One word? When seven would do…

I worked this morning. Bid was having Davies and Scarlett and being car-less and living right next to the beach the plan was to drop them off with him. I’d allowed 45 minutes which given it’s about 3 miles away was plenty of time to get there and back but I’d not factored in a traffic jam down to the coast road, two sets of temporary lights and the just-before-9am-traffic. So when we were still sitting waiting to get on to the coast road at 9.05am with me needing to have dropped them off and driven all the way back to work again I was getting quite stressy. I resolved this by shouting ‘I’M GOING TO BE LATE FOR WOOOOOOOORK!!!’ regularly, drowning out Chris Evans on the radio, making Davies and Scarlett laugh and people in neighbouring cars with their windows down jump. As a strategy it seemed to work though as I was only a couple of minutes late and the amusing anecdote charmed my manager into laughing rather than frowing at me once I did arrive at work.

It was a bit of a free-for-all at work this morning. Brenda, the chief librarian was in charge, back off two weeks holiday and with a very distracted, not quite present air about her. I manned the desk for 2 hours and was on the counter for an hour so I did just fine out of the deal but the rest of the staff were less impressed with their duties. I was planning to talk to Brenda about career breaks today but she clearly had other things on her mind so I left it. I was telling a colleague about a job I worked at for 10 days before they asked me to leave and some of the events leading up to it and realised an event which felt huge at the time has now been consigned to the status of ‘an amusing story’. I was in Bhs with the kids yesterday which was another job I loathed and was terribly miserable at for quite a long time before leaving and had avoided going in there for years but wondering round yesterday realised I didn’t have the tight chest, scared feeling walking round there any more, nearly 11 years after I left. Most of the time I don’t feel like I’ve changed or grown up at all but then I happen upon a memory that shows me I have. Generally this is followed up by me doing something very juvenille to balance the feeling of course 😆

I nipped home to change into my jeans, check on the chicks (two hatched, one egg with pips so hopefully will hatch over night) and the quails eggs in the incubator which were due to hatch yesterday / today – nothing happening. Drove to the beach and walked along to find Bid and all the children. The four children have been pairing off more often these days, particularly on the beach as Tarly and Eliot tend to go nature watching, while Davies and Archie do some sort of Harry Potter / Star Wars game. Bid and I chatted and caught up on each others news and enjoyed sitting right at the edge of the sea coming in :).

We had a couple of hours and then I was getting hungry and so were all the kids, we had Badgers to get to and both Davies and Scarlett had big bleeding scrapes on legs/ knees / ankles which neither of them seemed too bothered by but I wanted to clean up and get a look at (neither that bad, both from scrapes clambering over rocks and barnacle encrusted wood). We all walked back together as I had parked outside their flat, said our goodbyes and we headed for home.

We ate, the kids got cleaned up and changed and we went to Badgers. It was Davies’ last ever. I just looked up his first ever. He’s completed 12 badgers which makes him a Super Badger, he’s been a Follow Me Badger for several terms, been Badger of the Month at least twice, marched in several Remembrance Day parades and laid the wreath last year, had his first big away from home experience last year at Badger camp and generally gotten a heck of a lot out of his time there. I feel quite sad he will miss the last two weeks of term, particularly presentation night and should possibly have borne it in mind when holiday planning given Scottish schools have broken up already so we won’t necessarily be avoiding school holidays where we’ll be, but Julie has asked if he will go along to presentation night in December and have it all awarded then, which we will. She did call him up to say goodbye, thanks for all the commitment over the last 4 plus years and wish him well.

I had a fairly crap time there – we did an exercise with blindfolds where the Badgers worked in pairs with one blindfolded leading the other around the building, then an obstacle course was set up and they had to guide each other round it with verbal instructions only. Except to set it up they shut all of the Badgers in the coffee room with nothing to do except wait, supervised by me. I HATE that, have no skills to keep a room full of 12 rowdy 5-10 year olds, at least two with SEN under control nor any desire to do so really. I tried a few tactics, failed quite miserably and sort of gave up. 🙁 I’m sure the answer is to have a few ideas of things to talk about / games to play / entertaining plans to pull from my sleeve like a magician in such times but I don’t and I am happy enough with the skills I do have in life not to feel a failure in not managing to be great with kids. Grrr.

Still, that’s it til September now and with current plans afoot we’ll only have one term left anyway. Davies will try cadets in September. My personal prediction is he won’t like it, which is fine, I think he has gotten loads out of Badgers but am quite happy for him to leave it at that but I will support and encourage him in giving it a good go and then respect whatever decision he comes to after that. Tarly will have gotten her Gold paw by the end of this year leaving her just 3 more badges to do to get Super Badger so even if we do go away for a year she will potentially be able to pick up when we come back and finish it too, if she decides she wants to.

Back home again for a late dinner for the kids, Ady arrived a few minutes after us. I spent some time sewing bits onto Davies’ costume and then read some Alone on a wide, wide sea. At bedtime we realised 3 quail had hatched so all cooed over them for a while (soooo tiny!) and for once an early start, sea air, running around for 10 hours of the day meant they fell asleep fairly quickly. Ady and I had dinner, watched Outnumbered Christmas Special on dvd from the library and now I’m learning quickly about rearing quail before bed.

We started the day with nothing planned other than swimming later this afternoon. But I was fretting about not having a dress for being Fiona in and had realised from my brief foray into dressmaking yesterday that a proper garment for me to wear is way beyond me – fleece puss in boots costumes no problem, dress that will hold up to being worn by me for 3 hours? Not so sure.

I went out to check on the chickens and ducks, heard a tweeting from the henhouse and on investigation found a very fluffy cute day old chick nestled under the five or six broody hens in there :). We all cooed over it for a while, the kids decided it will be called ‘Harry’ and we came back indoor again. Davies wanted to ring Ady to tell him and I realised that the rather hi-tech phone Davies has been using is far above and beyond what he needs. Scarlett’s phone managed to go through the washing machine and is now deceased – which offered a cautionary tale to both Scarlett and I ;). So I decided to look at cheap handsets for them both that they won’t be scared of pressing buttons on, I won’t give a monkeys about getting lost or kept in a pocket whilst paddling in the sea or any of the other likely fates for a phone in the care of a 7year old! I feel I should qualify the fact they have phones at all at this point by saying they have them not because they particularly want them but because it gives me confidence to let them roam knowing they are contactable when still out of sight / hearing range. Neither of them know any phone numbers (other than 999) or how to do much more than ring the numbers programmed into them or answer a phone call when it rings.

So we did the rounds of Asda (nothing – handset or Fiona dress), Matalan (Fiona dress ditto), Terrible Tesco (nowt), charity shops and Peacocks in Portslade (not a thing) and finished at Sainsburys which had no handsets or dresses but we did stock up on food for lunch, dinner and cereals. We got a handset from Terrible Tescos but realised on getting it home it was a T-Mobile specific handset so Tarly’s existing, still has nearly a tenners worth of credit and survived the washing machine even though the phone didn’t SIM card won’t work in it. Fixed that by putting credit on the T mobile card it came with and when Davies runs out of credit he can have that SIM card in his and use that credit.

Home for lunch, another chick had been born so we cooed over that, ate, I read and agonised further over lack of Fiona-dress. Eventually we left early enough for swimming to nip into town first when I found a sundress and shrug which will be perfect to be Fiona in and I will actually wear afterwards. Hurrah :).

Swimming was very hot. I didn’t go in and sat with a book sweltering while the kids had their lessons – very good both of them.

Back home we finished off the sourdough starter and made it into a loaf. I cooked it tonight while I was doing dinner and it looks lovely. We’ve set aside some of the starter for the next loaf if everyone likes the taste. The loaf looks fantastic and smells divine, hoping it lives up to itself when we try it tomorrow. D&S have LOVED breeding wild yeasts though and really enjoyed making bread (soda bread, commercial yeast and now their own sourdough yeast) and pizza dough. Next is home made pasta and pastry 🙂 . Sadly I don’t think we’ve said goodbye to supermarket sliced white just yet but at least they know what the decent stuff is, can recall the ingredients, know what it should look like at each stage and understand the pros and cons of processed verus home made. That puts them infront of plenty of adults I know.

Ady came home, the kids had tea, they both did some drawing, I read some Alone on a wide, wide sea, they went to bed, came back out of their rooms again, went to bed (repeat x 23). And that’s all I have to say about that.

Everyone had a lie in this morning, including Ady who went to the dentist first thing. The rest of us had breakfast and debated what to do with the day. I realised we only have today and tomorrow free before Friday when we are off to a Shrek gala event and will need fancy dress. Ady and I had already decided to go as Shrek and Fiona. Scarlett had planned to go as Aslan (the brief is your favourite Shrek character or character from a fairy tale) but after some discussion agreed to go as Puss in Boots. Davies had decided to be Gingerbread Man so the hunt was on for material and accessories.

We headed to Shoreham where there are several charity shops for first port of call and then a Dunelm Mill store which has a fabric department. The charity shop came up trumps for a walking stick for Davies to paint to look like Gingee’s candy cane walking stick for £1.99 and we got end of roll and off cut and half price sale fabric in Dunelm Mill for the rest of their costumes and Ady’s.

Back home again for lunch, I read Ice Age 2 the movie storybook to Scarlett as part of her Chatterbooks ‘homework’ and then we went into Lancing for a quick look round the charity shops before going to the library. It was very hot and we were quite early so we set up and then had a drink in the staffroom. Russell arrived and we had a catch up chat before the children started arriving. It was the last session today and we did book and film reviews with everyone talking about the book and dvd pairings they’d taken home 2 weeks ago, which they prefered and what was the same and different with both. 8 of the children prefered the dvds, we’ve had a less reading-keen group this time for sure.

I then read ‘Ted’ which I’d typed out so there could be no peeking at the illustrations. Everyone listened and then I tasked them with drawing pictures of the characters and using some storyboard book to film worksheets to plan scenes for a film adaptation.

We did a spiel about the Summer Reading Challenge, compared notes on what we thought Ted looked like before I brought out the actual book so we could see the illustrations and then got the kids to fill out feedback sheets on the sessions. We got some great feedback and several parents gave us some very positive feedback too. I’m glad we did it again, but slightly relieved it’s over. I’ve learned more again from doing it a second time and although I’m not sure Davies and Scarlett got so much from the actual sessions this time the ‘compare and contrast’ element alone has been interesting for them, not to mention being party to all the post-mortem conversations with me and the other staff.

Back home again I made Davies’ Gingerbread man costume. It needs some adornment hand sewn on it now which I’ll do tomorrow and we’ll need to paint his face to go along with it but I think it will look pretty good. He is pleased with it :).

I made their tea and Ady arrived home. I then did Scarlett’s costume which proved far easier and then Ady went to water the allotment while I got the kids trying the costumes on at each stage. Tarly needs a belt and a yellow feather for her hat and will need face painting too – oh and her tail sewn on! Tomorrow I’ll finish their costumes off, check our face paint supplies, run up a tunic and waistcoat for Ady and work out just what I am going to wear!

The kids and I tidied up – having been distracted by a TV show with Caroline Quentin, and I read several chapters of Alone on a wide, wide sea. Ady arrived home, the kids went to bed and we had dinner. Not at all sure quite how it got so late but dressmaking beckons in the morning so I really should go to bed.

Anything solar powered is onto a bit of a winner at the moment :).

I’m on the mailing list for Chichester Harbour Conservancy and they have loads of cool events happening year round but we never seem to be around to get to many of them. This weekend other than me working yesterday morning we had nothing planned though so when an email came through earlier in the week about the solar powered boat trips I rang up and booked it for today.

Everyone struggled to get up this morning but we did manage to get out the house for our planned time of 930am and found the car park and were at the jetty at the appointed time despite hitting some serious traffic as most of West Sussex seemed to be heading to the Witterings for the day.

The Solar Heritage boat was one of three built in Switzerland for an Alternative Technology event and then sold off. One is in New York in a museum and one is here in Chichester and is used for education, harbour trips and to raise awareness of alternative technologies. It was sailed across the Atlantic from New York to the UK and has been modified back since to hold 60 people on a half-open sided deck. The engine is all but silent, the roof is covered with solar panels and it is incredibly manouverable. Due to design of the boat not only does it not use fuel to run it also creates very few waves which is good for wildlife and does not contribute to coastal erosion by creating waves.

