One word? When seven would do…

Saturday morning I worked. It didn’t feel much like work to be honest, I was very much in holiday-mode and as there were plenty of staff in I was given the whole four hour shift to mess about with various displays. I put up my 12 days of Christmas display, which I’m pleased with, it looks nice and colourful. Then I did a display with some new book bags that had come in in various colours. There is some prize to be won for the best display of them in any library so I did a display making a christmas tree shape with the green ones, photocopying and reducing the pink ones to make baubles and putting various other coloured ones underneath as presents. It looked pretty good :).

I came home and the others were watching Christmas songs on TV and doing some Christmas activity books Ady had found kicking around. As me finishing work meant we were all officially on holiday now we decided to call ‘Christmas’ and as Ady and Scarlett were off shopping for a few bits I added advocaat to their shopping list. They were gone for ages getting some plumbing bit as something had gone wrong with the vanity basin in the en suite upstairs. They came back with that bit, Ady fixed it and they went back out again for the food bits.

Meanwhile Davies was busy with some new DS game (Drawn to life, next chapter or something, you get to design your own characters, both the kids love it) and I made a start on baking for camp. I had a false start on Scarlett’s birthday cake (which is now chicken food!) and did the now legendary rice crispie cakes.

Ady and Scarlett came home and I got kicked out of the kitchen so Ady could do the kids tea so Scarlett I and retired with snowballs and it all felt very festive 🙂 I sat and wrote out some Christmas carol lyrics on big poster sheets and then went off for a bath before watching X Factor. Ady cooked steak which was lovely. I was persuaded to go to bed very early ;).

Sunday I’d ordered our Christmas cards online at Costco yesterday so we needed to go and collect them. We also wanted to get a few bits for camp too and thought the hours drive would be worth it. Thanks to very heavy traffic it was more like 2 hours but we had Christmas music in the car to singalong to so all was well. Costco was very successful and we got a turkey crown and a massive box of Christmas crackers at bargain prices. The journey home was without hold-ups and we got in and I started roast dinner and baking. My Mum rang to ask if we were home as they were passing so they called in for an hour or so which put paid to any further baking but I had got Scarlett’s cake done.

Mum and Dad left and we sat down to roast chicken dinner which was very nice if I do say so myself ;). The kids were being really well behaved and cooperatively playing their DSs so we let them stay up longer while we had baths and I disappeared back into the kitchen for further baking. Managed to cook flapjacks (very nice but a bit gooey, hoping they will firm up overnight) a secret santa gift which I’ve never made before but seems to have turned out well and flapjacks to go with the rice crispie cakes. Am also planning on baking some mince pies but I’ll do them up at the hostel as they are far nicer fresh from the oven.

We’re all really looking forward to the week 🙂

weigh a pie.

We had a nice leisurely start to the day and while Davies and Scarlett played / DS’d / watched TV I pottered around doing various unexciting things like laundry, washing up, putting a loaf of bread on ready for lunch and then got totally distracted by tidying and ended up clearing out what had been stashed underneath the sofa (lots) and my bag and my previous bag (which I’d got fed up of the accumulated crap in so transfered what I wanted to a new bag and left the rest in there :oops:). Recycling bin is now rather full of paper and I have a lovely tidy and organised bag :).

I managed to get hold of someone in my MP’s constituency office, explained about the petition and arranged to go and hand it over to her so she could hand it to him so we drove down to the town to do that. The kids wanted to stay in the car but I insisted on dragging them with me on the basis that ‘you are not hidden!’ 😆 The secretary was very friendly and said he was due to the office at 4pm and she’d hand it to him then. I have enclosed a covering letter and emailed him too asking him to confirm he will be happy to present it but as I am still feeling slightly at odds with the whole thing I confess to mostly feeling pleased it is no longer in my hands – literally and metaphorically.

Home again via Sainburys, this time allowing the kids to be ‘hidden’ and leaving them in the car playing their DSs and listening to Mika while I dashed round getting various bits. Home for lunch and then another dash out to buy some felttips for me. I now have my own two packets of felt tips for the odd occassion when I need to colour something in 😆 Am tempted to label them. My Dad used to shave off a tiny bit of the paint on the reverse end of pencils and write my initials on them for school, wonder if I could do something similar with felt tips?

We watched while doing colouring and it was all very peaceful and harmonious with the odd bit of tiddly-pomming along and chuckling at Bill.

The kids had tea and I carried on colouring, Ady came home and then we all went round the corner to Rainbows. It was Scarlett’s last Rainbows as she starts Brownies after Christmas. She does have a Rainbows Christmas Crafts Day to go to next Saturday but tonight was the last one of the term so they enrolled newcommers, said goodbye to the ones leaving and had a little Christmas Presentation Evening to boot. This involved the Rainbows singing four Christmas songs up on the stage and the parents being served tea, coffee and mince pies :).

Scarlett was just so Scarlett for the whole thing. While others were having last minute hairbrushings to look tidy, gathering up song sheets and being all very X Factor about the whole business she was thre with her tangledy hair, refused a songsheet on the basis ‘I can’t read – duh!’ and sang her heart out anyway :).She got amazingly enthusiastic hugs from all the leaders, she has been very popular with the adults, handed out lollies to all the rainbows and was sorry she didn’t have enough for all the siblings there today and was sad to be going although she is very delighted to be about to be seven. She’s certainly got a lot out of her 2 years at Rainbows, I’m not at all sure what but there has been a lot of it anyway!

Back home I read a pile of books to them, cooked pizza for dinner and Ady and I read Lord Lucas’ speech from yesterday which we found very heartening. Clearly I don’t have any dilemma about how I’ll be voting but I’m very pleased to know that people other than radical loons get what we do and why we want to protect it so much.

I was working a 12 hour shift today and thanks to my Mum being akward generally about childcare at the moment Ady made a decision to take Davies and Scarlett to work with him for the day. She’d really upset him yesterday on the phone (which is actually quite a feat, I might be easily riled but I think everyone knows Ady is a masterclass in patience, easy-going-ness and general good humour). We’d had a very long Serious Chat about the whole thing on Tuesday night anyway and discussions about what lifestyle we actually want and measures to take to make it happen. Lots of building blocks for the future have been laid in 2009, I reckon 2010 could well see some changes happening for us.

So, they dropped me off at work just before 9am and went off to visit various Garden Centres around Kent, Sussex and Surrey. They had a really good day by all accounts, got a McDonalds for a very late lunch and the highlight was Ady having one of his meetings while they got a first peek at the about-to-be-opened Santa’s Grotto which has live animals including reindeer and turkeys. Scarlett clearly in heaven! I have photos but have not flickr’d them yet so will drop them in later.

I had a LONG day. I can’t believe I used to work 10 hours shifts as a matter of course, let alone the crazy long days at this time of year getting ready for Christmas. Urgh, definite retail flashbacks today. The reason for my long shift was tacking an extra 4 hours onto my usual 9-5 to stay til 9pm for the Lancing Christmas Lights Switch on evening. The library stays open til 9pm (we usually shut at 7pm) and we offer children’s craft activties, hot drinks and mince pies under the banner ‘Festive Fun’. I’ve done it every year so far but this year it was a very deliberate act as I want my birthday off and I didn’t have any annual leave left so I wanted the time off in lieu from working tonight.

So my normal day which entailed working on the counter, on the enquiry desk, shelving and sending overdue letters out along with drawing, photocopying and cutting out figures for all of the 12 days of Christmas (which I now know all the words to and suspect I will never forget ;)) for a display I’m doing in the junior library.

Then I drew a snowflake on my cheek with glittery eyeliner, was asked to draw them on various other staff members cheeks and Festive Fun had begun! I did some craft activities – card making including glitter, sticky mini pom-poms, drawing with chalk on black card to make snowflakes and three very hastily drawn and photocopied festive pictures of santa, a reindeer and a robin!

At which point our days collided again as Ady and the kids came to the library to partake of Festive Fun too. Ady nipped off to look round Lancing but the kids chose to stay with me and the glitter. He managed to get the last bit of a Secret Santa gift from one of the charity shops, so aside from a home made bit by me which I’ll do at the weekend we’re all sorted there :).

He then nipped home to put the chickens away and the kids carried on staying with me and the glitter, along with about 30 other kids who also arrived to do stuff with glitter. Ady returned to take Davies and Scarlett home for hot chocolate and Indiana Jones watching. I worked on the desk and joined a new borrower and did a couple of reservations.

Then we had a Christmas miracle as one of the two grumpy old men who visit the library every single morning to moan and read the papers turned up. He must be well into his 70s if not 80s, has a really fierce demeanour and is often rude or brash with us, he rarely cracks a smile. He strolled into the library dressed as Father Christmas!!!!!

I ran to get my camera, he had his photo taken with various children – and staff members, even posed reading the paper in his usual spot 😆 He tried to resist that but I told him now he’d come in dressed like that he couldn’t ever be expected to be taken seriously by us again! 😆 I even rang Yvonne who wasn’t working to tell her – it made her evening! 😆

We cleared up and Ady and the kids came back to pick me up – all in their pjs including Ady in his shorts much to Sian’s amusment as I’d offered her a lift home! 😆

I read the kids a chapter of Littlenose as despite it being 930pm and me being wiped out it felt very odd not having seen them *all* day long. Ady thought he’d taped Gavin and Stacey but hadn’t banked on the autoview reminder we’d set up for River Cottage so we watched that on tape instead and then found G&S on iplayer.

Tomorrow the kids and I have very little happening which is just as well as I can’t see any of us being up very early ;).

When I went to bed last night – at 2am -it was with the knowledge that I didn’t have to be up too early this morning. The kids were awake just after 8am though and being noisy. I yelled at them twice to be quieter and then gave in and got up. I then had an OMG moment and realised the arrangement I’d made to see Lucy and The Rs was clashing with the arrangement I’d made to meet up with Julie and co some 15 miles away. As I had a swear word thought so the phone rang and it was Julie ringing to see what I was planning to do about lunch. We agreed it was cold and likely to be muddy / wet so we’d just meet for a walk and then call it a day before lunch. This was good as it meant I could contact Lucy and change our arrangement back to them coming over after lunch (rather than before) and all would be well and dandy.

Ady then rang me about 4 times in 10 minutes to check various Christmas present purchases while I put our new breadmaker on a speedy 10 min cycle to season it before first use. I then weighed out ingredients for a loaf and battled to get the breadmaker to accept it, while trying to wash up and chivvy the kids to get dressed.

Eventually Ady appeared home on his way past for a coffee so I left him with the definant breadmaker and the kids and I dashed off, about 15 minutes late. I ‘rah rah rah’d at them for a few minutes about squabbling and being nice to people who you love and have to live with. That shut them up 😆 Then I turned the cd up and sang along for two songs by which point my mood had dramatically improved and I was ready to be cheery again.

We got to Slindon at about the same time as Julie, wellied up (oh how I greater than three my wellies) and went for a nice muddy, sloshing through puddles and soggy leaves Nearly Winter Walk. We tried to feed some completely disinterested ducks, spotted a heron, had some time in the playpark and generally talked ten to the dozen to catch up. The sun shone for the whole hour and life was good :).

We were then late heading back again so Davies rang Lucy and left a message to that effect as well as sending her a text. I did the dictating from the front seat and he did the execution from the backseat. I made a speedy lunch (most of which the chickens ate in the end), baked some cookies and then Lucy and The Rs arrived. We had a nice couple of hours chatting while they played with very minimal intervention, then they left.

I made the kids some tea, chatted to Scarlett about a world map wildlife puzzle she was doing (she asked me where she’d find a kiwi and I said NZ so she looked for a small island at the bottom and then she spotted lemurs and decided that must be Madagascar).

