One word? When seven would do…

Saturday was an earlier start than I’d have liked really with my Dad arriving just before 9am. Everyone else was already up though I think we’d all have been better with a bit more sleep. Davies was being all pathetic and floppy on the sofa but I decided it was tiredness alone and nothing more sinister so kept insisting he had plenty to eat and drink and refused to let him wallow.

It was raining on and off all day so no chance of reducing the laundry mountain so I sat and chatted to Dad instead. Scarlett did some melted wax crayon art (a bit like painting but with really intense colours) and Davies did some drawing, a lot of DSing and plenty more lolling about.

Dad stayed for lunch and then finally headed off about 2pm. Ady made some potato salad and I made some pesto pasta to take with us then we all got changed ready to go to Tasha and Ryan’s wedding reception. Ever since I met Tasha (over 2 years ago now) she has talked about her plans for her wedding reception and how she wanted it to be like a village fete – in a field, with straw bales to sit on, oil drum barbecues, bottles of drink in ice filled tin baths, food contributions from all her friends, home made bunting, lit by candles as it got dark, everyone camping overnight and a load of mismatched old lady style crockery, bone handled cutlery and an eclectic mix of glasses. She was going to wear a Corpse Bride dress designed by one of her mates and made by another and a big pair of knee high, tartan lined DM boots.

It sounded fabulous, utterly, utterly Tasha and that was exactly what it was. 🙂

The rain didn’t matter as everyone was in wellies or DMs anyway, the music pumped out via a mix tape played on a big old stereo, the wedding ‘cake’ was a huge stand crammed with loads of gorgeous purple iced cupcakes with blue glitter, the kids went off to play in the woods and the tree house, the sound of ducks, chickens, geese and turkeys came across the fields and when it got dark the marquee was transformed by hundreds of tea lights and candles and some friends doing fire and glow-in-the-dark poi and staff displays.

I’ll drop some pics in when they had finished uploading to flickr.

We decided not to camp in the end as we were simply camped out, the kids were really tired and likely to crash and burn and we all felt just one night in our own beds hadn’t quite been enough so we waited until Davies and Scarlett started to edge closer to us and become a bit demanding before calling home time, it was about 930pm. It was a really magical gathering; we’d taken food, drink and many candles and it was lovely to be part of the whole event. Tasha’s dress was gorgeous and it was fab to be at a wedding that was so much about the bride and groom rather than what everyone else expected (rather similar to our own really, I even wore the same bright red shrug I’d worn to my own wedding reception as it matched my boots 🙂 )

Back home the kids had some toast and then went off to bed while I dredged my memory to start blogging the week and gave up and went to bed too.

Sunday was the lie in we’d all needed – even Ady slept til 9am 😯 I was more like 1030am and felt all the better for it.

I finished blogging and then as Ady had invited my parents over for dinner and we had a huge joint of pork I decided to cook it really slowly and got dinner on. Cooking it for so long meant the rest of the dinner took lots of moving about but was worth it.

Scarlett and I went to the CoOp as we needed some butter and she was fretting about not having got him anything for his birthday yet. She chose him some chocolates and wants to pick something else up for him tomorrow so we’ll try and nip into Lancing in the morning for her to do that.

Davies was feeling much better and both kids spent a fair bit of time outdoors. Saying goodbye to the chickens and ducks is going to prove very difficult indeed for Scarlett. I know she will get over it quick enough and we’ll be around plenty more birds but this will be a big deal for her and I’m trying to work out the best way to handle it, whether talking about it lots now so it becomes commonplace or whether to keep quiet about it and let her process it her own way is best.

I also sewed up (loosely, by hand, with tacking sort of stitch) the fleeces we have been covering the sofas with on two of my cushions that keep slipping down and looking scruffy. I have a big long mental list of things I need to get done and they were on it and therefore taunting me while I sat around on top of them not doing other things on my list ;). So that shut them up!

Davies and Scarlett polished and then laid the table (which reminded me that one of my Sunday morning jobs in my parents restaurant was stripping the tables of the place mats, side plates, knives, forks, spoons, sugar bowls, napkins, salt and peppers and fancy glass stoppered vinegar bottles to clean and polish them before relaying them. I used to really enjoy that switching off task, finding quicker and more efficient ways to gather stuff up and stack it and lay it back out again. It was really theraputic and I did it from the age of about 14 to about 18 so covered a lot of teenage angst working through ground – oh how I shudder at the thought of some of the dilemmas I faced then, along with smiling indulgently at the ones which felt like a big deal at the time but turned out to be nothing in the grand scale of things…).

I finished sorting out dinner, my parents arrived and sat down with the kids while Ady came out to help me serve up and we all ate. Mum had brought over a pudding but not looked at the packaging which advised 3-4 hours defrosting at room temperature but she’d shoved it back in her freezer at home. I felt like a bitch afterwards for pointing it out, she must feel like she never does anything right in my eyes :(. Dinner was nice, Davies told my parents all about the Sleepout and then they did their usual trick of staying way past the logical leaving time despite me having said on the phone earlier we didn’t want a late night – dinner was at 630pm, they left at 1030pm. I think it’s really hitting them that we’re going and Mum particularly is trying really hard to be good with the kids, hopefully they will make the next six months really count and we will see them over the course of the year anyway.

So Mum and Dad finally gone, kids finally asleep and me finally caught up on blogging. Woohoo and into yet another busy week.

