One word? When seven would do…

Thursday Was my working all day day. Ady was home in the morning and Mum came over after lunch. The children tell me they spent most of the day playing with the toy animals. The dinosaurs are enjoying a lot of attention again thanks to Prehistoric Park :).

My day was fine – fairly run of the mill. I spent a while chatting to an elderly lady in a wheelchair who was telling me how hard she finds it to accept her body can’t keep up with her mind any more. Next week I’m co-running an event tied in with the BBC My Story competition next week, which we’ve got a few people signed up for and I think will be an interesting afternoon. We’re doing a Halloween event tomorrow too and I feel like I’m finally pushing forward with some of the ideas and initiatives I’ve been pushing for the last couple of years.

Back at home Mum stayed for a cup of tea and a catch up. We really don’t see that mucj of my parents these days and I think it probably improves our relationship in many ways but it was nice to have a bit of a chat about various things. 🙂

Ady got home fairly late – nearly 7pm and rang to remind me we were supposed to be giving blood at 630pm which I’d forgotten and he wouldn’t be home in time for, so I rearranged it for a couple of weeks time.

When Ady arrived home we headed back out again to the seafront. The local Astronomical Society is holding a week long Moonwatching event on the beach this week. They have a variety of telescopes set up with various experts on hand to talk about what you can see. A couple of nights have been very cloudy including Monday when we’d planned to go originally but last night was nice and clear. One of the members is a HEor and keen to introduce local HEors to astronomy and forge links with the club so it had been promoted on local lists and there were 3 HE families there just last night, with more having already been earlier in the week. We had a brief chat about setting something else up soon so I will chase that up.

It was fab. We saw the moon at x50 and were able to clearly see the sea of tranquility and various named craters aswell as Jupiter and 3 visible moons (there is a fourth usually visible but it was either infront or behind Jupiter so not visible). I think it was more adults than children doing all the ‘wow’ ing but D and S enjoyed it just the same.

We saw T and M down there with some other friends so chatted to them briefly but it really was very cold and getting late so after watching the lasers coming off of the nightclub on the end of the pier and the kids discovering the cool effects of no-flash-wobbling-camera-around-on-light-things-on-a-dark-background (they’d both brought a camera with them) we came home again.

We caught the end of an interesting programe about racism (Ady and I, the kids had gone to bed already) and that was Thursday.

Friday The kids were playing with Ben 10 figures first thing, lining them all up in various formations and taking photos of them. I got up fairly late and after a cup of tea and checking my emails etc we decided to head off out. I wanted to check some more local charity shops for a school jumper for Davies’ Harry Potter outfit tomorrow night. We failed on that quest (bloody Harry Potter ;)) but did do rather well in one charity shop getting a jacket and pair of jeans for Tarly and another one getting a Euler’s disc which I have long thought were very cool for the bargain price of £3, a complete and unused Living & Learning – Horrible Science Explosive Experiments for £2 and a Planet Earth science set which I can’t find an online link for but includes all sorts of stuff such as landscape, rocks and minerals and loads of information. 🙂

We then went to the old fashioned sweet shop which we love. It is run by a bloke who was a couple of years above me in school and clearly just adores his job :). We chatted at length about sweets of old including Wham bars (still available but don’t keep well so he doesn’t stock them), spearmint chews (he went out the back and got me the current equivalent which are round and white with red and green stripes – totally taste like the old pink bobbly ones though) which I got a free one to try and fireball gobstoppers which he sells as small versions in boxes so I bought a box :). I got orange and lemon fizzbombs and sherbet pips, Davies got fizzbombs and gobstoppers, Tarly got gobstoppers and fizzy fishes after lengthy consultation with the guy about whether she preferred sucky or chewy, fizzy or fruity, big or small. We then talked about nostalgia which had the kids wanting to know a definition of – mine was remembering the good times fondly in a golden glow, his was a taste or smell of something taking you back to a happy memory and Davies summarised with ‘like how Daddy says Chrismas gets even better as you get older because you have a bank of memories to call on of good times gone by’ which had sweet shop man saying ‘your daddy is a wise man’ and all of us pausing to consider Ady and his wisdom (while I noisily ate my spearmint chew). We ended with ‘nostalgia, for under a fiver!’ and left promising to call again soon :).

In the car driving to town Davies talked about how that man has a job he really loves and how Davies has so many things he loves to do he doesn’t know which to choose to make his job. I suggested that he didn’t need to worry which was his actual job as long as he still got to do all the things he loved and that eg if he wanted to be an animator nothing would ever stop him being an animator even if that wasn’t the way he generated an income to pay bills. He liked that idea :).

We debated where to park and ended up back in the cheap out of town carpark again which is less than 10 minutes walk to town for about a quarter of the price. We’d left ourselves with not enough time to get drinks elsewhere though so had to pay Cinema Prices for a coke each for the kids before heading to the cinema screen next door to the main theatre. I’d never been to that screen before – Worthing had a big Odeon cinema when I was a kid where I remember queuing all the way round the block for things like ET, Jungle Book and Superman, oh and Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete’s Dragon. That was knocked down to make way for an arcade which now houses McDonalds. We also had The Dome, which has all sorts of historical resonance and was featured in the film Wish you were here but we always knew it as ‘the fleapit’. The manager used to come to my Mum’s restuarant every day for cooked lunch and we got in to see ‘Moonwalker’ for free as a result. I went to see The Witches there purely to see the trailer for Gremlins 2 once. My brother was in the audience too with a seperate group of his mates (smoking – back in the day when you could smoke on the side aisles but not in the main aisle) and we called to each other across the cinema in the dark getting loads of ‘shusshh’ ing.

The Dome is still there along with two way smaller screens at The Connaught theatre, once of which is The Ritz. The main screen, where we saw This Is It on Wednesday I’ve been to a handful of times – to see Shirley Valentine with my Mum, to see the only Indiana Jones film I’ve ever seen with my friend Vicky who was a huge fan, to see Fame with my not-swinger friend Rose a couple of weeks ago. It’s also the same theatre I recall going to see panto in as a child – once we had a box, my Granny must have paid for it as we were there along with my aunt, uncle and cousin Daniel – I remember Frazer, Daniel and I shouting abuse at Captain Hook and then ducking down in the box in delight when he looked up at us.

But I digress…..

So I’ve never been to screen two, aka The Titz before and what a lovely old building it is with fancy chandeliers and coving and ceiling roses. We were front row as is Davies and Scarlett’s preference and suits me both in terms of leg room and in thinking I would be balling at UP so would prefer to disturb the least amount of people possible. We really enjoyed the film, deeming it ‘happy and sad’. I shed a tear or three but no sobbing and there were several laugh out loud funny moments. Overall a very good film we thought.

A circuitous route home taking in several more charity shops and the CoOp for a few bits for dinner. Once home I cooked dinner, Ady arrived home, the kids watched and then I read some of before everyone got distracted by trying to find Halloween fancy dress.

D & S finally went to bed, I have drunk too much wine and been rather slushily telling Ady that I am glad I am sharing my life’s adventures with him and watching Armstrong and Miller. Really should go to bed so I am on top form to be a witch tomorrow ;).

I booked tickets to take Davies and Scarlett to see the Michael Jackson film ‘This is it’ about 3 weeks ago, it opened today at our local cinema. I wouldn’t class myself as a MJ fan particularly but my brother liked him when we were kids so there have always been his albums around, Ady saw him perform at Wembley probably about 20 years ago too and I think we had at least 2 of his cds around. I remember going to see Moonwalker when it came out. I guess he was just always a star from my earliest memory. Sadly he is probably the most poignant example of the dark side of celebrity really and was clearly very messed up :(. In the aftermath of his death when his songs were *everywhere* Davies and Scarlett, like many other kids I suspect (well I know actually from listening to children) got into his music, have been watching Moonwalker and Scarlett bought her first cd with her own money and chose Bad (so that will be a question she answers for years to come). So when the film was announced I thought the kids would enjoy it. I booked it so far in advance it would have been annoying to be asked daily ‘how many days til…?’ so I just didn’t tell them.

This morning when they asked what we were doing today I said we needed to go into town to look round charity shops for material for the Halloween costumes they want (we’re going to a Harry Potter Halloween party – Davies wants a school jumper and cloak to go as HP himself, Scarlett wants something white and fluffy to be the owl) but then I decided I was doing them out of some excited anticipation so gave Davies the tickets which he read out to Scarlett and they both jumped around the room for a bit :).

We had an early lunch and drove into town. Parking was interesting – everywhere in the town centre is short stay only and we needed up to 4 hours. There is a NCP car park right next to the theatre/cinema but when we pulled in and checked the price it would have been £7.20 for 4 hours!!!! 😯 so we parked a further five minute walk away for £2.20 instead.

There followed a rather frustrating hour of the kids just being a bit dozy. We don’t go into town very often any more and I remembered why – it’s busy, boring and full of people smoking – I was shocked at just how many people were outside shops holding fags at kid height. We bought some sweets from the market – the woman was selling shallow plastic trays with lids filled with sweets for £1 each which I thought was pretty good and meant we’d get reusable containers too so they chose a tray each, but faffed about in doing so. We then went to Poundland which must be newly opened and was heaving. I got really fed up with the kids asking for stuff in every shop and being gormless about not getting in people’s way – very possibly more about me being intolerant than them being annoying but I was getting irritated just the same.

We got to the cinema and I booked tickets for Up on Friday – it’s loads cheaper than the nearest big cinema, less distance to travel and we get to book specific seats – by all accounts I’ll need to wear waterproof mascara though. If you book online you pay for having the tickets sent to you so I saved the booking fee as we were there anyway.

The film was okay I thought. Davies enjoyed it and sat singing along and taking it all in. It didn’t hold Scarlett as much though, although she liked the actual singing and dancing bits she got bored of all the inbetweeny bits and was fidgetty. At one point she knocked her can of drink over and it spilt in her tray of sweets and she was just irritating. On the way home they started squabbling and being generally noisy and silly in the car and I really ranted at them when we pulled up at home about being ungrateful and annoying and acquistive. I left them to clear the car out of all the sweet wrappers, sticks and other stuff they had strewn across the back seats and marched in the house to put their tea on. As always my crossness never lasts long and by the time I’d cooked some pasta, put the chickens away and made myself a cup of tea I was fully recovered.

The kids had gone upstairs when they came in and I assumed they were (rightly) keeping out of my way for a bit but when I called them for their tea they presented me with an envelope inside which was a card with the following written on it and signed by them both:
“To Mummy, wr sory abat wot we did today los of love Davies & Scarlett”

We had lots of cuddles, I assured them that I was being grumpy too and 99%of the time they are superstars and that was the end of that. Cunning children ;).

Ady came home and I read stories – we had Ruby by Colin Thompson, The Rainbow Bearand Blodin the Beast

Then they went off to bed for a fairly early night for them, I had a bath and cooked a medley of sausages, bacon and roasted veg and we watched Is Anybody There? which captured Ady so little he went off to bed and I possibly only watched to the end because I couldn’t be bothered to get up and turn it off.

The plus side of the clocks going back is everyone is waking early-for-us at the moment. I don’t seem to be managing to get to bed correspondingly early though (and actually neither do the children) so I suspect it is not long term plus.

Davies and Scarlett used their early start to catch up on yesterday’s Life [DVD]
that Ady had recorded. They are really enjoying it. They then watched some more Prehistoric Park [2006] [DVD] (or as we call it ‘Nigel’) including some of the dvd extras.

I made some bread dough and simmered the chicken bones from Sundays roast with some salt and pepper, onions, garlic and carrot to make a stock for chicken soup for lunch. We also had four bananas that were rapidly going manky so I made some banana and choc chip muffins with them.

Then we sat down with the pile of Colin Thompson books we have borrowed from the library and all chose one book to inspire us and set about doing a drawing based on his work. Scarlett struggled with the ‘freeness’ of the idea of not drawing a specific thing and made a valiant attempt at ‘going where her pencil took her’ but it not her thing really. She did a fab wheel which she had a person running round in, hamster wheel stylee, which she then turned into a wheel on a car but she then got distracted by drawing a couple of monsters. Davies really got into it and drew a bookcase filled with books which all had various other things going on it them, some were houses or castles, some had ladders to climb up, two resting against each other made a slide. It’s very pale watercolour pencil so hasn’t photographed very well but I love the detail and imagination that he’s put into it, he totally got the idea of recreating some of Thompson’s ideas. I drew a big tree trunk and tried to have loads of things made from wood in it including a table and chairs, a grand piano, a windmill, various staircases,a window frame looking out onto the same sky in miniature as was behind the tree, a bed with a patchwork cover which put me in mind of a wall so I drew Humpty Dumpty on it and then in seperate places had a king on a throne and running down one branch a load of horse and down another a load of men. I quite liked the idea of a nursery rhyme or fairy story picture, might explore that further another time.