Davies had made a PSP from a cardboard box including the screen, disc player and controllers, must get a picture actually, it’s fab :). I went to look at that. Then I encouraged the chickens to go in their shed as some of them were looking fairly traumatised by the hailstones and the kids had tea.

Off to Badgers where I was rather taken aback to be asked if I’d consider becomming an Assistant Badger Leader. I have lots of reasons for saying yes and lots for saying no, need to think about it further really, along with talking to Davies and Scarlett about it more as one of them wants me to and the other doesn’t!

I sat with five other parents and Ady joined us too chatting in the coffee lounge there which was nice and then Ady took Davies and Scarlett home while I headed off to a local Home Educators’ for a Adults Only Home Ed support meeting. These have been happening locally for about a year but prior to the October meeting I’d never been invited. Not sure what has changed but it was nice to be included and the other people there were all nice. I had the oldest children which is happening more and more and is an odd feeling really. We chatted about approaches and I talked a bit about our autonomous approach and how it works for us. Hopefully I’ll get invited back next time ;).

It was yet another late return home and as I sat down to my dinner so Ady went up to bed. I’m out again late tomorrow working til 9pm so actually I’ll probably be looking forward as much to having some time with Ady next week as the rest of you ;). I’ve now spent more time trying to chase around and find out who is coordinating the various petitions I gathered signatures for tonight and am really looking forward to life not being quite so busy soon.

A necessary late start this morning for the children and I. We’d already decided on the way home last night to have a day at home today to recover but as Tuesdays are mad enough with nothing other than our regular ‘after school’ things that still doesn’t make for laziness ;).

Breakfast, dressed and things like laundry dealt with we nipped down to the industrial estate (where Gymnastics is) to visit Scout Shops for a Sea Scouts Cub sweatshirt for Davies. It is where I worked for the 9 months I was pregnant with Davies back in 2000. I got the job there as Sales Office Manager and found out 10 days later I was pregnant! I really enjoyed that job and infact stayed on for another 15 months after I had Davies on a one day a week in the office and further day a week from home sort of consultancy-style doing some paperwork and offering back up to the woman who took over my job. I’m still in touch with several people who worked there while I did but noone who is still there and I’ve not been back there since we moved home. It’s all changed and from being a mail order head office with 19 shops around the UK they are now mail order only and sold all the shops to Blacks. They do now have a small showroom open to the public at Lancing though so that was where we went for the sweatshirt. The door was opened by Dawn, who worked in Buying when I was there and was pregnant too so has a nine year old daughter. She filled me in on all the gossip, the odd few people still there (hard to believe that was nearly 10 years ago, it really doesn’t feel like it!) and sold me the sweatshirt.

We came back home and Davies tried on the trousers they’d given him at Sea Scouts a couple of weeks ago and he and Ady had told me didn’t fit him. It turns out they fit him fine so that was him kitted out.

We had a fairly lazy few hours watching various stuff on cbbc, the kids both did some DSing, both came and cuddled up with me at various points and Scarlett and I did a couple of jigsaws together. I also caught up a bit on blogging and did some reserving stuff online for Christmas and birthday presents ready for Ady to collect tomorrow.

Then it was off to swimming. I’d already decided not to swim today and I was glad as the chief instructor was observing today for grading them for next term so I got to watch that and also see the kids’ progress over the last few weeks. Davies went and had a bit of a swim while Scarlett had her lesson but then he came and sat with me for a bit before his lesson. Scarlett was sad not to play with her little swimming friend (they waved sadly to each other for a bit, S sat beside me and her friend, A from the pool) but played her DS beside me anyway. No idea if either of them will go up next term to the next classes but I am really pleased with their progress generally this term. They are both looking like proper swimmers, have loads of water confidence, clearly enjoy it and developing style and technique on the variuous strokes. Scarlett got her ‘Octopus 3’ certificate and badge and she found 50p in one of the lockers so she bought a packet of Opal Fruits to share with Davies to celebrate :).

I got them fish and chips as promised last week for their tea and when we got home Ady had just arrived before us. I got changed, bid everyone goodbye and headed off for my course. Last one tonight. The nine weeks has flown by and while it’s been fairly chaotic dashing around on a Tuesday and part of me is relieved it is over I have really enjoyed it and learnt loads. It’s not quite over yet as I have a test to complete, two assignments to finish, an interview to attend (which I need to reappoint as it was for next Thursday which is now Christmas so I have cancelled it) and a Health and Safety training day to go to before I am formally a Waste Prevention Advisor but all of the formal learning is now complete at least. I do intend blogging in more detail about the whole thing at some point, just not sure when exactly.

Meanwhile Davies went to Sea Scouts and was invested. Really sorry to have missed that and if it hadn’t been the very last one of my course I would have gone to watch Davies instead. Infact if he’d shown any signs of upset that I wasn’t going to be there I would have gone anyway but he was totally fine about it all and I got to see pictures 🙂

And see his certificate and of course I will get all of the honour of sewing on the big clutch of badges he brought home to be fixed to his new top :rolls:

And that, finally, pretty much brings me back up to date. Phew!

or ‘black bogies r us’. 😆

Back up to London again on Monday, train this time. Ady was with us again as he has a few odd days holiday to use up before the end of the year so he’d booked some days off here and there where we already had plans he could come along to. We were off to the RI in the morning and we’d booked tickets to The Cocoon at NHM too so he could come and see it and the kids and I could have another look and revisit some of the bits we’d not spent much time on last time.

Davies had ended up in our bed at some point in the night, Ady was in Davies’ bed and noone really wanetd to wake up. I got up first and roused everyone else, we left about five minutes later than I’d wanted but thanks to some sensible planning Ady dropped the kids and I off at the station to buy tickets and nip into Asda for further food supplies while he went on to the library and parked the car in the carpark there. He did misunderstand my instructions of ‘if there are no other spaces park in the staff bays’ though and parked straight in the staff bays despite the rest of the car park being empty. Not a huge problem but clearly noone had recognised his car as belonging to me so he had a note stuck to the windscreen about it being ‘STAFF ONLY PARKING’ when we finally collected it 11 hours later 😳

The kids and I did our customary running before 9am when it’s a day trip to London routine although this time it was because we knew the train was about 2 minutes away and wanted to avoid crossing the bridge rather than the tracks. And you know, it’s tradition and that ;).

Davies and Scarlett got seats as a youngish lad kindly leapt up as soon as we got on and offered his to them :). Ady swapped with Davies who was having a moment about travelling backwards but had managed to contain that until the lad moved on, so Davies and I stood together for a while, then he got a seat opposite Ady and Scarlett and the three of them sat with a nice woman and chatted about albino animals. I finally got a seat seperate to the rest of them and quite enjoyed watching Ady pretending to be me ;).

We’re getting pretty good at the route across to Green Park now (well it is only 2 stops, but knowing which line and stuff) and by 1030am we were happily installed in the RI cafe with tea and coffee. Alison and children (as opposed to teens) arrived shortly after us and joined us before we ambled upstairs just before 11am.

The lecture was ‘A visitors guide to life on earth’
Join author, lecturer, television presenter and explorer George McGavin on an incredible journey through the planets biodiversity. What would aliens think if they landed on planet earth?

‘A deep space exploration ship has discovered an unexpectedly large number of life forms in an obscure galaxy approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter and containing at least 200 billion stars. Remote sensing and initial surveys indicate that life may have already persisted on this tiny planet for a few billion years.’

This talk will examine the topic of biodiversity, the variation of life on Earth. Each nook and cranny of our world contains living things, from tiny bacteria to huge sea mammals, and this talk will take a unique view of the richness of life here on earth.

He was made up with green face and body paint and refered to earth as a planet number and asked us to pretend we were all from his planet attending a lecture about this new planet they’d found and investigated. I have to confess I had shades of school lessons that went on slightly too long before lunch and stifled a few yawns. Looking around the theatre I saw plenty of the school children doing much the same and there was a fair bit of yawning, stretching, fidgeting and so on. However all five of the kids with us and indeed pretty much all of the other Home Ed kids around us appeared to be held all the way through and indeed the feedback from Davies and Scarlett was really positive. I personally felt he was more engaging and entertaining when he took a few questions at the end and had a more animated feel to him them than when he was working from the slide show. But it wasn’t me he was there to educate and the two KS2 children I have were definitely happy to be there.

We said goodbye to Alison and co and decided to head straight to the Natural History Museum for a look round part of that before our Cocoon tickets at 2pm. There is currently an ice rink outside NHM along with various food and drink stalls and a carousel so we looked at that for a while and watched several people do full body splats in the couple of inches of icy water on top of the rink. Most funny 😆 Inside the NHM I queued for ages to get our tickets from the booking email form and was told slightly snottily that ‘you could have just gone straight there!’ which made me apologise and then feel grudging about both being spoken to like that and accidentally taking responsibility for it at all! Grr.

We decided lunch was in order before anything else so went to the picnic area downstairs and ate while discussing religion, philosophy and who we think is the most intelligent person coming to Christmas Camp! Then we talked about how you’d define that all anyway and what criteria we had for it personally. Decided intelligent wasn’t the right term after all and moved on to enlightened, educated, trained, interesting and academic. And no, none of that is for a wider audience ;). I’m jst blogging it to be mischevious ;).

We put ‘what to see’ to the vote and the kids voted for mammals so we headed to the whale. We walked around the dolphins and whales area and learnt about shading patterns on them before heading off to the Darwin Centre area.

I’m really glad we went a second time, I feel the kids and I got loads more out of it this visit. We spent time really using the interactive displays on stuff we’d not managed last time and were able to walk past bits we’d focussed on last time in more detail. Also having Ady there meant we were able to split up and go at different paces / have adult attention per child on stuff with lots of reading or explaining needed. Both the kids got to have a long go on the ‘planning a field trip’ bit which we’d not managed to do last time. Scarlett and I spent about 20 minutes on it and ‘went’ on two trips – Scotland for flies and Rio for plant samples. You had to plan the whole trip including keeping your baggage weight down, deciding which tools and equipment to take, what clothing to pack, ensuring you dealt with any paperwork and had all the right visa and passport etc. It was great. Scarlett was really rational and reasoned with her choices and made sure she had all the information before making decisions. She didn’t get them all right (I don’t think you are supposed to really, it’s far from easy and she made pretty much the same choices I would have done) and learnt from the feedback she got. Really impressed with that display 🙂

Not sure how Davies got on as he did it with Ady and didn’t seem to spend as long on it.

We watched various scientists in their various labs through the windows and listened to one talking about how he was mounting a plant sample ready to be archived. The kids and I did an activity about mosquitoes and malaria which was good and then crossed to watch real scientists carrying out very similar work for real

We came out of there and spent some time playing with the Climate Change wall which we’d completely missed last time and I’d regretted when I saw it on the website. Really liked that 🙂

(they get that presenting gene from their father ;))

Then we went into the Attenborough Studio for two short films. David Attenborough, Life on camera and Wildscapes. The former made me all misty eyed as it charts DA’s career, his passion and some of the highlights of his documentaries. The latter was amazing as it used five screens, no commentary, just amazing cinematography of nature. Really glad we did that. There were various other interesting looking things happening but either the times clashed with each other or in the case of one event children had to be over 12. On Sunday we’d bemoaned not forward planning our two days and booking a travellodge for Sunday night and staying over rather than going up two days running. I definitely think we’ll book one or even two nights early next year and spent some time at the museums doing all the various things we always run out of time for.

We ended up in the Body section of the museum, which I’ve not been in for several years and must be one of the older sections. Ady and Davies looked at all the optical illusions while Scarlett and I looked at changes in our bodies between children and adults and males and females, an illustration of the menstrual cycle and some memory games. It was then past 5pm and we were all starting to flag so we decided to call it a day.