It was our sixth camping trip at The Sustainability Centre and once again it didn’t disappoint. We really missed absent friends, specifically those who had been before and made it a place of special memories of times spent with them; LovelyEm, Marcus & Michelle, Katy B, Ros, Chris & Helen, Ali and indeed those who had hoped to make it and not managed to do so for various reasons. But it was fab to share it with Kirsty and James, The Babs and offspring and find they too love it as much as we do. 🙂

Sunday Davies and I were obviously already there and Ady and Scarlett joined us around 10am. We had a walk round the whole place showing them what we’d done and where we’d done it. The camping field had filled up during the course of Saturday, having been totally empty first thing in the morning so I was hoping everyone would sod off away again and leave us to it. We eventually wandered up to the hostel to check in and found someone to check in with – Ash, the temporary campsite overseer – and moved our booking, along with Babs and Kirsty to the main campsite rather than the individual bays as aside from a couple of tipi bookings the main site would be empty.

Back down to the campsite in both cars we were about to start setting up in our usual spot when one of the blokes from a trailer tent set up in Marcus and Michelle’s spot came over saying he remembered us from last year and were we here for a whole week again this time? Neither of us remembered him (he wasn’t Fun Dad) but chatted for a while. He said they were off soon so if we wanted to wait for their pitch we could. Knowing we had the canopy with us which makes us en elongated cross shape and therefore quite long we decided we’d take M&M’s spot this year leaving our usual spot and what had been Katy’s spot last year for Kirsty & Babs. So we waited. And we waited. And then we waited a bit more. From being there at 10am ready to go it crept past midday at which point I decided to go to the supermarket for food as I was getting really hungry and we needed to get a roast dinner on too if we were having that. No one else wanted to come so I headed to Mythical Morrisons all alone, sleep deprived, rather stinky and in very ripped jeans for sausage rolls to scoff there and then and roast dinner ingredients for later. When I got back we were still waiting and Ady and I got increasingly bitchy in our whispers to each other about the two families camping together, their parenting and how very bloody long they were taking. We’d thought they were on the cusp of leaving otherwise we’d have set up in our usual spot and now we’d hung it out this long we were determined to go the distance.

Eventually they finally did roll off about 4pm, after a lengthy pasta lunch and very slow packing up. We pulled into their space and it started spitting – the woman wound her window down to say goodbye and said ‘oh look, you should have set up earlier, it was lovely and sunny then…’ grrr.

The plastic knuckle on the porch pole that had broken at Wicksteed and we thought had been sufficiently mended with tape proved to not be mended enough to get the tent pitched and tempers were very frayed indeed as I simply couldn’t work out how to get all the tension right to get the tent pitched square. A petty squabble between Davies and Scarlett at that point resulted in them both being sent to sit in seperate cars having been shrieked at and told to sort themselves out otherwise we’d be going straight back home again. What made it worse was both of them had seperately been pining for the other one for the previous 24 hours with Davies mentioning Scarlett loads on the Sleepout and saying how she’d like bits of it, making a wand for her when he was doing whittling and saying how strange it felt without her that morning to me while Scarlett was bending Ady’s ear about missing Davies at home.

Everyone was saved by Kirsty and James arriving so while Ady guided them in I gave D&S another pep talk and released them from the cars to greet Marcus and Alex. The tent was not so safe and when I tugged rather crossly at the knuckle to try and right it I managed to snap the other one which resulted in several swear words, me ripping the whole pole part out of the tent and flinging it across the field, shearing off one of the pins in the process. I was *very* tried 😳

That out of my system I deduced that the fact both were broken and one was not now compromised by the other might mean it worked better. Whether that actually was the case or whether the flinging restored my sense of rationality I don’t know but we did then manage to get the tent up just fine :). Fortunately my show of temper paled into insignificance in the face of Babs later in the evening ;).

Once we were all installed (and possibly after cars had been returned to the carpark and cider o’clock called) Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex told us all about their fab time at River Cottage and presented us with what is probably one my top gifts ever in terms of usefulness, thoughtfulness and touchingness. I almost cried :). They had got us the River Cottage diary for 2011 and had it signed with a message from Hugh saying ‘Good luck to the Goddards’ having told him about our planned adventures for next year. So we’ll be off feeling we have the blessing of our of our heroes along with a diary to record all our hosts details in and loads of recipes, tips and seasonal stuff which will all be so very relevant to us along the way. I can’t overstate how much it meant and how touched we are by it xxxx thanks guys 🙂 🙂

A mother, father and daughter arrived to stay in the tipi. The daughter, Ruby was 4 and starting proper school on Tuesday so they’d brought her for a couple of nights away first. I think they were from London somewhere. We had a brief chat with them before they went out somewhere for dinner, arriving back when it was already dark and going straight to their tipi.

I’ve lost track of whether our dinner was ready or Babs arrived first but both happened and our chicken, potatoes, carrots, stuffing, sweetcorn and gravy was delicious :). It was getting dark by 8pm all week which made for easier putting to bed of kids as by 9pm they already felt they’d had loads of after dark time and were happy to head to the tent. I was exhausted so called it an early night around 10ish to recharge ready for the rest of the week.

Monday As with most days involved sitting around drinking tea and chatting while children played as all the best holidays do. We did go for a walk round the site to show Kirsty, James and Babs and left all the children behind on the camping field playing.

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Our tipi neighbours came out asking when the cafe opened and looking very crestfallen when we said 10am (it was barely after 9am) so we donated teas and coffees to them and Ruby joined our kids playing for a while before they headed off to the zoo for the day. Home Ed inevitably came up, as did the question of how we all knew each other. It seems quite strange to think we all met online and at specifically organised camps now and I was struck once again by how incredibly fortunate we all are to be in this amazing circle of friends. Conversations over the week turned to most of the people within our group at some point or another and the connections, affection and support and just how well we all know each other touches me every time.

