say we weren’t going to make it and see if we could get booked in for Thursday instead but it was fully booked 🙁 Shame.

The kids were disappointed and continued being hard work and I wasn;t in the mood to diffuse it or do anything distracting with them really. They did some drawing, Davies finished his border for his Feeding the birds WAA stuff so that can be photographed and written up. Scarlett did some aquabeading, they watched Kung Fu Panda again and Davies did a fab drawing of all the characters. He really is very talented at seeing and reproducing stuff like that :).

They went off to play upstars and I made pancakes for their tea which they ate with a punnet of blueberries Ady had brought home yesterday reduced to 10p from Sainsburys.

Ady came home, I went off to reading group. It was a big group tonight with 2 new members which is always nice and lots of laughs and banter. When everyone had gone Brenda told me that the opening hours of all the libraries are about to change and there will be job cuts. Initially they are asking for volunteers for reducing hours. Clearly at 11 hours a week I won’t be volunteering but actually Lancing will be ending up open for an extra hour a week as we will be closing an hour earlier four nights a week but staying open on a Wednesday afternoon when previously we’ve closed at 1pm, so I don’t know quite what will happen anyway. The aim is for the cut to be made with reductions in hours without losing any actual staff and all the senior staff will lose 2 hours a week. I doubt my hours will be effected but suspect the biggest impact on me will be low morale among my colleagues :(. I feel very sorry for those who rely on every penny of their salary.

Back home Scarlett was crying as she’d managed to shut the lid of some liquid soap on her lip – not at all sure how the accident had happened but am putting it down to her being six and remembering I pushed a small wooden bead up my nose at a similar age in just such an unexplainable incident! She soon recovered and even managed a smile at my joke about it being a ‘clean’ cut (clean, soap, get it!). She’s really looking forward to her Art Day tomorrow with Rainbows and I’m really hoping she enjoys it as a much as she’s expecting to.

I’ve made the booking for Monday 30th March. The session will be from 10am -2pm and will cost £5 per person. I need a minimum of 20 people but am keen to not go too much higher than that.
It’s pay on the day but if we do fall short of the number we will presumably have to make up the money to the £100 so I’ll be coming after anyone who says they’re coming and doesn’t turn up with my many years experience of debt collecting ;).

Anyone who would like to is welcome to stay at our house the night (or indeed whole weekend) before and the night after. It’s about an hours drive from our house.

Depending on numbers I’ll open it out to select local people too if needs be.

Today I have:
Knitted. One front and one sleeve and most of a second sleeve of a jumper. I’ve now decided it’s not what I want so tomorrow I’ll be unpicking it all again. For the second time. Third time lucky maybe.

Got lots of washing processed. I even hung some outside for a while. It was never going to dry out there but it did air nicely before coming back indoors to go over the radiators.

Yes, radiators :).

Made breakfast, lunch and tea for the kids.

Turned the eggs in the incubator three times – they are due to hatch just before you come down Mich, so fluffy little baby chicks as an additional bonus for your visit :).

Sat and drank tea and chatted with my Dad for a couple of hours.

Let the chickens out, fed them, collected an egg from their house, put them away again.

And that’s about it really. I have drunk lots and lots of tea and basked in the warmth of central heating and enjoyed a very deep, very hot bubble bath that I even topped up once with more hot water. It was bliss :).

Davies and Scarlett have done lots of DSing, loads of drawing (and a fair bit of writing. Scarlett has learnt to write ‘Davies’ and Davies has been doing loads of writing in speech bubbles and titles of the various Star Wars comic strip type stories he’s been doing. He sort of plays as he draws narrating and bringing the picture to life with sound effects and movement lines on the page), Davies made a R2D2 for his bedroom door, they watched the new Ben 10 series and had a bath themselves.

I’d intentionally left this week fairly empty as I enjoy the quiet of no activties for half term, don’t want to be out and about with all the school children and also didn’t know when we might need to be home for the plumber. However tomorrow I want to be a bit more productive and finish off the two WAA activities we’ve all but done but need to write up and plan in some more detail with the kids the next one which takes in 3 activities in one but requires some coordination.

During which I didn’t leave the house at all!

Infact aside from cooking roast lamb I’ve not really done a lot other than knit today. It’s been warm infront of the fire and relaxing to do nothing after a fairly stressy week.

With lots of prodding Ady joined in with Davies and Scarlett’s lego playing. We watched a bit of ‘One Small Step’ but it was very dry and documentary-ish and didn’t hold my attention, much less the childrens’.

I was bobbing in and out doing the lunch while the others had a couple of games of Kerplunk and then we all sat down around 2ish to roast lamb. Dinnertable discussions this week included plans for the coming week, which parent Davies would like to accompany him to the Young Archaeologists Club which has the first meeting of the year next Saturday and various other upcoming events and socialising we have planned.

After lunch Ady and the kids went outside to do some planting of some flowers and in Davies and Scarlett’s case run off some energy. They came in at 5ish when it was starting to get dark. They were wet and muddy and cold so Ady took them for a shower and then they came and watched (under protest, I insisted ;)) Events from nature or whatever it was called about Arctic ice melting. Admittedly it was all stuff they already know quite a bit about from various nature documentaries.

I read some Humphrey and they both did some drawing while listening to it. In the middle of all that Ady suddenly appeared in the lounge to say he’d got the boiler lit!!!! Both of us have been trying to relight it a couple of times each day and this time it lit and stayed lit. :shock

No idea why it’s suddenly done so but we’ve had the heating blasting away ever since and even debated having a bath despite already all having had showers only half an hour beforehand. I’m not at all sure what to make it if all and will be witholding confidence in it for a while now but hurrah! woohoo! and whooppeeeee!