Outside the ice rink was being skimmed over, the lights were all on and looking pretty in the trees and the carousel was lit up. It was £2 per ride and looked so old fashioned and magical I agreed the kids could have a ride on it. It felt all Victorian Christmassy 🙂

Back to Victoria where thanks to having to wait about 15 minutes for a train we managed to be among the first on it and therefore got our pick of the seats. The journey home felt really slow and we were all really wiped out by the time we actually walked in the front door at about 8pm. Very long day.

The kids had a quick bath to wash London off and then a speedy tea before a very late bedtime. Ady and I also had baths, a less speedy tea and an even later bedtime.

Oops, getting really behind here. I’m out late three nights this week too so need to catch up now otherwise I never will.

So Sunday then. Someone had posted to our local list a while back about Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior being docked at London for the weekend and boarding passes to have a tour being issued if you emailed to register. I’d failed to read the website properly about confirmation being emailed on the Friday before and had assumed as we’d not heard we hadn’t got places, but sure enough on Friday I got an email with our four boarding passes to be printed out. We don’t have a printer so I had to go to the library and print them off on Saturday.

So Sunday came, pouring with rain and very windy again. Ady was keen to just stay home and have a quiet day but I was adamant this was something we’d be pleased we’d done so I insisted. I was starting to think I may have been wrong when the rain got heavier the further into London we drove mind you.

We drove as it’s £35 for the 4 of us to get into London by train and Greenpeace had already warned us that the nearest tube station to where the Rainbow Warrior was docked was closed on Sunday so we reasoned even London carpark prices would be cheaper than train tickets. I’d found what looked to be the closest carpark to the docks online and we used that postcode in the sat nav. As always getting into London it shows as just over an hour but ends up as nearly double that once you hit the traffic. This time we didn’t hit traffic at all until the Blackwall tunnel ( which always disappoints me as the walls are actually white), then utterly lost our bearings on a one way system and ended up in a different car park altogether.

It was attached to a mini shopping mall and there were posters saying if you spent £10 in any of the shops you could get 3 hours free parking so we bought some bits from Tesco for lunch and got our free parking token too. We then got utterly lost and wandered around the docks in a huge circle for nearly an hour. It didn’t really matter as the rain had stopped and there was plenty to look at but eventually we decided we were edging far too close to our free parking limit so we asked one of the many Canary Wharf security officers who were around. He was really friendly and offered to take us part way there so we walked along with him and also gathered another two people heading the same way. The kids and I were disappointed we didn’t attract more of a crowd really, we liked the idea of the security man as a sort of Pied Piper leading us to the ship :lol:.

Finally we rounded a corner and there was the big Greenpeace banner – hurrah!

I swapped our passes for stickers with our tour letter on and we had a quick look at the Greenpeace stuff for sale. The kids and I got badges each and we put three books in the box for the crew. Attached to the boarding passes had been an email asking if we could bring books for the crew’s onboard library as they were bored of all the books they had already so I’d raided our shelves for a few of our unwanted books to donate.

Scarlett then got hijacked to have her photo taken, and Davies joined in, when she was spotted by a photographer. She had them holding a banner and against various backdrops and wanted to use it on the website. Not sure if it was for Greenpeace or The Wave, will have to keep an eye on both sites and see if I can spot them.

Ady and I had very welcome hot drinks and then it was time for our tour. I think we were really lucky as most of the tours were being conducted by volunteers but we were led round by one of the actual crew. She was Spanish, a deckhand and both passionate and very knowledgable – obviously 😉 We all got onboard (I think there were 22 of us in the group) and had an introductory chat to Greenpeace’s history and a brief overview of their campaigns and current issues. We had various pieces of equipment on the ship pointed out to us and were told this was the second Rainbow Warrior as the first is currently continuing helping wildlife from her position sunk off the coast of New Zealand. A few items remain from the first boat including a pair of binoculars and the original bell:

Inside we looked at the equipment used to chart routes, the captains log, how the ship is controlled, both hi-tech and old fashioned.

We came out and had a go at the ship’s wheel (no longer actually in use) and the compass, while peering through some portholes into the living quarters below:

Scarlett asked about seeing dolphins as was told it is such a regular occurance that a wooden dolphin called Dave now lives at the very front of the Rainbow Warrior, and told the story about how he got there:
“Dave the dolphin loved to come with his pod and play in the waves caused by the Rainbow Warrior but he loved the crew and the work that Greenpeace did so much he wanted to leave the seas and join the crew. He went to see Neptune, God of the Oceans and when Neptune heard about the good work that Greenpeace do and saw how much Dave loved them he gave his permission. Neptune remembered the story of Pinnochio and used the same magic to turn Dave from a real dolphin into a wooden one. Now he is part of the Rainbow Warrior crew and has the most important position on board, at the very front of the ship. He still sees his pod when they come to play around the ship”.

Sailing with Greenpeace has now been added to the list of things she wants to do when she grows up ;).

Tour over we all hung over the side of the ship to be videoed performing a wave (suspect that will also be on the website at some point) and then our guide gave us all a hug, thanked us for coming and sneakily showed Davies, Scarlett and I down one of the portholes to where a actual Greenpeace flag was draped underneath.

We had a quick sit in the dinghy and met the polar bear who had arrived

Then decided the sky was looking grey and grim again and we’d definitely have gone over our 3 hours free parking so we should try and find the car park.

We found a way, way shorter route back and were only about 15 minutes over the 3 hours. It would have been £9 for parking but putting the token down brought it back to £3.50 so that was a nice surprise :). And it started raining again almost as soon as we left the carpark.

Coming home was long and tedious, we took a very diverted diversion to find a McDonalds for the kids tea. I think we got home about 630pm. Everyone agreed it had been a really good day and we were all really glad we’d gone.

I started reading to the kids. I’d been reading some of it myself the day before and been really impressed with it, highly recommend it. Perfectly level for Davies and Scarlett :). We read the intro and then I read out the various ‘files’ or chapters within it and let them choose which we read first. They both chose ‘does God exist?’ so we read that.They wanted another chapter and I would have obliged but Total Wipeout was on so they chose to watch that instead!

I watched X Factor, the kids went to bed and we had a late dinner of curry. There, only 48 hours behind now!

Saturday
A fairly slobbing about start to the day. High wind and heavy rain overnight had trashed the garden so Ady spent some time outside righting things, Davies spent some time on the pc playing online Wallace and Gromit games, Scarlett made potions with a perfume kit I’d picked up earlier in the week at Emmaus intending to give as a present for her birthday but then realised it was not complete and had been used a fair bit so gave her to play with now.

I nipped out to the library to print off tickets for London trips on Sunday and Monday which should have been simple but wasn’t, as all 5 of the staff on duty swarmed over to chat and catch up with me when I went in, which was nice but I’d intended being ‘in and out’. I did some photocopying of forms for a Badger Christmas party Davies and Scarlett want to go to but there had only been one set of forms left on Wednesday and then faffed about on one of the computers trying to log into my email account to print stuff off and fighting with a memory stick in different formats. I finally did it and collected all my printing, then came home via a further battle in Asda, both for parking, walking round the store and queuing up to pay. I hate town on Saturdays!

Back at home I had several repeated run ins with Scarlett who was being annoying while I was being intolerant. I really should learn to step away from the small person when I’m in that frame of mind rather than carrying on going head to head with her. The trouble is Ady and Davies know when to keep a low profile and Scarlett either hasn’t or more likely flatly refusing to. It wasn’t the most harmonious of afternoons but I took myself off to do some baking and at 330pm we headed off to E’s for T’s sixth birthday party which had a teddy bear theme.

I was expecting this to be gentle and charming, actually it was rather more of a free-for-all with teddies used as ammunition. We stayed and were very much the exception which as the only other remaining in situ parent commented marks us (and her) out as Home Educators ;), everyone else is either glad of the opportunity to drop and run or their kids get invited to so many birthday parties each year they simply couldn’t be staying at each and every one, and their siblings are probably invited to a different party somewhere else anyway!

We stayed out of the general party proceedings though and I pondered again the difference of this group of 12 children who were (mostly) expecting constant direction and entertainment with the parties of HE friends where we don’t give a second thought to ‘what the children will do’. The instant they were unsupervised chaos reigned and violence broke out. I was glad we’d stayed…

We left promptly at 6pm as we had a very quick turnaround happening. We got home at 6.20pm and my parents were due to arrive at 6.30pm. We were off to K’s for a meal with Mike and Rose, our Not-Swingers friends and were expected there at 7pm. The plan was for Dad to drive us there in my car, picking up Mike and Rose on the way and then come and collect us all again in my car later so we could all drink. K was cooking Japanese food so we were taking a bottle of wine and a bottle of sake which we’d never tried before.

Things started to go wrong when Dad arrived at the front door without Mum, he said she was just coming and they’d clearly been rowing. After a few minutes of her not appearing he finally went back out to the car to discover he’d got out and locked her in! When she was released it had to be said she was less than impressed! Dad, Ady and I got in my car to go and collect Mike and Rose but my car is very sensitive to damp (one of the variety of reasons I wanted to get under the bonnet two weeks ago) and decided to die just as we were passing a petrol station. Ady pulled onto the forecourt and 15 minutes of chaos ensued in the pouring rain. I rang Mike and Rose a couple of times to keep them updated, they rang K to keep her updated, Dad grabbed a taxi driver who had just come off duty and happened to be filling up with petrol on his way home to get a lift back to our house, Dad bought some dampstart from the garage (which didn’t work) and in the end the taxi driver, Ady, Dad and I managed to push the car alongside the garage, Dad jumped in the taxi and whizzed off and Ady and I were left standing in the rain, halfway between our house and Mike and Rose’s, already late for dinner and wondering what to do. Ady decided he’d drive so he set off for home to get his car (I am the only other person insured on it, Dad is too old to be covered on the company insurance), while I carried on walking up the hill to Mike and Rose’s. Rose rang me and said she’d send Mike out so he came and collected me and we tracked down Ady. Ady and I nipped in the house (taking everyone here by surprise), Ady changed his very wet jeans and we headed back out again in his car to pick Mike and Rose back up again. In the end we were only about 40 minutes late.

K is very sweet but not someone I have very much in common with at all. She is recently split up from a fairly long term partner and although she seems happy enough to have finished the relationship she still talks about him as though they are a couple. She is a vegetarian, and has a dog. So I spent my evening with Ady sober, a dog sitting in the same room as me, while Rose and I got progressively more drunk on sake (everyone had brought a bottle!) and then wine, and talked to K about Hitler and the war (she is German) and we ate a dreadful selection of Japanese themed Vegetarian food. The starter was soup – not too bad, the main was rice, lentils and tofu. I took the smallest possible amount to be polite and washed every mouthful down with copious volumes of sake, the dessert was rice pudding (which is probably the single thing Ady hates more than any other foodstuff).

We all left at 1130. 😆

We dropped Mike and Rose home and were home ourselves before midnight. We’d called at the garage as we passed and tried to start my car which did start first time so we left Ady’s car there and brought mine home. When my parents left later they took Ady and he brought his car home too.

We arrived home to find Scarlett not long asleep and Davies still awake with my mum in his bedroom. Ady made coffees while I chatted to Davies and my Mum about the evening including the most interesting topic of conversation which had been Rose telling us about the headteacher at one of the schools she teaches at (she is a primary school teacher in Maths, RE and PE and covers 2 schools, 2 days at each per week) who has brought in a new technique of rewarding children who sit really still and quiet infront of the interactive whiteboard. She has brought in a large cardboard box and the ‘winner’ gets to sit in the box.

GETS TO SIT INSIDE A BOX!!!!!!

I told Davies and he thought this was hilarious and outrageous in equal measures which was my opinion also. Rose is desperate for someone to take the story to the tabloids as sticker charts gone mad!