We were able to do the classic point and laugh response when Ruby’s dad asked how the kids socialise as they were all together in a big group having set up an imaginary shop to play with behind a log. He seemed to know a little about Home Ed and was of the opinion that it was better academically btu I don’t think he’d met any real actual living people doing it before 😆

Ages ago we bought what we thought was a Chris French style tarp for some bargain price at TKMAXX but we’ve never managed to get round to putting it up. We bought it out to have a look at it and see what we could do with it and realised it wasn’t a tarp at all but a canopy for attaching to the front of a tent, very much like the one we already have, but without sides. It was possible to errect it as a standalone so with Kirsty and James’ help we set it up. I had another bout of heavyhandedness (this time not anger induced) and managed to rip the fabric when tightening one of the straps. It was very funny – all four of us were standing at a pole and Kirsty and James both looked utterly horrified then ducked behind a pole presumably to hide their smirks. Ady remained horrified, I just laughed! 😆 It didn’t seem to have any great compromising effect and we taped it up.

In the end the canopy became a bit of a lifesaver as we were able to store all the chairs under it at night, retreat beneath it when it rained and with a real sense of fortuitous timing the night it began raining at about 5pm and didn’t stop until about 11pm which would have made for a miserable evening had we not had the canopy to eat, drink, cook and sit under. We also grabbed a fire basket and managed to retain a campfire even in the rain under it too :).

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Ady and James went off to do the supermarket run as we’d decided to have pizzas that night cooked on the smoke n grill so they headed off with shopping lists. In the end all of our rather comical cobbled together tentage was invaluable that night as Babs cooked her tea under our kitchen porch and Kirsty and I assembled pizzas in the kitchen before cooking them on the Smoke n Grill.

Ruby’s family arrived back from the zoo in the driving rain and said they were not staying after all as it was just so wet. It was sad to see them go, Ruby’s little school dress hanging up inside the car, which was packed with things like sky lanterns and other fun outside stuff. I felt a bit humbled actually, I know I have a private tendancy to feel smug in the face of school using parents and these two were clearly just as child focussed and keen to give their daughter a great childhood as we are. We all chorused goodbye and wished Ruby well starting school (but I don’t think her Dad believed us 😉 ).

As they pulled away we raided the tipi for their remaining firewood and sent the kids in to eat their tea and shelter from the rain, so it wasn’t all bad 😆

After set in rain for several hours our tent decided to take it’s revenge for my stroppiness and the should have been convex but was actually slightly concave flat bit on the porch started to fill with water. Ady realised when he bumped his head walking into the tent that something wasn’t right 😆 It had gathered a HUGE puddle, literally gallons of water so I’m glad it was spotted before it went really wrong. With careful use of a wooden pole topped with a towel to stop the tent ripping and another to stop the groundsheet tearing we created an integral pole for dancing and keeping the ceiling up inside the tent. We had a pillar! 😆 The addition of a pair of plastic wine goblets in the void between the tent roof and the porch roof to keep that proud meant the tent coped well even with the downpours of rain we had.

It became a singing sort of evening, trigged by the children who came out to show us a little snippet of Born Free they’d been working on, with a slight lyric change to include Trevor the toad, the first of many toads found by Scarlett that week, cooed over and held before being returned to the wild. Toadtasic.
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Thanks to James’ ipod and Ady’s phone we had a great selection of music to sing along to, with increasing volume and possibly decreasing talent as the night wore on. 😉 We were confident we had the site to ourselves so wouldn’t be disturbing anyone though. We also had some marshmallow toasting as we’d gone stick gathering and stripped bark off and sharpened the ends as Davies and I had been shown during the sleepout.

Tuesday I was quite horrified on my way to the shower to spot a man in the bay directly behind us on my way to the showers meaning we may well have not been alone on the site after all the night before 😳 I called ‘Good morning’ to him and got a ‘good morning’ back so asssumed we’d not been too rowdy. Kirsty bumped into him at the washing up and learnt his plight – he was walking the 100 miles of the South Downs Way in four 25 mile days and had completed the first quarter leg, ending in that pouring rain from the night before, realised he had no waterproof trousers and on starting to put up his tent also realised he had no torch either. Pretty much everything he had with him was soaked with the exception of his sleeping bag and he was pretty miserable. Kirsty invited him to come and have a cup of tea with us and he arrived as we were settling down for our daily routine of PopMaster at 1030am.

Ian quickly abandoned his plan to carry on and decided to postpone his South Downs Way walk for a couple of weeks time, returning with full and proper kit next time aand ended up staying for another 48 hours with us :). He told us all about being a motorbike paramedic in London and aside from a slightly surreal moment when a newsflash about a man on the run came on the radio and made us all wonder at the wisdom of inviting a complete stranger to share our food, drink and hospitality, particularly with such close proximity to an axe he slotted in really well :). Ady ran him to the station on Thursday morning and he said meeting all of us had really opened his eyes and might well have set him on a life changing path. I think the friendliness of strangers, the group camaraderie and alternative approach to education had really enlightened him about different lifestyles. He was a nice bloke, I hope our paths cross again someday.