Then we had lunch. We all had fresh baked bread and chicken soup and watched Horrible Histories and Trapped which we on TV but I turned over when Basil Brush came on and we watched some Big Cook, Little Cook.

I then wanted everyone to watch Alien Worlds [DVD] which I’d borrowed when it came up on Amazon suggested alongside Prehistoric Park and thought looked interesting. Prehistoric Park is about a time machine existing and allowing a zoologist (Nigel) to go back and rescue now extinct creatures and bring them to a wildlife park. It’s based on known facts and scientific surmises and employs very good special effects, a real vet and real naturist along with some actors to, in my opinion, very good effect. Alien Worlds promised to do similar with speculation about planets discovered capable of hosting life and what that life might be like. But it lacked all the punch, passion and drama of Prehistoric Park so after my specified 10 minutes we gave up on it.

Davies got out his animation station and made some plasticine figures using one of the new background pictures Ady printed off for him while Scarlett did some more drawings.

Then it was time for swimming. I’d decided not to go in today, partially because I wanted to watch their lessons so Davies went off to swim in the big pool while Tarly had her lesson. It was only her and one other girl, Sophie today so they had a good lesson. There were more in Davies’ class though. Tarly sat and DS’d while Davies had his lesson and then we were out in record time and came home via the chip shop for their tea as we had time.

Ady arrived home not too long after us and I headed back out again for my course. Week 5 of 9 tonight so nearly 2/3 through. I had another couple of comments about how great D and S had been yesterday and a firm offer from Sheila, the retired woman who is on the course and used to teach music for us to go to her house so she can teach the kids some music. She has a piano, folk harp and various percussion instruments and has taught groups and individuals music and singing over many years. I’ll be cautious as to quite how it would work but potentially hopeful that her and the children could all get something from each others company. We’ve exchanged numbers and said we’ll get together once our course is over.

Tonight was about Green Cones and Green Johannas which I now know loads more about than I did when I woke up this morning! We also covered some of the ideas we’d had in groups last week about waste prevention, a debrief from yesterdays visit and a talk from someone who did the course 18 months ago and is now a volunteer Waste Prevention Advisor (WPA) involved in loads of initiatives and really out there making a difference. Feel very motivated and excited about the whole thing at the moment, which is of course the point of the course :).

Home for a bath and very late but very delicious dinner of saute potatoes, sweetcorn and the first pheasant of the season – yum!

This morning was a field trip for my Waste Prevention Advisors course to a MRF (said as ‘murf’) which stands for Materials Recycling Facility. It’s a new all singing, all dancing jewel in the crown of West Sussex County Councils recycling that opened earlier this year complete with classroom and viewing platform. I’d asked ages ago if Davies and Scarlett could come along and had it agreed before realising it was half term. Several other people asked last week if they could bring their children and were told no, it was fully booked so I was a bit nervous about rolling up with D and S and had pre-warned them about ‘impeccable behaviour’ which is our current family joke after I’d lectured them about my expectation of their behaviour while being looked after by Elizabeth last week. As we left Scarlett informed me ‘we have done impeccable behaviour Mumma. Haven’t we Elizabeth?’ 😆

We arrived and were greeted by the Education Officer who runs the visits for both adults and children. She talked to the children and said she was worried they might be bored so while we talked and looked at slides perhaps they’d like to design their own cloth bags before giving them a blank cloth bag each and a huge tub of fabric pens. They were delighted with this and spent the whole time we were being talked to and shown slides decorating their bags.

We started with an overview of the site, how it came to be built and what it’s targets and aims are. We then were shown the way the plant works by way of a flow diagram and shown some videos and some live webcam shots from around the plant. Scarlett pretty much kept her head down as many of the slides were just text but she did watch all the films and camera stuff and clearly loads was going in as it very much shaped her drawings on her bag. Davies participated more fully and was following the slides aswell as decorating his bag.

We then donned high-vis vests and hardhats with built in ear defenders which plugged into hand held radios. They are two way radios but we were just using them to hear a running commentary from Jen, our guide. I had to lie about Scarlett’s age and claim she was already seven as that is the youngest children are allowed on the viewing platform but I suspected 6 weeks tacking on her age wasn’t too criminal!

The viewing platform gave us a fab birds eye view of the whole operation; 93 conveyor belts dealing with all of the recyclable material that comes in from household waste collection including paper, cardboard, glass, some plastics, foil, aluminium, steel. It is an amazing place running with a tiny amount of actual staff. Waste comes direct off the lorries and has an initial human eye cast over it to pull out large cardboard and any obviously not recyclable materials. It then makes it’s way to a big drum with various sized holes which spins it and waste falls out onto appropriate belts depending on size and weight. Next it passes under giant magnets which pick up aluminium and throw that to a different belt, then past an eddy current which repels steel sending that to a different belt again, glass and paper/card fall through on weight grounds until it is just plastics left. Finally a light reflecting machine similar to bats echolocation shoots beams of light at the plastics and determines by how quickly it is reflected back what density it is and therefore what type of plastic, then directs blasts of air at items to push them to the correct belts. Everything has a last human eye cast over it to check before being baled into cubic metre bales (except for glass) ready for collection off the relevant destination for recycling.

Photos are rubbish as the belts move soooo fast it was practically impossible to get any photo that wasn’t a blur

We then headed back to the classroom. The children and I spent some time looking at the displays on the walls particularly the one charting how old water bottles can be turned into fleece jumpers along with jars of each step of the way displayed for you to touch and feel.

There was another display showing rubbish, what new raw material it could be made into and then an example of what that could be turned into (water bottles to fleece, old baked bean tins to paperclips, tetrapacks to cardboard boxes etc.). The children went off to wash their hands and then Davies got chatting to the old lady on my course for quite a while. I was also complimented on ‘how cute’ the children were and how well behaved they’d been. The old woman came up to me afterwards to check she’d understood correctly that they don’t go to school and asked a few questions. She then offered to help with music lessons if they were interested and said she’d love to talk to me about Home Ed more another time :).

We then had a Q&A session and some more general information on recycling. Davies asked a question and we learnt about some end destinations for materials recycled from Ford. All the glass from there is currently being ground up and used as aggregate for the M25 road widening happening at the moment. We were amused to think we drove past our old wine and beer bottles at the weekend! Davies and Scarlett both added a note to the feedback wall about what they’d learnt and then we left.

I was really proud of them both, they did indeed behave impeccably, listened and learnt, were very interested and engaged and both did fab designs on their bags. Hurrah for my babies! 🙂

I’d made sandwiches to eat in the car and both children are very convinced by my homemade bread 🙂 Need to get into the groove of making the dough and getting a loaf in the oven with dinner each night now. We just about got to the petrol station for fuel leading to a chat about how very expensive petrol is and what journeys we’d done in the car since I put £25 in last week, which was more economical (long or short journeys) and which we could try and not use the car for (not many really). I said the car was our third biggest expense each month after the mortgage and food and we concluded that while we try really hard to walk rather than use the car if possible being without it would really hamper our lifestyle and restrict the things we do but that it does come with a financial and environmental cost.

We also had a talk about lineage to the throne brought about by Davies asking about the queen dying on Tales of Despereaux (film we saw at the cinema last week) which had me naming all the royal family I could and placing them in line to the throne. We concluded that was rather like Top Trumps and I got wobbly around trying to decide if a son born to William would be higher in line than Andrew or not. Still not sure actually as hypothetical offspring don’t appear on the wikipedia page I found 😆 Tried to decide if Philip outlived Elizabeth would be become known as ‘The King Father’ in the style of ‘The Queen Mother’.

We arrived at the park and Mel, Liam and Lily were not far behind. I’m really glad we persist in meeting each school holiday as while the children take a while to warm up to each other again with a break of a couple of months each time I like Mel a lot and I always enjoy hearing Tales from the Front Line of School ;). Davies and Scarlett led a game based on Prehistoric Park although Liam seemed a bit confused and asked if Davies really had a time machine at home. Not sure if Davies is a very convincing liar or Liam just doesn’t get the imaginative play D and S do 😆 Lily also asked if it was true D and S don’t go to school which amused me as Liam asked me that about 3 years ago so I’d always assumed she knew and accepted it. Ady says kids can be very unobservant like that and next time we see them one of them will probably ask if Davies and Scarlett are really brother and sister! 😆

I got slightly cross at one point when Scarlett was playing on a piece of play equipment in the playground and a queue formed behind her of children wanting a go. I think she was initially oblivious and then got cross about being hassled to get off it. She ended up with about 7 children waiting and then a grown up (presume she had a child in the queue) all telling her to get off it while she ignored them all and carried on. The woman was very persistant and I could see her talking to Liam who had already come over to tell me Scarlett was holding up the queue and I’d said she would get off when she’d finished. Liam then pointed out Davies to the woman and I could see her telling him to ‘go and get your Mum’ and him refusing. Eventually I called Scarlett over as I could tell she was getting stressed and sure enough she came over and sat on my lap and cried. She’d felt really pressured but as usual the more she was hassled the less inclined she was to lose face and back down. The thing with Scarlett is if you ask nicely or even say ‘I’d really like a go on that when you’ve finished’ she is so good natured she would probably hop down straight away or at least be mindful of you waiting but if you try and wade in with demands about taking turns she will dig her heels in. There had clearly been a ‘rent a mob’ mentality to the queue forming too as they all had really brief goes and then abandoned the thing anyway so she got to go back and play to her hearts content on it. It just pissed me off that this woman had gotten involved at all, that in a free park someone felt the need to manage turn taking and that an adult had been happy to create some sort of bullying mob atmosphere round a child. I didn’t go over as I’d have been likely to tell Scarlett to be as long as she bloody well liked and while I appreciate her behaviour was probably quite annoying to those waiting in line I am nonetheless proud of her for biting her lip and standing her ground.

We stayed until about 4pm and then all left; Davies and Scarlett had gymnastics while Liam and Lily both had friends coming over for sleepovers tonight.

Kids watched another Prehistoric Park while eating tea and then back out again to gymnastics. I’d had an email to agree a sweat band would be fine for Davies and that all went smoothly tonight. There were only two other children in their group tonight and the gym was very quiet. Not sure if people had assumed it wouldn’t run in half term or were away or ill or what but it was great for D and S to get such individual attention.

I came home again and Ady had already arrived home so we caught up with each others’ days and then went to collect the kids, arriving a bit early so we could watch the last ten minutes. We had planned to go to the beach afterwards as there is a Moonwatch week event being run by the local astonomy club with big telescopes on the beach to see the moon and Jupiter which is also currently visible but it was really cloudy tonight so we decided nothing much would be visible and we’ll plan to go another night this week instead.

Home for some stories – we have a pile of Colin Thompson books so we re-read and and all of which are just beautiful, with the most amazing illustrations.

Kids went to bed, they are both looking pale and wan and tired bless them although neither of them fell asleep very early. I cooked tacos for dinner and we’re planning a quiet day at home tomorrow.

give or take an extra hour or so…

So Friday then. I worked all day. In the morning it rained really, really heavily just at the point I had to go to the bank to pay in takings. I did find a brolly from lost property to take but the bank clerk had a laugh at my expense anyway by asking if I was the ‘new girl’ being sent out in the rain.

It was Baby Rhyme Time and I had a medium sized crowd of 10 babies and 10 grown ups. I took requests and someone asked for ‘Five Currant Buns’ which I tried, and failed, to get some ‘audience participation’ for with the children calling out their names but they all just looked scared 😆

I managed to tick off another of the ‘dares list’ by changing the Senior Library Assistant’s 11am slot on the timetable to ‘see how I look in tights’ which caused general levels of hysterics 😆

The rest of the day passed in a blur of the usual checking books in and out, putting them back on shelves and other such library related stuff.

Back at home Ady had been here in the morning and done packing up the car ready for the weekend, my Mum had been here in the afternoon and my Granny had also come over to visit. Ady got home early to find Mum, Granny and the kids all sat watching Deal or No Deal 😆 Not sure what else they’d all been up to.

I chucked my change of clothes in a bag and we were off again by 530pm which was pretty good going. In order to get us and 3/5 of Salmon children in Sheffield for the 9am start of Ben’s birthday party on Saturday morning it was necessary for us to be there the night before. Katy’s Saturday morning job prevented them from managing this so we’d arranged to collect J, K and M on the way filling our car to capacity and slightly freaking both Ady and I out with the responsibility of 5 children!