A late night to bed, bad dreams induced by sake and wine and an empty stomach about pushing cars in the rain, eating lentils and being watched by a dog made for a fairly disturbed nights sleep!

will be the title of todays blog post, I just won’t be getting round to writing it til tomorrow. Which might actually be later today given it’s already 2am, but then again, given my history it may well be properly tomorrow after all.

It will however include shouting, rain, cars breaking down, me eating lentils (but only in teeny tiny amounts) drinking sake (which would have an e accent to make it Japanese rather than drinking sake in the style of ‘for heaven’s sake / Christ’s sake / God’s sake) and extrinsic rewards gone utterly crazy.

I know some of you (Sarah!) prefer my briefer blog posts but frankly when there is this much material the length is out of my hands ;).

Thursday We were supposed to be going to London for the day as a local HEor had gotten tickets for the Maharaja exhibition at the V&A. I’d already thought on Wednesday that we might be better off having a day at home but set my alarm to get up, make picnic lunch and rouse Davies and Scarlett. Davies was already up but sneezing like mad and looking pretty pale and washed out. A quick confer between the three of us concluded we’d all actually rather just stay home and have a peaceful day so I texted our apologies to the organiser and we settled in with various things we each wanted to do.

Davies had some new ideas for animation station stuff thanks to working on things with M on Wednesday on their animation station. He also did some fab paint pictures of Day, his crisp packet character who lives at a landfill site. We talked some more about what he wants to do with that and hopefully we’ll find some time in the next week to set something up, a blog or website or something for him to progress with his plans for that. Will link as and when that’s sorted and will also post a pic of his paint stuff too soon.

Scarlett spent some time looking at books and DSing, she’s into mini-games style games on the DS at the moment and is spending lots of time hushing everyone and telling us off for distracting her while she is trying to concentrate! 😆

I carried on trying to get a handle on the crazy world of Home Education in the UK and spent some time dreamily looking forward to camp. I really need the break, the relaxed time spent with friends who also happen to be HEors and the chance to switch off from everything other than why we do what we do. I had a text from our mate Jim, who moved to Ireland 5 years ago asking if we were up for him coming over for the evening as he was staying locally with his MIL for the night before heading to his annual lads weekend at Butlins on Friday. I texted back to say yes.

The kids and I have been talking about going to Emmaus for weeks to look for various bits for our Secret Santas so we decided to do that. As usual we got lost on the way – it is very close to us and I do know the way if I go via one road but I always decide it would be quicker to go via another route and then realise it probably is, if I only knew which road to turn off at to get there 😆 We drove past it three times then because there was nowhere to park before eventually driving a short way away and parking and walking back to it.

Scarlett and Davies both got some bits for SS, both got something small each and I picked up a top for me, about 5 different kits (perfume factory, brand new fimo kit, flower pressing kit and various other things) which I was anticipating paying about a tenner for in total – the top was labelled at £2.50 and Scarlett had already asked the price of the armful of stuff she had and been told £1.50 the lot, but the bloke at the till just asked me for £4.50 for everything :). Hurrah!

We came home via Sainsburys where I rather blew that good work by buying two jumpers in their half price sale for myself (bargains but not as bargaintastic as Emmaus!), various bits for lunch and some stuff for the kids tea to make up for them not having McDonalds at Victoria which I’d said they could probably have when we’d been planning to go to London.

Home for a very late lunch and we all watched Coraline together which we’d picked up at the library on Tuesday. I think it’s a fab film, enjoyed it at the cinema when Ady and I took Davies to see it in 3D. Scarlett was a bit reluctant but she actually enjoyed it too despite it being pretty dark. We then watched all the dvd extras (aside from the entire film again with directors commentary) which meant we spent about 3 hours watching various Coraline related stuff. Davies was very envious of the puppeteers and all the various little bits and pieces of body they were making. We talked about the voiceover actors and other things they had been in / done voices for (Jennifer Saunders is in Shrek as Fairy Godmother, Dakota Fanning is in Cat in the Hat and War of the Worlds, oh and Charlottes Web that Davies knows of).

I did their tea, spoke to Jim to confirm he was welcome over any time and then Ady arrived home. Ady and Davies spent some time looking at a DS game site while Scarlett and I ploughed through a HUGE pile of picture books I’d picked up at Shoreham library. I’ve taken them all back now and can’t remember them all but we read for nearly an hour.

Jim arrived while that was all still happening and sat watching us all for a bit before the kids eventually went off to bed. Scarlett did lots of coming back in and out, Davies cleared off and stayed away. I won’t say too much about Jim’s life as it’s his story not mine but I did feel very sad to hear and see someone I’ve known for nearly 20 years, when we were both just starting out as adults really, having such high hopes and dreams for himself and his family and now sitting here with regrets and sadness 🙁 We had a great evening, full of laughs and in-jokes that five years distance will never erase and we picked up where we left off really. There were some poignant moments where he said he wished he’d been as involved with and taken as much joy from his sons when they were still as little as Davies and Scarlett, and another moment when he said he asked his wife for a radio for Christmas after one of the first times he’d come round here for dinner and sat listening to Ady and I singing along to the radio together in the kitchen while doing the washing up. He says that radio has always lived in his kitchen with the intention of he and his wife singing along to it together. They never have 🙁

I realised the difference between us though when I said I considered the most important thing I will ever impart to my kids is that they are responsible for their own happienss, life will be to do with their perspective on what is dealt them and we choose to be happy or not. He said he agreed to a point but still felt money made a huge difference and would continue to encourage his kids to amass as much money as they could. Maybe it’s to do with being the child of two parents with that attitude and seeing it never made either of them happy despite the vast amounts they have amassed that makes me disagree with him but I suspect Ady and I would still sing together in the kitchen even if we couldn’t afford to have a radio and that will be what makes us happy.

Philosophising aside we had a great night, way, way, way too much alcohol was consumed. Laughter got louder, Ady and Jim have the same slide phone as each other so I was calling ‘DRAW!’ every so often and they were racing to slide their keypads out, we put a sticky plaster on a can of beer to represent Pudsey and found that hysterical and it was all just very silly but very fun. Jim finally left at about 230am and my alarm went off at 8am, a mere five hours after I’d finally got to bed.

Which brings me to Friday. Ady bought me and the kids all different Pudsey t shirts a couple of weeks ago (mine is red, Scarlett’s is black with rhinestones, Davies’ is long sleeved pretend t shirt over long top) so I was wearing mine and then got a text from F at work to say it was dress down day and we could wear jeans so I quickly got changed and headed off to work.

5 hours sleep and 1.5 bottles of wine does not make for a buzzed up, enthusiastic Baby Rhyme Time leader really but I’m assured I pulled it off ;).

The day felt pretty slow though. I had tea with a couple of colleagues who were talking jokingly about reusable sanitary towels (no idea how we got on to the subject) so I said I used them, and a mooncup and they were shocked and rather horrified, which I found a bit sad really. Quite ironic that I then had to ring Ady to ask him to bring me an emergency parcel of just that 😆 It was spotted being handed over and they asked what it was to which I tried to persuade them to see but they refused to be anything other than grossed out by it all. Ah well. F said her 17 year old daughter is still so squeamish about the whole thing she has to buy it all for her as she can’t even buy the stuff. I’m thinking Scarlett – and actually Davies, already having a very matter of fact attitude to all these things is surely a better way forward?

I planned my Christmas display (12 days of Christmas, planning to enlist D and S’s help on that one) and generally did my job really. Not sure I was in a fit state to recall detail worthy of blogging.

Davies is definitely coldy, hopefully that’s all it is and I feel on the rough side but I’m assuming hormones and hangover are responsible rather than a virus.

Back at home Dad was here as Mum had dashed off to accept a job offer. She has been doing some voluntary work for another charity shop and they have now offered her a proper job too. I’ve not spoken to her about it all yet but Ady said she was really buzzed up and is planning on taking that one and turning the other one down now. Massive confidence boost to her to be offered two jobs within two weeks though :).

I cooked dinner for the kids, walked Tarly round to Rainbows, chatted to the leader who said that it is the last Rainbows before Christmas next week, they have a Christmas presentation and it will also be Scarlett’s leaving session as she turns 7 the following week. Wow, end of Rainbows! They did practising for the Christmas presentation (singing mostly I think). I went back to pick her up and Ady arrived home at the same time as we did.

I cooked, we all watched Children in Need, I tried and failed to have a peaceful bath as all three of them kept coming to tell me stuff and try to talk to me (grr) and finally everyone went to bed. Which is precisely what I’m about to do too.

Super early start today which is always just horrid. Actually it probably isn’t early by Normal People Standards but anything before 8am, particularly involving alarm clocks is early for Davies, Scarlett and I.

I got up first, staggered around with no clothes on but contact lenses in and got them breakfast then went back upstairs to get dressed myself while calling timely reminders to get dressed back down to them. We left home at about 815am and drove to E’s. My car was booked in for 2pm, some 25 miles away from E’s so I made clear to Davies and Scarlett that when I arrived to collect them at lunchtime they would need to come straight away, not beg to finish a game / have ten more minutes / stay for tea and they both agreed.

I dropped them off, explained the need to collect them and dash off again when I was picking them up later and headed off back eastwards again. I was working at Shoreham (our nearest branch) library today; partially as respite from Nightmare Colleague and partially as career development in working at other branches and learning branch specific stuff in other places. I’ve worked there about 4 times before and the staff are very nice and friendly but it still feels all odd and to be honest I’d rather be at Lancing although being given the travelling time and being nearer to the kids than in my usual branch was helpful today. I also got to browse their slightly different to ours selection of books. Obviously everthing they have is available to me to reserve from Lancing but some of the kids books I don’t know even exist until I see them on a shelf. The staff there all said they’d seen me in the paper / on the news over Home Ed. I’m still shocked by just how many people do infact watch the local news / read the local papers!

I whizzed over to E’s to pick up Davies and Scarlett and was really pleased with my timings. It looked like we would have time to nip home for me to get changed, call by a cash point and still be at the mechanics for 2pm. Except…

Davies not only asked if he could stay longer /finish what he was doing, he also asked if they could just stay there while I went and took the car off. NO! Because that’s really rude to ask to stay at someone’s house past when you’ve been invited. Because it would make no sense at all for me to have driven to Brighton to pick them up, then to leave them there after all, drive all the way back to the other side of Worthing, then all the way back to Brighton again to pick them up etc. He also couldn’t find his coat. It turned out it had been hung up as he’d left it on the floor so I was possibly irrationally cross with him about this but my reserves had been drained by the fact that…

Scarlett was MISSING!

E sent M (8yo) who had been playing with Davies off to fetch Scarlett and T (who is about to turn 6) as they were off playing in the street. Davies and Scarlett don’t play in the street at home.This is partially because I’m not 100% happy about kids playing in the street, partially to do with road safety but mostly to do with the fact no other kids live anywhere near us and we have a perfectly good garden so there is nothing to play with in the street anyway. I think I’m fairly liberal in listening to what Davies and Scarlett are comfortable and ready for in terms of letting them out of my sight, sometimes leaving them home alone for a short period etc. I know E’s boys play out and Davies and Scarlett have previously played out in their street too which I’ve been fine with as they are in and out and visible from the front door.

Today though, S and T had gone missing. M couldn’t find them so E started to look worried and I joined her in walking up to the alleyway she had said they could go as far as. They weren’t at the alleyway, we walked all the way through it and they weren’t there either. That came out on a rather busier street and the other two roads flanking the block are pretty busy and Very Busy so none were desireable to have them wandering about on. E suggested going back to get a car to drive round the block so I said I’d do that and ran back to get my car. I drove round the block, now conscious I’d been there for 25 minutes and they’d not ‘just left’ when I got there so had not been seen for upwards of half an hour, they are two six year olds wandering the streets alone, in school hours and for Scarlett at least, in a totally unknown area. I was torn between my default ‘it’ll be fine’ stance and mentally recalling what clothes Scarlett was wearing, what would be a good recent picture to release to the press and an even half decent reason for what the hell I was doing letting someone I’ve not got a CRB check for look after my children :(.