Tuesday was mostly dry although it was a bit changable with sunshine and clouds. We wandered up to the hostel and paid, they are so laid back there you almost need to chase them to pay up. The big shock news of the week for everyone who has been there before is that Hazel isnt’ there anymore 🙁 I got the impression there is some sort of back story behind this as she isn’t working at all and Ash alluded to not ‘struggling to cope with it’ which seemed strange given the laid back feeling of the place. Apparently she does the odd shift in the cafe to help out still but I didn’t spot her over the course of the week :(. There is something of a ‘winds of change’ feel about the place which slightly disturbed me. I know it is essentially a business alonside being a place about permaculture and sustainability but at this years Green Fair we felt a commercial edge beginning to creep in and there seem to be lots of the old familiar faces either gone or about to go (a couple who live in one of the yurts are moving to Canada, the green woodworking lad who Davies really likes is leaving to go and work on a farm (ironically one on our short list for WWOOFing so we may well catch up with him again), Sean who we’ve met there several times no longer does the Campcraft stuff and Hazel has gone too.) and lots of people talking about plans and changes and so on. There was even some speculation that the campsite will be split into designated pitches and full payment will need to be made upfront when booking. I’m kind of glad our last definite stay there happened before all of that took place.

Julie rang me during the course of the day to say they would be coming up for the day tomorrow which we had semi arranged last week. We spent lots of time trying to persuade Babs to stay longer but didn’t quite manage to get her passed Wednesday but we did have the pleasure of an evening visit from Stella and co which was lovely :). Plenty of wood whittling and chalk carving from the children along with playing on the rope swing and creating a Woodlice World.
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We also first met J, or ‘little red boy’ as Scarlett called him due solely to his bright red t shirt. He was 5 and on a week long holiday with his parents, half at The Sustainability Centre and half at a sword festival in Cornwall. They came from the Borders where schools had already been back for 2 weeks. His Mum, Alex came over to say hello and chatted with us for a while. She seemed really nice but J was a very challenging little boy, prone to violence and threatening behaviour even to all our much bigger children and I think he was a bit underparented really with him dashing off to hassle our kids as soon as they arrived at the site with no real supervision from his parents.

Wednesday morning Kirsty and I did the supermarket run and I gathered some stuff to make Davies a birthday cake. When we got back Julie and co had arrived.

Babs, Kirsty and I had a look in the shop, which I’ve never actually been in before. It is the home of Permanent Publications which puts out Permaculture Magazine and various other printed titles so had a very comprehensive and interesting book selection in a very small space. They also had some solar powered and wind up energy gadgets, some knives and other tools and various other bits and pieces. I didn’t buy anything but added several books to my list of things to order from the library and am now seriously coveting a spoon carving set like they sell there.

Back at the campsite I started making cake batter. As with last year I’d bought just-add-eggs mixture so Davies helped me mix it up.
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Retrospectively I should have split the mix between two pans as it rose so quickly we lost at least a third over the sides of pan and finally the top actually caught fire 😆 Some cutting, trimming and splitting and plenty of icing soon had it looking good and tasting edible though 🙂

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So we gathered round and did some Happy Birthday-ing to Davies before scoffing the lot 🙂
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Julie and co left, having decided to maybe come back the following day with her Mum and their trailer tent for the last night, Babs and co also left and the rest of us had another lovely evening round the campfire, stargazing and chatting.

Kirsty and James took the kids up to the wildlife pond for a nature walk and batwatch and Scarlett returned with yet another toad. No bats were spotted so we took a walk in the opposite direction hoping to see some but didn’t find any there either. Ash told us there had been bats all around the hostel at about 745pm so we pledged to try being there that time tomorrow instead.

Thursday

Ady and I celebrated 11 years of being married 🙂

Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex went off to a local attraction. We’d be considering going with them but neither of the children were that fussed, Ady had been before several times (both of us went to the local Portsmouth attractions on school trips countless times as kids) and it wasn’t my thing anyway so we declined and decided to have a quieter day hanging out at the campsite instead.

Ady took Ian off to the station and to get some food, Davies and Scarlett were reconnecting after having been around such a big group and I was enjoying the sunshine (at last!) and reading my book. Julie and her Mum arrived along with their trailer tent ready to stay the last night too. Part of me was a little worried about this, Julie’s mum can be a bit of a liability (she wasn’t too bad but did wander up to the cafe at one point and finding no one about just made herself a drink and wandered off again, sat around asking for hot water constantly and is just one of lifes takers) and I was worried that Jack and Maisie being there would mean Marcus and Alex, Davies and Scarlett wouldn’t get a chance to have a nice last night together as they can be quite demanding of Davies in particular. In the event it all seemed to work out okay and the six children seemed to get on just fine. I was also a bit worried about how early Julie goes to bed and whether that would mean we’d disturb her or feel obliged to be really whisperingly quiet on our last night.

Several of us went for a walk round the woods and I tried to recreate the straddling John with a beard had done of the shelter to show it’s strength. It held me just fine but my legs are a lot shorter than John’s so when it came to getting off again I had to bear weight on one side unequally and the whole thing slowly and gracefully collapsed under me 😆
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Scarlett found loads of toads all week but she also found a slow worm and a newt that day, bringing both back to show everyone and let everyone who wanted to have a hold. Most people declined the handling session offer ;).

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she also found pretty fungi
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a hawkmoth caterpillar
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and took pictures of a dragonfly she spotted
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Marcus was keen to light the fire that night so I took the boys off with penknives to gather some birch bark and they collected sticks and wood chips too. We had some sticks for kindling and the plan was to lay a fire in the fire pit and all create sparks to make a mini fire to contribute to lighting it so we had a communal fire. The birch bark wasn’t really happening for Davies or Jack although Marcus did a great job and got his lit 🙂
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I was also struggling so we bought out the cotton wool and Davies, Jack and I lit ours using that, with Marcus joining in with more cotton wool too.
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We enjoyed a roaring fire that night and the boys were really proud of their part in getting it going 🙂 It was still burning enough the following morning to cook my muffins on it 🙂
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Ady and I managed to be spectacularly bad at getting our dinner sorted, partially due to me consuming the best part of a bottle of pink fizz, partially due to it going on the smoke n grill so late and partially due to Kirsty, James and I taking Scarlett, Alex and Maisie on a bat walk and being gone ages so it was pitch dark by the time we served up dinner; poor Davies and Scarlett had already watched everyone else eat marshmallows and had to eat their dinner wearing headtorches 🙁 it was very delicious though so worth the wait.