The children went to bed, Davies taking a pad and pen with him and reappearing an hour later with a 10 page story for a new Star Wars film including various speech bubbles and other writing.

We watched Lost, basked in the warmth of the lounge (I even took my jumper off!), I knitted some more, we both played some DS (Ady’s been on another downloading frenzy today so we have loads of new games) and now I’m off to bed to dream of waking to a heated house and having a blissful bath tomorrow night – and keeping my fingers crossed for both :).

Work for me this morning. It was an odd one as Yvonne was off sick, one of the Saturday assistants was on annual leave so we had Big Boss Brenda who is a proper important librarian (and runs the reading group) and a relief member of staff Sherrin who runs homework club which totally changed the Saturday ‘vibe’. Jan and I christened it ‘Articulate Saturday’ and competed all morning to use the best long words in context which was fun :).

Brenda had done the rota and put me down for 3 hours on the enquiry desk and one hour off so I had a lovely dossy morning really. I like manning the enquiry desk – it’s fairly quiet, you get to sit down, you have full internet access and the queries you do get are usually interesting and varied. I joined 6 new borrowers, printed off details of campsites in Sussex, dealt with tracking back the movements of a book which someone rang to say they’d borrowed yesterday from us and found an envelope containing a large cheque in the back of, took an enquiry about keeping Giant African Landsnails as pets (for which I printed some stuff off the internet and ordered in a selection of books), read a bit about consipiracy theories on the moon landings, chatted to someone about floristry and wedding flowers, chatted to someone else about the house they’ve bought in Lancing as a weekend and holiday home to retire to in the future and are visisting at weekends and dealt with an assortment of regular library characters including ‘Fred’ who is 93 and used to go up the stairs in the library 3 at a time. He has Altzheimers or something similar and regularly works his way round the staff telling us the same stories two or three times per visit, the special needs bloke who comes in and asks if S Club 7 have released any new cds and leans right over the desk clearing his throat noisily on a regular basis and Mr Bye, our in house alcoholic (think I mentioned him before, he has taken a shine to me). This morning he was so drunk you could have got high off the fumes from standing next to him. He giggled and said to me ‘I’m as drunk as a….’ and then wandered off again. He kept getting up from the computer he was using and stumbling across to me at the desk, forgetting what he’d come over for and then stumbling back to the computer again doing aeroplane arms as he went :lol:.

We also had a Community Saturday table set up for the Lancing Musical Theatre group which consisted of about 12 girls ranging in age from 6 to 14 dressed in tutus, leotards and ballet shoes and wandering around the library. It was like a sit com in there today :lol:.

I spent my ‘off’ hour doing a new display in the junior library of Food and Cookery. This consisted of two aprons stapled to the wall surrounded by photocopied book covers of kids cookery books and cut out picture of various cookies, cakes, apples, tomatoes and more. It was ‘busy’ but looked quite effective.

I got home and Ady headed off to Tom’s where he was assisting in the felling and chopping up of some trees in return for bringing the wood home for logs. He was gone for hours but brought back a whole car filled with logs :).

Davies had presented me with a home made bookmark for Valentines Day and I’d bought all three of them a chocolate orange each. Ady bought me a bottle of pink fizz and cooked a lovely dinner (with a starter :)).

The kids were playing with the lego, then another construction toy called Klikko which came from a charity shop and then building marble runs. I decided I was going to have a bath today no matter how I managed it and toyed with options for heating water:

1. Fit some sort of hose to the shower upstairs and run it all the way through the bedroom, down the stairs and into the bath. Possible flaws in this included lack of hose and potential for flooding / trip hazards.

2. Moving the microwave into the bathroom with the aid of an extension lead and zapping bowlfuls of water to tip in the bath.

I eventually went with the four biggest pans in the kitchen, filled with water and put on the four gas rings on the cooker then toing and froing with them til the bath was full. I instructed the children to stay in the lounge and made it clear that a collision with me and a pan full of scalding water would result in hospital visits for all of us and lifelong scarring. I was concerned that by the time each new lot of water had boiled the previous lot would have already cooled down and indeed that did happen to a degree but not sufficiently and it was actually slightly too hot but I refused to add any cold to it.

It took a full 90 minutes and was not as full as I’d have had it usually but it was a bath. In hot water. And it was bliss :).

While all the water was ‘cooking’ I did some baking as I was in the kitchen anyway and I made some cheese scones and some M&M cookies. Baking, in a kitchen that was lovely and warm with all the gas rings and the oven on was very theraputic and followed by an hour long bath, with a cup of tea, and a book, and a proper hairwash all had me feeling much better about the whole world :).

The kids had the bath after me and I washed their hair then left them to play in it.

We’ve kept the fire going all day in the lounge so it’s been lovely and warm in here and kept heaters on in the bedrooms so they are warm too so it’s all felt not so bad today. The plumber is back sometime tomorrow so fingers crossed for it being sorted on Monday assuming it is something easy and straightforward. I spoke to my Dad and along with promising to get the plumber round he also listened to a prolonged rant from me about my mother and made all the right sympathetic noises. I am sure he will now tell her and I’ll end up being confronted by her about everthing I moaned at him about but it felt good to get it all off my chest.

I brushed Tarly’s hair and tied it back in a plait which we all decided looked pretty and tidy but not particularly Scarlett-like. They had their tea (pasta) and then spent some time connecting on Lego Star Wars DS.

I realised the knitting pattern I’d been following for a jumper was beyond me and had abbreviations in I didn’t understand along with two sets of circular needles and other stuff so I found one I can manage and unpicked and wound up all the wool again from what I had been doing.