I came across the two of them fairly quickly, wound down my window and in what I imagine was a fairly terrifying tone told them to get in the car. I ranted at them and drove back to E’s. I left E talking to them both in the car as I collected Davies from the house, thanked her for having them, apologised if I’d traumatised T and we left with me still shaking and asking Scarlett precisely what she would have done if a stranger had asked her if she wanted to see some puppies, if someone had grabbed her and bundled her in a car, if a police officer had walked or driven past and asked her name, what she was doing there, where her mummy was and why she wasn’t in school.

It took 3 hours before I stopped feeling sick and E rang me later to apologise again and assure me that is not what I should expect when I have entrusted the care of my children to her while I’m at work. I’m fairly sure this was kids pushing boundaries and taking advantage of freedoms but it did strike me as odd when Davies was telling me that the boys have egg timers to monitor their time on DS and Wii and why did I think that was when I let Davies and Scarlett use their DSs whenever they like that we often end up with very mismatched approaches to what is and isn’t okay for our kids. I’m guessing that all the various ‘what could have happened’s will be giving me nightmares / keeping me awake for the next few nights.

We whizzed over to the mechanics, only a few minutes late and he actually pulled up a couple of minutes after us. He asked me to leave the car for a couple of hours and that it would cost ‘not much, about £30’. His workshop is not quite in the middle of nowhere and has the garden centre Ady used to work at about 10 minutes walk away so we went there via a handily located cashpoint. We had a really good look round all the Christmas decorations, looked at the fish in the indoor pool and waterfall, looked at the guinea pigs, mice, rabbits and hamsters and the aquatic section and then went to the coffee shop. I bought us a hot chocolate each and the kids chose a chocolate cake to share, all of which came to nearly a tenner 😯 Very nice hot chocolates though and not the sort of treat we normally have. We sat and chatted while drinking them and I was struck by how lovely it is to be able to do that with bigger children as there were two mums with young babies at the next table and I overheard them looking forward to when they were big enough to sit up and drink hot chocolate!

We walked back to the workshop and the work was all done and complete and he only charged me £20 in the end – result! And meant the hot choclolates were sort of free ;).

Back home again to put the chickens away, reheat stew from last night for the kids tea, chivvy them into Badger clothes and go back out again to Badgers. Ady joined us there after about 15 minutes. We’d been officially asked to be Parent Helpers tonight and actually assist with the activity which was dreamcatcher making. They were BakerRoss kits and very good but a bit ‘this is the right way to do then’ or maybe that’s just Julie, the leader’s way. Whatever I got the impression it was like that famous quote HEors like about a grade school teacher getting pupils to draw a tree and then telling kids they’d got it wrong when they did their own versions of trees, all crazy coloured and shaped and the author realising what she’d actually meant was not ‘draw a tree’ but ‘draw MY tree’. I encouraged with colouring (and sympathised with the kids moaning about using coloured pencils on shiny paper as they didn’t really show up) and then helped with threading the middle to the outside. Some of the kids got this straight away, others didn’t get the hang of it at all and several wanted to do it their own way. One of the lads who has all sorts of ‘behavioural issues’ and conditions with letters was head down, focussed on doing something he clearly had a vision for. I asked if he wanted my help or to be left to get on with it and he insisted he was fine. He did something totally different to everyone else in the way he’d threaded it but it looked great and was really creative. One of the other girls told him it was ‘wrong’ and his was ‘bad’ which had him about to crumple so I stepped in and told him how great his was because it was His dreamcatcher, different to everyone else’s and really creative and individual. I then had a posse of children around me all keen to tell me how their’s was different to everyone else’s for X, Y and Z reasons which was just fab as they were all so proud of the differences and uniqueness. Over on the other table I heard Julie telling someone they had done it wrong so I suspect if I’m not around next week those I bigged up might be made to feel bad. I hope not. At times like that I think I am quite good with kids after all, I had them all wanting to talk to me and chat about stuff and feeling good about themselves but then they have to reintegrate to the rest of the group and abide by the rules. What I sometimes wonder about with Davies and Scarlett I guess but on a micro-level. Ah well, Ady tells me he was doing similar and told someone who was getting a hard time from another girl about her string being too big and not tight enough that it didn’t matter because obviously she had very big dreams and that was a good thing! :). The whole thing was a world away from the Book Club yesterday where a mish-mash of ‘junk’ was made available and kids came up with amazing creative works of art all under their own steam. Wonder if there’s a market for St Johns Anarchists?! 😆

Back home again and in the re-telling of the Scarlett went missing story to Ady I slumped and decided the whole day had really been far too much. I went off for a bath, cooked dinner, chatted to Davies about an idea for a blog for him for a series of stories he’s worked on (mostly told through pictures) about adventures of bits of litter at a landfill site. He’s loving the drip feed of stuff I learn at my course each week and integrating lots of it into new stories. I think it is all excellent on every level and want to help him push forward with it as I think it has loads of potential.

We’re supposed to be going to London for the day tomorrow. I have to confess that financially (train fare) and generally I don’t really feel that enthused so we may make a last minute decision not to go in the morning.

This morning we went off to Bognor for a new Home Ed Book Club. There are two groups being run together in someone’s house. A 6+ group in the kitchen and a 12+ group in the conservatory. I signed us up when it was first mentioned as I thought it would be a good way of meeting some new, same aged Home Educators locally, I already know the woman running the 6+ group, like her lots but never manage to meet up with her. She has a same age as Davies son and a same age as Scarlett daughter too so it’s potentially all nice and tidy :). I also thought it was worth seeing if something structured like this would appeal to Davies and Scarlett moving forward. I know we’re never going to go down the me teaching them stuff route and I don’t think structure generally is something any of us are hankering for or in need of but I was curious as to whether the time is right for activities like this. I know they both get elements of group learning, circle discussions and stuff at Badgers / Rainbows / Sea Scouts / Wildlife Explorers etc but I thought something Home Ed specific might be a nice occassional addition. This is monthly, coincidentally the same day each month that my library reading group is (3rd Tuesday of the month) and on the basis of today was a very promising addition to our calendar.

I used to work in Bognor managing the Clinton Cards there and Ady used to live there. Infact it’s where I first met Ady as I was going out with someone else who lived in the same house as him and his then girlfriend. Spookily that house is now owned by some of Ady’s friends so we’ve been there since with the kids which feels very odd. I don’t like Bognor though, I think it’s a crappy seaside town with a really seedy feel to it. I was telling Davies and Scarlett I used to do the drive we were doing this morning every day on my way to work and promised I’d take them into town afterwards to show them where I worked. However I only ever used to drive to and from work and so the rest of my knowledge of Bognor is rubbish and I don’t know where anything is. I’d looked at a googlemap and written down some directions but got fairly lost and only fluked seeing a road which happened to lead from where we should have been to where we’d ended up it was so long. We were then able to find our way.

The group was for 2 hours and went really well. There was so talk about judging books by their cover, illustrations, fonts and how they told stories, some examples of books with interesting illustrations and then a load of different fonts were shown and the children decided what sort of stories they might be used for. There was some talk of genres and the children all talked about books they liked.

Then they all wrote their name in a font they thought reflected them and wrote some words to describe themselves. Scarlett was pretty resistant to the very idea of coming up with words to describe herself but Davies threw himself into it and came up with loads. He spelt them out letter by letter and I agreed he was right; loud, fun, adventurous, creative, imaginative, clever, artist,animator. Scarlett did concede to doing her name and made each letter into an animal as she thought that was what she was all about. She did the E in a zebra print, the L in leopard print and made the R have a horn like a rhino before realising L was for leopard and R was for rhino. She then regretted the E being zebra but I told her that was the second letter of zebra and then she wanted to make all the rest animals beginning with that letter. She had Snake, Camel, Ants, Rhino, Leopard, zEbra, Tiger, Tortoise and either coloured them accordingly or added ears, humps, forked tongues etc to the letters. It was really good and the first time she’s every shown interest in letters and sounds really.

All the kids then got given a folder to keep all their Book Club stuff in and Katy had a big stash of collage-y bits to stick on them to decorate them. Scarlett very comprehensively decorated hers with stuff, Davies was more measured and wrote ‘My Folder’ on it turning a couple of the letters into pencils writing the rest. He then decided to do some drawing and did a fab picture of Littlenose and Two Eyes from the book we are reading for next time (that we’ve already read), which was good enough to have several of the other parents commenting on it :). He also did some stuff with shadows and shading which was very good effects.

The group finished and both Davies and Scarlett were really enthusiastic about it and keen to do it monthly so it was well worth it :).

We then parked in the town for an hour, went and saw Clinton Cards, I bought a new pair of jeans as I seem to only have 2 pairs that fit me but don’t have holes and rips in them. I’m in the process of patching the ones of those in least tatty condition with the ones in worst condition but as I wear jeans 6 days out of 7 (even to work on a Saturday) and only ever buy very cheap ones when I tried on a pair in a cheap shop and they fitted really well I bought them.

On the way home we called in to see Chris and Julie’s mechanic to see what his take on my non-opening bonnet was. He managed to open it straight away! He thinks it needs a new handle though so I’m taking it over to him tomorrow afternoon to have that done.

We called into the library to collect a few items I’d had emails to say were in as I’m working in a different library tomorrow. Back home for all of about 20 minutes and the kids disappeared straight upstairs to Davies’ room to listen to the Star Wars OST which was one of the things we collected from the library.

Then back out again to swimming. Both the kids’ lessons went fine, they both played with friends while the other had a lesson – D made a friend and S played with her regular chum. We managed to be slightly late so I only had 50 minutes swimming. I was in a reflective mood rather than an agressive one so only managed 46 lengths but found that reassuring as I was 10 minutes down and not putting in massive efforts. I spent most of the time thinking about a friend who had just shared some very sad news :(.

We got back to the car to find Ady had been ringing me (I leave my phone in the car) to say he wouldn’t make it home in time for me to leave for my course. So we rang my Dad and arranged to drop Davies and Scarlett off there for Ady to collect them on his way through. Davies and I talked about Sea Scouts as his enthusiasm has been waning. I’ve not been able to ascertain whether it is genuine lack of interest, worry over the whole Home Ed teasing thing, or just being wiped out after an hours swimming and not being up for turning out again at what is usually pretty close to bedtime in the cold and dark evenings. I suggested he went today, stopped at a halfway point and thought about whether he was glad he’d made the effort to go or not. If he felt he was pleased he’d rallied and was enjoying it then he should remember that next week when he is feeling tired and not up for it. If he still felt like it wasn’t where he wanted to be then he should remember that and decide not to go and maybe think about trying again next year.

I dropped them off at my parents, nipped home to put the chickens away and collect my course notes and then headed off to my course. I had to double back to collect a teddy as we were doing real nappies this week and had been asked to bring one to practise nappies on. In the end it was only me and one other woman who remembered to bring teddies anyway. The course was good; we talked about Smart Shopping which we’d started to cover last week but run out of time on, learnt about what the supermarkets are doing on waste prevention and looked at various statistics and initiatives, then talked about nappies, handed round samples of disposables and resuables, learnt about more stats relating to both and the various initiatives locally for real nappies. Next week is the last session.

Back home I presented Scarlett with her teddy now all nappied up and caught up with Davies on the whole Sea Scout thing. Ady had (finally!) gone and chatted to the leaders and Davies is being invested next week. They were keen to check he was happy and to assure him that is he was feeling unhappy with anything he could tell them. Ady said the Home Ed thing didn’t come up but I’m guessing it has been noted anyway. Davies said he talked to the boys and said ‘look I really don’t go to school but let’s all stop talking about that anyway and just get on with being friends’. He seems pretty happy with the whole thing now so we’ll go ahead with investing him and take it from there. After next Tuesday I’ll be able to take him anyway and can do my customary wading in heavy handedly if necessary ;).