Various events are run using the boat and today we did a Harbour tour to Chichester Marina and then a 3 mile walk back to Itchinor again. Davies and Scarlett were the only children on boat (and actually I was the next youngest person after them) and the commentary from the skipper was very much geared to his audience so covered lots of pointing out historical interest facts about the harbour and coast. There was some talk about wildlife but there is a specific wildlife tour too which might have been more interesting although this was certainly not boring and we all enjoyed it.

I had thought the walk back was more ‘guided’ than it actually was and that we’d have more pointed out to us but it turned out to be one leader at the front of the group keeping pace with the fastest walkers, one at the back with the slowest and the main idea being that they ensured we found our way back to our cars. As it happened this was perfect and the four of us found our pace somewhere in the middle of the group and walked along chatting and spotting things as we went. It was public footpath all the way, mostly hugging the coast, past some very gorgeous, very expensive houses, through some fields (one of which we saw a red deer in) and finally along through the marina. We did the walk in under an hour and given I’d been expecting a bit of moaning for 3 miles in such heat (it was by now 1pm) it was very nice and noone complained at all :). We bought ice creams and sat watching the boats coming and going. It was a really nice trip and one of the things on my personal list of ‘we really must do that one day…’ things so I’m really pleased to have ticked it off :).

Back home again some people watched football, some played with chickens and ducks, some played with geomags and some made popcorn. I read my book (finished it tonight, the new Lionel Shriver, Very Good), we tried a rather unsuccessful roast dinner on the barbecue in an attempt to keep the kitchen cooler by not using the oven. The potatoes ended up rather well done and the beef was too rare for everyone but Ady. Then Ady got distracted by something, is crap at multitasking so had got me to start cooking vegetables and getting everything ready to serve up before he was ready with his bits. Grr.

We all ate together and watched Willy Wonka (the original, think it might be Charlie and the chocolate factoy actually, that one) which was nice and mellow. More chicken & duck stuff, the kids and I added to our sourdough which is looking good – even better they caught the bit of River Cottage on tv tonight where they make it and heard about someone having the same sourdough starter for 13 years.

We spent some time talking about our trip to Scotland and researching dolphin watching trips, Loch Ness and other local attractions.

Work for me this morning. And getting up was a shame as I was having a very delicious dream ;).

I enjoyed a good bitch at work about the state of the library service. All public sector workers have been sent a letter from Dave & Nick asking for radical ideas for cost cutting so that set us all off in ‘If I ruled the world…’ type ponderings. I spent some time on an NHS website training module -I think West Sussex’s long term vision is for ‘Service Centres’ offering library service, health care, a place to report pot holes, get on the council housing list, meet your MP and pay your council tax. I imagine this is phase one of making us all multi-skilled enough to be the one to boot the computers up of a morning ;).

At home everyone was in the garden with various chickens and ducks eating lunch cooked on the barbecue. I joined in with the hanging out in the garden and then we went to Halfords to get roof bars. We picked up a roof box courtesy of Ady’s workmate Fergie who seems to have taken on the role as our dealer for pretty much anything we want / need. So we have a roof box for £30 complete with a set of roof bars which don’t fit either of our cars but will probably ebay to cover the cost of buying the box :). Having tried cheapo bars we eventually went for Thule as the price difference between halfway decent and branded was very little and we figure we can ebay them afterwards too if we end up with a vehicle they don’t fit.

We fitted the bars in the car park to check we could, nice and easy :), nipped into Sainsburys and came home and fitted the roof box on. We’ll leave it on for tomorrow and check how the car drives with it attached.

Scarlett played with the chickens and ducks, Davies watched a HP film I’d brought home and Ady and I sat in the garden eating ice creams and hatching plans for next year. Then Ady cooked the kids tea on the barbecue, Davies and I watched Doctor Who, the kids had showers and eventually they went to bed. Not at all sure they are actually asleep yet mind you.

Ady and I spent some time perusing the WWOOF website getting all excited at various listings. At one point after I’d read out another listing of people living with no mains electricity, rearing animals to eat, keeping bees and making their own cheese and looking for people to come along and join them for a week and help work on their land Ady said ‘it all sounds too good to be true’ and I had to remind him that we are splinter group minority weirdos and most people would be horrified at the very idea of compost loos and time spent weeding in exchange for two meals a day! 😆

We had a very late dinner (quel surprise!) and were both rather worse the wear for beverages when first Scarlett and then Davies about 15 minutes later came to complain of sore fingers. One finger, unrelated injuries – I think Tarly’s is a paper cut, Davies seems to have had something stuck under a nail. Ady offered a tub of Sudocrem with an instruction to ‘stick your finger in that and waggle it about lots’. I suspect not only would we not get medical qualifications we often would fail basic parenting tests too! 😆

In other news I strained and bottled my elderflower cordial from yesterday and it is divine – Spring in a glass :). I also bottled my first attempt at home brew wine and the kids and I noted bubbles in our sourdough yeast starter and have added more flour and water ready for tomorrow’s inspection of it.

It’s 1am and I strongly suspect the only Goddard asleep is Ady but as we have to be up in the morning early-ish I am off to join him. I’ve left the Sudocrem out incase the children need it while we’re asleep…

Thursday Early up for one and all as D&S were off to work with Ady for the day. Once they’d all gone I spent some time researching roof bars on the internet and looking into hiring them. Turns out that’s not cost effective :(.

I had a good day at work. I talked to my boss about career breaks and West Sussex County Council does offer career breaks between 3 and 12 months, unpaid but with guaranteed return to work, no loss of benefits or break in service. For employees with 5 years plus service. I will be four years in December :(. She did say it was worth talking to the head librarian to see if they would be prepared to extend that deal to me though particularly as all vacancies are currently being filled with 12 months contracts only anyway. I will talk to her next time I see her. It would certainly not be make or break and I strongly suspect that the last thing I’d want to do is return to 11 hours a week at the library but it would make sense to have it as a back up option and be risking even less with a year out.

Other than that it was a normal day really, perfectly enjoyable but with a feeling of biding time.

Ady and the kids beat me home having had a good day. D&S do have to spent a fair whack of time sitting in the car while Ady nips into shops when they go out with him for the day but they have DSs and get to have lunch out so it’s not all bad.

Ady and I chatted in the garden for a while before Scarlett and I headed up to the allotment for some watering. We had a water fight with the hose pipe which left us both soaked but was very funny, Tarly harvested some peas and we both gathered loads of elderflowers from the tree at the end of out plot – some with me lifting Tarly up while she held loppers to get to high up flowers. Health and Safety is certainly not my forte even if it is Ady’s ;). We got quite a few heads from there and then had a walk up and down the lane leading to the allotments to get more so came home with quite a bagful.

A quick stop at CoOp and then home. It was getting late and an early morning start meant they were both asleep fairly early (for them) so no penguin suits here.

Friday Was far more back to form with the kids and I scrambling out of bed at the last possible moment, shovelling down breakfast, frantically packing lunch and heading out of the door still yelling at each other. We were late but it didn’t seem to matter too much :).

It was the last of the four sessions of Bookclub Crafts for the library display and today was papier mache moon surface with crater making. It was at Mel’s house which is rather like our own garden with plenty of veg growing, chickens and ducks along with added dog and rabbits. I enjoyed catching up with friends and chatting, Scarlett enjoyed the same with added papier mache-ing and once Davies had gotten over himself and his rather annoying shunning of friends asking him to play in favour of hanging round me he did the same too. I had a chat with him on the way home about it. I think he is struggling with Scarlett finding her feet with that group and not needing him and him being slightly lost as an indivdual rather than half of a pair, which is understandable and if he was being ignored then I would understand his quietness but he is being actively asked to play by really nice, same age as him kids he knows and likes and rejecting them. I suspect they have a finite number of asks before they get pissed off and stop bothering and I think he now understands that too.

We left there and headed for home debating what to bake. Davies is loving the idea of being able to sort food out for himself and Scarlett has always liked being in the kitchen but I am really chuffed at their enthusiasm levels for this whole idea.

Friday night is Pizza night in our house so having explained that pizza dough is the *exact* same recipe as a loaf of bread, just dealt with and cooked slightly differently Davies took on pizza dough and Tarly the loaf. I read out the recipe and they did all the weighing, measuring, mixing and kneading. I got them to see what a teaspoon of salt or yeast looked like in their hands and then test themselves to see how accurate they were without measures (similar to the ‘pour a shot’ competition the barmen in my favourite bar did on my 18th (which we had to pretend was my 21st given I’d been a regular for so long :lol:)) – they clearly have their mothers knack of measuring ‘by eye’ and were pretty spot on. I know baking is a science and weighing is important but I do most of my cooking by eye and taste rather than weights and measures and if I can get them thinking that way of instinct and an appreciation of just what 4oz / a teaspoon / 300g of an ingredient looks they are far less likely to mis-read a recipe and get it wrong or be able to memorise recipes and know at each stage whether it looks right or not.

While they did that I made some elderflower cordial which is resting in the pan for 24 hours but I know from dipping and licking a finger is divine :).

Ady arrived home and while we were waiting for proving to happen Davies watched some Harry Potter and Scarlett spent some time with the ducks.

Davies and I tried to make some homemade tomatoe sauce for the pizza but his hand slipped while adding oil which made it too liquid to use for that. He also declared it too garlicky but said he’d like to try making it again for next time. I’ve frozen it to use as a pasta sauce base instead. Davies shaped the 3 pizza bases, spread his with tomato puree and cheese and put it in the oven while Tarly shaped her bread and cooked it doing the relevant checks. Both really proud of themselves and justifiably so. Tarly made a gorgeous loaf of bread with no real help which is something plenty of adults couldn’t manage. While that was cooking we also set off some sourdough starter to see if we can breed our own yeast to try.

The kids had tea, Ady and I syphoned off my home brew wine which is now ready to be bottled and tastes pretty good if just a bit like cheap, supermarket own brand wine. I have plans for more flavourful and less chemically-enhanced recipes next but need to collect some wine bottles to store it.

We read a couple of chapters of ‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’ which we are really enjoying and then it was bedtime for small people. I finished off pizza prep and cooking for Ady and I, have joined WWOOF and should probably be dressed as a penguin by now as I have work in the morning.

Dentist for me and the kids this morning for our six monthly checkup. It would have been for Ady too but he is currently having some sort of dental issues which may or may not need expensive treatment and I am keeping out of so he has his own appointments for the next couple of weeks. Our dentist has changed and the new woman is lovely (as was the old one actually). I went first and was fine, she said I have a little staining from tea drinking, which normally gets cleaned off as part of the check up appointment but now is considered cosmetic rather than medical and so I would need to see a hygienist and pay privately for – I will invest in some whitening toothpaste instead 😉 . Davies was fine, a bit of plaque picked up and some hints on where to be concentrating on brushing, a bit of a cross bite issue potentially although I suspect that is him not biting where he normally does as I know I never seem to bite properly when asked to consciously do it. I have been aware of him overbiting his lips with his two new front teeth though which might become an issue. Both kids seem likely to have overcrowded mouths and possibly be candidates for braces in the future which is a surprise as no one in my family has ever needed anything like that. Mum has had lots of dental issues and has false teeth on the top but that is due to gum disease rather than tooth issues. Ady’s teeth however are all over the place and both Davies and Scarlett look like they have his teeth patterns rather than mine :(. Something to put off thinking about for now though.

Scarlett had a small patch of decay on a back tooth last time and this time it had gotten worse (which I knew) so it was drilled out and some fluoride cement put in, apparently not technically a filling but it looked a lot like one to me. She was a star, sat through the whole thing including X rays (to check it has not gone through to the adult tooth underneath) and had more cement put thinly on the other back tooth too. We walked home again talking about X rays and why we all had to leave the room while Scarlett had it done.