Ady came home, I read some Humphrey and the kids went to bed. Ady made a lovely dinner and I’m now feeling pleasantly tipsy, full of nice food, warm, clean and tired.

it would be neither half full nor half empty, it would be bloody frozen solid!

I’m veering wildly here between stoic and pioneering, reasoning it’s no colder than camping and a bit of an adventure and it won’t kill us and other such stuff and crying at how cold and fed up I am. I’ve got washing still sat wet from last weekend, dirty stuff piling up, I have to boil pans to wash up the dishes, we took some mince out of the freezer for dinner yesterday morning and left it on the side in the kitchen to defrost. In the evening it was still frozen solid.

I think I could cope with the cold if we had hot water though.

Then I could have a bath. Oh how I dream of a bath. I have a bath every single night. I lay in it for about half an hour and read my book and wash my hair and soak all the stresses of the day away. I haven’t had a bath since Monday. I’ve had daily showers, in our perfectly warm but incredibly cramped shower in the en suite. The house is so cold you have to be sure not to have any part of your naked body touch the tiled walls of the shower for fear of sticking to it and getting freezer burn. And getting out of the shower back into a freezing cold room and putting on clothes you’ve not managed to warm up first on a radiator sort of negates any relaxing or warming effect it may have had on you. But I don’t smell at least.

I think I could cope without hot water if we had heating.

So the update on all of that is that the plumber my Dad knows who my Mum said his Mum had said would be back today from his snowboarding holiday turns out to not actually be back until Sunday. Not sure if that is his mum or my mum who got it wrong. When we heard he would be back on Friday way back on Tuesday we thought we could probably just about hang it out til Friday. Now of course I wish we’d just found another plumber on Tuesday. Instead we had a 4pm on a Friday afternoon ring round and of course didn’t find anyone who was able to come out before Monday anyway.

Dad sort of knows another plumber who might be at the snooker club he goes to on a Friday night so if he is then he’ll talk to him tonight and see if there is any chance he could come over tomorrow. But there’s a lot of ifs and buts there so I’m not holding out much hope. I suspect we will be lucky to have it fixed by Tuesday bringing it to a full week without heating or water. I’ve had a couple of offers to go and stay with friends, an offer of a bath at a mate’s house and actually if I didn’t have work tomorrow I might well have decided to take up the offer of decamping somewhere with heating.

If we don’t have any luck with the ifs and maybes plumber tomorrow I will be going over to my parents to bath myself and the kids though, despite the fact they have not offered that and will probably be horrified at the very thought :(.

Anyway, back to life aside from boiler related stuff.

Yesterday I had a training course in the morning at Steyning library. It’s very nice, quite a new, purpose built library with lots of windows and natural wood and stuff. It was also bloody freezing! The training was a perfect example of fairly poor training – I doubt anyone there came away having learnt anything or changed their attitude towards anything. The jaded and cynical would have come away feeling ever more so. Far too many ‘outside the box’ and ‘bigger picture’ cliches bandied about and altogether too many lesson in egg sucking once you are a grandmother type bits. I’m passionate about good training, it’s something I’ve done a lot of in my career and I think that relevant training, delivered well can be invaluable. I believe in investing in people, empowering them through learning and all of that sort of stuff, but only when it’s done well and effectively.

Back to Lancing for the afternoon which went fairly quickly.

At home I had some time with the children who had been mostly building things out of lego for gthe day. We watched Fly me to the moon and chatted about moon landings and the whole ‘one small step for man…’ quote. Then we had a couple of chapters of our latest Humphrey book

Today was a bit of a treat day for the kids as it’s been a bit crap here this week really. They’ve not really noticed the cold much but they have borne the brunt of my grumpiness, Davies was upset at Badgers and again last night about my Mum minding them. I’m not sure if that is him feeding off my feelings towards her at the moment (on the negative side) or whether she is doing anything wrong. He says she’s always making snotty comments about our house, the way we do things, how messy things are which I think both upsets him as it’s a judgement on his home and also he feels torn in not defending me to her. Argh! 🙁

Anyway, today was ice skating day. We were slack at getting out of the house and then couldn’t find a parking space so ended up there at about 1015am when the first session starts at 10am. Actually I don’t think it much mattered as the next session was already booked up too so we paid for the midday session and went for a wander round the town for an hour. We didn’t buy anything (not that we particularly needed anything) but it killed time.

There must have been lots of teaching training days locally or something as there were loads of kids around today – gets us into practise for next week I guess!

We got back to the ice rink at about 1140am but it all seemed rather disorganised and we got skates straight away then were already on the ice before midday. It seems to be staffed by a load of young and not particularly competant people.

I’ve only ever been ice skating once in my life when I was about Davies’ age and recall clinging to the sides for the first 90% of the session and managing to just about get going at the very end. This time was no different. The kids (and I) were like Bambi when we first stepped on. As were about 80% of the rest of the people 😆

Davies did fairly well and found his feet on his own. He said he loved it and I can see that with a bit of time and maybe some one to one with me or Ady to get his confidence up he’d probably get good quite quickly. Scarlett was less sure and managed to bang her face twice on the side which meant she was in tears and I persuaded her to sit out for a few minutes. I went and joined her and we had a little pep talk on the bench. She’d had no idea just how hard it would be and decided she would never be able to do it so didn’t want to try. I mangaed to comfort her and then persuade her to have another try which was great as we managed to skate away from the side holding hands quite a bit which bolstered her back up again.