The bat walk was good, we did see bats, along with another toad (caught by Scarlett) and did lots of walking slowly and quietly in the dark listening to the sounds of crickets and grasshoppers and hearing the toad before we actually spotted it. I took everyone to the spot Davies and I had slept at the weekend and showed them how dark it had been.

The kids went to bed, folllowed by Julie and Kirsty, James, Ady and I sat up. We had been planning a full night under the stars in our four very reclining chairs, thinking we could bring our sleeping bags out and sleep out properly. It was specifically to enjoy the stars though and while we had a good hour of stargazing it eventually clouded over around midnight and by the time we were ready for going to sleep it was totally cloudy so we did sleep in tents in the end. Definitely a plan for next camping trip though, I think it would be lovely.

We had a great last night, missing those who had already gone home or didn’t make it this time, enjoying all the many in jokes and catch phrases of the week – it feels strange to say ‘ideal’ or ‘to be fair’ or ‘isn’t X….’ and not get a chorus of replies or joining in. It felt like a very communal holiday with loads of sharing, group cooking, supermarket shopping together and so on. We also missed sky lanterns so created our own eco friendly one where the tallest person (James) holds a torch inside a plastic sack that did contain logs and lifts it up high. It certainly has the initial wow factor although doesn’t quite work when you let it go 😆
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Friday The last day 🙁

The weather was a bit threatening so we didn’t hang around quite as long as we’d intended to. I’d also wanted to have one last walk round just the four of us but the kids were really worn out and Davies felt it would be too sad to walk round saying goodbye (we definitely won’t be coming next year and who know’s what our circumstances will be by 2012) so we didn’t in the end.

We’d got everyone to sign our canopy (which by now had a second taped repair covering a hole made by sparks the night we’d had a fire under it) which we think we might take WWOOFing with us and get others to sign whenever we put it up and we put the tent away with the distinct feeling we may have used it for the last time. The kids did some more of their Bug World creation which on and off all of them had worked on all week using bits they’d collected from the wood. It been the source of some squabbles along with the harmony but was quite an impressive creation by the end of the week:
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We had time for a couple of self timer shots by the tipi before Kirsty and James headed off to battle the M25

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and then it was home time all round really. Davies came with me, Scarlett went with Ady and once again we really appreciated being just an hour from home as we were back and bathed and fed all by a very respectable time. I can’t say it was our best time there as we missed people not there too much but it was lovely to file away that memory of sharing it with Kirsty, James, Babs, Stella and Julie and all assorted children, of course including Ian as another chapter in our catalogue of fantastic times camping there. I love it there very much :).

Way, way back in about March or April I told Davies about a Campcraft Sleepout course happening at the Sustainability Centre this weekend. It was pretty much perfect timing given we’d be there from that weekend camping anyway for our annual Everyone-else-has-gone-back-to-school week and just a few days before his birthday. Davies loved the idea as a birthday present so we booked and paid for it.

As the date drew closer I was starting to feel a bit odd about being Davies’ nominated parent – I had in my head it would be more of a ‘lads and dads’ type event. I wasn’t remotely fazed at the idea of being the only female but I was a bit worried that Davies might feel strange having me there if everyone else had their dads. But he chose me for his own reasons and frankly if he’d chosen Ady I’d have been feeling like I was missing out as I am really interested in the Bushcraft stuff too.

We’d packed light – a rucksack each with water bottle, packed lunch, spare pants, pjs and clean top for the next morning, waterproof trousers and jacket, knife, fork, spoon, cup, plate and bowl, tooth brush and toothpaste. We had a roll mat, a sleeping bag, a roll up pillow and a blanket each and that was it. A far cry from my Princessy self of a few years ago who would go nowhere without an en suite bathroom ;).

Saturday morning saw us up early, fed and watered and ready for the off. We’d got my car pretty loaded up with all but the front seats taken out although I later realised we’d not packed very sensibly as we had all the tents, kitchen and so on for the week but none of the spare clothes :rolls: We gave ourselves plenty of time to allow for traffic so we were there a good half an hour early. We had a brief walk around, rang Ady and Scarlett and finally wandered back up to the centre to meet up with the rest of the group. There were 17 of us in all: Davies and I, J (a child psychiatrist) and his daughter E (12, youngest of 3 girls, hates outdoors, bugs, fire etc) there on a bonding weekend because he works crazy-long hours and doesn’t have enough time with his daughters, N (another Nic, there were 4 of us!) and his son J – N was a gas man and J was his 8 year old son, he had another, younger child and his wife had booked the sleepout for him and J, A and her granddaughter A, she was recently divorced and was doing a lot of Striking-Out-On-Her-Own including course in permaculture, spoon whittling and so on and had booked this course for her granddaugher and her, V and his son O, not sure what V did but I had the impression he wasn’t living with O full-time. O was lovely, 15 and really into his bushcraft, told me all about how he’d met Ray Mears once, really knew his stuff and was one of those teens who give you hope for the next generation, a mother and son who’s names I never learnt but were really nice, I think she was a single mum and her son who I think was very tall for his age rather than very old had been failed by the school system and was about to start some one to one special measures teaching with a different school before her last, last resort of Home Ed and two sisters in law (one was married to the other one’s brother) J and A with a son each and an extra friend of the two cousins, all boys. A was very nice, J was nice but had a very annoying habit of doing that Australian going up at the end of each sentence to make it sound like a question which really grated on me after a while. She’d taken redundancy from IBM and set up a dog walking business? Which she really enjoyed? And found very fulfilling? And us. And Sean the Bushcraft man who we’ve met over the years there several times and his new sidekick John-with-a-beard who turned out to be a fellow Home Educator.