We were home with a full couple of hours before we needed to be out again so I got the River Cottage Family Cookbook out and told the kids I wanted to start reading it to them. I explained that if we go WWOOFing then we will need to be eating together rather than in shifts as we do now, there will be no freezer therefore no chicken nuggets and potatoe waffles and that I consider part of my job as their parent to teach them how to cook, what is healthy and needed in their diet and show them how to prepare meals. Tarly has always enjoyed baking and Davies has been showing a real interest in cooking his own food lately so it seemed the right time.

So we read the introduction which talks about how everyone should understand where their food comes from and basic, raw ingredients rather than packets of processed food. We read about flour and bread and as I had hoped both the kids were imediately asking if we could bake bread. I explained we hadn’t enough time before lunch to make yeast bread but could manage soda bread and prepare a yeast loaf for later for dinner too.

So, to the kitchen! I read out the recipe, reached high up things and nominally supervised the oven but between them they made a loaf of soda bread and then the dough for a normal loaf. This involved weighing, mixing, kneading, melting and so on, all the time referring to RCFCB for the ‘science bit’ behind it all. We talked about how our bread had 6 ingredients and we knew where they all came from and read the ingredients list on a loaf of supermarket white sliced bread which had many more, most of which we’d never heard of or sounded quite scary. We left the dough to rise, brought out the baked soda bread to cool and cleared up the kitchen.

Sofa bread for lunch was lovely :). The chickens and ducks got fed the remainder of the sliced white supermarket loaf 😉 .

Then we collected together swimsuits and towels and change of clothing and headed off for Ali’s. We arrived before Freya to find a paddling pool being filled :). Unfortunately the styles of enjoying said paddling pool were not compatible between the three children, or indeed even any two of them at any one time. I got very bored, very quickly of micro managing D&S who got very bored of being so ‘ruled’ so it wasn’t quite the happy meet up with a not-seen-for-ages-friend we’d been hoping for. They did manage to have an overall nice time though, with the apparent highlight being dunked headfirst into the water for Davies and 22 bounces on the trampoline to cure a shallow-fresh water vampire bite to Scarlett. Can you tell I don’t just stick with a conventional ‘kiss it better’ routine 😆

Was very lovely for me to see Ali (and J) though and I really enjoyed sitting on the patio drinking ginger beer and eating ice lollies and chatting :).

I’d left anticipating heavy traffic and alllowing for it and possibly another 10 minutes later leaving might have demonstrated that but we were home in 20 minutes so called in home to bake the bread. It had risen beautifully, Davies kneaded it, Scarlett shaped it and between them they monitored it in the oven, turned it over and tapped it to check it sounded hollow before turning it out to cool. Then off to Badgers.

Next week is our last week, we will miss the final two which is a shame as it is the end for Davies so next week is his last ever Badgers. There is some debate about when he will get his Super Badger award having completed the 12 required badges but I think it will probably happen in December if he is happy to return to Badgers presentation night then to recieve it.

Badger was a little underplanned tonight with the theme being compasses. We talked a little about coordinates and directions and then went outside to practise. We are obviously lucky being within hearing distance of the beach at Badgers knowing we live on the south coast so therefore the sea is south. We did some running about to show different directions and then came back in for drinks. We played some quieter games indoors but it was clear if we didn’t have more on offer than games we were going to struggle so we took them back outside again for more games. Running around games were something I HATED as a child so even though D&S seem to quite enjoy them I don’t really like standing around supervising them so it was a not good night particularly for me. I don’t get anything out of herding a group of children really.

On the way home we played spot the elderflowers as we want to make some cordial (and maybe some wine) so were planning a route to harvest some later in the week. Ady was home so I dropped D&S off and nipped along to Co Op for some sausages for Ady and I and some tinned pasta for the kids which was what they’d requested to go with their home made loaf (baby steps! 😉 ). Davies offered to come and do it when I got home so he opened tins, tipped into pan and heated, cut and buttered bread etc while Tarly got drinks and cutlery sorted. Funnily enough the next thing to make is pasta so we’ll try and do that this week too.

No story as I was cooking dinner and the kids got caught up in a Simpsons episode instead but we did candle the quails eggs and discarded 5 of the 12 as empty giving us 7 potential hatchers. Been meaning to do that for days. I cooked a lovely toad in the hole which inadvertantly used up loads of eggs as in a 12 eggs recipe (six normally but I was using our bantam eggs which only count as half an egg each) egg number 10 was bad 🙁 It must have been either a found egg from the garden that had been part incubated or left in the sun or just old or very poor egg rotation in the kitchen on our part. It wasn’t 100% rotten but didn’t smell nice and with plenty more eggs I chucked the mix away and started again. So it was a 22 egg recipe in the end. Luckily we’re good for eggs ;).

I’ve been looking at campervans online tonight which are surprisingly cheaper than I realised :).

All the most important things in life :).

We slept in this morning and once we’d dealt with chickens and ducks and breakfast and I was sitting down with River Cottage family cookbook and debating yeast starters and home made bread when I got a text from Bid to ask if we were free today. We decided we were so arranged to meet him and the boys on the beach with picnic at lunchtime. Davies and Scarlett took the two injured hens round to the front garden for some grass grazing. One seems totally recovered today, the worst injured one is much better and all the swelling has gone down and the bruising come out so she has a spectacularly colourful neck and I think her sight is a bit compromised too as she was injured in the eye which was fully closed yesterday but it open today.

I threw together a picnic and grabbed swimming stuff and the collection card for a parcel which had been returned to the collection office yesterday as it was too big for our letter box. I called to the kids to put the hens back in the back and Davies brought one through fine but Scarlett managed to spook the other one (the colourful neck one) and she flapped up onto the garage roof. I tried to encourage her down and she flapped up onto the house roof :rolls: I figured if she could get up there she could get down again so got the kids loaded in the car. I then realised she was no longer on the roof so went to check and she was back in the henhouse looking a bit fraught but okay. She is one of our original bantams and I’m hoping she’ll recover but I imagine adventures like that won’t do her much good :(. On the plus side seperating the ducks seems to have been a winner – they are a bit quieter, the cockerels have calmed down and are quieter and although a couple of the hens flapped into the ducks area today but could flap back out again and escape. I’m quietly campaigning for keeping them for now on the basis that there is every chance all the birds will be rehomed in a few months although I’ve not told Tarly that yet. So fingers crossed the seperation continues to stop any problems.

This made us rather late so a quick dash to the post office for a parcel which delighted Scarlett (thanks again Alison :)), the petrol station which delighted my thirsty car and then to the beach. Bid and the boys were already down there. Davies and Archie headed off in one direction, Scarlett and Eliot stripped off and headed for the sea, Bid and I stayed put and chatted. We had a very lovely few hours soaking up the sun, chatting and catching up on each others news. D&A loved spending the whole time out of sight, wandering far from the rest of us and staying in touch by phone. S&E stayed in sight but far out of hearing range and once they’d tired of the sea they rockpooled, played games with digging sand and found all sorts of sea creatures including crabs and shrimps. It was all very perfect :).

We had to leave at 4pm to get to swimming lessons. Thanks to Circus last week and Davies arm the week before he’d missed the last two, Scarlett had missed the last one and thanks to a whole hosts of reasons including my allergic reaction I’d not been in the water for weeks. It was lovely after the heat of the beach to be in the cool of the pool. Scarlett had a good lesson and came and joined me doing lengths for a while and managed 3 in a row straight off – 100m – and a further 3 a bit later so a fairly speedy 200m from her :). Davies had a really good lesson too, didn’t mention his arm and was all happy because they’d been practising breast stroke which he enjoys. And me? I managed my 50 lengths in the hour which I was pretty chuffed about given the lack of swimming recently. My knees protested and are still a bit achey so I’ll know I did it in the morning probably but I’m pleased I’ve not lost the level I’d built up.

Back home the kids had an eclectic mix of things for dinner and then went back outside. Ady came home and we chatted about our respective days and plans ahead. Ady and Davies took some plants to two of the neighbours, both of whom were telling Ady how lovely it is to hear the ducks in the garden 😯 then the kids got ready for bed and I read a couple of chapters of ‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’.

A catch up on the news for Budget stuff, dinner, more planning chat and I drank cider rather than wine, while it’s still cheap :).

Since the blogpost outlining hopes and dreams the four of us have been talking and talking and talking. I’ve done some online research and looked at ideas such as Blackberry Farm Community (thank you Alison 🙂 ) and even contacted them (although I’ve not yet heard back), thought about what we would and wouldn’t do and what our personal ‘terms and conditions’ would be.

We do want our own front door, even if that is just a tent flap . I need to be able to yell at my kids, eat when I want, have bedtime when I decide and have a space that just belongs to us. That writes off shared living ideas.

We’re very cagey about throwing in our lot, financially and generally with people we don’t know. Intentional Communities sound wonderful things on paper and at best could provide a ready made extended family of like minded people all working together towards a common goal and building a small scale version of an ideal world. At worst you could end up tied to a group you don’t get on with, giving your all to a compromised dream. With so many reservations about the idea before we even start down that path I don’t think that is the answer for us.

Our actual dream isn’t financially possible. We can’t buy as even though we could probably sell our house and buy another property with land for a similar amount that leaves us with a mortgage to pay and household bills to meet, meaning one or both of us would need to work other than on our own land. We could sell the house and that would give us capital to rent somewhere short term but it would only last a couple of years and then what would we be left with?

So, we’ve been talking about what we think we want, the gaps in our knowledge of both skills involved and whether we’d really like it if that was our day in day out lifestyle. We’ve been looking at training courses to learn about rearing pigs, sheep, cows, slaughter and butchering, beekeeping and so on. All at high costs, all without the chance of practical application any time soon to keep the skills up to date and in use. Ady’s chief reservation every step of the way is coming off the property ladder. I understand his worries and whilst I am more flightly and would risk things Ady is more measured. Probably for the best really ;).

Which leads us to where we currently are. We need: practical experience in what we think we want to do, the chance to learn from experts or people already doing it, the opportunity to see that lifestyle – warts and all and decide if it is really for us. To hone our rather general plan of a ‘bit of everything’ to something more concrete. We need to know all the potential pitfalls, what does and doesn’t work for us, what could go wrong, whether we really do want to be sitting up all night on a snowy March evening lambing, whether milking a cow chaps my hands and chips my nails and I can live with that or not and so on.

And there is an answer… and it’s called WWOOFing. It’s what Caz and Bid did, both in this country and internationally. They had a different agenda and motivation to us but I think it could well be our next logical step. Basically it’s an organisation that costs £30 for membership which gives us access to farms, smallholdings, businesses, self-sufficient and eco-living people who want help on their land in exchange for board and learning and benefitting from their experience. You make your own arrangements direct with the hosts for how long you want to stay, when and what you can offer.

Ady and I read the first ten results on the ‘teaser’ section on the website, using the filter ‘families’ so hosts who are happy to take people with children. I got 187 hits so certainly plenty to choose from and we were excited by all of them – home educating families, talk of eco-living, various lifestock, people wanting WWOOFers who could help look after chickens, help run Forest Schools, assist in the sorts of projects we are interested in learning more about. It was like reading a list of dream hosts really :).

This morning I shared the idea with Davies and Scarlett who are equally as excited by the prospect of what we’re proposing so we have them on board and enthused.

So the plan: We join WWOOF and draw up a list of places we want to visit. This will be both a geographical and what we want to learn type wishlist. We might as well see as much of the UK as possible, on as sensible a route as possible and cover as many of our learning wants as possible. The aim is a full year of doing it in order to see the best and worst of weather, a full cycle of all the seasons, sowing, growing and harvest of crops, breeding, birth, rearing and killing of animals. I want to milk a cow, assist in lambing, learn about shearing, see piglets born, reared and eat the bacon so timing and planning to achieve all that will be quite a job.