I’d got a pair of skates which were too small and were killing my feet with that throbbing pain that only too small boots can inflict.Our car was due to run out of time on the parking ticket and I forsaw a mass exodus and problems with getting shoes back so once we were all happy and able to leave on a high we had one more circuit round and then came off. Unfortunately many others had had the same idea and due to Scarlett wandering off in the wrong direction with her boots and neither a queuing system or any awareness on the part of the staff as to who had been standing waiting first I was there for about ten minutes getting increasingly pissed off. I made my displeasure known and did get an apology. we got back to the car with about a minute to spare which was good as I’d seen traffic wardens lurking earlier so knew they were about.

Crap disorganisation aside it was very good though – and only £2 each for the hour including skate hire, which possibly explains the staffing given how low their wages must be in order for the whole operation to be financially worthwhile. We’ll go again, not next week during half term, and it would be great if Ady could come too so we could have one child each.

I had some luncheon vouchers so had planned McDonalds for lunch but didn;t want to pay for more parking and needing a few bits from the supermarket so we headed over to Tescos which has a McDs onsite and went there. A quick scoot round Tescos and then home.

Scarlett had Rainbows, I took a book to read :). She’s got an all day art session next week with Rainbows after which she intends staying on her own – for the remaining two and a half terms left ;). I won’t be sorry to stop that, I’m very bored of sitting there week in week out now.

Back home for the kids tea. On the way home we’d nipped into the shop for some cooking oil and Scarlett had asked if she could choose something for Davies which quickly became something for everyone so we all got some chocolate. They watched a couple of episodes of Lion Man which happened to be on instead of a story.

And that about brings me up to date.

First overnight in arctic conditions survived. It *is* cold, we tend to keep our house on the warm side of normal anyway so we’re feeling it all the more. I slept in a fleecy nightie and socks last night and as I usually sleep naked I expected to wake in the night too hot and take them off. I didn’t! I think that early morning heating cutting in at 6am ish must make all the difference.

Ady woke me before he left (again) to say the sky wasn’t working so sorting that out was my first task. It turned out to just need resetting so I did that, drank some tea, make the kids breakfast, let out the chickens and then did some baking. I made snickerdoodles and M&M cookies. Davies came along and helped at the end although I suspect it was a well time ‘help’ to be around for spoon licking duty ;).

We gathered ourselves together and headed off to Ali’s.

We had a very nice time there with plenty of chatting for me, enjoying the various games consules (PS, wii, xbox 360) for Davies, kitten worshipping for Scarlett. Not sure the kids did much in the way of socialising with each other but it was very nice just the same :).

We left there and headed for home. As I brightkited earlier I am not *always* right but I do have a fairly high success rate so when Tarly came to me nearly in tears because she’d left behind at Ali’s the toys I’d told her she probably shouldn’t take incase she forgot them, swiftly followed by Davies also nearly in tears that he couldn’t find the trousers to wear for Badgers that I’d asked him to check were where he thought they were yesterday (his usual pair are wet in the washing machine with no way of my drying them. I knew he had a spare pair otherwise we’d have gone to the laundrette or dried them infront of the fire or something yesterday, which was why I asked him to check). We found some trousers for Davies and although Scarlett insists she will desperately miss her cuddly toys she has plenty of others to comfort her til we next see Ali :).

I made their tea and Ady arrived home. He lit a fire to get the house warming up while we were out, the kids got changed and we went to Badgers. Davies had said earlier he didn’t want to go, which is most unlike him and I’d been fairly dismissive.

Ady and I had a walk around while the kids were in Badgers and then went to collect them. On the way home Davies was a bit tearful and explained that he’d not wanted to go because he is in a different group for this badge and he doesn’t really know the other children in that group. When pressed he said that actually two of the boys have been a bit mean to him. One of them he had previously said he liked but a lad who used to come and then stopped has come back again and seems to be both being a bit unkind to Davies and leading the other lad in it too.

It’s half term next week so I’ve said I’ll have a chat with the leader next time and just draw her attention to the fact Davies is feeling like this and that he should make a special effort to be friendly to them at the same time. I tend to veer possibly too far towards listening to his fears and worries and giving validation to his feelings but I do believe that regardless of intent on the part of the other boys if Davies is feeling like this then he is both entitled to his feelings and we need to find a way of remedying it. I suspect that his HE status, increasingly different outlook and approach to life to most kids is going to have him finding himself in situations like this and I don’t want to just withdraw from everything like we did with Beavers (although I still think in that particular set of circumstances we did the right thing). This is one of the aspects of HE I always knew would be an issue as the kids got older and whilst I celebrate being different to the crowd and going our own way I do vividly recall being a child desperate to fit in and be just like everyone else. Ironically I can see how this could be a crossroads that would have a child deciding to go to school. I doubt very much that is what will happen with us but it is something both children, with our help and support, are going to have to get used to dealing with.

At Ady’s suggestion – he often comes at this things from a different perspective to me – we all watched a bit of the Girls and Boys Alone programme and chatted a bit about that. Then we got back to ‘normal’ for us and started the next Humphrey book.

Dinner, some Relocation and some Grand Designs and now as the fire dies down and it gets pretty cold in here I’m off to bed!

Ady woke me at about 6am to say the boiler wasn’t working this morning. We have a combi boiler which heats the hot water for the water and heating as it goes through so we have no tank or immersion. It seems the pilot light had blown out during the very windy night and is refusing to be lit again.

I tried to go back to sleep (no real reason to actually get up and the thought that it would be cold wasn’t exactly motivating) but I couldn’t get properly back to sleep and had lots of troubled dreams about broken down cars and boilers in emergency situations. The children were then finding their own way to keep warm downstairs which seemed to be in the style of ‘Mad Lizzie’ Webb from breakfast tv of days gone by and included lots of noise and thudding and the Star Wars sound track. All of which meant when I did get up and come downstairs it was with a headache.