We had a pretty smooth journey considering it was Friday night rush hour, M25 on the alleged busiest day of the year on the roads. When we set off satnav said 8.10, we actually arrived just after 830pm which I thought was amazingly good going. Dartford was busy and we hit a couple of other busy spots but kept moving the whole time.

Pick up complete we hit the road again and the second part of the journey was two hours and was equally as smooth. 3 DSs and 2 pairs of headphones for the dvd player were shared between the 5 children completely harmoniously with lots of collaborative playing and watching. Mostly Deal or No Deal on DS and Doctor Who on dvd. I had a very heartwarming moment when Davies, Scarlett, K and J started talking about Davies’ Doctor Who party and how cool it had been and how much they’d all enjoyed it, remembering their outfits and games they’d played. I love listening to children ‘chat’ anyway but hearing them talk about something over 2 years ago, particularly something I’d put a lot of effort into making happen was really nice to eavesdrop on :).

Ady and I had a chat about what life would have been like if we’d had a bigger family. We did only ever plan two children and they came along precisely as planned taking just 3 months to conceive each time but after we had Scarlett we did know several families with 3 or 4 children and did briefly talk about more. It was very brief as we’d always said we wanted even numbers so 3 would have meant 4. We concluded we were happy with two, decided the positives of a smaller family outweighed the positives of a larger family for us and have always been happy with that decision. I certainly have never felt broody but then I’m not big on babies but a car full of older children was actually quite nice :).

We got to Babs at 11pm, the five kids had been utter stars and remained being utter stars as J,K and M went straight to the room they were sleeping in, bid us goodnight and we didn’t see or hear any more from them. Davies and Scarlett were equally as good once we’d ironed out who was sleeping where – we had a triple sleeper bunk and a single air bed but both kids wanted to be in the proper bed and I didn’t think either Ady or I would want to be on the top bunk or the air bed so I persuaded them to share the top bunk and left them to it. They were equally as peep-free as the Fish children :).

Babs really pulled late night dining out of the bag with a steak fondue. There were chips, warm bread rolls and 3 (count ’em) home made dips all of which were delicious. Really enjoyed the meal, both as we were starving and as it was lovely :). I think we headed to bed about 130am which was early for us really but we were conscious of an early start in the morning and frankly knackered from a long day at work and a second shift of driving halfway up the country afterwards.

Saturday Neither Ady or I had slept well – I don’t like the claustrophobic feeling of bunk beds, both children are quite joisy sleepers and I always sleep badly when fretting about getting up on time in the morning. I was brought a cup of tea by Babs though and missed out on the bedlam that was feeding all those children croissants and orange juice downstairs before packing them into the two Touran convoy and waving off Chris and Ady to Laserquest. They didn’t have a smooth run of it as they both struggled to find both the place itself and anywhere to park but after a slight delay they were all in and laserquesting to their hearts content. Apparently it was fab, both my two loved it and would definitely go again.

Babs and I drank tea, ate crossiants, chatted at length (which was lovely, I could spent weeks on end with Barbara and never run out of conversation, wish we lived closed and could just hang out more),we did some maths, talked parenting and Home Ed and finally did what we were actually left behind to do and peeled and chopped some veg, cooked some pizzas and set the table up ready for the onslaught of 11 children hungry from questing with lasers.

Food was consumed, ice cream was delivered and birthday cake was candled, sung to, blown out and eaten up.

Some of the children left and the remaining ones either played some game which must have involved jumping off the bed given the thudding it created downstairs (that’d be Rachael and Scarlett then) or sat and watched Doctor Who (that’d be everyone else including Ady, Chris and I), then Babs lured me away with the promise of cider and it wasn’t long before Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex arrived so Kirsty joined Babs and I, James joined Chris and Ady in the lounge to watch football and the kids joined the rest of the kids inside and out being rowdy or quiet depending on whether they were playing with sticks in the garden or DSs in the bedrooms. The reunion between Alex and Scarlett was touching and emotional ;).

We left at 5pm as my parents weren’t around to deal with the cats and chickens this morning so we wanted to get back to be home to do it ourselves. We were also conscious of the drive and a second late night for the kids plus it meant we vacated a space for the remaining half of the Salmon family, who sadly didnt make it there before we left but I imagine probably crossed us on the other side of the M1 at some point along our way.

The drive home was uneventful and the satnav predicted 4 hours although we prolonged it by stopping at Sainsburys for some food supplies so arrived home at 930pm. We decided to put all the clocks back an hour there and then to make ourselves feel better 😆 The kids had some toast and then went off to bed, we had a curry, Ady went to bed, I tried to stay up and blog and watch the repeat of X Factor but fell asleep over my laptop and woke up at 2am very cross with myself :(. Staggered to bed, fell asleep straight away and managed to forget to take my contact lenses out so woke this morning with that ‘I’m cured!’ moment of believing in miracles and then suffered cloudy vision for the rest of the day!

Sunday A lovely sunny day here today. Davies and Ady spent some time looking at Xbox games on ebay and amazon while Scarlett did some painting. She’s really into her painting at the moment and her typical subject matter is animals. I remembered we had a book showing how to draw various things step by step which I thought was on Davies’ bookcase. He went off to look but came back saying he couldn’t find it which led me to peer at all the bookcases in the house getting increasingly pissed off at the state of all of them. A task for the coming week I feel as it’s still bugging me now. She did some very good giraffes, rhinos and pelicans though. I think I need to pick up on this a bit really as I know when Davies showed inclinations towards such things I was very hands on about it and suspect I don’t pick up as quickly with Scarlett. Which doesn’t seem to have done any harm it has to be said and I believe her motivation is strong enough with her alone but I don’t want to miss a chance to encourage or assist.

I needed to take the rather overflowing kitchen waste to the composter at the allotment and we’ve been rather neglectful of the plot of late so I wanted to cast an eye over it too plus we needed something to roast for dinner so Scarlett and I headed off out. Ady spent some time with the chickens – they need new chipped bark but it always slighty freaks them out so we decided to rake up half of the existing bark to the area we have to walk on and leave the other half to dirt for now. We don’t need to walk on it and the chickens prefer it as they can scratch around for worms and bugs in it. All seems to be well in the coop with no real politics happening in there at the moment. The new chicks seem to be fitting in just fine and the hens all seem nice with the second cockerel seeming as good natured as the first. He’s yet to start crowing though so that could be a deal breaker for him depending on pitch and frequency.

Davies had delcared it a pj day for him and spent most of it gaming of some description.

The allotment was fine, I’ll blog about that in the relevant place soon. Scarlett and I headed off on a mission for free range chicken. My preferred supermarket is probably Co-Op as I like their ethics and they actively promote British Food and Fair Trade so we went there first. I did get some bargains on fruit and veg but no free range chickens. We tried Asda next but no f/r there either 🙁 So I dropped Scarlett back home and headed to Sainsburys for the chicken.

Back home again Scarlett a carried on with her painting, Davies went to sort out his bookcase (and did a fine job of both that and tidying up his room a bit too) and Ady tackled the playroom, specifically the cupboard under the stairs. I also filed some paperwork and got out my car insurance documents as my windscreen has an ever increasing crack in it which needs replacing before the MOT in December so I wanted to check the excess for that (£60 boo 🙁 ).

I decided to cook dinner and while I was in the kitchen for a couple of hours poured myself a glass of wine and decided to make full use of the oven being on. I found some apples in the fruit bowl that were dying and beyond eating so grated them for the basis of mincemeat for mincepies and muffins at Christmas. I then make two Christmas cakes and called everyone in the kitchen to have a stir and make a wish as it out tradition. We’ve been talking again about making rather than buying bread so I decided to bake a loaf (we don’t have a breadmaker and are trying to decide if buying one is a worthwhile investment so decided we’d bake bread for a while and see if it gets eaten / moaned about). Dinner was delicious – I catered for everyone’s whims so we had roast chicken, roast and mashed potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots, peas, sweetcorn and broccoli, stuffing, yorkshire puddings, gravy and cranberry sauce. All four plates contained different combinations :). All four were empty at the end and everyone had loads of vegetables too :).

We ate dinner while watching episodes 1-4 of which we all really enjoyed. We have disc 2 to watch another time.

Then it was time for Total Wipeout which I can’t stand so I went off to have a bath. Davies and I had an interesting conversation about things needing to educate, amuse or entertain and if they didn’t achieve that then they were of no use and how that was an individual, subjective thing. I didn’t tell him the phrase ‘neither use nor ornament’ but I should have done as he’d told me the definition of it all by himself.

The kids went to bed, I watched X Factor (which many, including residents of my own household deem as tripe as Total Wipeout ;)). I think an early night is in order for me too.

We went to our only NSFW screening for this year this morning. I’d booked Longleat for Monday without realising it was film week which wrote Monday off and then I worked yesterday and am working again tomorrow which only left Tuesday and today free. I did try and book films for Tuesday and another for next week but the only booking that came through was for todays. In the same way as I have gotten carried away with RI lectures though I have had to restrain myself from booking films we’re not really bothered about seeing or from travelling way further than is cost effective even when the film is free. I’d have liked to have seen the flamingo film which was one we didn’t get and also Ice Age 3 as we missed that when it was on general release, but never mind.

So today was The Tale of Despereaux which I’d never heard of and neither had the kids. I quite like going to the cinema without expectations of a film though and it was certainly not one we would have chosen otherwise. We were there early enough to nip to the cheapo shop in the marina for some additional sugary snacks and drinks and then we got to the cinema. It was a very poor turnout although we did see Toby and Ryan there we are confirmed front row watchers whereas they prefer to hang out nearer the back so we didn’t sit together.

Actually I thought the film was pretty good, nothing dramatic in terms of clever plot lines, amazing effects, fab cinematography or any other twiddly bits but a nice story, a few laughs, a few tense moments and a happy ending. Can’t ask for more really I don’t think. It was narrated by Sigourney Weaver and was very much in the style of Desperate Housewives narration, it even made me wonder if the name was a clever spin on it and once that nagging ‘what does this remind me of?’ question had been answered I sat there thinking surely everyone else who has ever seen Desperate Housewives must be thinking the same.

Davies and I enjoyed the Mouse School bits and lectures about ‘learning to be scared and needing to be timid’, we both liked the irony there and Scarlett enjoyed the simplicity of the tale. They both said they enjoyed it afterwards.

We left the Marina and headed to Ali’s where we had a very nice few hours chatting, playing and generally hanging out. The children pretty much pulled off being in each others company and getting along and Ali and I made a bit of a dent in our being in each others company deficit from last week’s early finish.

We left later than planned and detoured to Tesco for garlic bread and a sweat band for Davies for gymnastics next week. I’ve tried a few places and failed to find one but Tescos did have a skull one in their Halloween gimicks display so we’ve got that sorted now. I am still very tempted by the one Liza linked to in her comment though… 😉 I also bought a load of hair slides which were all reduced from several pounds to pence for some reason including some of their fancy Finest range and some branded ones like Babyliss. I’ve decided, for now, to grow my hair long again so wanted some nice things to decorate it with to stop me getting bored of it and chopping it all off again. I got loads of sparkly, pretty things for about a fiver :). Still hate Tescos though, it’s been months since I was in one.

Back home for a pasta tea for the kids, putting the chickens away and catching up with Ady who arrived home a while after us. We finished the end of the Roddy Doyle book we’ve been reading, explained what the protest being covered on the news was about and who the BNP are and the kids went off to bed with an Argos catalogue each and Davies has started on his Christmas list. I’m slightly grr-y about this both on the basis that Ady brought home two great big catalogues just half an hour after I’d lectured the kids about NOT needing two of the same leaflet advertising Tesco’s Christmas range as we’d rather less trees were cut down and fewer leaflets were produced / needlessly taken home. I also have issues somehow with the creation of a list and the fact that Davies has suddenly got over £100 worth of stuff he wants and will clearly not be getting anywhere near that. Hmmmm…

Another early start today as Ady was dropping Davies and Scarlett off at Elizabeth’s to play with T and M while I worked this morning. I helped chivvy breakfast consumption and getting dressed and waved them off before getting dressed myself and spending some time with the chickens.

Work was very brisk and busy, just the way I like it to be. I spent some time on the counter where I was very efficient, some time shelving where I was equally efficient, some time off sending out overdue letters and then doing the closing up. I like Wednesday mornings :).