From talking to Caz and Bid we know that having a campervan to enable you to live with your own space whilst on someone’s land is a good idea. My Sharan would not be the car to go travelling all round the country so it makes perfect sense to trade it in for a campervan (and add some money to it obviously – if it’s going to be ‘our home’ for a year then we need to invest as much as we can in it). We will rent the house out, which will (fingers crossed) pay the mortgage, make the monthly repayments to CCCS and possibly even give us a small income which would help cover running costs for the vehicle. We’ve rented the house out before, albeit five years ago now and it rented easily, brought in £775 a month even back then and was very smooth and straightforward, particularly with Dad just a mile away as first port of call for any issues tennants may have.

I would investigate staying on the library staff relief register which I think means I’d need to do a shift every 12 weeks or something. If we factored in a visit back to Sussex every 12 weeks that would bring in some extra cash. Ady will speak to his company about the possibility of some freelance mystery shop reports from around the country which he could do in a couple of hours and email in. I would also look into potentially writing about our experiences for a magazine or other avenue that might bring in some money too. All of that could cover any unexpected expenses or pay for time off as we’d still attempt to have some time camping with friends over the year.

So worst case scenario? We walk away from jobs we are not happy in anyway, discover we hate the whole idea of farming and self sufficiency and come back a year later to settle back into our house, find jobs and go back to our ordinary lives. We’ll have scratched the itch, answered our questions, had an adventure and an amazing experience, learnt new skills and had a great year together as a family and met lots of new people.

Best case scenario? Sky’s the limit really. I’m guessing we’ll have learnt enough to be credible employees in that area, have worked out precisely what we want, maybe have more equity in the house ready to sell and invest in our dream, realised what we can live without and what is really important to us.

House is safe, mortgage and debts still get paid, likely we could pick up the same or similar jobs we walked away from, we learn stuff, have a great adventure, spend lots of time together, probably get fitter and healthier, kids have a ball in the environments they crave.

So, timings. Ideally we’d save a bit of cash first. My car plus our final months salaries plus anything we can save should get us a campervan and put it on the road with tax, insurance etc. We need to get the house ready to let with any tarting up it needs, get chickens and ducked rehomed or long loaned out, make decisions about what gets put into storage, what gets sold / freecycled, what comes with us etc in terms of possessions and stuff. We need to plan our route, set up hosts, get our year organised. We have time away booked in July, September and December. It doesn’t make sense to go away at the start of winter when everything will be at it’s bleakest so we’re thinking maybe March, which gives us several months to plan, save, prepare. Winter will be the best time to buy a campervan, spring will be the right time to start a journey like this I think being the start of the farming year.

That’s it, as always up for debate and discussion and amending but for now the four of us are very excited at what seems like a real proper plan :).

A nice slow start to today, much needed after waking with alarms for at least the last five mornings in a row. I have all but given up fretting about the kids getting enough sleep figuring if they still have energy left at the end of each day to spend a couple of hours in their rooms quietly playing, drawing, listening to audiobooks etc even on days when we have woken them and dragged them reluctantly out of bed then they just don’t need the sleep. They are certainly not lacking in exercise, fresh air, general stimulation or anything else I can think of and never really seem to complain of feeling tired, walk miles when required, run rather than walk everywhere are just never asleep much before about 11pm no matter what we do during the day. But it’s still nice to sleep in until about 9ish when we get the chance ;).

This morning we were expecting a visit from Helen, Alex and Abbie, our friends who live on a boat. We’ve visited them a couple of times but this was their first time here. We had a bit of a tidy up and then Davies and Scarlett went out to play outside while I caught up on some emails. Our guests arrived and while I gave Helen a tour of the house before settling down with cups of tea the children went out to play with the chickens and ducks. Two of the hens (the oldest, original two actually) both had nasty injuries, one of them worse than the other with blood, bruising and swelling around their eyes and mouths. I put it down to pecking from the other hens but further investigation from Ady later has us attributing it to the ducks – more on that later.

The kids had a great time playing in the garden the whole time, watching a fledgling blackbird learning to fly, rescuing woodlice (not entirely sure what they were rescuing them from), creating a snail hotel and playing with the chickens and ducks. Helen and I had an equally lovely time chatting 🙂 .

We had lunch, the kids went back outside and finally they left and we headed into Lancing for Chatterbooks. We had another really good session – Storytelling this time. We talked about telling stories, the ways in which we can tell them, I showed a quick comic strip sketch of Little Red Riding Hood and we passed it round the group with everyone telling one picture worth of the story. Then I read Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig and Three Little Pigs and the Gingerbread Man. We split into three groups – first telling story by illustration, then by plasticine models, then by narrator and mime. As we only have 10 children I took the final part as twist in the tale and had to finish the story where the mime team left it. Cara worked with the drawing team which included our challenging, learning difficulties child, Scarlett was in the plasticine team and Davies in the mime team. We mixed them up so no sibling pairs or couples of friends were in groups together and they all worked really well. We told the story once as a group and then as some parents had arrived for collecting children we told it again for an audience. It was a good session :).

We came home and I did Davies and Scarlett’s tea. Ady arrived home and we realised the injuries to the hens were most likely duck induced where they had grabbed food from the them. The ducks are far bigger than the chickens, have been upsetting the balance and pecking order, making the cockerels more noisy and now it would seem have hurt two of the hens too. As the ducks are pretty noisy themselves and far bigger than I had hoped we have all but decided they have to go. They plan (as was always the back up plan) is for them to go to Tom’s Dad’s where there is a lovely big lake complete with islands in the middle for them to sleep, nest etc safe from predators. We would then think about incubating again this time with runner ducks eggs which are the breed I think would suit us best. Scarlett is understandably upset and we have not finished talking it all through just yet but for now have put up a divide between the ducks and chickens to ensure no further upset or injuries happen. Already the chickens seem calmer. The two injured ones should recover fairly quickly aslong as the other chickens don’t peck at their injuries or pick on them for being hurt. We gave them some time round the front on the lawn and they are both very perky and otherwise fine so we’ll see how they do over the next couple of days and hope we don’t need to seperate them from the others.

I went up to the allotment to water and while I was gone Davies and Scarlett talked Ady into a sleepover, so another late night for them. We had dinner and exciting chats about things, which it has gotten too late to share tonight but I will hopefully blog about tomorrow.

After a slightld disappointing Ardingly South of England Show this year (too pricey to get in, too commercial once you were in) we decided to give the Sussex Game and Country Show a go this year. In previous years we have always either been busy this weekend or assumed it will be a poorer relation to the SoES. Being Fathers Day I’d invited my parents to join us so after some card and gift giving at home and some packing up a picnic we collected them on our way and arrived just after 10am.

The Scouts were doing parking marshall duty with rather hilarious effect, really making a meal of the hand gestures and we were quite tempted just to sit in the car and enjoy their theatre but did make our way in. We were greeted with steam engines on one side and gun dog competitions on the other. We enjoyed looking at an organ for a while (and had a quick peek in the back at the workings)

and the different engines and their different uses before turning our attention to the gun dog trials. They had six different pens or ‘scurries’ to test various skills in dogs and people had brought along their dogs to test them. Some were incredibly, impressively good, others were rather amusingly not so good 😆

We joined the main arena and spent some time looking at the falconry birds of prey in their static display. Ady managed to bag a table next to the arena so he sat there with Davies while the rest of us chatted to the woman on the birds stand and found out what all her birds were, how she comes by them (captive breeders) and how they are trained. We joined Ady and Davies on the bench, got some coffees in and installed ourselves there for the next couple of hours to watch the constant entertainment laid on.

First we watched a gathering and display of Sussex Spaniels, a fairly rare and obviously local heritage breed of dogs. None of us (with the exception of Tarly) being particularly dog-people we found the rather over enthusiastic commentary far more entertaining than the actual dogs. Next up was a very interesting demonstration about long nets for catching rabbits for pest control (and eating of course :)) which we really enjoyed. The guy doing it was very funny, full of stories to tell, wisdom to impart and knowledge to share.

Scarlett was getting restless by then so while the others protected the table Mum and I went for a wander with her. The stalls surrounding the arena went farther back than I’d realised so we returned to the others with the intention of exploring further later all together. We declared it lunch time and tucked into our picnic while watching dog training in the arena.

Next came my favourite show of the day, the falconry. They invited anyone wanting a closer look into the arena so Davies, Scarlett and I went in and were mesmerised by the amazing displays of the birds swooping right over our heads, hovering above us and flying way out at top speed. Again the couple doing the display were expert showmen and put on a really entertaining show with lots of facts thrown in so we felt educated as well as entertained :).

I declared it ice-cream o’clock and got a round of 99s in to watch a very impressive display of stallions next. Two incredibly talented horsewomen (sisters) and their beautiful horses doing all sorts of amazing stunts, all introduced by another sister while their 12 year old brother joined in on his motorbike. They had the horses galloping while they dangled off them, lying down to play dead and getting back up again, all with a rider on their back, rearing up, marching and dancing, crossing raised platforms while the rider stood up on the horses back and the brother went under the horse on his motorbike – all very gasp-worthy :).

We watched the last display before the programme repeated itself of a man and his five sheepdogs herding a flock of geese all around. Again they called for audience participation so Davies and Scarlett went into the arena along with lots of other children to create live corales for the geese to be herded into. I found that display probably the most impressive just for the amount of training that had gone into the dogs, the relationship between the dogs and the owner and his own great skill at commanding them all and getting them working together. He had trained all of them to respond to different words for ‘left’ and ‘right’ so he could talk to one dog at a time – they included ‘fish’ and ‘chips’, ‘king’ and ‘queen’, ‘powder’ and ‘rocket’ as well as the more traditional ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘come by’ so was calling all these various words which just one dog of the five responded to and coordinating them all to work together to herd these geese. Amazing stuff.

Next we went for a wander round the stalls which were a mix of stuff for sale, information, charities and organisations on recruitment drives and activities. We paused at the army surplus stuff, the guns for sale (Davies and I both interested in shooting, Ady can do it anyway and says he’ll speak to Tom about some coaching for Davies and I in air rifles and shotguns 🙂 ) and looked at some knives and other camping / survival stuff.

We paused for a while at the magician on stilts, spent ages talking to the staff manning the information about deer stand and looked at the various skins, skulls, antlers and feet they had on display. They were promoting slowing down when you see the caution deer triangle road signs and showing you the impact on deer, car and people when they collide 🙁 .

We looked at ducks, chickens, geese, rabbits, mice, gerbils and other furry animals for sale and on show and then stopped for the ferret racing. That was lots of fun, four ferrets wearing different coloured neck scarves racing down long tube against each other. Tickets for sale at 10p each to bet on a ferret for winnings of 20p each if your colour won. Davies and Scarlett both chose blue having looked at all four ferrets as they were brought round to the audience and after a tense race (blue was in the lead all the way and his nose was poking out of his tube long before any of the others but then he stopped while still in the tube to eat grass and the rule was the winner had to be all of the way out of the tube. With yellow coming up fast behind blue finally came out to cheers :). Davies and Scarlett’s first taste of gambling and they won! :). I fully expected them to want to place their 20p winnings on the next race but they heeded our advice to walk away winners and we moved on.

Ady paused to chat to someone in the food festival tent (lots of lovely smells and free samples) who knew an ex Portsmouth player (Ady was wearing a Pompey top, not sure why I say that as you all know he only ever wears Pompey tops ;)), then to someone he knew through work and then again to chat to a couple we bumped into we both knew. We then queued with the kids to go on the bungee trampolines which is something they’ve wanted to do every time we’ve seen them anywhere so agreed to them having a go on there. They both LOVED it 🙂

We watched the falconry display for a second time, which had slightly different things happening including an owl flying very low over audience members lying down and was very impressive. A quick walk round the last part of the grounds where a display of vintage caravans and other vehicles was laid on aswell as a rifle range with tuition, but the queues were too huge for that and we finished up with cups of tea and coffee and some cake to watch the sheepdogs display for a second time.

The sun had been in and out all day and I’d lost count of the times I’d taken my fleece on and off but suddenly the sun was really powerful and all of us ended up caught out by it and rather pink cheeked 😳 as we’d not thought about suncream. No lasting effects though, just a few extra freckles each this morning 🙂 .

We watched the last few fundog trials happening as we walked past on the way out and finally left at about 530pm just as things were winding up for the day. A really good day out, we’d definitely go again next year :).