The kitchen was a shambles – last night’s washing up was everywhere, Ady had taken the front off the boiler and leant it against the back door, the pots and pans which normally sit on top of the boiler were on the worktop and only after I tipped the end of the milk on the kids cereal did I realise that meant there was none for a cup of tea.

While I was boiling kettle-fulls of water and pans on every gas ring to get hot water for washing up I rang my parents to see if Dad could get hold of his plumber. My Dad is a builder and has a plumber, electrician, bricklayer, carpenter etc that he uses and subs out to sometimes. I was also trying various methods of getting the pilot light to stay lit too. My Dad wasn’t home but my Mum rang back and was not only spectacularly unhelpful she was also incredibly unsympathetic :(.

When I explained our plight of no hot water, heating, method of drying the wet load of laundry sitting in the washing machine etc. did she offer use of her tumble drier? For us to go and use either of their two baths? For us to move in there until it was sorted? Did she hell – she said she’d go and find their phone book and read me out some numbers for plumbers if I liked.

That pretty much finished me off so when Ady rang me to see how I was he got an earful ending with ‘and there’s no fucking milk!!!!!’.

Davies was dressed by then so I asked him if he wanted to nip round the shop for milk and he did. So it was his first time round there to buy something (he’s been to the postbox round there a couple of times before). He came back with the milk and the change and told me how much it had been. I said he could keep the change (50p) so he promptly went back round to get some sweets. He came back with a packet each for him and Tarly and told me how many more packets he could have bought with the money :). I was impressed with his independance, his demonstration of mathematics in practise and of course extremely grateful for the milk so I could make a cup of tea.

I’m ashamed to say I have spent most of the day being intolerant, short tempered, impatient and generally grumpy 🙁

We had planned to go ice skating this morning but with the whole boiler thing and the fact Scarlett couldn’t find her gloves (she has several pairs, one was left behind at Liza’s but she has at least one other pair that I saw around the place last week) we didn’t make it. They have hour sessions starting on the hour so once we’d missed the 10am one I lost the inclination to bother.

Instead I spent some time playing Davies’ DS and checking roadside recovery breakdown cover prices online. They did some lego playing, some DSing and watched some TV.

We had lunch and then it was swimming lessons in the afternoon. It’s been sunny and dry here today and the car was fine.

Scarlett’s lesson was first. She did some excellent backstroke. Davies went off to the big pool and came back shortly afterwards to say one of the lifeguards had told him he shouldn’t be in there on his own. He’d said he’d been in before and she said to him ‘probably with your mummy or daddy’ and then walked away from him dismissively.

I was probably spoiling for a fight really so I went over, probably with a thunderous look about me, trailing my small dripping child behind me and asked ‘is there a problem with my son being in the pool?’. She asked how old he was (why didn’t she ask him?) and when I said 8 she started to backtrack. She said he was a weak swimmer and shouldn’t really be in the deep end. I said fair enough (although I don’t actually agree, he is strong enough to do 2 lengths albeit at a slowish pace) and that he would stay in the shallower end then. She then tried to be all smiley and said ‘he’s a great little swimmer though..’ but we’d already started to walk away.

I appreciate the rules, I appreciate her doing her job but the rule is age related not height or even swimming proficiency related. Why couldn’t she have just asked Davies his age and maybe suggested to him he stay more in his depth? He’s actually very sensible and very aware of his own limits – probably because that’s the way he’s been treated by us and is able to determine these things for himself rather than have them enforced on him. If I thought for one second he wasn’t safe to be in that pool alone then I wouldn’t let him be there regardless of how old he is. Grrr.

Davies had a good lesson too, his style is really improving and he looks like he’s properly doing swimming strokes now rather than doggy paddling.

The kids both had showers and hair washes there rather than a bath at home as usual. We drove past the ice rink so we could have a quick look at it and definitely want to go there as soon as we have a free day to do so. Scarlett is motivated to find those gloves now ;).

Ady had already beaten us home and had a fire lit. Upstairs isn’t too cold anyway, the bathroom is freezing but as we’ve no hot water for baths it doesn;t really matter. Scarlett’s bedroom is often cold but with the back of the chimney, a hot water bottle in her bed and a heater on in there for an hour before bed it was fine. The kitchen is warm if you’re in there cooking and the fire is lit in the lounge, we don’t need to go in the playroom anyway so it’ll be fine.

I spoke to Dad and his plumber mate is away til the weekend. I’m fairly sure it’s the thermacouple that’s gone which is a small and easy job but beyond us really so we’ll wait. We’re focussing on how wonderful that first bath will be when it’s all working again.

I made the kids tea and boiled up more pans and kettles to fill the flasks with hot water for washing up. Davies and I watched 10000 BC which was fairly rubbish and pretty violent. Scarlett dipped in and out of it and did some DSing.

Then to make up for being shouty and not particularly engaged I read them the end of the Humphrey book which was the last six chapters, so we ended on a high note :).

Always make me smile 😉

It was Pulborough Brooks day today. We’ve not made the last two – in December it was the day after NicCamps and our mad day trip to France so we’d not got home til 2am the day before and if I recall correctly we weren’t actually even out of bed when we should have been meeting. In January the kids were both rough and it was pouring with rain and I had a rare moment of not being neglectful and unmaternal and pretended to be a grown up and keep them home in the warm and dry. The kids should have been there for Wildlife Explorers on Saturday but that was cancelled and we’ve not been out and about enough lately so I was of a Rain Or Shine mentality about it today and adamant we were going come what may.