Very late dinner (stew I put on this morning before we left the house) and another early start and long day ahead tomorrow. Oh and Thursday. And actually on Friday too…

Shockingly despite three days at home last week we ended up at home again today. I had planned to go out but the weather looked grim again (in the end it cleared up but it certainly didn’t look promising at 10am when we were chatting about what to do today), the children were both up for staying home and as we have otherwise got a fairly full week it seemed like a sensible plan.

A local freecycler had posted about a bag of girls clothes and I’d got in first so I nipped round there to collect them this morning. Davies and Scarlett stayed home. I was only gone 15 minutes and it is nice to have that sort of small dose freedom all round I think. I had to drive past the sea to get there and it was very high – high tide anyway and a very grey and foamy looking sea. If it hadn’t been high tide right then I might have suggested we go back to the beach later but I knew the tide would be out again by then and it’s not nearly so dramatic.

A mini fashion show ensued when I got home with the bag of clothes as Scarlett fell on them. In the end she only accepted about 1/3 of the black sack-full as okay. Pretty much everthing fitted her as she is a very standard age 7-8 years size in most places but she is *very* picky. She doesn’t much like labels and isn’t keen on tight waistbands. She won’t wear skirts, *hates* those tops with pretend vest tops and off the shoulder looks (which is all good by me, I’m not keen either on a Little Girl), doesn’t like shorts (even in the summer, I know she wouldn’t be wearing them in November anyway) and flatly refuses to wear pretty pastel shades, frills, flounces or anything with a slogan she doens’t like – today she liked a top but rejected it because it said ‘Girls Academy. No Boys Allowed’ which she said was just stupid and didn’t want to wear – feminist she might be but she’s all about the equality! ;).

This rather limits her to jeans and trousers with soft waistbands and tops in bright bold colours with no slogan or one she deems acceptable. Despite all this she also claims to have ‘a style’ and was deciding things were ‘not my style’ or ‘are my style’. It would appear her style is rather tatty jeans, lots of black tops and materials that are soft and tactile. She did accept about 3 pairs of trousers, a couple of tops and a fleece though. The rest all the stuff all put me in mind of pretty much every other little 6/7 year old girl I know – Maisie, Rebecca, loads of those coming to camp but Rebecca sprang to mind first so I send Lucy a text asking if she’d like to cast her eye over the rest of it to see if anything was suitable. We arranged for them to pop round later this afternoon which seemed like a good compromise on not doing anything today.

Davies got out the 3D drawing kit and did several 3d pictures and checked them out with the glasses. His drawings were great – one was a lizard which was fab, but his appreciation of which bits should stick out 3D wise was a bit off and he had middle bits of things coming out and looking wrong. We talked about perspective and which bits of your face would be the ones to stick out most, looked at profiles and he started to grasp the idea of creating natural looking pictures rather than flights of fancy (which are also fine and great of course). Scarlett got out a window sticker kit and spent ages doing outlines of things to be filled in later, and mixing colours and trying different effects. She is really into her craft kits at the moment – will definitely be getting her more of that sort of thing for birthday / Christmas, but making stuff rather than beads and bracelets.

I did online stuff and then made some flapjacks – baking therapy is top. You feel productive, it smells gorgeous, you have real life evidence of your efforts and you get to eat stuff too! 🙂 I also did several loads of washing including the accepted freecycle clothes which came from a smokers household.

We had lunch and caught a clip on TV – I think it was Nick Jr with some little kids singing nursery rhymes and shaking instruments while a fairly patronising adult says things like ‘well done, you sang that beautifully. Shall we sing that one again?’ Davies asked me if that’s what I did at work and I agreed it was just like that. Scarlett asked if I said the whole ‘well done, let’s do it again’ stuff too and I agreed I did then asked them if they thought that sounded like something I would do. They both said it didn’t and I confessed I don’t much feel like me when I do that bit 😆 We talked about whether I liked that bit of my job and I said I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either. Scarlett asked which bits I did love of my job and Davies said ‘oh that’s easy, it will be meeting new people and helping them find the right book!’. He’s either reading my blog, listening to my conversations or knows me very well. I suspect it’s the latter!

Lucy and Rebecca arrived and stayed for a couple of hours. Whether it was the altered dynamic of no Richard, or whether we were just lucky the three children played really well together (Davies had put some effort into thinking of games and ideas that would go down well, flushed with the success of Friday when Ali and Freya came, which must have also helped) and Lucy and I got to chat and chat and chat, which was just lovely :).

It did mean I was rubbish at getting the kids tea ready on time so they were rushing to finish it, get changed and get out to gymnastics and we were a few minutes late. They both said they’d had a great time tonight and progressed with their cartwheels.

I popped to Asda – bread rolls for 25p and loaf of nice seeded brown bread for 25p, then Co Op, fair trade oranges for 10p per net bag, British apples for 10p per bag, big lump of braising steak for £1. Planning on beef stew for me and kids tomorrow and some carrot (from the 25p bags last week glut) and orange cakes which I might freeze ready to bring to camp.

Ady was already home when I got back so I put the shopping away and we caught up on each others days before heading out to collect the kids from Gymnastics. I read a chapter of Littlenose – we’re on the second book now. If you’ve not come across these and have 5-9 year olds they are well worth a look IMO, Davies and Scarlett are enjoying the gentle humour, the simple illustrations and the educational element of neanderthal man.

Ady and I looked silly eating our dinner while watching Derren Brown in 3D wearing our glasses 😆

I slept pretty badly thanks to reading various Home Ed lists last night with varying degrees of horror and then going off to bed thinking about it all. The wind and rain were still howling around the house, which felt both appropriate and annoying…

Which led to a late rising this morning, for me at least. Ady and Scarlett were out in the garden tidying up the mess from the weather, Davies was doing stuff with Paint (as in the Word pro not the messy liquidy stuff ;)). I went out in the garden too to try and gather some twigs and sticks for the first layer of my new super composter but didn’t get very far – we seem to have a lack of sticks in our garden. I’ve a plan to go stick collecting, along with pine cone collecting (currently eco-warrior battle is getting Ady off chemical firelighters and pine cones, small bundles of twigs, tightly rolled newspaper and old lemon rinds are said to be just the thing) some time this week so it will have to wait for then. I put it all together yesterday, remembering just in time that making something that big in the playroom which then needed getting through the hall and kitchen and back door was a bad idea so moving it outside to construct, but now it needs the correct starting layers of material.

I also slipped over in the garden much to Ady’s amuseument 😆

After some discussion with both children we decided to go to the Christmas Market at the Weald and Downland Museum. We joined for the season this summer with the intention of getting along to most of their events and so far we’d only managed the Autumn Show so I was keen to get to this one. Am also intending to do the Boxing Day one. Ady was less keen and the children both wanted to go to the beach in the hopes of seeing some extreme weather but they were easily swayed and so we headed off there.

It’s always slightly further than I think it is and there were big queues to get into the carpark – more due to poor direction than actual parking issues it turned out and the whole place was a bit of a quagmire thanks to very heavy rainfall almost incessantly every day this week. We should have been wearing wellies! I announced a prize to the least muddiest person upon our return to the car, fully expecting to be the one to fall over and disqualify myself. The whole place was very squelchy – if Park Resorts could have seen it they’d have been there, setting up a Sparkies show and turning it into a camping field ;).

The Weald and Downland museum is very charming even when no events are happening – it comprises original and recreation buildings from various ages and has a watermill, a town square style contruction, various houses and cottages from very basic to fairly luxurious, cottage gardens, a maypole, various livestock and heavy horses, open fires and authentic furniture in every building and is just a nice place to spend time. Except when it’s very muddy indeed, it’s packed with hundreds and hundreds of people and all the charming tiny little buildings are host to stalls selling Christmassy stuff.

There were some treasures to be found – Sombrerolatin seem to have a stall at every one of their events and their stuff is fab, there was another stall selling musical instruments including spring drums, thumb pianos and ocarinas which were all fab. If the children hadn’t been so taken with them I may have been able to slip back and buy them one each for Christmas but they kept on about them so much it was impossible. Will have to google for them and find another place to buy though. There was also a stall selling felted items including flowers, candles, tree baubles and holly wreaths all of which were fab. Some inspiration there to make some stuff definitely.

There was also a fair bit of dross there too – no plastic tat but the middle class equivalent of nasty, mass produced wooden toys pretending to be good quality and ethical ;). We’ve been to Christmas Markets in Bruge and in Manchester (which has magical, huge Christmas markets with ice rinks and stuff and is fab) and been utterly taken to Christmas with the sights, smells and sounds, drank alcohol laced hot chocolate, eaten roasted chestnuts and gingerbread and generally felt very festive. This didn’t quite pull that off but was very well attended nonetheless.

Ady tried a quandry in the Tudor kitchen which is a bird,in a bird, in a bird in a bird. We’ve seen it done on Hugh or similar but never tried it. He said it was very nice and is keen to do his own now. We can’t get one cooked bird on the table before 1030pm, four in one dinner is likely to end up as breakfast ;).

We didn’t actually buy anything but on the way out to celebrate no one getting muddy and everyone winning the cleanest Goddard left standing competition we had a ride on the horse and cart. Davies did some very speedy mental maths – 50p for children, £1 for adults, sothat’s £3 then. And then proceeded to work out what a quarter of a pound was too quite quickly. We talked about the crazy horse and cart ride last winter in Bruge as we rode rather sedately round a field in the car drawn by two heavy horses.

Then we headed back homewards. As promised we stopped on the way and had a half an hour or so on the beach. The tide was way, way out and the weather had calmed right down but there was evidence of the storms in the level of stuff washed up. We pranced about between the rock pools, all getting our feet wet until it got too cold.

and no, I’ve not sorted out getting my horizon straight yet! 😉

Back home for baths for the kids to warm up / wash up. I got a roast dinner on but thanks to it being a HUGE joint of pork my timing of getting it on the table for 7pm and Doctor Who was off and it was more like 745pm in the end. Very nice dinner though :).

I didn’t see all of Doctor Who as I was in and out but Davies tells me it was good, Scarlett was too scared to watch most of it but did keep teasing Davies over his glass of water at dinner so clearly got the gist of it while she did some more playing with Paint on my laptop.

We watched X Factor while eating dinner and I tried to explain by translation why I was laughing so much at some very sweary texts I was getting from a friend. Think all of the humour got lost in translation 😆

Work for me this morning. I did various things, can’t be bothered to type them all out but it was a good morning:).

Back at home Ady and the children had tidied up the downstairs bathroom and then the kids had got art and craft stuff out and were applying glue and glitter to paper when I arrived home.

I’d brought a couple of ‘how to draw’ books home although they were both cartoon ones and Scarlett wants real life ones rather than cartoons. The kids disappeared upstairs to listen to Michael Jackson music and draw, Ady researched lined curtains online and I read a book and gave occassional pearls of ecofriendly wisdom to Ady as I read them 😆

We then messed about with Paint for a bit thanks to a chaper in one of the books about computer drawing. That’s pretty hard but with fairly good results. Guess we’d need one of those tablet things to make it work how we want it to though.

Then we headed off for Chris and Julie’s for fireworks postponed from last weekend. We stopped at the farmfeed store on the way for chicken food and then had a lovely few hours with the Other Goddards including some fireworks in the garden.

Home via McDs for the kids and my parents for me to collect my car and Sainsburys for me to get some bits. Ady and the kids arrived home to discover wind had wreaked havoc on the garden and chickens area so Ady put that all straight and the kids got into pjs. I read a chapter of the next Littlenose book and then they went off to bed.