We dropped my parents home, spent some time in the garden, Scarlett and I walked to the shops for some supplies for dinner while Davies and Ady did some X boxing and then Ady had a bath while the kids and I watched some River Cottage before they went to bed.

Ady and I had dinner, tried and failed to watch a film (The Good Night, don’t bother it was terrible, we turned it off!) and watched a River Cottage episode instead.

Ady and Davies went off to YACs this morning. Ady is now an almost official parent-helper I think and was the only adult permitted to stay today as they were doing a dig and they encourage adults to be hands-off otherwise they take over apparentely. I love that Ady is going, partially as he seems to enjoy as much, if not more than Davies, partially because they have so very little that is something they do just the two of them together and partially because it means Tarly and I get to have one to one time too. They’ll miss the next session because we’ll be away and I’ve a feeling they don’t meet in August anyway. I may well see if Dad can have Tarly for any future sessions that I happen to be working for (or even just bring Tarly to work with me actually) so that Ady can carry on attending.

The dig was good, Davies came home and told me about flint and chalk, how flint can be different colours, what he’d dug up (mostly pottery) and which dates it was from and was most enthusiastic. Ady even more so ;).

Scarlett and I had breakfast and watched a couple of episodes of Wildlife SOS which is one of her favourite shows (have just been looking at their website, might try and organise a group visit there). Then we tackled a task we’ve been meaning to do for ages and went through her wardrobe and drawers trying on every item of clothing in there. She’s ended up with loads of clothes that fit and she is happy to wear rather than rotating the same few garments. We also ended up with a HUGE pile of clothes she has outgrown or doesn’t like. I seperated them into age 3-5 years, age 5-7 years and age 7-9 years and bagged them up, stuck them on freecycle and they were collected within the hour :). She now does not possess a skirt or dress or anything other than nightwear which is pink. I kept a tiny pile of clothes I had loved her in including the silver outfit she wore for Kirsty and James’ wedding. She is such a funny mix of girlie and vehemently NOT girlie :).

Back to some more wildlife documentaries and some lunch and then Ady and Davies arrived home.

Scarlett and I went out for a couple of hours in the afternoon – a trip to the big charity shop to see if they had any demijohns for my homebrewing adventures (no 🙁 ) and then to Morrisons for beer and picnic supplies for tomorrow and then into town for Fathers Day cards for my Dad. We have long since stopped buying any cards for each other between the four of us as it seems crazy paying a fiver for a card to say things we are capable of saying to each other far more sincerely and a waste of paper too but my parents are quite big on ‘nice’ cards so I wanted to find sone for minimum price and maximum shallow impressing effect ;).

We had a quick look in a couple of shops and while I was looking at flipflops and Scarlett was looking at toys in one shop she picked up a couple of toy frogs that you could squish and their insides pop out as they are liquid inside. She brought it over to show me and say ‘Look, you can make it look like these two are mating’ as she popped out the relevant bits into cavities from one to the other. All very innocent and IMO exactly how a young child should view the mating process of animals. Except she had approached and shown the wrong grown up! 😆 😆 She’d wandered over in my general direction, misplaced where my voice had come from as I’d not looked up and assumed the woman standing where I had been was me so demonstrated the mating frogs to her 😆 The woman found this hysterical (thankfully) and once I’d gotten over my initial embarrassment so did I 😆

Back home again Ady cooked dinner for children, Scarlett played with the ducks and chickens, Davies and I watched Doctor Who and then the kids and I watched a really good programme about the Top Ten Natural Wonders of the World. They included giant redwood trees, the Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Mount Everest, a volcano, Victoria Falls and more. The number one was one of my personal Must See Before I Die sights of the Northern (or indeed Southern) Lights. We decided we’d all actually like to see all of them (although I can tick off Grand Canyon at least).

Ady and I had duck for dinner which was very lovely (and scared Scarlett when Ady asked me how long to cook it for and she assumed we meant Sploosh or Lucky :lol:) and watched an Aussie version of River Cottage where the guy was having to protect his veggies from possoms.

I was at work all day today and Ady took Davies and Scarlett off with him. He was doing a B&Q store visit in Watford and the kids stayed in the car while he popped in and out. They had DSs and the radio and each other and were quite content sitting there. They got McDonalds for lunch, were much praised for being such stars and then came home again.

I had a really good day at work. I’ve felt really exhausted from all the drama yesterday and have exchanged a few texts with Frazer who seems okay but I am planning on having a proper chat with in the next week or so to offer some practical help for him working towards moving out somehow. I have no idea what will happen but having realised just how rubbish his life is I am determined to help in any way I can to improve things for him.

First thing this morning was banking, the preparing for Baby Rhyme Time. That was fairly intimate with only four adults and six little ones coming along. Frankie later commented that it was like ‘The Nic Goddard show’ for half an hour as I was the only one singing for much of the time. Fortunately I am not remotely fazed by singing to an audience and shaking plastic maracas and I live in eternal hope of being talent spotted by Simon Cowell for a pilot episode of a new TV show called Library’s Got Talent.

we spent some time talking about Country Music and then someone returned 2 cds of compliation country music which I took as a sign and have borrowed to listen to in the car and learn all the words to. Expect plenty of blog posts entitled things like ‘never count your money when you’re sitting at the table’ and ‘please don’t take him just because you can’.

Back home I caught up with the others and then nipped out to Sainsburys for various bits. Back home again the others were watching the football and then D & S went off to bed. Ady made pizzas and we watched Michael McIntyre who I used to not like at all but have come to think is quite funny.

And now I really do need to go to bed.

It’s our 17th anniversary today. Not 17 years since we met, that was a few years earlier, not 17 years since we married, that was a few years later but 17 years since we became a couple. The actual reason we celebrate on June 17th has become slightly blurred over the years as we were crossing the line from friends to an official couple for quite some time and I think the date corresponds to us becomming lovers (I could check back in diaries from that period) but I know that we moved in together on JUly 1st so we’re mere weeks away from 17 years of living together, we’d bought our house by Febrary 1st, so mere months from a joint mortgage and this was the relationship everyone who knew us predicted would never last.

In fairness the 19 year old Nic and the 29 year old Ady are indeed long since lost in the mists of time – I bear very little resemblance to the skinny stroppy teenager who was going to drive a BMW by the time she was 30, never have children and take on the whole fucking world. I suspect Ady has changed rather less ;). He assures me he still has the woman he signed up for and that I am still fiesty, stroppy and world-changing, just in different ways.

Two different individuals we may be but I guess we are still the same couple. All those potential triggers for pissing each other off are still there but still being overlooked in favour of the many things about each other that are worthy of celebration and make each others tummies tingle. We still talk several times on the phone each day, it is into Ady’s arms I want to run when things are not going well, to Ady’s ear I want to whisper my hopes and dreams, to Ady’s eyes I want to look to see myself reflected at my most beautiful, Ady’s hand I want to slip into mine in rare moments when both hands are not clasping a childs’ and Ady who gives me courage that relationships are indeed worth existing in when I have a day like today.

I left Davies and Scarlett breakfasting and getting dressed while I nipped to the supermarket for picnic supplies, back home to pack said picnic and then we all left to collect Tasha, Toby and Vinnie to head to the beach for a Home Ed meet up. Debs was organising and had already put up a gazebo and laid out loads of circus stuff for playing with including diablo, poi, hula hoops, bubble mix and giant wands, unicycle, plates and sticks for spinning and loads more. Debs’ son Alex was there, as were Archie and Eliot and another family. The spot we were on is a large grass area leading onto the beach with a large wooded area so the kids spent the whole day either in the sea or in the woods, all playing some big, convuted Harry Potter game. A further 6 or 7 families arrived during the day so we were quite a clan with about 20 children at the height. Adults moved between the gazebo on the green and the beach and we all paid at least one visit each to the ice cream van parked nearby (most of us two). Debs did some Tai Chi and most of us had a go at various circus things (loved although was crap at poi). Davies and Scarlett had Archie, Eliot, Toby, Alex, Poppy and George on hand who are some of their most favourite people in the world so they just had a whale of a time. It was one of those perfect home ed days where adults sit around putting the world to rights and celebrating our right to sit at the beach chatting on a Thursday term-time afternoon and the kids just mill about in a pack loving their freedom and popping up every so often for food / money for ice cream / a cuddle :).

I spent lots of time chatting to Caz who I’ve not caught up with for ages and was rather shell-shocked to learn that at the moment she and Bid are living apart. It is all positive and amicable and hopefully not at all permanent but rather world rocking just the same. I love them both and hope the find the right resolution for all of them in as pain free manner as possible.

We finally drifted away from the beach at about 530pm, we dropped Tasha and co home and nipped in very quickly to coo over the five kittens they have. Scarlett was enthralled telling me later ‘I didn’t know kittens could be sooo small’ 🙂

We arrived home to find Ady already here so I left him in charge of feeding and bathing children and nipped up to water the allotment and get a few bits for dinner. While up there I called my parents to arrange to see them on Sunday.

Arrived home again and was chatting to Ady who had got the dinner going and about to open the bottle of fizz when my phone rang and it was my brother to say my parents were in the middle of a huge row, he was scared about them hurting each other and didn’t know what to do. I offered to go over and he declined and then hung up on me quickly saying he’d call me back. I got straight in the car and drove over with Frazer ringing me again on the way to say okay, come then. He met me outside the house looking terrified and we went back in together. The kitchen was a mess where a full pan of food had been thrown across the room, splattering every surface, cupboard door and floor with food and landing in the sink where it had shattered all the mugs and glasses there. I went straight upstairs where there was screaming and shouting and swearing. I shielded my Mum from my Dad and told her to get downstairs and out of the house and then faced off against my Dad who was furious, shouting and swearing me to get out and stay out of it and that they didn’t need me interfering and getting involved.

We all moved downstairs where Mum was cuddling Frazer and continuing to yell at my Dad. I told her to get out of the house and into my car and then Frazer and I sorted the kitchen out with Dad ranting at us. He very quickly calmed down – I have always been able to diffuse my Dad’s anger where Mum and Frazer can’t and got him to agree that no-one was being rational or productive and that if I’d arrived over there recounting a situation like I’d walked into there between Ady and I he would not be letting me go home again (violence from both sides, very ugly scenes 🙁 ).

Once we’d cleared up and he’d calmed down I said I was going to fetch Mum as actually I didn’t particularly want to bring the whole circus into my own home. She was in my car, sobbing, covered in the sauce and not wanting to go back in the house but I insisted and they began talking and then rowing again. I stayed for a while and started to get dragged back into the role I played for all those years of mediator before deciding this was not where I wanted to be any more and leaving them to it to go and see my brother who was holed up in his bedroom with the music turned up really loud. He said he was so sorry for dragging me into it but he was just so scared, had talked to them twice to try and calm it down but been told to go away and not get involved and was just so upset at listening to them saying such horrible things to each other and was really worried someone was going to resort to violence and didn’t know what to do so had rung me :(. I reassured him it was fine and I was always there for him and we had a big hug and clung to each other as years melted away and we were two scared little kids trying to drown out the sounds of our parents shrieking at each other.

I went back to them and got dragged further into all sorts of details about their relationship I neither want to know nor care about. I said to Ady later that I had assumed they had calmed down in the 17 years since I lived there and possibly forgotten quite what a warzone it is. I listened in horror for a while until Frazer arrived, about to go out and asked me for a lift which extricated me too. I hugged them both, told them I loved them and would never take sides but always be there for them equally, that they both deserve to be happy and need to take personal responsibility for their own happiness and that walking away from each other is probably the best possible action they could take towards that and Frazer and I left.