Tasha sent me a text to say they weren’t up for it after all and due to both children wanting second helpings of breakfast and me getting caught up on the lastest downloaded DS game (picpic,it’s ace!) we were late to leave. For once we were suitably attired with raincoats and wellies. My car, which I’ve thought for a while has been a bit shakey about starting, with the tickover not sounding quite fast or throaty enough refused to start. We’ve had the Sharan for 7 years and aside from a battery that died it has never let me down so it was a bit of a shock. I have had my share of bangers over the years prior to owning decent cars though and managed to get it started.

Once we got there I paid for a couple of events later this year (one in May, one in August) that we’d picked out of the events leaflet and made a booking for but needed to confirm and pay. The children had a wander round the shop and spent some time doing a ‘spot the animals’ activity which Davies told me he’d read all of to Scarlett :). Then we headed off round the reserve. Although it was wet, very wet, it wasn’t cold and there was no wind so it wasn’t unpleasant to be out walking in and actually quite satisfying to be making good use of my lovely wellies again and splashing in puddles with confidence.

We had a look at the pond and spotted a few birds and several rabbits. We bumped into Katy who organises it on the way round – she was just leaving having already gotten soaked and both her children had fallen over in the mud. She is 8 months pregnant and blooming so we had a brief chat and then they headed for home and we carried on walking.

Scarlett wanted to walk in the stream, which has been fine during the summer but it was quite fast and full so I vetoed that idea. We talked to the cows for a while and then had a long conversation about what animals, crops and machinery we’d have if we ever lived on a farm. We decided on cows, pigs, ponies, sheep, a dog, several cats (I think Tarly settled on 14), hens, ducks, geese for livestock. Clearly if we had a farm it would be very comprehensive and diverse ;).

It was a shame the weather had kept others away but actually very nice to be walking along just the three of us chatting and finding the best puddles to take photos of. And, as predicted, it did us all good to get some fresh air and exercise.

On the way home having driven through a big puddle my car died again though. It was heading up a hill, which it tends to labour with anyway (it has no poke my car) and all the power went and it stalled. I managed to pull in to the side as much as possible and get my hazard lights on but we were across someone’s drive, at the bottom of a dip with limited visibility in the pouring rain :(. I had a few goes at starting it up, it instantly misted up as the engine wasn’t running and was flatly refusing to start again. I debated getting the kids out and onto the path and trying to flag someone down to either steer while I pushed or push while I steered to get us off the main road and decided to ring my Dad to get him on his way before dealing with it any further. We’ve not had breakdown cover on my car for a few years now as it has always been so reliable and we don’t use it really for long journeys so Dad was my best bet.

There was no signal on my phone though 🙁 No idea if that was due to the slight dip in the road, sods law or what but I was saved from having to deal with it further by having another go at turning it over again and getting it started. I was incredibly cautious about breaking down again and avoided any large puddles or sitting too close to cars infront and getting spray off the road but we made it home fine. Davies was very excited – ‘Have we actually broken down then?’ he said with delight :). Scarlett took it upon herself to be Puddle Monitor and assured me ‘you just need to drive Mummy, I’ll look out for puddles and tell you when they’re coming up’. :lol:They debated who would have been best to steer the car if I had to push it when I told them what my plans would have been if I’d not got it started. I explained neither of them would be steering it anywhere but agreed that I’d probably not been much older than Davies when I was steering my Dad’s van on it’s many breaking down adventures and bump starting while he pushed it escapades.

I think I might sort out some cheap breakdown cover though.

Once home we had popcorn for lunch. There was some debate about what to watch on TV but we found various things to entertain us and then they DS’d til teatime. I did some laundry processing and drank tea. Then made their dinner.

While it was cooking we all made banana and chocolate chip muffins together. I weighed out the ingredients, they chucked them in and operated the whizzer, Tarly chopped up the chocolate and Davies mashed the banana. He’s been wanting to do some baking for the last couple of days and we’d not gotten round to it at the weekend. Very nice they were too :).

They had dinner, followed by a couple of muffins, then did a bit more DSing until Ady got home. Lego Star Wars connecting is still a firm favourite with them. Those rumble packs were easily the best gift, next to the DSs of course, we’ve ever got them :).

We got onto the subject of whether there was anything really too hot to touch or whether that was a figure of speech which led somehow to talking about Simon Weston so Ady googled him to show the kids some pictures and told them a bit about him.

Then we read some more Humphrey. Really enjoying this series, very entertaining and with lots of little asides that offer little nuggets of information. Would highly recommend them – a bit Olga Da Polga-ish.

The kids went to bed, I made dinner, we watched tv and I played some more picpic until Davies’ DS ran out of charge 😳

Saturday We had half a plan to visit the allotment and go for a walk along the downs in the morning. Dad arriving just as we were getting motivated to get dressed scuppered that idea. It was lovely to see Dad though, he’s been calling over fairly regularly lately and it’s nice to just sit and chat with him. Ady brought us regular tea and coffee and then did something outside with the chickens. Davies and Scarlett spent some time watching Tom and Jerry cartoons and then joined Ady out in the garden too.

Dad did leave around lunchtime and after lunch we did indeed head out to the allotment and for a walk. It was cold but sunny and it was a bracing walk as much of it was either steeply up or down hill. Ady and I chatted about holiday plans for the year and fantasised about it being warm enough for camping again! 🙂

Davies and I took the woodland way back down the hill which involved scrambling over logs and fallen trees and getting tangled up in holly. I nearly lost my hat twice! Ady and Scarlett took the more sensible field route back down but were not much quicker due to stopping to pet all the dogs they met.