All signed in we first went to camp hq to drop off our stuff and then had a bit of a tour of the site. Davies and I know the site really well after so many visits but learnt loads nonetheless with all the little snippets of history Sean threw in. We finished down the other side of the green burial site where John-with-a-beard took over to teach us about squirrel shelters. We were given the tip that shelters are best placed facing east where the sun rises, so warming them in the morning and shown how to work out east using a normal wristwatch and the sun before splitting into 3 groups and getting on with building a shelter while John came round and oversaw how we were doing. We were in the smallest group – Davies and I with V and his son O who had already decided they’d be sleeping down in their self-built shelter in the woods. Possibly if we’d not been working in a group with someone who was planning to do so Davies and I might have considered it ourselves. But it did mean the pressure was on the four of us to really do it properly.

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Once everyone had finished we all went and gathered round each shelter and then John came and tested them all by straddling them with his 18 stone weight. They all stood up to it too 🙂

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Back to camp base for a cup of tea and our packed lunch. There were a couple of kelly kettles which were sufficiently interesting to one of the lads to have him keeping them almost perpetually on the boil and offering cups of tea every 20 minutes or so. Having never refused a cup of tea ever I drank quite a bit! 😆

We sat round the campfire eating lunch and chatting and inevitably learning a bit about each other. Predictably our Home Ed status came up pretty quickly and the whole WWOOFing idea was soon out there too, making me something of a novelty / curiosity / person to come and poke with questions :). Well me and J the child head doctor who was also popular to ask questions of :).

Next we split into two groups to learn some knots (quick release, timber hitch, adjustable AND I can still remember them all 🙂 ) and chop down some sycamore to strip and carve into pegs to create our shelters. Davies and I were with Sean this time. We’ve met him several times before on visits to the centre and he always does a firestarting talk at the Greenfair. He is an excellent teacher, really patient and ready to show you over and over again if you don’t grasp something at first giving you the impression he has all the time in the world to show you. He was particularly good with Davies who struggled with one of the knots, mostly I think due to having such little hands and stood with him doing it again and again until Davies got it right and could do it again.
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We started with knots and then went off to lop some sycamore before bringing it back to make into pegs. We had to cut them to size, check over them to see if there was a logical top and bottom and place for a notch depending on knots in the wood and then taper one end, flatten the other and create a notch for cord to be captured. We were all given very sharp knives and shown the right way to use them to create a small pile of pegs each.
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Next we were issued with a hoochie (best link I can find online to show it is here) which were actually packaged ones with integral guy line and eyelets but could have been easily made if needed. We were shown a variety of methods of pitching including both sides down in a sideless pitch, both sides up propped with wooden poles, or one side up, one side down. Davies and I went for the later with one side pitched to the ground and the front open.

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At this point we had to make decisions about where we were planning to actually sleep later. Davies and I were the only ones who didn’t decide to put a tent up at this point. We did have a little tent in the car but we were already feeling we’d wussed out slightly by not planning to sleep in the woodland shelter so we wanted to get a real survival type experience. We had a small groundsheet with us which covered enough ground to put our roll mats and little pillows on, topped with sleeping bags and blankets. We thought it looked very cosy 🙂
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There were a few hammocks to have a go at putting up and getting into too – Davies really liked it, I didn’t have a go as I was not at all confident at my ability to get back out again with any dignity 😉
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Then it was time to prepare dinner. A vast array of food was brought out including 3 chickens, several packs of bacon, potatoes, sweet potatoes, leeks, onions, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, parsnips, lentils and tinned tomatoes. We established that no one was vegetarian so there was no need to make anything meat free and then one team took care of cooking the chickens in an ammo box on the fire adding the bacon towards the end of cooking. The rest of us took on peeling and chopping veg to go in the big iron pot to hang on a tripod over the fire. J sidled up to me and muttered about hating lentils, I agreed I also hated them and so when noone was looking we hid them 😆 😆 I was quite staggered to see how little pretty much all of the kids and several of the adults knew about food prep – surely it doesn’t get more basic than peeling and chopping veg? We added some water, stock cubes and herbs and bunged the pot on.

Another hour or so of sitting round the fire tending to the food, whittling wood and chatting or finishing off setting up camp – and of course more tea drinking. Davies wanted to make a wand for Scarlett so Sean lent him a knife as his own was pretty blunt, helped him choose a good bit of wood and cut it and then coached him on some knife skills and showed him some techniques.

Next we did some sensory awareness games and talked a bit about tracking. Sean explained about peripheral vision and using all our senses and we played a game where a blindfolded person stood in the middle of the circle armed with a water pistol with a bunch of keys at their feet. The rest of us had to creep towards them and grab the keys without being heard – any noises made by us resulted in the water pistol being squirted in that direction. We had a couple of games of that before it was time to get ready to serve dinner.

I helped carve a chicken and serve up and we had a pretty good meal of buttered rolls, veg stew, roast chicken and roast potatoes. Someone had brought along marshmallows so we cut some more sycamore switches and stripped the bark off and sharpened the ends to make perfect toasting sticks for those. We washed up (Davies did our plates and bowls, unfortunately his drying up afterwards left something to be desired so they ended up collecting loads of leaf litter and twigs :rolls:) and then headed over to the woodland classroom for some firestarting practise.