Frazer spent the 10 minute car journey shaking, blaming himself and wringing his hands like a small boy caught in the middle of his parents shitty marriage and I realised for the first time that that is just what he still is even though he is 34 years old. I had no idea just how messed up he is by living with them and dealing with this all the time. He said he feels he can’t leave as he is one of the chief factors keeping them together – I said all the more reason to leave. I offered for him to come and live with us to get him out and told him that he shouldn’t be there and this should not be his problem. He has just started seeing a new girlfriend but I can’t help feeling any relationship he has is so doomed from the shitty model he has lived with his whole life :(. We had another clinging to each other hug and said goodbye and then I cried all the way home 🙁

I’m not sure why I’ve blogged this really, my life being influenced by them and the state of their relationship has long since ended and I don’t dwell on it, know other people had far shittier childhoods with far worse things going on and I am living proof – 17 years today – that you can come away from that and still find a healthy, healing, loving relationship but I had no idea just how damaged my poor baby brother was and I am feeling dreadful for having skipped off aged 19 and leaving him there to deal with it alone. I’m so very sad for two lives way over half way through that have such destructive and damaging and hurting each other things happening in them and just exhausted at having had so many traumatic memories of my own childhood raked up that I had fixed with almost as many years worth of good, healthy, loving relationship of my own. I heard things tonight that have really shaken me about them both and having turned my back on such complicated things I am really struggling to make any sense of them at all.

Back home Ady had got the kids ready for bed and was watching a film with them. I put them both to bed and drank in their sweet innocence and uncomplicateness, cracked upon the fizz and toasted Ady and I, eat a lovely curry and then sat with Scarlett who had obviously picked up on my mood, mulled over all those kittens she’d seen today and was sobbing about missing Candle and then wanted to know just what the meaning of life is? I fielded that (as best I could given the bottle of fizz and day I’d had) and sat with her til she fell asleep.

So, lovely day, lovely beach, lovely friends, lovely Ady. All of the rest probably something I’ll never blog about again but there is laid bare for tonight. Maybe the reason above all others that I am so proud and happy to be celebrating 17 years with not even one fleeting second of the sort of relationship I was dragged into this evening.

Early start all round here which never feels right. Bleary eyed and staggering I wrapped Lorna’s (very) late birthday present, the children got dressed and they all left the house so Ady could drop Davies and Scarlett at Julie’s for the morning. I enjoyed the half an hour or so of the house all to myself and then headed off to work too.

Work was fine, I had quite a bit to do having been off for two full days with my allergic reaction and then working at another library last week. I checked stocks of several suggested reads from book club last night and have ordered books for the next three meetings, finished editing and printed off a letter inviting all the various book clubs that get their books from us to a coffee morning event I’m organising for next month and dealt with numerous enquiries about how to operate the photocopier and several demanding customers wanting help on silly things that seemed to take far longer than they should. I also listened to two colleagues bitching about each other – the atmosphere at work is rather tense just at the moment. But I had a productive and mostly enjoyable morning anyway.

Over to Chris & Julie’s and as I pulled into the road I saw Jack and Davies walking towards me from the nurseries at the end of their road. Gerda (Julie’s mum) and Lorna were at the house and looked mightily relieved to see them as it turned out they had been walking a different path to the others and Julie was getting very worried about just where they were. Julie, Maisie and Scarlett then appeared all looking quite harrassed and equally relieved to see the boys. Sort of glad I missed that drama really although the boys seemed totally oblivious to any fuss they may have caused :rolls:.

Julie was clearly having one of ‘those’ mornings as she then had to deal with Jack getting stung by a bee, Maisie having a strop about something to do with cereal and Lorna whacking Jack with a bag of tomatoes. And a phonecall from someone who wanted to chat. I made tea and waited. We did manage quite a good chat in the end and then she asked if I could help her catch a chicken. They have three hens which are not really handled at all and are pretty terrified of people but have scaly leg which needs treating. Scarlett had helped her catch one of them this morning and held it while Julie rubbed vaseline in to it’s legs so I helped her catch a second and held it. She decided that was enough trauma for one day and we’d do the third one some other time. I was going to hang around and mind all the kids while Julie nipped out to go and collect her car but Chris arrived home so we left when Julie did and followed her most of the way home as the garage was on our way. Very busy diaries mean it’s another two weeks before we managed to arrange a date to meet up again – I miss Julie and wish we managed to see more of them 🙁

Back home it was 3pm and we were all hungry (the kids had had sandwiches but eaten them mid morning and I’d not eaten at all) so I made a pile of pancakes as a tiding us over snack. The winemaking kit I’d picked up yesterday had been minus instructions so we left for Badgers slightly early to swap it for a complete kit.

Badgers was really good tonight which was typical as Davies, Scarlett and I had been chatting about all the reasons why despite thinking Badgers is great for them it is not really that much fun for me. We’d been agreeing that Ady would be far better suited to being a Badger leader than me and trying to decide where my strengths lie instead. Tonight was a much smaller than usual group – just 9 of them and we were doing map making. For once Julie was keen to let the children lead it and her plan was for them to work together or alone and come up with a map of an imaginary place and do some symbols to create a key for it. She tried to demonstrate some symbols and is very crap at drawing so I took the pen from her and did a quick example, which turned into a rather lengthier one as the children started calling out loads of things for me to draw – all felt a bit Rolf Harris for a while 😆

Once armed with pens and paper we left them all to it for a while and then wandered over to see how they were doing. Some were great at it, really creative and imaginative whilst others struggled. I helped those having difficulty by asking lots of questions designed to get them thinking and creating and then did a quick map of my own to show symbols, keys and scale and talked to them about all of those. I quite like tasks like that when you are encouraging children to be creative, come up with ideas and unleash their imagination :).

We finished up with 10 minutes playing games outside and I rather embarrassingly fell down the concrete steps. I did it quite slowly and almost gracefully but will still have new bruised on both knees tomorrow to replace the all-but healed ones from falling over in the campsite toilets the other weekend :rolls:

Home time and Ady had beaten us home. Davies came and did his own dinner under supervision – he’s really taken on board the whole doing more for himself thing :). I stuck on the first six bottles worth of home brew wine which in theory is ready in a week (although it does say it will improve if kept over the next 3 months). I’m going to have a go at a kit chardonnay first to see how it all works and follow close instructions but after that the aim is to use as few chemicals as possible and maybe experiment with flavours and ideas – hey parsnips wine counts as one of the five a day right? 😉

Instead of stories we watched Springwatch and then Davies and Scarlett went to bed, Ady and I had baths and a Nic o’clock dinner at 1030. We’re so rubbish!

A local friend who runs a Circus skills group with her husband and another woman had facebook messaged me last week to say this week they had a gymnast coming in to teach the children some tumbling skills. The Circus group runs on a Tuesday afternoon and clashes with swimming lessons. I have previously tried to swap swimming to a different day so we can do circus but had no luck. Much though I think Davies and Scarlett would enjoy circus, and quite a few of their local Home Ed friends go along I’m not prepared to drop swimming altogether. But I’d talked to Debs before about tumbling and acrobatics when D&S were wanting to learn back flips as I thought it was more of a circus skill than the sort of gymnastics they were doing at the local gymnastics class when they tried that for a term. So we decided to miss swimming today and go along to see what Circus skills was all about and be there for the tumbling too.

We had talked about going swimming in the morning today instead as Davies missed swimming last week, they both missed it the week before and I’ve missed it for ages and ages for one reason or another. But our local pool literally just had the big pool open this morning and the two nearest other pools are really expensive, have pay and display parking and are quite a drive away, plus their timetables on line looked like they were doing Adult Swimming so I suspected we’d get frowned at.

After some moaning from me Ady had spent some time tidying up the playroom yesterday so D&S took full advantage of the accessibilty of the toy animals and the lego and were playing with those. Davies then got out the animationstation and was making some films with lego. I decided to nip to The Range as I’d heard they had home brew stuff and I want to have a go at winemaking so Scarlett and I nipped out leaving Davies to his animation. When we came back half an hour or so later (empty handed, we could find no home brew stuff at all) he had made lunch for himself and Scarlett and tidied up :).

I processed some laundry and spent some time online while the kids watched some How’s It Works and ate lunch. After eating they both clearly had far too much energy so I sent them outside to play in the garden for an hour or so.

Then it was circus skills time (with a quick skip into town on the way for a home brew wine kit). We knew several of the children there although we were expecting to see Archie & Eliot and Toby and none of them were there. I really liked the sessions, thought it was a good mix of structure and guided learning with lots of scope for doing your own thing. They spent time with the gymnast doing various bits and also used hula hoops, diablos, staff, poi, juggling balls and spinning plates. There were 5 adults to help and everyone got plenty of one to one time on whatever they wanted to learn more about. The session started with some circle time, a couple of fun warm up games and ended with 15 minutes up on the stage showing off what they had learnt today.

Davies and Scarlett enjoyed it and we’ll have another look in September to see if there is scope to move swimming so they can go to Circus each week.

Back home Ady had arrived so I just dropped the kids off with him and headed straight to the library. It was reading group and I was running it as Brenda is on holiday. I laid out chairs, got drinks ready and printed some stuff off about the book we’d been reading – Carry Me Down by Maria Hyland. There were 15 of us including me and we had a good discussion about the book, spent some time tossing about ideas for future reads and generally chatting. It was good :).

Everyone left, I put stuff away and closed down computers, turned off lights, set alarms and locked up. Home for dinner and chats about all sorts of things with Ady and now I’m falling asleep over my laptop so I’ll boing off in a Zebedee type manner.

Today was Pulborough Brooks day but taking inspiration from Jan who was not going to be standing around in the rain today I’d looked at the weather forecast and didn’t plan to be walking around in rain today. As it turned out the weather forecast was wrong and we’ve had another day of glorious sunshine here but having got everyone breakfasted and dressed there was actually very little enthusiasm for PB today and when we checked facebook to see noone but us had confirmed as attending it seemed not really worth the drive over on the offchance.

I wanted to go into town to look at winemaking supplies and having had several goes, including one rather brutal attempt by Scarlett to force an earring through an old pierced hole on one my ears and failed as it has closed up I’ve been hankering after getting it re-pierced. I can’t really explain why, it is shallow and vain and I’m far too old to be up to such tricks but I wanted to do it anyway. And Davies and Scarlett knowing the history of all my ear piercings (and indeed being responsible for one each) were quite curious about the whole process so I claim Education as a motivating factor ;). We also needed to get a birthday present for Lorna and Davies who appears to have finally grown, or indeed been in his trousers so long they have shrunk in the wash before he has grown out of them needed some bottom half clothes.

Before we left I made some phonecalls and online purchases meaning we were far too quickly over £300 worse off – I taxed my car online and bought the tickets for FOH then made a phonecall to book some October half term workshops for Davies and Scarlett at Making Space. I am being very proactive for Davies just now as a result of chats we have had about things he wants to do. I suspect he will turn 10 in September and either flourish with loads of new ideas and things he wants to do and learn about or slump so I’m keen to pre-empt that with lots lined up following his passions and interests which primarily are bushcraft and animation. So he has one full-on, outside, professional input on both experience lined up for the autumn which will hopefully help deal with that birthday phenomena where they all do this big changing leap thing as soon as they go up a year (or is that just my two?).

Then into town. We parked for two hours and spent it very productively looking at winemaking stuff and pricing it up but sensibly (for me) not buying anything and coming away to do more research first. We perused charity shops and I was the one who did best really coming away with four new tops, we got Davies 2 pairs of trousers and a pair of shorts, chose a book and hand puppet for Lorna and found only Claire’s Accessories to be offering ear piercing at the astonishing price of £21.95 so my ears remained with the same number of holes in as before. We nipped to the theatre to get tickets for a Shrek gala event like the Alice one we went to which means we need to think about fancy dress (for all four of us apparentely, D&S are insisting we participate – your favourite fairy tale or Shrek character, all suggestions welcome).

We dashed back to the car as we were out of time on the parking and came home via Sainsburys for various food supplies. We had lunch and then back into Lancing to the library. First though we nipped to the little local hairdresser who do ear piercing for the price of the studs and happily made a new hole in my ear and supplied me with a pair of 9ct gold earrings for well under a tenner and explained the whole piercing gun procedure to the children too :). See, educational ;).