We called at Sainsburys on the way home. Ady and Davies went in while Tarly and I waited in the car. She took the opportunity to sit in the drivers seat and ask me questions about what all the pedals, gears and buttons on the dashboard did.

We then drove over the downs to Steyning which is a gorgeous drive with stunning views. Once we reached the top of the downs there was loads of snow still there. On the drive back the sun was setting and it was just beautiful. The reason for the diversion is that I have a training course in the library there on Thursday next week and I wanted to check out where the library is and what the parking situation was like first.

Back home the kids had tea and a bath and then begged for a sleepover in Davies’ room. As we had nothing planned for today we agreed and it was lovely listening to them chatting and giggling together. They went to sleep around midnight,of their own accord without us needing to berate them once.

We had an incredibly late dinner of tacos and fajitas, accompanied by much wine. It was a very nice evening :).

Sunday We paid the price for tired children with tears for no real reason several times and some stroppiness from Scarlett :(. I’d half planned to visit my parents but we never got there and Ady had half planned to sort out the cupboard under the stairs but that didn’t happen either.

Instead we had our roast chicken at lunchtime and stayed in.

Not sure if I blogged it but the kids got their WAA bronze certificates this week. They’ve already chosen which six activities they want to do for their silver, infact the Big Birdwatch from a couple of weeks ago is the first one. Second on their list was ‘feed the birds’ so we got some yoghurt pots and made holes for string, melted some lard and suet and collected together some seeds, nuts, raisins, grated cheese and the last of the crumbly Christmas cake and they mixed it all together and crammed it in the pots.


They went out with Ady to hang them from the tree where hopefully we’ll get some birds.

The woman across the road, known to us as Dragon Lady (the one who locked her estranged husband out last year) was taken away in an ambulance before Christmas and a couple of weeks ago when I saw her relatives bring all her belongings back I assumed she was coming home. Last week the kids and I got back from being out to see a funeral car dropping off the relations all dressed in black, so she clearly wasn’t coming back after all :(. It’s very sad. It also means the birds, who she used to religiously feed every day on a bird table in her front garden haven’t been fed for a while so hopefully will be attracted to our garden and haven’t already moved on.

Back indoors the kids sat down to write up the bird feeding. Davies started doing a lovely border around his which he then got bored of and just did a scribbly pattern around the rest. We had tears over that as I told him I thought he’d lost interest and ruined it. I’m a bit crap at pretending something looks wonderful when it doesn’t, particularly if I know he secretly knows that himself already. We worked it out and he cut the nice bit off ready to stick on a new bit of paper and finish nicely another time. He wrote out what we did with rather more help on the spelling that he was needing last time we did any writing but I’ll blame tiredness for that. Tarly did quite a bit of writing with Ady helping her, so we just need to do a little bit more on that one and that activity is finished.

They did some DSing and I put on the David Attenborough Darwin programme we recorded last night having not seen it last week. We all watched it with them zoning in and out for the interesting bits. I thought it was fab.

Ady then brought out the big box containing all our home videos over the years. We watched about 4 of them including one where Tarly is 8 months old and crawling while Davies is getting all ratty with her for touching his sticklebricks, a Centerparcs holiday around his third birthday, Christmas 2005 and 2006, Newgale and Oakwood with The Portico, The Clarks and The Ellis-Bones, some odd clips of The Portico kids and ours watching TV and singing and dancing, some of a younger Freya and Davies watching Shrek and eating pizza and quite a bit of Jack and Maisie. Was lovely to watch and see how much they have all changed and grown :).

We had lunch and carried on watching the videos then the kids got the train track out and played with that for a couple of hours building an elaborate track that went under the table and round the chair legs.

They went to bed about 8ish, we had baths and watched Lost and Friday Night Project. Tired stroppiness aside it’s been a lovely family weekend :).

I was off for the day being Nicola at the library.

It was baby rhyme time today – we had a good sized turn out of about 15 babies and 15 adults which is comfortable capacity in the junior section. I’m trying to ring the changes a bit with the songs as I’m getting bored of the same old ones. One of the toddlers, Maisie has taken a shine to me and tried to come and sit on my lap. My Dad always says kids and animals know when you are not interested in them and the more you ignore them the more interested in you they become. He’s right – I am the hit of Baby Rhyme time and all the while inside my head I am screaming ‘more away from me and take your snotty nose and your dribbly chin with you’!!!!

I did have a new couple come along for the first time with their tiny baby, he looked a bit like Phil from Phil and Kirsty and sang a rousing Little Peter Rabbit and came up afterwards to say thank you and how much they’d enjoyed it :). Positive feedback from adults I am rather more receptive to, generally they don;t try and climb on my lap!

That said I have made similar errors with both a colleague and a regular borrower too recently. The first is my colleague I decided to find common ground with so she’d stop patronising me and treating me like I was 12. That has worked so well she now seems to think we are best friends. This worries me as surely it’s only a matter of time before she asks me round for tea and then finds some way of publically damning me when she realises we’re not going to be walking round the library arm in arm dressed in matching outfits after all. The second is an alcoholic man who spends most of his day in the library on the internet. He is an artist (piss artist and art artist) who regularly displays his (actually very good) art work there. He is a very intelligent bloke who is articulate (when not slurring) and clearly has had something go wrong in his life to put him where he is now rather than where he could potentially have been. I’ve always been polite to him but he’s now seeking me out to ‘chat’ and breathe fumes over. I suspect always finishing at 5pm I am fairly safe, he usually only gets rowdy and abusive after 6pm and the police have regularly been called to remove him from the premises.