Thanks to a Serious Talk about bedtimes they both actually listened and went to sleep rather than meandering about the house for two hours which may go some way towards helping the purple shadows under Davies’ eyes :rolls:

A soggy start to the morning. Last nights rain had continued all through the night and there were puddles and flood all around the place. I nearly slipped over and got soaked just going to let the chickens out. We were car-less and utterly without motivation to go anywhere in such dire weather so we settled in for another morning at home.

Davies asked for the hama beads out and I ironed the various things which had been waiting precariously balanced on boards for ages. He then built a Bamzookis board and several Zooks out of hama which I also ironed for him and we talked about sturdy and non-sturdy bead formation patterns. He also said he didn’t like the various shaped boards we have (elephant, teddy etc) as he prefers to make up his own and assumed everyone else would too. I explained that just as many people are happier with a pattern to follow and enjoy that as much or more than making up their own and we talked about colouring in, dot to dot etc. I still don’t think he quite got his head round not wanting to do your own thing really though 😆

Scarlett played with the toy animals and we had an interesting conversation about whether she was a ‘Moxie girl’ after we saw an advert for the toys. She said she wasn’t. I asked if she was a Barbie Girl, a Baby Annabel girl? and got equally disparaging replies. I asked what sort of girl she was then and she replied ‘an Animal Girl’. Which I think sums her up pretty well really, in every respect ;).

We watched Evacuation and it was the last day of the 2 week stint for the kids. I started crying when they all listened to Churchill’s ‘war is over’ speech on the radio and pretty much trickle-cried all the way through with peaks at the points of the children being sad about leaving, being reunited with their parents and writing goodbye letters to the teacher and farmers. I’m such a sap!

Then I had a very welcome phonecall from Ali asking if we’d like them to come and join us in being trapped at home without a car in the rain. The answer was a resounding yes and a prospect we looked forward to for the rest of the day :).

Davies and Scarlett cleared up the hama and animals and went up to Davies’ bedroom to prepare something that would keep all three of the children occupied and happy as last time they visited nothing seemed to go well and they ended up leaving way earlier than planned. Davies had the amazing plan of making their own Viva Pinata gardens and he and Scarlett set about putting scrap paper down to cover the carpet, gathering paper, cardboard, materials, junk, glue, pens etc to do it with and generally preparing his bedroom as a workshop.

We had lunch and watched TV together including a very good programme none of us had seen before called Howard’s Big Question which was excellent. Then Ali and Freya arrived.

The children instantly disppeared upstairs, re-emerged for food a couple of hours later and then disappeared again for a couple more hours. This freed Ali and I up to drink tea, then wine, chatter to our hearts content and generally have a lovely time :). We took Scarlett round to Rainbows and I collected her again before Ady took Ali and Freya home about 730pm. A very successful visit :).

Davies and Scarlett tidied Davies’ bedroom up to a Very High Standard Indeed and then I read some stories. Scarlett and I fell out and made it all back up again with some Serious Chats about things like unconditional love and me getting cross not meaning anything other than me losing my patience (although I actually hadn’t on this occassion). Ady returned and cooked a very nice dinner and the children finally went to bed.

I often feel really uninspired blogging on the days I work all day each week. Not because I don’t enjoy my job, I do but it feels like a tiny thing I compared to the rest of my week. I hesitate to use the word ‘respite’ because that indicates I need some sort of rest from my Home Ed lifestyle and I really don’t but I really do feel like I’m becomming a whole other person when I pin my library badge on. I get the same feeling at my Waste Prevention Advisor course. I guess it’s a feeling of ‘walking alone’. I’ve never lived alone, been half of a couple for nearly half my life and a mother for two thirds of that time. So it’s rare to go somewhere without an Ady, a Davies or a Scarlett and not be anybodies girlfriend, wife or mother. And there wasn’t much of a gap inbetween that starting and me still being someone’s daughter or sister really. I think I’m a fairly strong character, not really defined by the relationships to those around me but the physical proximity of some or all of them to me most of the time does probably colour my actions fairly heavily.

At school and later on at work I have always felt more me, judged on my own credentials and the face I choose to present. I like the camaraderie of a workplace, the in-jokes, the finding out how to work well as a team. I quite like the order of a certain workload to be complete in a certain timeframe, I like helping people (I’ve always worked in service providing roles so satisfying customers has always been a key part of all my jobs) and I enjoy meeting and interacting with different people. My Home Ed life incarnation has elements of that but remains something of a ‘work in progress’. It definitely feeds my heart and soul but there were also gaps in meeting my other needs which these various outside things I have started to pick up over the last couple of years have met for me. Davies and Scarlett clearly get the same needs met at their Badgers, Rainbows etc groups and Ady gets them from his job. It’s utterly right that we don’t rely on each other to provide everything to everyone.

Ooh, don’t really know where that all came from, talk about stream of consciousness! 😆

So, I was saying, I don’t have much to blog about on my working days because it’s kind of mundane in the details and I have no real idea what the kids are up to in my absence. I can tell you what they’ve been playing with or eaten as it’s usually still evident or they tell me but I don’t know what conversations they’ve had, what questions they asked, what crazy tangent based on something small and inconsequential might have led to today’s new thing they learnt or became interested in. Which is often what makes up the main content of my blogposts.

So I’ll do a more detailed account of my day at work instead.

Anyway. I went off to work – Ady and the kids dropped me off as my car is at the garage with various mechanics trying to work out how to open the bonnet. I did some tidying with the others before we opened the library and topics of conversation included old people having sex and at what age they stop – if at all, times any of us have been on telly and a challenge of tidying a large print paperback spinner from the bottom up so needing to use reverse alphabetical order.

My first hour was on the Enquiry Desk. I spent some time trying to find books on Amazon and on the library catalogue pertaining to Maharajas as we’re going to the V&A museum next week to see the exhibition and wanted to read something to the kids before we meant to give it some context and link in. I failed to find much at all and got really cross when all the books I did find were listed on the library catalogue but only available through the Schools Library Service. More on that later.

I ordered a few books in for various borrowers and did some paperwork chasing up reservations that were long outstanding.

I had teabreak with Nightmare Colleague. We chatted about a workshop she’s doing at a local wool shop she lives nearby that runs an afterschool craft club Monday to Friday for kids. They do knitting, sewing, fabric collages etc – it sounds fab! She does it once a week but was saying she struggles with the children not behaving. Can’t decide if that is her or unruly kids 😆 I was dreading the fact I was rota’d to be on lunch with her particularly as I didn’t have my car to go and retire to but Y changed the rota when she realised I was on break and lunch with her – bless her :).

Next I had an hour of doing my own work – I sent a couple of work related emails – one about setting up a coffee morning event with Reading Groups run from Lancing library, one about the Late Night Christmas Shopping event craft activties and one confirming I am happy to work at Shoreham Library next week. I sent out some letters about overdue items and receipted a book we’re borrowing for one of our lenders from the British Library.

Next I was on the counter so dealt with the delivery – books and things coming back to us from other libraries and books and things coming to us for our borrowers from other libraries. Some to go back on shelves, some to be put aside for phoning people to tell them it had arrived. Also issuing and discharging books for anyone coming to the counter.

Then I had lunch 😉

I was back on the counter after lunch. All of the delivery had been dealt with so it was packing up stuff ready to be collected in the morning instead – white slips on things just going back to libraries, pink slips on ones that are for reservations. We have boxes for Shoreham and Worthing – our closest libraries and ones we get stuff brought back to us from most frequently, a third box for stuff going to head office to be sorted before being put in boxes to be sent back and finally a box left open for items going to libraries which are after us on the van’s route each morning so the driver just drops those things off along his way.

I chatted to the librarian who was on the desk about the Schools Library Service and how annoying it is that we can’t access it as Home Educators as I know other authorities do allow HEors to use their service and also that as a ‘normal’ borrower it is very annoying that I can see multiple copies of some books on the system for Schools use but no copies on the catalogue for other borrowers. I could put in requests for copies to be bought for the public service but of course in this instance they wouldn’t be in time for next week’s V&A visit anyway. And there are budget cuts in spending on new books anyway so no guarantee they’d buy them at all. She was equally unimpressed and asked why I didn’t make a big fuss about the inequality side of HE kids being denied access to resources. She also was shocked that we don’t get any funding when we save the council so much money in not taking up school places. I agreed but explained why I wasn’t willing to make a fuss and risk outing myself but if we do end up registered I will certainly be making all of those noises and demands. I also told her my interesting statistic that there are about 20,000 state schools in the UK and at least that many HE families so there are more homes where children are being educated than institutions! She emailed the Schools Library Service (SLS) manager to ask whether we could access the service and the woman rang her to say no. She cited other authorities and the woman insisted they would have to pay. Apparently the SLS is funded out of the Schools budget (LA / Education) which is why schools have free access to it. Independant schools can access it at a cost so if I wanted to access it on the same basis that they do that could be looked at. It would be £30 per 14 items for one term and I didn’t ask because I wouldn’t use it but I’m guessing there would be hoops to jump through in proving our status and the risk of our information not being kept confidential too.

Tea break and then an hours Shelving. I spent more time chatting than shelving really but did have a burst of efficiency in the last 10 minutes of the hour and cleared everything anyway.

Finally I had half an hour on the counter at the very end of the day.

I was expecting Dad to pick me up from work in my car but he didn’t arrive. I rang round my parents house and my house and finally reached my Dad. Clearly there was some crossed wires as he’d rung the mechanic at 330pm to discover the bonnet still hadn’t been opened but hadn’t thought to let me know or come and pick me up in his van instead. I was there with two heavy bags of books and it was dark and raining so I really didn’t fancy the 15 minute walk home and Dad wasn’t offering 🙁 I rang Mum back and she did offer to come and pick me up but it would mean the kids sitting in the back of her car with no car seats (and also coming out in the rain) and she wouldn’t be prepared to leave them home while she came for me. So I rang Ady who luckily was only 20 minutes away on his way home so I went back in the library again and waited for Ady to come and get me instead.

Had a chat and cup of tea with Mum, put the chickens away in the pouring rain, made the kids some tea (this created all sorts of fussing – one wanted rice, the other wanted pasta, it was getting late and I was fed up. They agreed to toss a coin and then the loser decided if they couldn’t have what they wanted they’d have nothing at all! Finally got them sorted and fed.)

Ady cooked an epic dinner of pheasant and potatoes which took way longer than he expected so we didn’t end up eating til about 1030pm. I read the kids the last few chapters of Littlenose which they have enjoyed enough for me to order the rest of the series and then . They took forever to go to sleep which was annoying.

We watched River Cottage that we’d taped from earlier but ended abruptly when Scarlett had sat on the remote control and turned onto some other channel about 10 minutes from the end :rolls:

And that was Thursday.

I slept in this morning so everything was much later than it should have been really. We had no plans for the day until Badgers this evening and I offered a few choices but both Davies and Scarlett were happy for another day at home really.

We watched Evacuation together which we’re all really enjoying and then a documentary about Venus (Earth’s evil twin) which was interesting, then we all lapsed into quiet beating the computer games – me on my laptop and the kids on their DSs – Scarlett was playing Boys Toys or something similarly titled which looked to be a load of minigames including things like spot the difference and rubbing off part of a picture then a multi-choice about what you thought it was. She is still adamant she is never going to learn to read but she was doing a fairly credible job of identifying the picture then deciding which of the 3 words started with the correct letter ;). Davies was playing Transformers. He got bored quickest and played Xbox for a short while instead, leaving the sound down because ‘then I get to practise reading at the same time!’ as it has subtitles for any dialogue on the Star Wars game he was playing.

I made some cheese scones for lunch as we only had fairly stale white sliced bread and then made some snickerdoodles too as I had a cinnamon craving :). They all went down very well :).