Chatterbooks went well. We missed two children from last week but gained one (friend who’d been invited for tea of one of the attendees forgetting they were at Chatterbooks) so had 10. We did Poetry and started off chatting about what we’re reading at the moment before moving on to talk about stories in rhyme. I read Wild About Books and some Edward Lear Nonsense and then we tried to write a poem about the group. We got some good rhymes for the children’s names, ages, gender, location and interests but some were still struggling so I read On Beyond Zebra about made up letters and meanings and I said it was fine to make up a word too aslong as you made up a meaning for it. This worked rather better and I got all the children to made up a word rhyming with their name and a meaning for it. I kicked off with a Glick – a beautiful flower that smelt horrid. We had all sorts of things then – a Zeve (rhymes with Eve) which is a giant rat as big as the Eiffel tower, bright green and smelling of cheese. A Grethan (rhymes with Ethan) which is a green banana that sometimes tastes of apple pie and sometimes pizza, A Marlett (rhymes with Scarlett) that looks like a chicken, makes the sound of a horse and eats sharks, a Borren (rhymes with Lauren) which is a hut where there is peace and quiet, a Dyan (rhymes with Rhyan) which is a dinosaur as big as the universe that has big claws and could pick up everything in it’s hand but is friendly as long as you feed it chips. This exercise worked really well and we had loads of imaginative ideas and creative thought with plenty of enthusisasm when directed the right way with the right suggestions. We had ten minutes left so I handed out paper and pens and read them out what they’d described and got them all to draw their creations.

One of the children has ADHD and last week was no trouble at all but this week was quite a challenge. Russell spent lots of time with him and had a brief chat to his mum at the end. I suspect he does get lots from the sessions but it is not really fair for her to go off and leave him unsupported as it takes the whole attention of one of us away from the rest of the group. Next week is storytelling which should be fine but he might struggle in the final week of book and film reviews so I need to factor in him and his needs in planning the session.

We collected the many, many books we had waiting for us (we’re back to about 80 items on loan between us again :rolls:) and nipped home to collect various plants before going to the allotment. Having done loads of growing from seed this year we had a few gaps on the plot so Ady begged some plugs plants from work and we had some sweetcorn, peas, beans, strawberries and cabbage ready to put in. Davies and Scarlett did some wildlife spotting and pond exploration while I did some weeding and planting. The kids were delighted to see the first crops of peas and set about eating them all :). Ady arrived and he came in while the kids went out for an hours ‘adventuring’ in the woods. Ady was in work clothes and shoes so not keen to get muddy he watered the plot while I finished putting plants in. There is more weeding and cutting back to do and we have about 1/5 of the plot empty but we plotted and planned and will hopefully have that in use soon.

We rang the kids to come back and headed for home. I made the kids tea, sorted out washing and then read several more chapters of Alone on a wide wide sea. Ady watered the crops in the garden and tidied up the playroom. I cooked dinner and we watched some Hugh and chatted about smallholdings.

Today was our fourth Open Farm Sunday attending event. The first year we went to Lancing College farm which is just up the road from us and more of an educational resource than a working farm with a handful of all animals but no real crops. Years two and three we went to an organic lamb farm which was highly educational as they are very passionate about what they do, education for all and sharing their views on organic farming, homeopathic treatments for their animals and restoring old farming methods and have a mix of arable crops to feed their lambs and a very labour intensive method of farming. We’ve combined that with a visit to a more commercial visitors farm down the road. This year we decided to head in the other direction and found a different sort of farm to visit – a large farm which grows lettuce and celery for supermarkets and local grocers. After some email contact with the owner booking places on tractor rides etc she emailed me to say she had arranged a limited number of canal boat rides to and from the farm on the Chichester canal and would we like to book that too?

So 1130am saw us dashing to the canal basin (traffic had been bad) and being last on the canal boat. We joined three other families aboard and had a lovely 30 minutes or so along the canal having wildlife (loads of ducks, coots, moorhens, a heron, terns) pointed out and spotted and the history of the canals talked about, while the kids mostly hung out on the top and all had a go at steering the boat, we arrived at the road. A tractor and trailer was waiting for us and took us along the road (very exciting riding in a trailer along a road) to the farm.

We had some tea and coffee and a look round the stalls – we particularly liked the wildlife stall where a very knowledgable woman was showing some stuffed mammals and animal skins. I then queued for ages and ages (about 40 minutes) for hog roast for Ady and I while Ady and the kids sat and ate the small amount of food we’d brought with us. The hog roast was delicious and worth the wait but frustrating because it was one of those situations where there was no real reason for such a delay.

Scarlett spotted a dead shrew on the floor and insisted on taking it to the wildlife woman to show her. They truly bonded over animals and a man from the next stall which was about owls joined in the love-in with his tupperware box of owl pellets. The three of them spent about 15 minutes rummaging through the fur and feathers and bones pulling out small mammal skulls and exclaiming at each other about them – I think Scarlett had found her spiritual parents 😆 She donated the dead shrew to the woman, Sarah, who promised to use the shrew to learn more about animals.

We then jumped on another tractor trailer for a tour round the farm. Huge fields filled with four different varities of lettuce and celery. They supply Asda, Sainsburys, Co Op and local greengrocers. The farmer commentating told us about sowing, harvesting, delivery to cold stores ready for collection, irrigation, pest control and how supermarkets dictate colour, size and weight. They have 2 llamas who they shear annually and sell the fleece and 3 pigs who eat all the reject lettuces but no other animals. They have 23 tractors and farm machines of all different types, some of which were out for children to clamber over.

We had time for an ice cream (made on a farm down the road, truly delicious) before needing to catch the next tractor to return us to the canal for our return boat trip. This time all the children spent the whole duration of the ride on the top deck while all the adults stayed below decks chatting to the member of staff. The farm visit was really good and the canal trip made it ever better – and all free :).

There was a family fun day at Shoreham airport today as part of the Adur Festival so we came home via a quick visit there to see if anything was happening but they seemed to be wrapping things up there so we came home. Ady and the kids did garden based things while I got a roast dinner on. We sat down to eat and watch Countryfile.

The kids and I read a few chapters of Alone on a wide, wide sea and they had yet another late night.

Thursday I was at work all day. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t feel like I have much to blog about on my all day at work days. Today was no exception really. I had an okay day, some banter with colleagues, spent some time writing up an account of the Chatterbooks session on Monday and preparing for next Monday’s session. I talked to Cara, the childrens librarian who came and ran it with me and we agreed it had been a good first session. Another colleague has just handed her notice in to leave and there is rather a feeling of rats desserting a sinking ship at the moment with even senior members of staff pretty disillusioned and insecure in their jobs. It’s far from a great working environment at the moment but that all makes for easier decisions elsewhere I suppose.

Davies and Scarlett had been out with Ady for the morning, back here for lunch and to meet my Dad and then home here for the afternoon with him while Ady went back out to work. I’m not sure what they’d been up to but they’d not seen Dad for a while and had enjoyed spending the afternoon with him :).

As I left the library K, from Reading Group called me over as she had just pulled into the car park. She is a nice woman who is very difficult to make conversation with so we had a strange ten minutes or so struggling to think of things to say before I finally said I needed to be getting off and left. Back at home the kids were starving so I made them a quick dinner and caught up with their day. We’d half been planning to go to the allotment but it was cold and grey and looking like it might rain so we decided not to. Ady was late home having delayed his days work in the morning.

The kids and I started reading Alone on a wide, wide sea which we have had home from the library several times but just not started before. Having finished The Scarecrow and his servant I was looking for another good chapter book to get stuck in to and this, as Morpurgo always seems to, filled the gap nicely :).

I cooked dinner, we watched the final of Junior Apprentice and although we all had the best of intentions of getting to sleep early I don’t think any of us actually managed it.

Friday The South of England Show. The kids and I have been for the last five years or so, sometimes with all the family, sometimes with my Mum, sometimes with Ady and once just the three of us. This year Ady had booked the day off work and when I mentioned it to my parents a couple of weeks ago they said they’d come too. They are having one of their fairly regular periods of not talking to each other and there is lots of friction between them but they did come along today albeit ignoring each other.

The weather had been dreadful all night with very heavy rain and it was still grey and drizzly on the drive over there but when we arrived it stopped and although it remained overcast all day it was dry and warm and actually perfect for walking round outdoors all day.

The price was a bit of a shock – £35 for a family ticket which has gone up loads since last year 😯 – Dad very kindly said he’d pay anyway though :). We started with looking at the hounds, Scarlett’s favourite and watched some of the judging of them for a while. We looked at the Countryside Alliance stand where Tarly impressed one of the staff by naming all the stuffed birds – she came over to tell Scarlett the names of the actual ducks aswell when she couldn’t name the Teal and the Shoveller Ducks (she did jay, magpie, pheasant, partridge, crow and so on).

Ady and I used the saved admittance money to get a waxed jacket (me) and pair of waterproof boots (Ady) :). We looked round all the usual stalls and did the same activities we’ve done before – this time I got to be the Beekeeper which was ace :). Suited up I had to go in to the demo area, help smoke out the bees and take the hive apart, bringing over the supers to show the audience. The overwhelming things were the noise – 20,000 bees make one huge buzz, you actually have to raise your voice to be heard over them and just the amazing industry and focus that bees have. I am in awe :). I wasn’t at all scared, even when I suddenly realised I was covered in them with several hundred all over me. I chatted to the beeman for a while about how to get started. We have definitely pushed livestock keeping to the utter perimeter here at Osborne Drive but bees are high on my list for the next venue – Chris (Goddard) would be my resident expert though as he already has two hives. I bought some honey and beeswax based creams (lavender lip balm and some barrier cream and pollen cream) from the woman I’d bought stuff from last year who said she remembered me :).

We spent time at the stands for Plumpton and Brinsbury colleges which are argricultural, farming, animal and equestrian courses and I chatted to some of the students about their courses, what they were learning and where they wanted to go with their qualifications. We picked up information about Young Farmers Club, Small Farm Training Club and several other interesting looking places to join or get more information.

We looked at the livestock – lots of ducks, chickens etc. and we bought a dozen hatching quails eggs which will go in the incubator tomorrow. Tom wants quails so had asked us to hatch some for him but depending on the success of the hatch we might keep a couple. We were surprised anew at the prices of chickens and bantams and ducks and may have to think about hatching to sell again – it looks rather like we’re turning down easy money by not doing so. Scarlett should be breeding them rather than us looking at other small animals I reckon.

There were the usual cows, pigs, sheep to look at too, ferrets, tortoises and other more ‘exotic’ animals such as cockroaches and snakes. We spent some time sitting next to the horses jumping and being paraded round the rings resulting in the hilarious (and loud) comment from Tarly that ‘I didn’t know horses had such big willies – that’s HUGE! It’s like it’s got five legs or something!’ to the amusement of everyone nearby and the further embarrassment of the poor woman leading the horse round the ring 😆

We had a very full day there and did the various tents for food, drink, crafts, flowers and the always impressive WI tent with various crafts. This year the theme there was ‘fun and frolicks’ and there was a fab display of bras, quilts, cupcakes, limericks, papier mache models and more. We finally left just after 6pm as things were winding up for the day.

We had a really good day there but the entry price of £35 was very high, I felt there was less there than usual in the way of information and activities and far more stands of people trying to take yet more money off us by selling things, very few of which had any real relevance to the agricultural roots of the event. It was a good day out but in direct contrast to River Cottage last weekend at considerably less cost with far more of interest and none of the commercialism I guess we were slightly disappointed this year. Ady and I both said we probably wouldn’t bother going next year.

Back home Dad stayed long enough for a sandwich before heading off as he was going out with a friend for the evening. The kids had some time in the garden with the ducklings before coming in for dinner, bath and a begged for sleepover which had them still awake past midnight. Mum stayed for dinner and some full on moaning about my Dad. I gave some advice and maintained my position of not getting involved or dragged in but saying I would support and love her no matter what she does and always be there for her regardless of what happens in my parents marriage. It did rather like the sort of pep talk a mother should give to a daugher than the other way round but I guess that has always been the case with us….

Mum finally left about 1am which is why this blogpost is brought to you on Saturday (maybe, I’m cutting it fine for that deadline too :)).