So anyway, work was fine ;).

Meanwhile at home Ady was here this morning but my Dad was around for most of it and they changed the blade on Dad’s chainsaw and chatted. Mum was here this afternoon. When I got in she was snuggled up on the sofa looking at Tarly’s DS with her. Scarlett seems to have had a nice day but Davies was very wobbly when I got in and got tearful twice in the hour between me getting home and going back out again to Rainbows with Scarlett.

Ady got home in time for Davies to stay here with him and they made pizza together and equilibrium seemed restored by the time we got home.

At Rainbows they made mosaic pictures – Scarlett was the only one who claimed to know what a mosaic was when the leader asked – made me wonder if it’s not on the reception and year one curriculum ;). They did some team games and then moved through for show and tell. I saw and knitted, which seemed to work in making me less accessible to the Rainbows to come and chat to me. Good :). Did I mention how I attract small people?

Scarlett took her kitty rucksack to show and tell which was dutifully cooed over. 🙂

Back home again I helped Davies finish his Ewok with a hood thing and an embroidered face. I’ve no real idea if it looks Ewok-y or not but Ady tells me it does. I’m really proud of Davies as he has pretty much done it himself and really enjoyed it 🙂 He’s very proud of himself too 🙂 Will take some photos tomorrow in daylight of it.

I read a couple of chapters of Humphrey and then they went to bed, Ady cooked dinner and I started knitting my next project – a jumper for me.

Soft play!

As part of my One Event A Month for local HEors today was a meet up at the local soft play place. I’d negotiated discount and we had a fair few people expected to come along although they all seemed to have 3 year olds!

Scarlett came and assisted me in getting a beef stew in the slow cooker (although I suspect more carrots were finding their way into her mouth than the crock pot and her stock cube sprinkling was a bit random), everyone was dressed and breakfasted with Davies having seconds of cereal while Tarly packed her knitty kitty rucksack full of two purses full of pennies that she insisted she wanted to bring along. As an aside I’m really pleased with the rucksack, very Tarly 🙂

I was planning on drinking a cup of tea and having a quick last minute check of my emails but the doorbell rang and it was my Dad. He wanted to borrow a petrol can (which I couldn’t find) and would probably have happily settled in for the morning but after a coffee and a chat with the kids (Davies told him all about something to do with Star Wars, Scarlett told him all about swimming lessons on Tuesday) we all left together which made us late.

We got to soft play and 3 lots of people were already there – one had gone in and the other two were waiting for us to arrive. Lucy and The Rs came, as did Tasha, Toby and Vinnie and we identified another family there too.

We had a nice few hours actually. Davies and Scarlett enjoyed it – playing with The Rs, Toby and an 11 year old boy. Aside from one brief spat which Tarly chose to run to me over rather than deal with by herself I didn’t really see them. They dealt really well with a little boy who was being really annoying to them and pinching and hitting them by going to see his mother. Unfortunately she chose not to deal quite so well with it by telling them off for telling tales 😯 – fortunately I didn’t learn about that until after the event as I may well have not been so calm about that. Grrr. Davies also apparently had a long chat with one of the members of staff about why they weren’t in school. He told me ‘I told her all about Home Education and how it all works and she thought it sounded really cool’ :).

We had lunch and Davies sat with Tasha and Toby, Tarly sat on the next table with me and a woman called Ina and her daughter. They were really nice and we’ve planned to meet up with them again. The children won’t necessarily get anything out of each other but Ina and I hit it off and she was interesting.

We left at about 3pm and walked down to the fabric shop to get some buttons for Tarly’s bag. While in there Davies asked for some material to make a cudddly Ewok. He chose some that was £30 a metre so I talked him down from that and we chose some felt instead.

Back at home we made the chocolate orange cupcakes they’d wanted to make yesterday and we’d got the ingredients for but not quite managed. It was a very collaborative effort, although I later iced them with chocolate orange buttercream. They are delicious :).

We then had a bit of a hiatus while I had a grumpy half an hour where I just wanted to be left alone to send a few emails and drink a cup of tea in peace, while Tarly wanted to show me every single frame of a DS game she was playing and Davies was nagging me to do something with him. Eventually I shouted and order was restored for a while. Davies got out some drawing stuff to make a picture of an Ewok to copy and Tarly managed to play DS quietly.

They had their dinner and ate two cakes each by which time I had calmed down and sent my emails.

Davies really wanted to do his Ewok and I’d said I was keen to get on with my knitting so he said he’d like to learn how to do it himself then. I helped him with the design and copied his picture onto the felt and cut it out. Next time I’d let him do that himself actually. I showed him a couple of types of stitch and we agreed on the best one then I threaded a needle for him and off he went.

I was actually really surprised at how fast and neat he was as he is not terribly coordinated with his hands. He turns out amazing art work but has only recently mastered using scissors with one hand so I thought sewing would prove quite tricky – not so! He’s asking for his own sewing kit now and claims to love it 🙂

He spent some time showing Scarlett how to do it and letting her have a go at a few stitches and then he sat on my lap and carried on sewing while we read some more chapters of Humphrey. Ady arrived home in the middle.

They went to bed, Davies appearing back downstairs a while afterwards with the Ewok sewn most of the way round so we turned it right side out and he’s going to stuff it tomorrow and then I’ll help him with finishing off and ‘decorating’ it to add features.

Bath, dumpling making (no tossing when at home, I save that for camp ;)), some Victorian Farm watching followed by the film Happy-go-lucky which I’ve really enjoyed (A went off to bed a while ago but liked what he did watch).