I drove over to Elizabeth’s realising on the way I’d not given her the library phone number or any of my usual list of contact details and other such ‘in case of emergency’ stuff. I arrived at their house to spot a note taped to the front door at which my heart sank but it was just to say they had gone to the local park and to go and meet them there. The note gave driving instructions so I did drive but it was easily walkable. I stood for a good couple of minutes quite close observing them all before they realised I was there. Scarlett impressed me with her ability to do the monkey bars really well and we all went back to their house. I drove and Davies and M chose to come with me while Elizabeth walked with Scarlett and T. Apparently Tarly spent the whole time telling them all about komodo dragons which had been on the Life programme she’d watched with Ady last night. We beat them back by a short time so let ourselves in and I put the kettle on and we all had lunch.

The kids went off to play in the garden while Elizabeth and I chatted. She is very good friends with Imran who was one of the HE parents at the Select Committee so she was telling me his feedback from that and we chatted about the whole thing generally before moving onto other stuff. As always, an enjoyable couple of hours in very easy company.

We left with enough time to get home and changed before Badgers and thanks to very light traffic Scarlett and I had time to snuggle up and read a book together too.

At Badgers Julie asked me if Davies and Scarlett would be there for the Remembrance Day parade, I said they would and she then asked if Davies would like to be the Badger to lay the wreath. I said I was sure he would – and having asked him afterwards was right, he’d love to.

Our usual friends were both there so we waited another 10 minutes for Ady to arrive and then all went to Lidl together. We picked up some advent calendars for the kids and a few other bits aswell as eyeing up a waffle-maker. We walked back again and lurked in the corridor outside Badgers. They asked outright about Davies and Scarlett and school this week as they’d been wondering how come we had so many day trips to London on week days so when we mentioned Longleat this week it was enough to ask. Both were fairly laid back about it with a simple ‘oh right’ type answer although I suspect more questions will come up over time.

Back home again for toast for the kids and some more before bed for them.

I’m sure there is probably more but I can’t think of it.

This morning I bimbled about getting a stew in the slow cooker for later, making a picnic and dealing with the chickens in daylight. The kids did some drawing and also bimbled about really. Our plan was to head to Julie’s where she was waiting for a bulk food order to be delivered and then head to the woods for a walk if it arrived early enough to allow time.

But then Julie rang to say she’d forgotten she’d booked the farrier for Honey the pony and was there an way we could swing by the stables on our way over, bring Honey out of the field and up to the stable and meet the farrier. We could either ask him to turn her out again after he’d finished or hang around to watch and turn her out ourselves. We decided to wait and watch as it would be quite interesting.

I confessed straight away to Davies and Scarlett that I was quite nervous about this. I’m not really a horsey person, they are a bit flightly and nervy, very big (well most are) and have big sharp teeth and long scary kicky legs and hooves which they could hurt me with. I am not too bad with Honey as she stands shorter than me which helps and has never been remotely flighty around me before. I steeled myself with pep talks about women who can hold tarantulas and snakes on a Monday are certainly capable of putting a head collar on a pony and leading it up to a stable on a Tuesday. And Scarlett shared with me her secret for success ‘you need to just not show her you’re scared’.

So we arrived and while I rang Julie I eyed up the great big dog sitting, unchained, outside the farm house eyeing us with interest. The kids got out of the car and very rapidly got back in again as the dog came flying across the carpark straight for them. I shreiked at them to close the door behind them and the dog circled the car a few times. It was like that bloody scene in Cujo!!! (A film I should have never, ever watched). Julie assured me he was friendly and at that point the farmer came out and went off with the dog anyway so I was safe to get out of the car. Julie advised getting the headcollar, told me which way up it went, said I should grab a handful of feed and take it to the field in Honey’s bowl, call her, let her out of the field and then slip the head collar on while she ate. Infact, she said, I could probably give the headcollar to Scarlett and she could do it.

Except she’d failed to mention the lower bar of the electric fence was secured all the way round and had to be unclipped at the end and then loosened all the way round before attempting to get Honey out. So I called her, she came, I took down the top bar and trod on the lower one expecting her to step over it but she refused. She backed up a few steps and I half expected her to jump it but she then got all scared when Grace, the crazy big white horse she shares a field with came over and got all arsey. We totally missed our chance as then Grace flatly refused to let Honey anywhere near us. She did pawing at the ground with her front hoof, showed me her teeth, did lots of snorting and head tossing and generally totally succceeded in both making me scared and ensuring I showed it too!

Then the farrier arrived so I sent Davies up to meet him to ask if he would possibly come and help us get her out of the field. He was a youngish guy, very laddish and charming and laughed at me explaining I was scared stupid of Grace. He said she was fine and they shoe her too but agreed to get Honey out for me. Except Grace butted at him too and finally bit Honey on the bum and turned back to the farrier before he decided it wasn’t going to happen either and he’d come back another day!

No idea if I freaked Grace out and that meant she was too mad to respond to anyone or if she was just having a mad day but I’m really glad I didn’t pep talk myself into getting in the field as I’d have been terrified if she nudged me like that. I do not have any plans to add Horse Whispered to my CV at this stage.

So we headed to Julie’s to share the tale. The kids all played together while Julie and I sorted out her big food delivery which needed seperating into the 6 different people’s orders it covered and checking off against the delivery note and the order forms. We had lunch and Chris came home so I sat chatting to him for quite a while. It was a really nice afternoon :).

We left in time to nip home before swimming to check the dinner and then back out again to the pool. Davies had a good time in the pool and a good lesson but I only managed 35 lengths thanks to a run in with Scarlett and the instructor, Carolyn. Davies finished his time in the big pool with a length so I was swimming infront of him on my back cheering him on and suddenly Scarlett appeared in the water beside me. I took her back to the side and waved Davies off to his lesson when suddenly Carolyn appeared looking furious and gave Scarlett a real lecture. Apparently she’d just run off after her lesson before being told she could go. And she told her off for leaping into the lane swimming area too. She did really shout and everyone nearby stopped to watch and listen which was embarrasing for me and really humiliating for Scarlett. She sobbed for about five minutes afterwards :(. Another mum came over to say she thought it had been unnecessarily harsh but I did see her point really. Scarlett claims she heard Carolyn say ‘you can go’ so went but realised afterwards she hadn’t been talking to her. This could well be one of Tarly’s rather creative ‘I thought she said’s or may be true, I suspect she did indeed just run off, confident she knew where I was and just came to find me. I think she was very shocked at still being shouted at by Carolyn after she’d reached me too as usually both my kids assume once they are with me nothing can touch them.

I explained why Carolyn had been angry and that while she is having her lesson and until Carolyn knows she has handed her back to me she is responsible for Scarlett and as such if she didn’t look after her properly and know where she was and that she was safe I would be really angry with her. I likened it to Tarly deciding she didn’t want to stay at Rainbows one day and just leaving and coming home. I know she could safely walk from Rainbows to our house alone but I would be furious if she did it, both with her but mainly with the leaders for not realising she’d gone or stopping her.

Scarlett always recovers really quickly and her little friend she plays with was hanging around waiting for her while I was talking to her and comforting her so she went off again to play. Hopefully she’ll be okay in next weeks lesson as she does tend to get spooked by being shouted at by someone else and it was a really big rant, but I understand it was partially worry aswell as anger.

I went off to do some more lengths but I’d lost my stride, and 10 minutes of my time and decided my heart wasn’t in it and I was still convalesing from my cold so climbed out after 35 and watched Scarlett on the diving boards for a bit instead before going over to meet Davies from his lesson.

I’d forgotten the shower gel so we got dressed quick and came home. Ady was already home which took the pressure off the whole getting ready for my course timings, so I dished out some stew for the kids, made myself a cup of tea and some toast and had that before heading off to my course.

Davies had Sea Scout Cubs which he is really enjoying. One of the other lads was invested tonight but I suspect Davies wasn’t due to missing last week which was presumably when they were informed. It’s half term next week so hopefully he’ll be invested after that. When Ady collected him he brought him over to one of the other lads to confirm to him that Davies doesn’t go to school as apparently the lad had refused to believe him. Ady and Scarlett had watched last night’s Life while Davies was out.

My course was interesting again. We were focussing again on recycling but subsequent sessions will be more about other areas of waste prevention which I’m looking forward to. We did some mind mapping in groups at the end which was interesting and next week we have a field trip to the local MRF (recycling sorting centre) on Monday which I’m looking forward to.

Home for a late dinner and thanks to getting caught up with myself online a pretty late night. So I’m off to bed.

We’ve been to Longleat before, 4 years ago after a week in Centerparcs with my parents to celebrate Davies’ fifth birthday. We had a really good time then but as the kids were just 5 and not even 3 it was always somewhere we intended re-visiting when they were a bit older. This visit came about after Marwell with Scarlett while Davies was away at Badger camp as an alternative to the classic zoo model which she had enjoyed seeing animals at but felt saddened by the ‘there for your entertainment’ aspect of, as had I, in particular the big cats. Also Davies missed out on that whole thing so it was good to have an animal encounter visit with him too. Africa Alive! has always stuck me as one of the best zoo type experiences so we may well try and get there again next year along with a visit to Chester Zoo at some point as Tarly wants to see elephants and there is a local safari style place too I want to visit next year.

So having decided to do Longleat this autumn and checked prices on the website it was well worth getting a group together for the discount given they only need 12 or more to qualify as a group. I also booked an Educational Talk as a free extra thinking if nothing else the chance to actually have some contact with one of the keepers would be good as that was another thing Scarlett and I mourned at Marwell. Numbers fluctuated a fair bit during the run up and on the actual day but we were over our 12 so all was well.

The routefinder on aa suggested it was a 2hr21min journey, Ady’s satnav claimed it was 1hr55min and so factoring in rush hour traffic we decided on 2hr45min. We actually left just after 7am (which meant satnav said we’d be there by 9.06am) which was not only Very Early Indeed and Still Dark (poor chickens, let out in the dark and put away again in the dark yesterday) but earlier than planned. This is a massive first for us. The kids and I are not great at getting anywhere on time anyway but factoring Ady into the equation usually means we’re really late for some reason. It was fortunate we were early though as the satnav started hemorrhaging time almost from the outset thanks to traffic around Chichester and Winchester. I’d had one text and then took a couple of phonecalls asking me ‘which entrance?’ which utterly confused me as a) when we went before we just sort of crossed the road from Centerparcs into the entrance that said ‘Longleat’ and b) when enquiring, booking and confirming the visit and on the booking form paperwork no mention had been made of entrances. I realised when we arrived that there were indeed two entrances – a ‘house and attractions’ one and a ‘safari’ one. We went for ‘House and Attractions’ which turned out to be wrong as the woman on the desk looked all confused and then directed us to the ‘Safari’ one instead. Various frantic text, phonecalls and talking to people’s messaging service while they were talking to mine meant we all eventually ended up at the safari entrance, except for one person who ended up meeting us inside in the end.

Two ticket booths redirection later we finally found a man at a window who was able to take our money!

Everyone paid and then the race was on to get to the Pets Corner area in time for our booked talk at 1030am. Even that was not smooth as Michelle took a diversion through the tigers and Cintha bowed to the demand of her children and went straight for the safari, Ady went to get his hat but took ages coming back again (he was forgiven when he appeared having been delayed due to buying me a cup of tea :)). Fortunately the man doing the talk was also running late so Michelle and Chloe didn’t miss much in the end. It was really good, I’m really glad I booked it.

It was run by Jon, who we actually bumped into several more times during the day (he was driving the boat when we did the safari boat trip and was doing more animal handling later in the day too). He has been on telly several times on Animal Park (I know because I asked him, rather than because I recognised him ;)) and was excellent at tailoring his talk to his audience. We’d asked for Conservation which he did talk briefly about but got sidetracked by chatting to us about what animals we’d eaten (kangaroo, crocodile, venison were amoung the more exotic ones mentioned, mostly by young Ernest ;)) and then laughing and saying ‘we’re supposed to be talking about saving animals rather than eating them!’. I think everyone there (adults included) learnt something about animals though which was great. He had a parrot which kissed all the kids’ cheeks, said ‘hello’ to us and was then taken off. Next was a guinea pig, followed by more interesting stuff – first a couple of pancake tortoises, one of which delighted us all by weeing :lol:,

then out came the royal pythons. Very beautiful, I butted in and had a hold too :).

Next came out Rosie, a Chilean Rose Tarantula (always going to be a winner with Chilean Rose in her name really ;)) who had only last week shed her skin so was all bright pink. I also had a hold of her too, as did Ady. Holding a snake and a tarantula was definitely one of my highlights of the day :).