Saturday I was up for work. I’d been asked to go to Burgess Hill library for the morning as they were short staffed. When Brenda had rung me to ask she’d checked if I’d be okay to be on the Enquiry Desk and I’d been slightly surprised at the question. I found the library okay and was given a quick tour round before being left to my own devices really. I covered the desk for the whole 3 hours while the other staff looked at me in awe. One of them asked me if I was a manager and when I said ‘no, I’m just a library assistant like you are’ they were shocked as apparently the library assistants there don’t go on the desk. I actually really enjoyed my morning, it was busy enough to stop me from getting bored and the enquiries were nice and varied. I spoke to someone on the phone who wanted details of Playaways (inbuilt mp3 players with batteries and headphones and just one audiobook on them) for children, I found details on the library intranet about them being introduced, found out how to get a list and then emailed it to her, took some childrens books off the ticket of a woman in her 70s who said she’d not taken children’s books on her ticket for about 30 years and helped a guy who wanted to tax his car online.

Back at home Ady, Davies and Scarlett had walked into Lancing and been at the library here for a storytelling session this morning as part of Adur Festival. David Arthur was the storyteller and they had had a great morning with him at the library. I arrived home with just enough time for lunch before we were off again to the local Children’s Centre for a second storytelling session. I caught up with the library staff running the sessions and had a long chat with David himself who had been impressed with Davies and Scarlett and found out we were HEing and wanted to chat about that. The second storytelling session was equally as good – David chatted to Ady in the refreshment break and also spent some time talking to Davies about learning and education. He did make me laugh by saying he felt HE was great but worried about getting qualifications to ‘make it in the real world’ to which I replied that as he makes his living travelling round telling stories perhaps we don’t all need to go out to work in an office wearing a suit – he had to agree 😆

We had a quick look in a charity shop on the way back to the car which was being staffed by one of the regular old men who use the library. They had a box of marbles for sale on the counter and he chatted to the kids about marbles and stuffed loads of free ones in the bags they bought for 50p each.

Davies had found a wallet on the path outside our house this morning and it had a nhs card with an address in it along with various other stuff so we dropped that round to the owner, bought a portable tv / video combi from someone else local out of the local free paper for a fiver so Davies now has a tv in his room for watching videos and playing x box on when friends are over.

Back home again the kids played in the garden with the ducks and chickens who had their first day integrated into the same pen today and seem to be getting on just fine aside from the chickens eating all the ducks food. Ady and I watched a couple of episodes of The Good Life and then I made the kids some dinner and Ady nipped out for some food shopping and the kids and I watched Doctor Who.

Davies made a heroic effort to care about / be interested in the football and watched it with Ady. He got to half time which I thought was quite commendable ;). I offered Scarlett the choice of doing whatever she wanted and she chose a bath with me so we had a long bubble bath with face packs, hair treatments and foot and back rubs for each other :). Her hair now looks fabulously shiny and gorgeous although she says she has full intentions of getting it matted, tangled and full of moss and mud again by this time tomorrow 😆

Everyone went to bed far later than they should have done but although tomorrow is another full day it does at least have a slightly later start time. I didn’t get anywhere close to posting this while it was still Saturday thanks to an 1130pm dinnertime. I never have quite worked out where all the hours in the day run away to…

First of all a bit of a disclaimer. At this stage we are very much at the sharing hopes and dreams, putting it all ‘out there’ and not letting cold hard reality prevent us from talking about our vision. The next stage will be the rather tougher information gathering reality check level. We’ve sort of been here before with a previous exploration of small-holdings as a possibility and various reasons stopped us from going further. This time we are dreaming bigger and further and as yet I’m not at all sure whether that makes it a more or less possible dream.

Ultimate Goal – to live a more sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. To have all four of us working together towards providing for ourselves whilst having as many elements of our shared, and indivdual ambitions met. To be living our passions full time rather than indulging them in small ways around the rest of life. To be doing things for ourselves wherever possible and putting our own food on the table (bloody tables!) rather than going out to work to earn money to pay for food (or tables). To have our life be our work, our work be our life and everything rolled in together in providing for ourselves, realising our dreams and spending our days in tasks taking us towards where we want to be. No pointlessness.

So where does all that point us at then? A couple of years ago we were looking at small holdings and self sufficiency. We realised we couldn’t afford to buy outright which would mean we had a mortgage, which meant we would either have to be self-sufficient AND productive enough to sell stuff to pay the bills, or be self sufficient AND go out and earn money some other way aswell to pay the bills. It suggested all of the worst aspects of what we already have with work, plenty of slog, being tied to where we were with no freedom to head off camping / visiting friends and on a bit of a whim given we’d not done anything like it before so could just end up hating it. We decided to create as close to our yearned for lifestyle here at home and focus on the things we love about our life already. I was enjoying my library job so was happy to keep that up and try and grow the role, we took on the allotment, got serious about breeding bantams, have grown fruit and veg here at home. I went on the lookerers course and have done some volunteer shepherding for a taste of that, completed the Waste Prevention Advisors course and learnt about composting, recycling and loads of other ‘green’ things, many of which we have put into practise. Davies and Scarlett have continued with things like Wildlife Explorers, Forest School, hatching ducklings, Wildlife Action Awards and so on. But it’s clear we are all still hankering after more of that way of life and every time we visit Tom’s parents house, or Jan and Jonathan’s, or our friends who have been raising orphaned lambs, or indeed River Cottage we realise we are still just playing at this and feel sad that we don’t have all the elements of what we want and the compromise still isn’t enough. Ady and I had concluded that bringing in small bits of that lifestyle would be enough and if we still wanted to do it then we could think about it in our retirement when Davies and Scarlett are off doing their own thing. Turns out their own thing still seems pretty likely to be that anyway.

So the four of us have been talking, sharing all the things we’d love to have and then trying to fit them together into one coherant idea with which we can do lots of research into cost, feasibility and how it could all work, which elements are pipe dreams and which could become reality, which need to be actioned first and made a priority and which need to be put on the back burner for the future. Here are the lists:

Ady
learn more about butchering, possibly slaughtering.
Growing fruit & veg
Spending more time with Nic & children
Fishing
Cooking
Practical skills

Davies
Bushcraft / survival skills
Working with wood
Driving tractors and understanding how they work
lifestock – particularly sheep and chickens
fishing
a lake with a row boat
a treehouse

Scarlett
wants dogs and cats!
animal breeding – ducks, chickens, maybe small animals
keeping pigs and sheep

Nic (longer list ;))
Keeping livestock – pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, bees (for meat, eggs, honey)
Having a cow for milk & making other dairy – butter, cheese, yoghurt
Growing food for us and livestock
Bartering / skill exchange / education
cooking / baking / preserving / brewing
crafts – sewing, knitting, basket weaving, woodcraft – making clothes, tools, household objects.
composting
renewable and sustainable energy – a green way of life -= solar, wind, water power, biomass fuels, woodburning
building from sustainable sources – strawbale builds, compost loos, solar showers, rainwater harvesting

To me that translates as the following absolute ideal:

A model of self sufficient living for four people. That means working out how many animals needed to breed / rear for meat per year, working out the costs for keeping / feeding them (do we grow our own crops for feeding them, buy in crops and if so at what cost?), working out levels of fruit and veg needed for a year and how much space needed to grow them. Factoring in failed crops, cost of seeds etc.

The 100% self sufficient model probably doesn’t exist – I am fairly sure you could work out your own meat / dairy / eggs / fruit and veg and work out preserving, storing and freezing sufficient to keep you going but there will be some out of reach ideals such as rice, pasta, cereals, flour. A bulk ordering, packaging free option is a possibility and maybe by being the coordinator / storage or selling on would cover the cost of your own requirements. I like the idea of a bartering scheme for the costs you do have to find – could you pay for animal feed by swapping it for meat or livestock? Supplement your own fruit and veg growing by exchanging for things you have a glut of? A co-operative approach to meeting the needs you can’t provide yourself.

In terms of housing I like the idea of sustainable, eco-friendly building, with renewable energy resources. Solar panels, wind turbines, renewable wood burning, maybe harnessing water energy. If we could live off-grid and be self-sufficient in energy then we reduce bills and expenses and live closer to our eco-ideals. If we were able to build from scratch then I am interested in strawbale building, composting and reed bed toilets, rainwater harvesting and so on. If we can’t then how can we get close to those ideals with existing buildings.

Once this self-sufficient model is in place and working phase two of the dream is to share it. I’d love to operate a residential education centre. Camping, camping barns, yurts. People could come and learn about how it all works, exhange labour and payment for education. Building a strawbale solar powered shower block should be possible by buying in the materials and expertise and paying for it by offering hands on training courses leaving everyone paid, taught and us with the structure.

Aswell as a recreational and learning destination it could be a part of the community, local schools could visit to learn, community groups could use the space. There is a huge trend towards interest in this way of life, the way of the world financially and environmentally means the need for harnessing these skills and knowledge will only increase with time.

For us as a family it will enable us to live the way we want to live, for us to have time together, to indulge all of our individual passions, interests and learning goals. For Davies and Scarlett it would offer every possible opportunity for them to learn, to explore all the different ideas they have about their future, to find potential careers and revenue streams aswell as having their own visions of their perfect childhoods. It would make full use of all the skills we already have as a team and personally – managerial, customer service, training, presenting, crafts, being with people, gardening, growing, livestock etc.

So how feasible is it? Well if we were looking to buy the land and finance it then it is a complete non-starter. But we do have about £100K equity in the house if we paid off the mortgage and the debts. We wouldn’t be in a position to borrow money (nor would we want to – the idea is to live as bill-free as possible) but it might get us started with renting land and property to start up. Long term it could potentially be a profit-turning enterprise which would then pay for rental once our funds have run out. The other ideas are all financially costly initially but I suspect there are grants and funds available for the sort of alternative energy / eco-friendly ideas we have particularly if there is an intention to be educational / keep agriculture and farming going etc. We would think about sponsorship / selling our story / writing about it or even approaching TV companies if it brought us close to what we want.

So the hitches – well, the obvious risking everything financially is the first one. I can’t really see a way of protecting our assets – the house could be rented out and pay the mortgage but with debts to clear we would still be left with a monthly sum of money to find and I suspect certainly initially the plan would quickly fold if we had to do more than feed ourselves. The idea of having to work outside of the plan doesn’t appeal (although something like writing or being prepared to tell our story to cover those costs would be okay). There is the chance it simply wouldn’t work and we’ll find ourselves in a few years tired, broke and with nothing to show for it other than a sob story and broken dreams. I’m more than prepared to jump and take that risk but I have three other people to consider, one of which isn’t great at sleeping anyway so doesn’t need crazy stress levels about whether there will be enough food to last the month.

We might just do it and decide it isn’t for us after all. It might be too much hard work, we might miss our freedom (long term I could see time ‘off’ being perfectly possible with other people stepping in to oversee it / share the workload) but certainly short term we’d be tied to it. I suspect we’d be a popular place for friends to come visit so hopefully wouldn’t miss out too out much on seeing people but depending on where geographically we are we may find ourselves struggling with a change in location. I think we have had as good a taste of this lifestyle as you can get in suburbia and we’re still with it after a good couple of years of progressively increasing our committments to crops and animals.

Next steps then. This is a fairly huge idea and has many elements to it which need investigating before we come up with a proper plan. It could be we need to start small renting a farm and getting as many elements of the lifestyle as possible before branching into the other aspects, it could be we try and find out about funding first, or look at campsites or existing businesses. I need to find out if there are already people doing this and whether we can learn from them or even work with them. I need to find out just what numbers of animals we’d be looking at to be self-sufficient and how much land to grow which crops, we need to look at where we’d ideally geographically and how feasible that is and all of the other implications. Above all we are spending lots of time talking about this, between ourselves and to other people and feeling out what the idea sounds like when we speak it out loud. So far I get more excited with every retelling and from it being a pipe dream I am now starting to see potential ways it could become a reality – maybe.

So there you are. I’m guessing it’s not a shocking plan, indeed I’ve shared elements of it with several of you in some form anyway. Comments very welcome, from super critical picking holes to ideas to whatever else comes into your head when you read it. It’s all still very half formed and I’m hoping that in getting it written down and read by others I will start to get some clarity on where to go with it all next.