Most of that Davies and I had covered before, either at Forest School or at Sean’s own firestarting talks at Green Fairs over the years but he did a really good half an hour or so talking about different firestarting techniques throughout history and handing round iron pyrite, flints, firesteels, various types of matches, maya dust, cotton wool and vaseline and so on. We were then sent off to collect some birch bark and given fire steels to make sparks to light it. We all tipped our started little fires into the main fire in the classroom to have jointly lit it for the night. We were shown charcloth and told how to make it along with newspaper soaked in candlewax and it renewed Davies and my intention to create a tinder kit each ready to carry for fire starting.

We were then taken back down to the burial ground and shown a good place for badger watching as a hide had been created from a wattled fence. Clearly you wouldn’t actually see any with them not being true and all but the sentiment was nice ;).

By then it was nearly 8pm so we walked back over to the camp where Sean and John had a last hot drink with us before leaving us to our own devices. The mother and son made a decision not to stay the night so bid us all goodbye and headed off, the father and son who were staying in the woods left to bed down there for the night and the rest of us settled round the campfire.

As it got dark people gradually drifted off and the children who were still awake were off playing with torches which just left myself and two of the Dads – N and J. J who was very quickly becomming my new best friend then broke out a flask of sloe gin he’d made himself and several shot glasses to share round. I’d not taken any alcohol with me worrying there wouldn’t be a chance to drink it and then I’d end up taking covert swigs from within my rucksack thereby confirming my private worry that I am infact an alcoholic so this was very welcome :). We had a very interesting conversation about what life is all about, I was questionned more about Home Ed and WWOOFing.

Davies was off playing with J, the other smaller boy, who he’d really hit it off with and they were enjoying doing stuff with torches. It started to get properly dark and they came back so we all called bedtime. I was wondering if not putting a tent up or indeed the sides of the hoochie down had been an error as it suddenly seemed very open to the elements, but Davies snuggled straight down and was asleep in minutes.

I predictably lay awake although I must have dozed. All of the tea came back to haunt me and I ended up struggling out of my sleeping bag three times for a wee, the final time managing to wee all over my pj bottoms too which meant I had to get back into the sleeping bag just in my pants 🙁 I laid for a bit longer having checked the time (4am) and decided as soon as it was light I’d get up and dressed, get the fire going and make some tea but I eventually did drop off and next thing I knew it was 730am, broad daylight and several people were already up – which made getting out of my sleeping bag and into some clothes pretty tricky ;).

Davies and I congratulated ourselves on making it through the night 🙂
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and packed up our stuff before going to join the others round the campfire for pancakes cooked on the fire for breakfast. I have serious frying pan and casserole pot for cooking on the fire envy :). We were rejoined by V and O who had managed the night in the woodland shelter and by J and his daughter E who had been freaked out by a spider at bedtime, gotten very upset and so they’d decamped to their car in the carpark for the night instead. We cleared everything up and gradually people headed off leaving just Davies and I. Sean and John were last to leave and said we could carry on the campfire, leaving us some more firewood aslong as we spread it all out before leaving it later.

Davies and I finished our experience with some sitting round the fire, whittling some wands and chatting about everything we’d done, the new stuff we’d learnt and the things we want to try next. It was a really good experience, Davies loved it and has added further to his list of things he wants to learn and kit he wants to acquire. I was really proud of him for being so up for everything on offer, loved having the time just the two of us and would definitely do it again.

Meanwhile back at home Ady and Scarlett had been to Wildlife Explorers in the morning, visited the supermarket for their individual favourite dinners, eaten together, had baths and had a sleepover watching Harry Potter in our bedroom before heading over to meet us which is where we get to 10am on Sunday morning and the beginning of our holiday. But that’s for a whole other blogpost :).

Tasha and I finally had a nice day to try and do our much put off foraging excursion.

Davies, Scarlett and I had time to nip to The Range first as I wanted to get a couple of camping bits (pegs etc.). They appeared to have a 40% off offer on such things and so having left the kids in car I picked up various bits and then had a brief kerfuffle at the till when it didn’t all come up as 40% off and experienced some very terrible customer service while they sorted it out. I *hate* bad service anywhere so was gearing up for a fight but it all came good and I got my discount.

I wanted an aluminium water bottle for me and *thought* I’d bought a really cool one with 40% off, bright red with FUEL written on it, in a ‘your body needs water for fuel’ type fashion until I got it home and realised it genuinely is a fuel bottle for putting flammable stuff in and has printed all over it warnings about not being suitable for food or drink. Grr.

We collected Tasha and Toby – no Vinnie today, I missed him 🙁 – and drove via Tesco Express as neither Tasha or I had actually got any lunch with us before heading to a large green space with a playpark that had elderberries and sloes around the periphery. The kids went off to play, Tasha and sat and chatted and ate and then we picked a few sloes for Tasha as I had realised I really shouldn’t pick anything as we’re off from tomorrow on holiday.

We dropped them home and went in for a cup of tea before they had to head off to take one of their cats to the vet and we needed to get home for pre-holiday prep. As we pulled up David was outside washing his car so he wandered over to chat and then my Mum pulled up having driven past once and then passed us on the road so double backed to see us. She caught up with Davies and Scarlett while I brought in some dry washing and hung out some wet stuff – there is much to be said for staggered going on holiday 😉 and shoved the raspberries we picked on Wednesday in a pan with some jam sugar before they went off.