I was really proud of all the kids with us for either having a go even if they were a bit nervous, or being really sensible about stepping out of doing it if they were not keen and not making a silly fuss or being hysterical – a real difference to that sort of thing done with schooled groups I’ve seen. I was also really impressed with Jon for ensuring that any spare people who wandered over and tried to get in on the session were politely ignored and not invited to join in until they realised it was an organised talk and wandered away again.

Finally we were introduced to a barn owl and the children all had a turn at wearing the glove and having her fly to land on their arm lured by various day old chick body parts. There was possibly more interest in the chick bits than the owl but it was very cool. She also very obligingly produced an owl pellet for him to hold up and talk about and did some silent flying over our heads.

My favourite questions from the kids, scattered in between more sensible ones about life expectancy, habitat, eating habits and so on was ‘is there only one Longleat?’ and in response to Jon telling us that spiders were very good climbers ‘could this one climb a mountain?’ which wasn’t quite what he’d meant 😆

We arranged to meet back up with Alison and Michelle for lunch and then we headed off. Davies was really keen to do the maze having remembered it from before so we went off to do that. I was less enthusiastic as it is just a load of hedges after all and I was conscious we were likely to run out of time to do everything, Ady was less enthusiastic as he must be mildly claustrophobic and hates mazes saying they have nightmare qualities so we did it at speed. The kids took turns at leading us with three direction choices each before swapping over and we pretty much ran round the whole thing. We were starting to get fed up when some people from the middle hailed us and gave us directions from above to find our way to the middle. We took a quick self timer, all red faced and puffing and persuaded the kids to go for the quick exit option out again.

at least Davies and I managed to look at the camera!

I persuaded everyone we should do the safari boat next as if we only managed that and the safari drive I’d feel we’d got our moneys worth so we headed for that. We narrowly missed a boat so spent some time on the ‘how long can you jump?’ bit which had so entertained my Dad last time we’d been. He had been approaching 70 and as he still does now had the occassional bout of ‘I’ve still got it-ness’ and insisted on spending ages on the long jump acting like a little boy. He doesn’t have crazy moments very often but when he does they always stick in my mind and make me smile to remember them:

Kids have changed a bit since then too!

We queued for the safari boat and saw Alison and Michelle coming off. The boat was really noisy and I struggled to hear the commentary but enjoyed seeing the sealions and hippo (only one of the pair was visible and that was just a bump of bum in the water) and gorilla on his island. The kids both had a pot of fish to feed the sealions which they enjoyed.

Then we headed back to Adventure Castle (playground area) for lunch. Some woosie people ate lunch in their car but we braved the cold and ate our picnic at a bench ;). Enjoyed a quick chat / play with the others when they came and then ever conscious of time pressure we headed off to do some more stuff. We decided to do the bits we *really* wanted to do near the house before doing the safari and then coming back for the house if we had time. We have done the house before and I suspected it would be last on the kids’ list of things so I was happy to forgoe that if needed.

We did the motion simulator; kids loved it, I thought it was nothing compared to a proper racing car ride and Ady hated it :lol:, we did the bat / mine thing which was good, I like bats :). Then off to the car for the safari.

We got the cd to listen to and decided to really take our time and spend time in each enclosure just watching the animals for a while. First is the giraffes where you can get out and watch from above putting you at the same height as them. Really enjoyed this. Ady and I said almost in unison ‘oh, they’re so graceful’ to which Davies and Scarlett said, completely in unison ‘what’s graceful?’ 😆 I loved the way they seemed to bow down to Ady :).

Back into the car and we drove round the zebras, giraffes and camels. The children and I both thought the zebras looked smaller than we remembered zebras being although it could have been a perspective next to the giraffes issue I guess.

Flamingos, pelicans and vulctures – learn that flamingos mate for life, reminded the kids a group is called a flamboyance (which wasn’t on the fact board but I already knew from Drusillas) which is one of my favourite group names, found out that vulctures have bald heads and necks so the feathers don’t get clogged up with blood from their food (eww).

More camels, various deer, antelope and cattle and a not very active rhino. We learnt white rhino is not relevant to their colour but comes from the Afrikans word for ‘wide’ in relation to their mouths. The monkey enclosure and the deer park were both closed which was a shame. I suspect Ady wouldn’t have driven through the monkeys anyway but Scarlett had seen the people feeding the deer from their car on the website and was looking forward to that. It was closed as it’s the rutting season though so we talked about that having seen it on Autumnwatch.

Finally, best til last, we drove through the lions, tigers and wolves. The tigers were quite active with three visible ones (not sure if there are more) all prowling about and stalking each other. They are my favourite animal, so very beautiful. Almost impossible to get a decent picture from behind glass with our cameras but fab to be sitting in the middle of their territory like that.

The lions were less active with one pride doing a bit of prowling about and one doing a cross between a roar and coughing up a fur ball. The second pride were more majestic and were positioned, photo opportunity style lying on tree trunks and in a big lazy heap of males at one end.

The wolves were doing plenty of roaming about but no howling sadly. Last time there had been smaller cubs there I recall which was good both for cuteness factor and in giving some perspective to the larger ones. We also got there shortly after they’d been fed last time so got to observe some pack behaviour at work which was absent this time.

That took us to about 430pm and we were all pretty tired but headed back to the house for a last quick look at the new Animal Adventure area. There was some rabbit and ferret handling going on but the keepers looked quite busy with the children already doing that so we walked through the butterfly house and spent some time in there before exiting into another handling area where me met Jon again. He had a different tarantula out but said he’d get something else as we’d already done spiders that morning. He had a couple of incredibly cute, few week old tortoises which we held and cooed over before moving onto a larger royal python to hold and various lizards to look at.

I knew we’d missed the house by then so we finished in the gift shop where Scarlett got a lion pencil and a tiger figure (she haggled the price down on the lion pencil as it only had one eye and got it for 50p instead of £2) and Davies chose a cuddly bat, all very modest ;). We spent some time posing infront of a big wall of animal pictures and then called it a day.

The drive home was far less trafficky than the drive there. We stopped for a McDonalds for the kids (and a coke for me and coffee for Ady, we were both caffiene deficient by then). One of the dares from the weekend was ‘at a drive thru restaurant say ‘to go’ after every item and say ‘over’ when speaking to the speaker’ so Ady had me in stitches by doing that on every item including the ketchup. 😆 This infected the kids too so we were all a bit hysterical by the time we got the food (which they’d probably spat in!). We got home about 8pm.

The kids went straight to bed, I did a fairly speedy dinner and even I was in bed before midnight.

I think Longleat is a great day out, definitely better in warmer weather but the tradeoff was having the place all but to ourselves. The talk was excellent and the awesomeness of the big cats never fails to impress me. Thanks to those who came along and allowed us to get the discounted prices :).

I worked yesterday morning. The Big Boss came in to see me as a result of my rant at my appraisal earlier in the week. I feel most reassured there is now a proper plan in place to deal with Nightmare Colleague and better about having ranted as I did feel very guilty about performing such a thorough character assasignation on someone I used to quite like and have some affection for before the impact of her inability to do the job rippled through the workplaces upsetting the dynamic between the team, increasing our workload in both picking up the slack of her not pulling her weight and in ironing out the mistakes she makes and really compromising the service we are offering borrowers. Ooh that was a long sentence!

The rest of the morning went fairly quickly. I spent tea break talking to the two Saturday Assistants about Home Ed and why we shouldn’t be registered, monitored or tested. Hard to hear such views out of the mouths of two 16 year olds and I may have been fairly passionate in my arguing as J came up to me later and asked ‘you do still like me don’t you?’ 😆 And this is the lad who wants to go into politics – he needs to develop a thicker skin ;).

I then spent an hour on the desk where among other things I helped someone with some local history, ordered in some books for various people and then spent some time being truly silly with colleagues. J had discovered an old list in her tray of dares to do at work which ranged from the silly to the utterly mad. They’d had a period about 8 years ago of doing them and so we’ve decided to restart. This meant yesterday morning we covered skipping instead of walking, only going to the photocopier walking sideways, putting a colleagues chair in the lift when they weren’t looking, calling each other Bob and Neil, making lots of silly internal phonecalls and other such immature behaviour – very amusing 🙂 😆

I spent the last hour shelving and more than made up for being giddy the previous hour by being incredibly efficient.

Davies had YACs which was at Michelham Priory this month. The site has links with Sussex Archaeology and hosted a mosaics session. They learnt all about mosaics, which period they were from, where they were used, looked at a variety of designs and then made their own on wooden boards with polyfilla and various shaped pieces of tile and ceramics. Davies chose to do a pattern rather than a picture. He said he enjoyed it, his pattern is pretty, I’ll take a photo when it’s dried.

Ady and Scarlett walked around the site and enjoyed looking at the sculptures in the garden.

They came to collect me from work having dropped me off on their way and the kids came in with Scarlett choosing yet another pile of Lucy Daniels books that she imagines Ady is going to read to her but realistically will sit in the house for a few weeks before I persuade her I should take them back. I refuse to read anything that I don’t actively enjoy reading and Lucy Daniels doesn’t fall into that category.

We came home for lunch and all played the Creationary Lego game for a while. It’s very good, Davies says thanks again Ali :). Eventually it started to get raucous so Ady went off for a bath, the kids went to watch Star Wars and I went to rummage through my wardrobe to find something to wear that evening.

We were off out with Ady’s ex-boss, recently made redundant. He lives in Kent, about a 90 minute drive from us and we were hoping that the fact he’d invited us out, was asking us to travel to him and had suggested the venue meant he would also be paying, but had a precious £100 in our pockets just in case. Another of Ady’s colleagues was supposed to be coming along too but cancelled late in the day due to coming down with flu :(.

I really struggled to find something to wear as my wardrobe is very much clothes I wear for work and clothes I wear the rest of the time with my favourite 3 ‘business’ suits, a funeral suit, a couple of fancy dresses and two dressy suits. I tried on the dressy suits but although they fit fine I really didn’t feel like me in them and suspected I would be slightly wrongfooted by being in a fancy eaterie, with people I don’t really know and would rather feel confident and comfortable in my clothing. So I wore a dress over trouses with lots of cleavage and chunky jewellry and then added high heels and plenty of make up to nod to the poshness of the event.

My parents were here minding the children which they of course did with their usual good grace, willingness and delight in being able to help out and spend time with their grandchildren…

We let Scarlett sleep in Davies’ room although that turned out to annoy my parents for some reason and indeed did mean that Scarlett had not long been asleep and Davies was still awake when we arrived home just before 1am :(.

So how was the evening? Well as already BK’d we went to The Swan in WestMallin. Lovely surroundings, excellent service and the food was very nice indeed. It certainly wasn’t cheap but it was very busy and no signs of a recession to be seen anywhere! Ady had a mackerel, shallot and beetroot salad followed by Sussex belly pork with butternut squash. I had chicken liver parfait with greengage chutney followed by venison and parsnip puree. We had sides of triple cooked chips, bobby beans and curly kale. All washed down with several bottles of Very Good Wine. It was delicious but a proper Grown Up meal, in proper Grown Up company. Ady and I had a dessert for two to share of School Dinners which was tiny portions of beautifully presented Arctic Roll, Sticky Toffee Pudding and Jam Roly Poly along with a vanilla cream custard and a toffee cream icecream. The pudding was my least favourite bit as I felt it was all a bit novelty rather than being about flavours although Anne had a rather amazing dessert of peanut butter and dark chocolate ice cream with black cherry sorbet which was delicious so I suspect we just chose wrongly.

We finished with fancy tea or coffee or large glasses of liqueurs all round by which point I’d done a quick tally of costs and realised our £100 wasn’t going to cover half by any means. Fortunately Tim was quite indignant at the offer of anything so we were able to leave happy to have had a very nice meal, experienced easily the most expensive dining we’re likely to try and not had to actually blow the same amount of money we agonised over spending on the Centerparcs holiday in January!

We dropped them home and were back ourselves before 1am.

Today has been accordingly lazy. Noone was up much before 930am (I am told, I was not the first to rise ;)), the kids were not dressed until after midday and it’s felt like a Proper Sunday. The kids were struggling a bit with each other so I took Davies with me to Sainsburys to get various bits for dinner tonight, picnic tomorrrow and general cupboard topping up. Scarlett and Ady made an apple crumble.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, Davies played with the lego and Scarlett did some fab watercolour pencil drawings of various animals she is looking forward to seeing tomorrow at Longleat. We watched while eating, and afterwards. It’s so not my sort of film normally and I didn’t pay much attention to the first half an hour or so really but did get sucked in and even Scarlett who originally deemed it too scary and wandered off half way though came back to it and we all watched the last half an hour fairly intently. Scarlett and I really liked Loveday’s hair (I suspect we’re both a bit shallow ;)) with all it’s plaits and flowers and stuff.