The rain that had been colouring the sky a stunning dark grey but not actually arriving still hadn’t put in an appearance so I decided to drive over to my parents and fill my car radiator up. No one was home but I’d just filled a jug with water and gone to open the bonnet to discover the catch didn’t seem to be working when Dad pulled up. We both faffed around with the catch and couldn’t get it open so Dad jumped in and we drove up the road to a mechanic he knows. He had a quick look and also couldn’t open it so said if I took it back tomorrow he’d have a look at it for me then. Dad and I worked out a speedy getting my car back to his house tonight so he could take it up there in the morning and then collect it and come and pick me up from work in it tomorrow plan and we drove home again. Fingers crossed it is a niggly and easily fixed thing rather than something needing parts – it’s already cost me the £60 insurance excess to have the windscreen fixed and it has it’s MOT due next month so I am fretting about car costs atm.

We’d taken some snickerdoodles over so we went in for a cup of tea and chat which was nice. Dad showed me the brochure for the holiday he is booking for February for him and Mum (4 weeks in NZ) and bemoaned not knowing what best to do with his money at the moment as banks are not paying much in the way of interest. He was debating buying another property (he clearly has even more capital than I thought) so I suggested ‘investing’ in our house and sorting our kitchen out! No idea if he will and I suspect it will annoy my Mum who still regularly tries to plead poverty to Ady.

Back home again and I stuck some tea in the oven for the kids then went out and totally de-crapped my car of all the broken cd boxes, scratched cds, sticks and stones and sweet wrappers, parking tickets (pay and display ones, not fines) and general rubbish straight into the wheelie bin. I then parked it on the drive and brought the hoover out and hoovered it all too. Clearly this won’t make it cost less to have various things fixed but made me feel better about the prospect of spending money on it! I also found Davies’ phone which has been missing since the Sustainability camping trip and we’d started to give up hope on finding :). Davies then instantly remembered having put it in the door where I found it :rolls:

Off to Badgers where our usual mates were heading off for a walk but Ady was about 15 minutes away so I said I’d wait for him instead and they said they’d be back to join us soon. I sat in the coffee lounge and had a cup of tea and then Ady rang to say he was there. I’ve just rememered I left my tea cup lying around :oops:. I walked to Waitrose to meet Ady and we walked back to collect his car and then drove to where I thought we were supposed to be giving blood to see what the parking situation there was like and whether we’d be better going in one car or two. We totally failed to find it at all (church hall) and had to get back to collect the children. We were asked if we could stay next week (booking us in advance!) and all the Badgers who did the parade were given some chocolate buttons for doing so well. 🙂

We had another go at finding the church hall – Scarlett and I in my car, Davies and Ady in Ady’s, failed and gave up, only to drive past it as we turned round. It was only 15 minutes before the session finished though and there was no parking so it was another failed attempt to do something today.

We drove to my parents where I left my car ready for Dad to take to the workshop in the morning and came home. In the car Davies and Scarlett played ‘name that tune’ with the music on my phone. Davies is very good at it :).

I read the first couple of chapters of which took us to 9pm. I had a bath and cooked dinner and Ady and I watched Come Dine With Me while eating. Davies sent me several text messsages from his bedroom which is rather a scary sign of the times.

An at home day again today. Days at home are always the ones that have me fretting about my laissez-faire attitude towards the kids Home Ed. Is it neglectful? Would it stand up to scrutiny? We tend to have a pattern of getting on with our own things when we’re at home, which in the case of today meant I spent some time on the laptop, some time reading and some time baking. Davies and Scarlett both spent some time on their DSs, both spent some time snuggled up next to me, both spent some time watching stuff on TV (Evacuees, Worlds most dangerous animals, some cartoons) and some time playing together with the geomags. Oh and Davies played with his Ben 10 figures for a bit too. Aside from the odd ‘what does this say?’ or ‘I didn’t know that about crocodiles, did you Mummy?’ interjection I was called upon very little which either seems a bit too good to be true, or at the very least worthy of suspicion that I’m not ‘doing my job properly’ really.

I admitted seasonal defeat at both getting laundry dried outside and needing to put the heating on, which sort of ties in nicely together really as it meant I could do several loads of washing and get it dried on the radiators. I had planned to top up the water and antifreeze in my car, along with checking the oil and the washer bottle and maybe even de-craping the interior a bit but it needs to be parked on a flat bit of road and as both our road and our drive are sloping this means taking it somewhere else. I am also not keen on the idea of lifting the bonnet outside our own house for risk of neighbours, and yes I’m thinking David Thank-you in particular swarming over to offer a hand. I’d planned to take it to my parents after lunch, call in for a cup of tea and do it there but the relentless rain all day long prevented me from following through with that idea. Maybe tomorrow.

I made a couple of trays of brownies – one with and one without nuts and we had lunch.

A peaceful early afternoon and then off to swimming. I was feeling quite slothful and rather full of brownies and was very tempted not to swim but berated myself for such laziness and took what I thought was the right money in change with me. I discovered when I went to pay that I was 10 pence out and had to dash back to my car and collect 10p worth of rather green coppers to make up the money. Hurrah for not having tidied my car out I suppose!

A brother and sister who are also Home Educated and we know loosely from groups over the years go swimming on a Tuesday afternoon – they are older than Davies and Scarlett – I think the sister is about 12 or 13 and the brother is maybe 10 but they are big children and the lad particularly plays rough which when he towers over Davies by half as much height and size again slightly bothers me. It always seems very amicable and Davies and Scarlett are always pleased to see them but I feel conscious of keeping an eye on them all incase general horseplay gets out of control. As a result I was distracted and only managed 46 lengths today. I did change my stride to front crawl, backstroke, front crawl, backstroke, breast stoke, back stroke, repeat though as front crawl is definitely quicker and more energetic than breast stroke. I also kept a sharper eye on the time – I did the first 10 lengths in 10 minutes but by 15 minutes I had dropped to 14 lengths. At 20 minutes I was down to 16 lengths and at 30 minutes I was just about at 26 lengths. I was hoping to manage 52 lengths today so was about on track at half time but of course my second half of the hour tends to be slower as I get worn out.

Back home again I did the kids some tea and got changed before Ady arrived home and I went off to my course. Week seven of nine tonight so only two more to go. Today was all about Smart Shopping and included a talk from a woman from Love Food Hate Waste. She gave us loads of freebies including fridge thermometer, pasta and rice measures, bag clips, magnetic shopping list, foodsaver tub and recipe books. She gave a really interesting talk and infact we ran out of time so some of the other stuff about shopping we were due to cover is being carried over to next week.

I got home to find Davies hadn’t gone to Sea Scouts. He’d already said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go and he wished it wasn’t the same day as swimming as he is worn out by swimming for an hour and always wants an early night. Didn’t stop him reappearing back downstairs at 1045pm with a robot spaceship transformer thing he’d made from a bit of McDonalds Happy Meal toy, some cardboard and a load of sellotape though :rolls: I can’t decide if he has lost interest, it’s because of the whole refusing to believe he’s HE’d or genuine tiredness really. I do wish it was me taking him each week as I suspect Ady hasn’t been as good as I would have been in easing him in and maybe having a chat with some of the boys who are giving him a hard time or speaking to the leader. We’ll see…

Other than that I am getting really frustrated with an online game I am desperate to get to level six on so will maybe just have one or more tries at that before I go to bed…

A welcome break in the rain yesterday although the pay off for sunshine and clear skies was bitter cold. Winter is really in the air. It always seems sudden in November when October is still so often T shirt weather.

Yesterday was Pulborough Brooks Home Ed walk and we were hoping to catch up with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna along with a few others but when we arrived there was noone else around. The children were greeted by name by one of the very enthusiastic volunteers who sometimes helps out with Wildlife Explorers. They declined spotter sheets and played in the ‘childrens corner’ while I went to use the toilet. When I came back they were looking at a really nice wildlife rug which has numbers and words all round the border 1-10 of different things eg 1 frog, 2 flowers, 3 ladybirds etc. You then have to spot those number of things on the rug. Davies was shocking me by reading everything on it and when they were struggling keeping track of 8 butterflies he came up with the idea of taking 8 jigsaw puzzle pieces off the counter and placing them on the ones they’d counter already. We debated borrowing the ‘explorer packs’ which they lend out for a £10 deposit and included rucksack with binoculars, birdspotting book and nature sheets, pens and paper, magnifying glass and so on. They decided against it but I suspect we will next time as we regretted not having binoculars several times as we walked round.

No one else arrived or was in the playpark so we decided to head off on our own and walked the opposite way round to usual so we would meet up with anyone who had already set off. We did come across two other families at the halfway point and looking at the facebook group invite I’m pretty sure they were Home Educators but they had very young children – at least one was still in a pushchair so we smiled and said ‘good morning’ but didn’t introduce ourselves or check if they were HE folk.

Instead we enjoyed the walk just the three of us and spotted green woodpeckers, rabbits, deer, robins and various other birds we couldn’t identify (hence wishing we’d had the explorer rucksacks). There is a ‘resident’ peregrine falcon that comes back this time each year and was around. We think we spotted that but were not sure. We heard the geese honking and then saw them fly over our heads and talked about why birds fly in the V formation.

The deer

by the green pond

Scarlett found some fox poo and got a couple of sticks so she could pull it apart to see what it had been eating. It was even more interesting than she’d hoped and she found some claws (rabbits we presume) and lots of fur and small bones

We then decided as it was just us we’d detour to the 1/2 mile walk hide we’d never been to before. I was worried there would be loads of serious birdwatchers and photographers there as we often see people with hi-tech equipment setting off on the trail so had warned the kids we’d need to be really quiet in the hide and so on. So it was a great surprise when we cautiously opened the door to find a large group of people and were greeted with a big ‘Hello!’ from a couple of volunteers. Along with the more serious twitchers were volunteers with various binoculars and telescopes to show people how to use the equipment and point out interesting things. We saw a cormorant with it’s wings outstretched, a couple of ducks hopping into the water, a swan taking off and a flock of geese landing and all got to look through the binoculars.

Davies had refused to wear a coat insisting he’d be warm enough in his jumper but he was getting cold and shivery so I wrapped him in my scarf and we walked briskly back to the centre to keep warm. We decided it was far too cold to sit out and eat our lunch so ate in the car driving home instead. We took the route over the downs home that Scarlett and I had gone on Saturday and it was very pretty – the sun was hanging low in the sky and creating gorgeous colours of grey, pink and yellow. I wanted to stop several times to take photos but the road is narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass and twists and turns so many times that by the time there is a safe place to pull over the landscape has totally changed again.

Back home we had a quiet afternoon with the kids playing on their DSs, they Xboxed for a short while and then played Creationary for a bit. I spent some time synching my diary and phone for various things. The kids had tea and then it was time for gymnastics.

I dropped them off and went to Asda where I got two big bags of carrots reduced to 20p each, two packs of tomatoes for 20p each and some coriander for 10p, CoOp where I got loads of croissants for £1.00, some cheap avocados and a couple of other bits for dinners for this week. I also popped into the libarary as I’d had an email to say a couple of things I’d reserved had come in and I knew we had a copy of the Jacqueline Wilson book Alison and Jax mentioned as I’d ordered in a load of her books for the display I did last week so I collected that at the same time.

I got home and had just put the shopping away when Ady arrived home so we headed back out again to Gymnastics to catch the last 10 minutes watching the kids. They both seem to be doing well and progressing but neither of them look like gymnasts 😉 I certainly can’t seem either of them being invited to join squads or compete but they are enjoying it and learning something aswell as getting yet more regular exercise (although that is probably the least of their needs!).

Back home again Scarlett swept the ashes away in the fire and Davies did the hoovering, both because they wanted to and offered when Ady and I were about to do said tasks. Made us laugh to be sitting down watching them though 😆

I read followed by a chapter of Littlenose and then, as I was begged I also read , then it was bedtime.

Ady and I watched Life, the kids will catch up with it on Sunday evening.