After that we watched the first hour or so of which we found earlier while clearing off some old stuff from the hard drive dvd player machine. Not at all sure when we recorded it but it was really interesting. We’re up to 100 years after people but have stopped it to watch the rest another time as it was getting late and it was a longer programme than we’d realised.

We started and read the first five or so chapters for bedtime and then Davies and Scarlett went off to bed. I was hoping a very late night last night and the prospect of a very early morning tomorrow with a long day ahead would encourage them to sleep but it was still long after 9pm before either of them finally fell asleep. I guess that does count as early round here 😉 .

No one has really been on top form with tiredness induced grumpiness and intolerance of each other and I always rather struggle with weekend days being spent at home rather than out and about Doing Stuff but it was a nice relaxing day, plenty of which I spent with one or both children snuggled up on my lap.

Everyone who didn’t have to be up for work this morning slept in. Davies is clearly incubating the NicCold although Scarlett isn’t showing any signs yet. We did kitchen clearing, chicken tending, laundry processing, breakfast eating, tea drinking, dressed-getting and then sat down to watch Life together. The kids are rubbish at watching something they’ve already seen without doing that running pre-commentary thing: ‘watch this, watch, watch. Do you think it’s going to die? You think it’s going to die don’t you? It doesn’t die, don’t worry it’s not going to die.’ 😆 Fortunately it’s fine with an Attenborough documentary as it’s more about the cinematic beauty, the marvelling at nature and the feeling carried away with the sublimeness of his voice and his passion rather than any level of suspense. Don’t ever be watching Sixth Sense with my kids though eh? They’ll sit with you as the ‘Starring Bruce Willis’ bit comes up and conversationally drop in ‘you know he’s dead don’t you?’ 😆

I had a quick chat with Ali who assured me they wouldn’t be here til 2pm so decided to head out to Asda for a few bits. Davies didn’t want to come and as I totally trust him to be fine here by himself I left him with strict instructions not to open the door to anybody, checked he was able to ring me if he needed me and Scarlett and I headed off. We got the bits we needed in Asda fairly quickly and then nipped to a local charity shop as I wanted to get some buttons for my jumper. Scarlett selected some plastic animals from the 5p box so I found something for Davies too and he rang me to say someone had phoned asking for me but he’d told them to ring back later. I assured him we were about to leave the shops and would be home in less than ten minutes. Which we were. Except we arrived home to find Ady’s car parked across the drive and a load of the neighbours out on the street!!!! 😯

It turned out it was all purely coincidental and Ady had nipped home as he was passing,the neighbours just happened to be out and Davies had let Ali and Freya who had arrived only a few moments earlier in as he’d seen them walking past the window, agonised over whether my rule about not letting anybody in also included them and how long he could reasonably keep them waiting outside and then Ady had arrived home at the same time. I always used to wonder when I’d know the kids were ready for things like being left home alone, then I thought I’d found the time when they were happy to be left and I was confident to leave them. I still am but maybe I need to not lay down so many rules and chat to Davies a bit more about judgement instead… Fortunately he used his initiative anyway and made the right call.

So the kids went off to play, Ady, Ali and I chatted and it all seemed like the afternoon and evening would go perfectly according to plan. It didn’t, but we enjoyed living in that delusional bubble while it lasted.

Freya presented Davies with a fab card she’d made with loads of Viva Pinata references and drawings – really liked that :). And then his belated birthday present of which is just so perfect for Davies in every way :). I’d seen it talked about on BK recently and mentally bookmarked it as an ideal Christmas present for him so I was really chuffed when he unwrapped the first corner and I realised what it was. Ady had gone back to work so the five remaining of us helped organise it into colours and had a play. Davies loves it and has enthused about it all evening – Ali, winner 🙂

Ali and I then managed a very fragmented chat while the children really struggled with going off to play. It seemed like only 2/3 of them could be happily engaged with each other at any one time, chicken, grain, fox stylee. They tried indoors, outdoors, upstairs and downstairs. They didn’t bother with ‘in my ladies’ chamber’ on account of us not having one, not really knowing what one is and the fact they were all being fairly uncooperative anyway. Ali offered ‘going home’ as an option, I suspect, for I certainly didn’t anticipate, it not ever being taken up but Freya took it and ran with it. We struggled on for another 20 minutes or so but it simply wasn’t to be. Davies worked really hard to try and find ways for everyone to be happy, Scarlett seemed less prepared to share her brother or her belongings and Freya was suffering from PSS (post sleepover syndrome).

So they left 🙁 Davies was upset but I pulled out the kit I’d picked up in the charity shop and we looked at that together while Scarlett played with some toys.The kit is similar to one we saw at Michelle’s last weekend in that it has some coloured pens and some 3d glasses but it also has a very comprehensive booklet explaining all about 3d, how it works, why it works and some tips for creating 3d effects even without the glasses. Both Davies and I found it fascinating and learnt loads. We all did some experimenting with the pens but applied the principles to other things (including some illustrations in a book Tarly was looking at). Davies has really picked up and run with the whole idea and has been experimenting with the glasses and noticed they split light sources into spectrum rays tonight – possibly the best £1.25 I ever spent!

I did their tea and then took Tarly round to Rainbows. She took her Houses of Parliament pin badge and security lanyard pass to show and tell and told them about the mass lobby. Would have liked to be there really to hear both what she actually said and how it came across but she was very happy to tell me that ‘while we were in parliament all the other Rainbows were at school!’ 😆 While she was there Davies did more 3d pictures and then we walked round together to collect Scarlett.

The three of us worked together to tidy up – all putting stuff away, then Davies did the hoovering and some of the washing up, Scarlett ran me a bath and helped me chop up potatoes for dinner while I assembled pizzas for Ady and I and then we sat down and finished which we’ve all enjoyed as a welcome return to form for Andy Stanton after the slightly disappointing Matthew Buzzington. We have another Roddy Doyle to start reading next.

I had a bath and Ady arrived home (he was late as he went for a drink after work with some colleagues). We had dinner and enjoyed Armstrong and Miller and did some scoffing at the news.

And I didn’t wear a skirt.

I did wear trousers though, obviously. 😉

I had a better nights sleep and although still on the rougher side of well I do only seem to have a cold rather than anything more worrying. I suspect the rest of the family will get it in time for Longleat of course… So off to work this morning for me.

Ady was home this morning and he and the children watched the latest Attenborough series which Ady had recorded earlier in the week. It inspired Davies to do some drawings and Scarlett to play with the toy animals and recreate some of what she’d seen. I’m planning to watch it with them again in the morning as I want to see it too.

Not sure what they did in the afternoon with my Mum and when I came home they were upstairs playing.

I had an okay day at work considering I wasn’t feeling great. I started on the desk where I dealt with a variety of enquiries including ‘do you have the theme tune to Family Fortunes on cd?’ and ‘can you order in some books on starting nursery school for my daughter. And actually maybe some for me as I’m probably more wobbly about it than she is!’. After that borrower had gone my colleague grinned over at me and said ‘I could hear your internal screaming from here- do you struggle with queries like that?’ 😆 I had teabreak with several senior staff all of whom have heard the shepherd rumours and wanted to talk to me about that :rolls: Also told them about the mass lobby. I’m sure they have me utterly pigeon-holed as a raving lunatic (possibly correctly ;)).

I spent the next hour persuading a senior we should do Chatterbooks and childrens reading groups and other such stuff, sending out letters to borrowers with overdue books on loan and dealing with books coming in and going out from other library services including the British Library which is all very time consuming and adminny.

I followed that with another hour on the desk dealing with a strange American woman who comes in fairly regularly but I’ve not really had dealings with before and opening the post.

Then it was lunchtime. I did a charity shop trawl and found a really nice purple hand knitted jumper which I love but almost put back as I hate the buttons. I then weighed up how much I really liked the jumper and how cheap and easy it would be to change the buttons so bought it and will change the buttons to something gorgeous instead. Nightmare Colleague was also on lunch and I just couldn’t face sitting with her for half an hour so I went and sat in my car and read my book, checked my emails on my phone and enjoyed the peace. I don’t tend to sit in my car outside kids activities these days and I quite enjoy it every so often with a good book.

The afternoon went quickly – a couple of hours on the counter, a tea break and my PDR (personal development review) at which I was given pats on the back and got a lot of grrr-ness off my chest about Nightmare Colleague. Felt much better for that.

Back at home I was really pleased to see my Dad – don’t think I’ve seen him since Davies’ birthday although I’ve spoken to him on the phone several times. Mum had walked over earlier so he’d come to pick her up. They stayed for a chat and I told them all about the Mass Lobby and the Select Committee before they headed off.

I made the kids’ tea, practised a five section plait I’d seen in a book on Tarly’s hair and then they got ready for bed just as Ady arrived home. I read some Mr Gum and then they went to bed, with much toing and froing. Ady cooked a lovely dinner while I did the consultation, then I typed while he narrated his response to the consultation and I’ve done my No, Thank You post over on Monster and Teeny.

Could be worse – could have been yesterday. Could have been later and knocked me down for next week’s Longleat trip (hoping any of the rest of us who are planning on getting it have done so before then). I *think* it is just a cold, along with some residual knackeredness from a mad day yesterday but I am very achey and shivery aswell as being a very high production snot factory.

So today I have mostly sat on the sofa really. I uploaded some photos, watched the Select Committee, read lots of emails about the lobby yesterday, the SC today, the SC group of HEors invited to visit SC next week and generally swung from feeling upbeat that our voices are being heard and it’s not a total whitewash to frustrated and despondant about people still not ‘getting it’.

I thought about some baking but can’t be arsed-ness put paid to that idea after Scarlett and I walked round the shop to get some Marmite and I had to sit down to recover when we got home.

The kids have been fab. Scarlett heated me up her cuddly dog in the microwave (he is designed to do that!), tucked my blanket around me and tended me with cuddles and love. She even tolerated me putting a couple of hair wraps in her hair – now she lets me brush it more often she is like my own living Girls World ;).

Davies played with the Animation Station for ages and has been very gentle and sympathetic to me all day.

Ady got home in time to take the kids to Badgers and so I stayed home, had a long bath and got dinner on.

Off to bed now for what is a very early night for me in the hopes I will sleep well and be able to head off to work tomorrow.

just to test I can do it from my phone.

national travel, science (chemistry), walking through London, meeting up with friends from all round the country, lobbying parliament, public transport foibles and more. We need a bigger checklist for our timetable ;).

Up far, far too early this morning but not early enough as we struggled to get out of the house. I’d been hoping for a leisurely park, walk to the station to buy tickets, maybe call into Asda for a takeaway cup of tea and then boarding the train. Ady tells me it is very unfair I am blaming him but he often seems to be a common factor in times we are crap at getting out of the house. So we left, with me thinking we’d be cutting it fine for the train and then got stuck behind a refuse collection van. In a narrow road with cars parked both sides it would be impossible to turn round in, so we were stuck. I jumped out and ran to the station to buy the tickets, leaving the others to park the car and get to the station (platform for London trains is on the other side of the tracks to the ticket office). So I did running before 830am.

The gate came down as I came out of the ticket office and I had to do further running (with steps) over the bridge with the train pulling in. We literally caught it with moments to spare and I took quite some minutes to recover.

Our seats were facing backwards which Davies has decided is an issue for him so he moaned about that for a while. He was sitting with Ady, while I sat with Scarlett and as Ady isn’t great at engaging the kids in just chatter he quickly got bored and became annoying so I got him to come and sit on my lap which meant he could face me and therefore the right way and he, Scarlett and I could talk. Ady sat grumpily behind us, even more so when the train got busier and he ended up with someone squashed up next to him. The kids and I talked about bears mostly as I recall.

From Victoria it’s just one tube stop to Green Park so that was quick and easy and we were at RI by about 1020am. Which meant we had time to sit in the cafe and finally have my first cup of tea. We got ushered past the queuing school children and had fairly good seats in the usual Home Ed strip of chairs.

The show was Fizz, Foam and Flubber and was very good. For once there is a very good back up of information as the speaker, Lorelly Wilson has a website where she lists all her talks and all the experiments she did along with details of how to do them again at home. My only critcisms would be that it is a bit ‘science-lite’ and that she wasn’t as much of a presenter as some of the other speakers we’ve seen. I was also a bit cross that she didn’t tell us just what that number 6 with all the zeros was as I could hear various people round the audience muttering about it.

Finally, for our first time we ended up with nightmare children behind us. One woman with two children who I don’t think were her own. One was a very small, very precocious boy who kept yelling stuff out and claiming to know everything already, on the other side of her was a bigger girl who insisted on having her feet – in shoes, on the back of Ady’s chair. Which is slightly annoying in itself but she then just didn’t keep still with wriggling, kicking and moving about the whole time which was just incredibly annoying. I glared a couple of times and even Ady turned round twice but the woman with her was just really ineffectual at dealing with it. The girl then got all arsey about us turning to look at her and I started to feel really irate. I was on the verge of saying something at the end but she suddenly became all contrite and apologised, which I rather grimly accepted. The thing with the RI is it is one full hour of sitting down, shutting up and keeping still. If that is beyond a child then I don’t think they should be there. I know Scarlett struggles with some of them so I have been very careful about the ones I have chosen and I ensure I sit where I can deal with her and would take her out if necessary but I would take any and all measure to ensure she was not disturbing or annoying other people. I wish everyone would exhibit the same courtesy.

Show over we debated getting on the tube at Green Park or walking through the park to Buckingham Palace and getting the tube from that side of the park. We went for that and arrived at the palace just in time to see two horse drawn carriages with visiting foreign dignatories of some description leaving the palace with very comprehensive police escort. We took pictures and waved at them despite not having an inkling of who they might be.

We could see Big Ben and the London Eye so decided to walk to Westminster as it was a lovely sunny day. We walked through St James’ Park which I don’t think I’ve been in before and enjoyed all the birds, particularly the pelicans, loved the little allotment in the middle of the park and all the very bold squirrels including the duo nicking food out of a picnic bag belonging to a man sitting on one of the benches.

We arrived at Parliament and didn’t quiet know where to find everyone but spotted another small group with a HE banner so followed them at a discrete distance. We caught up with them when we spotted a whole posse of folks with banners and actually chatted to them for a bit as it turned out there were from Chichester which is just down the road.

I saw loads of people I knew straight away including Ros so we sat down to eat some food and watched the group increase more and more until there was finally about 450 of us. I have to confess to feeling a bit disheartened at the thought of the people who weren’t there really, I do think apathy will be our downfall really. At least I will know I wrote every email, typed every letter, made every phonecall, attended every protest, spoke with my MP, wore our T shirts, talked to everyone I know and many people I didn’t, have been on the TV, radio, papers and have done all I can to ensure I am protecting our lifestyle.

I didn’t actually eat much but did manage to chat to lots of people. We attracted a lot of attention and the banners made a fab impact. Scarlett stood against the railings for ages along the road side cheering and waving at all the many cars, busses full of tourists, vans and other vehicles going by beeping their horns and waving their support. She adored it :).
This photo was taken by someone else and uploaded today. It got mentioned on a list as a good shot because the little blonde girl had just appeared infront of the banner jumping and cheering while the photographer was just after a shot of the banner. I had a sneaking feeling as I read that that it might be Tarly and sure enough….

We crossed the road and joined the long windy queue to get in which must have been nearly an hour for us but for some was closer to two hours I believe. We chatted to those infront and behind us and it went quickly though. At the entrance we were all given a lanyard and as we stepped in our photos were taken and attached. Security was very fierce with airport style walking through full body screens and all your possessions put through an xray machine in a tray.

The other side was much calmer and we were welcomed in. We decided to visit the loo (for Parliamentray wees) and nipped into the cafe where we enjoyed the free tap water (and Ady grabbed a stash of monogrammed napkins). I balanced my camera on the desk to get a self timer and the clerk offered to take it for me but I explained we have a collection of self timer photos in weird and wonderful places and wanted to add this to our collection :).

Up into the central lobby where we filled out green cards requesting our MP come down to meet us. We knew he was not in Westminster today anyway but in the end we had to go back up to the desk to be told officially. I really liked being there though and we’re planning a proper tour in the new year organised through our MP. For that reason we didn’t have a look at the House of Lords or the other public areas. Scarlett managed to crack her head on the wall which must have really hurt as she cried lots 🙁 She will have a Parliamentary bruise there tomorrow.

Finally we decided we needed to leave if I was to get back for my course and Davies for Sea Scouts so we came out, buying souvenir badges for the kids on the way out. Back to the square to collect our bags, hailing Michelle and Chloe in the queue as we passed them and saying goodbye to all the people still in the square.

Tube back to Victoria and then a 20 minute hanging around for a train but we did at least get on it first and had a table and chairs all the way home. I sent my tutor a text to say I’d be slightly late and Davies decided he was just too tired for Sea Scouts after all. They ran me to my course where I was 20 minutes late and came home for baths and dinner. They then had to turn out again to collect me at 9pm.

My course was interesting again – a visit from the company who process all our recycling and stuff from the tip. My nose started running while there and hasn’t stopped yet, which coupled with general knackeredness may or may not be the onset of some lurgy 🙁

We’ve decided Primary Proms just isn’t going to happen in the morning, which is a shame but would be an even earlier start than today with another 3 hours worth of trains, another dashing back for Badgers and another 20quid in train fares. Instead I think a quiet day at home is in order to recover from today.

Today was Pulborough Brooks day but I’d already decided last night to let everyone sleep til they woke up and when I woke it was 10am, the kids were a good half an hour behind me, which coincidentally would have been the time we *should* have been arriving at PB to start walking round. So despite it being a lovely sunny autumn day we didn’t attend today.

I did some kitchen clearing, let the chickens out, sorted some laundry, cleared up some cat poo (oh how we pay for going away for a weekend, that cat is *such* a bunny boiler!), took out something for dinner, got breakfast for children and chivvied them to get dressed. Which took us to well past 11am. I then sat down with a cup of tea to check my emails and looked at the message from the RI about tomorrow’s lecture which had 3 suggested science experiments to do to help prepare for the lecture. I decided they were simple enough so gathered the required stuff and brought it into the lounge and put it on the table (knew it would come in handy sooner or later ;)).

The first was dissolving sugar in water and then talking about what had happened, whether it was still there and how you could tell. This was all very straightforward. I did laugh when Davies suggested it had been ‘deleted’ but he corrected himself to ‘dissolved’ and claimed he’d mixed up words rather than meanings 😆 They said they knew it was still there because they could taste it and smell it. They then asked if we could get the sugar back and I asked for some ideas of how. They came up with the idea of evaporating the water by heating it so we poured it into a saucepan and put it on the hob until all the water had evaporated and just sugar syrup was left. We didn’t continue as it would have burnt. Much discussion of gas, liquid, solid, told them that water boils at 100 degrees and freezes at zero, we talked about dissolving, solutions, saturation, catalysts and then checked whether temperature plays a role in dissolving sugar in water, did an experiment to check (one glass of cold water, one of hot) to prove the kids hypothesis that it would.

Next was curdling milk – two glasses of milk, one with water added, one with acid (we used vinegar) added. Some discussion about acids, but not as many ideas on this one.

Finally we had to tear a sheet of newspaper in half, then try tearing in half again, one from short edge, one from long edge and speculate on why one tore smoothly and evenly and the other was all ragged. We tried this several times to ensure it was the paper and not the tearer who caused the outcome and speculated on several reasons why.

All of the experiments are apparently being discussed and explained tomorrow.

That took maybe half an hour. When they were interested and engaged we took it further (hence lots of dissolving stuff), when they weren’t we didn’t.

Davies had posed the idea that his animation station might work on his portable dvd player. He brought it down to check but it didn’t (it doesn’t have the correct input port). We plugged it into the old laptop which recognised it and allowed us to download all the photos but it doesn’t have a working disc drive to install the driver for the animation station and I couldn’t find the external disc drive we have somewhere. So we watched Trapped instead.

Scarlett has been spending lots of time brushing various toy horses she owns (Barbie horses and a collection of similar toy horses mostly gathered from charity shops and car boots sales) to ensure their tails and manes are ‘tangle free and glossy’ (her words) – I suspect she’s been watching too many shampoo and conditioned adverts on tv! 😆 She is experimenting with various potions to see which results in easiest brushing and glossiest results. The irony of her own rather tangled hair was not lost on her and indeed she commented on it…

We decided lunch should be popcorn inspired by melting sugar, we decided we should watch a film inspired by eating popcorn so watched WALLe and ate our popcorn.

While watching I emailed Booth museum, Sealife Centre, Herstmonceux Science Centre and South Downs Planetarium to see about prices and offerings for group visits during Christmas camp.

I’d had a bit of an ordering books frenzy at work the other day for Colin Thompson books for Davies and slow cooker recipes books and friendship bracelet books for me and had several email notifications that books had arrived so I decided to go to the library to collect them. I offered Davies and Scarlett the chance to stay at home while I went or to come with me, they chose coming too and both voted for walking rather than driving. We walked a ‘different to normal’ route there and collected the books, both chose a couple more and a DVD for Scarlett, admired my Andy Stanton display, chatted to various colleagues and then looked at the ‘What makes you smile?’ display complete with pens and postit notes for people to add their answers. I noticed ‘shepherds’ and ‘National Badger Day’ in the handwriting of a particular colleague, both of which I knew to be aimed at me 😆

Davies did a drawing of Mr Gum and wrote ‘Mr Gum’ on one and then took another post it note round the corner and came back to stick it on with ‘My Mummy’ written on it, complete with little drawing – awwww. I’m not like sunshine like Michelle is but I am worthy of public declaration :).

We’d got so many books my bag was full and heavy so we went straight home, stopping only at the sweet shop for some sweets each for the kids. Once home I made their tea while they watched Pablo the little red fox on dvd (Tarly chose it from the library).

I started watching the SC but had to pause it to run them out to gymnastics. I came home and continued watching, really enjoyed some bits of it and certainly didn’t feel GB got an easy ride at all.

The honeymoon may well be over at gymnastics already. We forgot to tie Tarly’s hair up so they’d done that with an elastic band which she was less than impressed about. Davies had been pulled out and told he can’t wear all his wristbands and needs to cut them off. After the first week they told him he needs to cover them so he’s been wearing a buff wrapped around his wrist but they told him today that’s not okay either. As far as he’s concerned that’s the end of gymnastics. We talked a bit about their reasoning, how he has to wear a uniform at Badgers and a swimming cap at swimming lessons and the rule is if he wants to do these things he needs to abide by their rules, if he finds their rules unacceptable then there is no pressure to attend. For him this is a deal breaker, he is not prepared to take off the wristbands he has been wearing for 18 months and which to him are part of who he is. Personally I’m very proud of this and happy that he is not bowing to pressure although I am being resolutely impartial in what I tell him. I have said I will email the gym owner as I do feel allowing pierced ears with tape covering the earrings is no different to allowing wristbands with a covering.I am happy to sign a disclaimer to say we won’t sue them if he injures himself as a result of wearing them, or alternate clothing to allow him to carry on wearing them covered up.

Got home and read several chapers of
would have continued for longer but time was marching on, it’s an early start tomorrow, I needed to have a bath / cook dinner and so on. So I had my bath, cooked dinner – shepherds pie including two individual portions for kids for tomorrow with their personal vegetables of choice ready for A to slam in the oven when we get back tomorrow for Mad Tuesday for them while I’m out at my course.

In the end nobody managed early to bed, but that might be to do with the 10am start to the day really 😳

Friday I worked. Ady was home in the morning and my Mum in the afternoon. Not sure what everyone got up to really but the house was lovely and tidy when I got home :).

My day was a usual Friday at work, I did the banking in the morning, did Baby Rhyme time, manned the enquiry desk, worked on the counter and enjoyed the banter and chatter with colleagues and borrowers. Nightmare Colleague wasn’t in… Word is out about my Volunteer Shepherd course (which I had email confirmation of on Friday too :)) so there is plenty of laughter at my expense and debate about what sort of outfit I should wear – I’m planning something Bo Peep-esque! 😆

I got home just after 5pm, we got everything packed up ready and Ady arrived home at about 6 – rather later than planned thanks to an accident closing the tunnel near us and diverting him, along with everyone else driving home during Friday night rush hour along the coast road. I was irate at the inability of us to get out of the house as usual but we were on the road by 630pm and only hit about 20 minutes of road works so arrived at Marcus, Michelle and Chloe’s before 9pm.

At work they know most of my friends by a few words ‘catchphrase’ type description – there are our ‘not swinger’ friends, my ‘crafty’ friend (Tasha), my ‘crap vegan’ friend (needs no explanation) and other such ways of differentiating for the purposes of sharing ‘what are you up to this weekend then?’ type conversations or general anecdotes. M&M are my ‘friends with the glassware’ friends ;). And known for being probably the very best hosts.

Our arrival on Friday was no exception – cuddles, wine, roast beef with potatoes to suit all members of our family and a variety of style of yorkshire pudding awaited us ;). We ate, the children disappeared to play, we mostly sang songs into Ady’s mobile phone and spent time googling for one’s it didn’t recognise. People went to bed in stages with the very youngest first, the oldest second and the ‘we’ve still got it’ middle group heading off around 3am still humming about not liking Mondays.

Saturday was a lovely relaxed and lazy start. There were pancakes, a challenging shower, ham and cheese croissants, DSing, plenty of tea, some chatting, some friendship bracelet making and a trip to the park in the lovely autumn sunshine for frolicking in the falling leaves, clambering on the climbing frame, throwing ‘helicopters’ (sycamores) to see where the wind took them, ritual killing of harlequin ladybirds and returning to the Manor singing ‘The Court of King Caracucticus’ with a brief educational interlude to observe the visible marking of pieces for a very old kit house.

Back at the house I predicted that Babs’ 3.30pm eta would be 4.15pm and was proved spookily right – Babs and I clearly have a spooky pyschic thing going on ;). Either that or our later speculation that she infact controls the whole group in the style of a big board game, that we are all her pawns and she prods effigies of us about with a big stick on a map secreted in her house somewhere while laughing in an evil manner about how we are all just her puppets…. 😆

So Babs and co arrived, followed by Merry. There was a frenzy of pasta / sandwich / pizza making and then it was time to head off to the swimming pool. The party went really well – everyone in the water seemed to have a ball, it’s a nice, clean pool with the cafe area on a mezzanine floor overlooking so we got to watch them while laying out the food. Nice to put some faces to names of some of Michelle’s local friends and meet some of them again. The food went very quickly – never underestimate the hunger of children after swimming!

Grapes and carrots were trodden into the floor, the candles on the cake were lit, blown out and cake cut and distributed, rubbish cleared, floor swept and lots of us headed back to M,M&C’s for post party drinking, chatting and playing. Really nice to see several more friends and a very nice evening was had.

It may have been quite late before the last of us went to bed again… 😳

Sunday and on that basis it may have been quite late before we were seen again! :lol:Even Ady slept in.

A nice lazy morning with yet more tea drinking, chatting and generally enjoying being with friends. We had lunch and then headed off. Davies had a fantastic weekend but Scarlett struggled a bit today, she is pretty good at being self sufficient but was missing Davies and didn’t much like having to compete for his attention. All was well as soon as we got in the car and they connected on their DS’s while watching Star Wars on the dvd player. Scarlett has ever such a lot of Ady in her but she most certainly doesn’t have his people pleasing gene and is far more likely to have my more Marmite effect of people loving or hating her with an added side order of my ‘and if you don’t like me you know what you can do…’ attitude too. She does tend to expect Davies to love her though and is understandably upset when his friends are less keen to have Davies’ little sister hanging around. I understand this is really hard for her when the games they are playing are ones she plays at home with Davies and *their* friends but I also don’t want him to feel responsible for Scarlett. Fortunately she was easily appeased with some time with Ady, the joys of the ice machine gadget on the fridge and some colour changing pens so she spent a fair bit of time last night and today on her own eshewing the variety of other children available to play with.

We said goodbye about 2pm and headed for home. A very smooth journey in under 2 hours through various weather conditions but without any stops at all. Ady said he didn’t think he’d used his brakes for the entire journey. The cat had left marks of her displeasure with us going away but it was speedily cleaned up, the kids had a bath and then ate their dinner watching a variety of Family Entertainment TV shows, I closeted myself away to catch up on X Factor online and then had a bath myself, Ady rather wonderfully cooked dinner for all, in shifts and we ate watching the Electric Dreams 1980s which we found very entertaining.

In all a fabulous weekend, we all really enjoyed it (Scarlett being very stoical about the bits she hadn’t liked and saying there was loads more she loved so it was still a good weekend) and thanks to all for wonderful company and to Marcus, Michelle and Chloe for their fab hosting as always and their wonderful glassware.

The sun shone again today which after 3 solid days of rain was a welcome return. I quite like rain but not when it sets it for long enough to start googling for blueprints for arks!

First thing (well as first thing as we get round these parts ;)) I found out some theories behind the possible answers to Davies’ question about making a hole through the middle of the earth. I love how my general knowledge improves daily by helping them find out answers to things – it’s one of my favourite things about working at the library too. I get way more pleasure out of answering ‘I don’t know but what an interesting question. Let’s find out together’ than from just knowing already.

Elizabeth, M and T arrived to play with fairly poor timing just as the washing machine spun to a halt. I was keen to get the wash out to dry as it was including swimsuits we’ll be needing to pack for the weekend so I left them to it for 20 minutes or so while I pegged out washing, made some pastry and shoved some cakes in the oven. This worked out just fine as Scarlett and M went out to play with the chickens, while Davies, T and Elizabeth explored the Animation Station which I’d told Elizabeth about and she was keen to see in action. So Davies did a fine job of explaining how it all worked, showing them what he’d done on it so far and then getting out some plasticine and helping T make a film.

Elizabeth was really impressed with both the machine and Davies’ coaching skills and previous efforts so we got to talking about Davies and his animation passion and I pulled up his blog and showed them some of his other work over the years. We all enjoyed watching some of the stuff on Davies’ youtube account, particularly the making of outtakes film which had a 6 year old Davies and 4 year old Scarlett looking all tiny and cute on it :).

I made some lunch and the kids gradually all drifted away to play leaving Elizabeth and I to chat. There was some friction when Davies tried to stop the others from being too forceful with the chickens (he was right, but sometimes doesn’t quite have the authority to pull it off) but it was smoothed over and Scarlett and T played together while Davies and M built a traintrack with the brio spanning four rooms which was quite impressive :).

They left at about 330pm and all three of us were relieved to not have anything to go back out for this evening. I think the kids feel like I do about all the evening activities really – enjoy the opportunity, are glad they do them and get lots out of them while actually there but the thought of them, particularly this time of year in the cold and dark is wearing. Something reminded us all the other day of Nim’s Island although none of us could remember what it was so I suggested we put that on and we watched it, and all the dvd extras too. I do love that film :).

Earlier Scarlett asked why plaster of paris is called plaster of paris and speculated that it must be something to do with Paris in France. A bit of googling showed her to be right and she’s added the word gypsum to her vocabulary too :).

Dinner for the children, much snuggling with Scarlett who has been very cuddly today and I made a rainbow bracelet, at his request, for Davies. I tried and failed twice to get my head round a heart pattern, despite it being classed as ‘easy’ on a website.

We read at bedtime, which as usual for his books has the most beautiful illustrations. Scarlett has taken it to bed to look at more and Davies wants to spend more time looking at it too. I think he’s planning on some artwork inspired by him, I feel quite tempted to have a go myself :). We also looked at although I’m not at all sure why I ordered that in now, it must have popped up as recommened somewhere linked to something else we’ve read.

I cooked dinner – homemade quiche, jacket potatoes and sweetcorn and I made some jam tarts with the leftover pastry scraps and that was today.

and actually I’m not even sure it is physics!

Davies was asking yesterday about how the whole upside down to each other thing works with different places on the earth (obviously brought about by having friends who were here 48 hours ago but are now literally on the other side of the world and therefore upside down to us). We talked a bit about how you don’t actually go upside down rather stay the right way up as you travel across the earth’s surface but it is very much not my area of expertise.

Then he wanted to know whether you’d fall out feet first then if you went through the very middle of the earth. He does know you couldn’t for all the obvious reasons but wanted to know the answer anyway. Turns out a quick google this morning shows he’s by no means the first person to ask that question. There doesn’t seem to be a quick definitite answer though but I do at least have some theories of more informed people to share with him now. Found this and liking this lots

Maybe I should think about a timetable after all…. 😆

A far too early start all round this morning as Ady got the kids up at 7ish and I staggered down soon afterwards to assist in the chivvying them to getting dressed then they all left to go to Julie’s and work.

I hung some washing out, let the chickens out, put another wash on, sorted a load of laundry, made a cup of tea and then got dressed (another Nice Skirt Nicola day, worn over leggings again. It’s a pink raggedy edged skirt with layers which makes me feel like a dancer but I suspect makes me look more like an elephant in a tutu! :lol:). I had time to check my emails and then headed off to work.

I’ve not done a Wednesday morning for ages thanks to holidays and then having to book another off as I’d muddled up my Wednesdays and booked RI and W&G Science Museum for a day I was supposed to be working. I think Wednesdays are my favourite day to work actually, only four hours and generally busy so the time goes really quick. I spent the first half an hour, pre-opening marking off the daily papers the library has (Times, Telegraph, Guardian) and one of the weekly ones (West Sussex Gazette) and stamping them with the ‘please do not remove from the library’ stamp. Then we opened and I was on the counter for the next hour and a quarter but it was nice and busy with a steady stream of customers coming in and lots of delivery to unpack and split into stock to go back onto the shelves and stock to be put aside ready for borrowers to collect. This included 3 slow cooker recipe books for me :).

Next was tea break where I chatted to Y about my evening course and made her laugh describing some of my fellow attendees who are high in comedy value.

After tea I was on the enquiry desk for an hour. I dealt with very few enquiries but did print some stuff off for someone for her daughters homework on ‘kingdoms’ which we eventually realised was about classification of species and the varying types of groupings – something I had learnt a bit about last week at the Darwin Cocoon. I did some work on a print out of reservations outstanding for more than 30 days, 60 days and 75 days to ensure people weren’t waiting for items that are never going to arrive.

Finally my last hour was spent on an ‘off’ which means you are not rota’d anywhere but get on with your own jobs. I sorted out the Reading Groups that are managed at Lancing, ordered some promotional material for some upcomming displays and then did all the closing routines of locking windows, shutting down computers and so on.

We closed at 1pm and I drove straight to Julie’s. It has rained, heavily, all day long today without any break so driving was not as relaxing as usual. I had a cup of tea with Julie, who commented that all the kids had been a bit crazy today – wet play syndrome – and we coordinated diaries for the next few weeks before heading for home.

Davies and Scarlett wanted to watch Star Wars so they headed off to do that, although from the banging coming from Davies’ room I suspect they didn’t watch it too closely. I ate marmite on toast and drank tea. They reappeared back downstairs after about an hour and I offered to read to them as I’ve promised to do but hasn’t happened for a couple of days so we spent about half an hour sitting with me reading a large chunk of

I then made the kids tea which they scoffed down before getting changed and we left for Badgers. Ady was only about five minutes behind us but we decided not to wait for him incase he was held up too much and I dropped the kids off. There is a single Dad (his twin boys were at badger camp with Davies) and a single Mum (her 5yo daughter started Badgers last term) who also hang around as it’s not worth driving home and back and have been asking Ady and I to go to the pub / coffee shop with them. We had intended to go last week but got asked to stay so this week were planning to go along. But it was raining so hard we all stood around outside under the porch of the building trying to decide what to do. Eventually we went for ringing the doorbell and asking to go and sit in the lounge at Badgers instead of venturing out. They let us make ourselves tea or coffee and the four of us sat and chatted in there. It was really nice :). We didn’t admit to Home Ed this time although I suspect it will come up pretty quickly but they were doing most of the talking about their nightmare ex partners and one of the twin boy’s special needs. I was really inspired by how well this Dad knows his boys. He says his ex was never very maternal and I think he has pretty much raised them himself but I know plenty of parents who don’t have a clue of who their kids are, he has them spot on and loves them and works with them to make them the best they can be. Top bloke :). Ady and I both decided we never want to split up – it sounds like hell and that we’ll carry on Home Edding – neither of them had much positive to say about schools! They did say that for a long while they thought we were not a real kosher couple but were having an affair as we turned up in seperate cars and headed off holding hands before going off in our seperate cars again afterwards 😆 Reminded us of our neighbours in Manchester speculating about us for ages before they got to know us well enough to ask why Ady worked funny hours and headed off in a fancy suit – they had decided he was an undercover policeman! 😆

Davies won Badger of the Month for the third time and was commended for being mature, helpful, responsible and grown up. He’s been doing lots of helping with tasks like getting drinks and putting tables away apparently and is very hopeful he may be made a Follow-Me Badger which I think is a bit like being a prefect for the last year of Badgers. From what Julie was saying last week and him winning BotM tonight I suspect he is indeed on track for it. 🙂 Oh how I remember the early days at Lancing Badgers where I had to sit in the cloakroom!

Back home again we finished the book as we were enjoying it so much before bed.