I made two pots of jam, one of which my Mum went off clutching along with all the current eggs and a pot of strawberry and chilli jam too. Her and I had a chat over a cup of tea while the kids played with geomags and then she went off. I supervised packing for Davies and Scarlett, with Davies packing both an overnight bag and a ‘rest of the week’ bag.

Ady came home and I left him to serve up the kids tea that I’d put on while I went to fill my car up with petrol and grab some bits for the picnic lunch Davies and I need to take tomorrow. When I got home the kids had eaten and were in pjs and Ady was preparing to load the cars. I helped Davies get his rucksack ready and then we had a little pre-birthday present giving. Most of what Davies wanted for his birthday was camping / survival stuff so given we are off on a campcraft sleepout tomorrow followed a week camping with friends we knew he would like to have it for that rather than the week after when we have no camping trips for the forseeable future so having checked with him which he’d prefer he went for early presents now and less on the day and was presented with a new rucksack, water bottle, cooking set, folding shovel, whistle and torch set all of which he was very pleased with. He does still have things kept back for his actual birthday but as this weekend is the main part of his gift from us it made sense for him to have things to enjoy as part of it.

So Davies repacked his new rucksack with the various things he’ll need this weekend, Ady loaded up the cars, Scarlett gathered all sorts of things she needs and I packed an over night survival rucksack for me and a longer term week long bag for myself before having a bath and cooking dinner.

So Davies and I are off in the morning for a 24 hour bushcraft survival campout, with Scarlett and Ady joining us on Sunday. Really looking forward to it and hoping not to be too overpowed by testosterone ;).

Normally my working all day day but I was only working the afternoon as they owed me hours for the bank holiday.

I did some online stuff in the morning and then popped out to the post office to send some ebay parcels. Very annoyingly two people have still not paid despite auctions ending a full week ago so I will either have to deal with chasing them or filing non paying bidder reports / doing second chance offers or they will pay tomomorrow morning and then be hacked off when I don’t send stuff for a week because I’m away. Grr ebay.

Back home for lunch and I wrote the ‘when she was 7’ page about Scarlett for my blog which always takes ages because I go and read the ones that have gone before. It always makes me realise how much they do change over the course of a year.

Ady came home and we all had lunch before heading back out again – me to work and the rest of them to do some store visits. Childcare has been pretty easy for the summer as Ady is happier taking them out with him to work as they give him cover for his mystery shopping type stuff and don’t look out of place in school holidays. It will start to get trickier again from now on.

I had a nice afternoon at work, chatting to two of the Saturday assistants who are off to uni in the next couple of weeks and another who is 5 years through a 6 year medicine course and is very interesting company. I always feel a bit melancholy normally at this time of year when all the youngsters are off about to start their lives with new horizons and adventures and hanker after that for myself, this year I am hugging to myself the knowledge that we’ll be off on our own life changing adventure or at the very least a gap year in six months time :).

An ex work colleague came in and we had a catch up. She is undergoing all sorts of life changing stuff of her own including rethinking some huge areas of her life so we chatted about that for a bit. Looking forward to seeing what happens to her next :).

Ady picked me up and we started sorting out camping stuff, well actually Ady mostly started sorting out camping stuff while I drank tea 😳 We have a bit more stuff to clear from our playroom and then we’ll store all the camping stuff in there and have to make decisions on what we keep, what we take with us and what we won’t need any more.

We read a couple of chapters of King of the Cloud Forests and then Davies and Scarlett went off to bed.

It’s all starting to feel very real now, in a slightly surreal, still half a year away fashion.

This morning we dropped in at Julie-from-Badgers as she had wanted to check in with me prior to the start of term that I was happy with the programme and knew what it all entailed. I have cast an eye over it and will look at it in more detail nearer the time – we won’t be at Badgers for a whole fortnight yet ;). She threw her arms around me in a rather unexpected and slightly awkward hug with an ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me!’ and then proceded to tell me how wonderful the whole experience will be for the children and how very ‘us’ it was. I always squirm slightly at being told anything is very ‘me’, I remember a work colleague telling me that jetting off to Las Vegas to get married was ‘very you’ and wondering how that could be when even I was slightly shocked we were doing it! It does entertain me the way that slightly more conventional friends are almost selling me the idea of WWOOFing though in trying to convince themselves it isn’t 100% crazy…

I explained that Davies has decided against Cadets. I told her the reasons (he’d miss the first two sessions of term, only be there for one term anyway etc.) and she then suggested he carry on at Badgers for the term, go into her group doing First Aid which he has done before so won’t get a badge for but can brush up his knowledge (it was quite some time ago he did it), be a Follow Me Badger for the final term and assist Julie with the younger Badgers, not be with Scarlett or I and finish the term at the end of the year with Scarlett and I, get his SuperBadger award etc. and be part of the grand farewell to the Goddards. He loved the idea and it will make life much easier for me not to have to plan a place for him to be while Scarlett and I are off.

We left there and headed to PYO, arriving about 10 minutes early, which with Julie’s usual 10 minutes late meant we were sitting in the car for 20 minutes or so. I’d picked up a load of cds to listen to in the car and they all happened to be fairly melancholy ones which had me all reflective and feeling sad. I don’t know if I mentioned but we found out recently that my Grandfather had died – my Mum’s Dad. She had been estranged from him for many years and out of loyalty to my Mum I had had no contact with him either, although it was no big sacrifice as I hardly knew him and certainly didn’t see him as a Grandfather in any more than the biological sense. Mum has rather gone to pieces over the news though, despite me having numerous conversations with her over the years about how she would feel if she learnt he had died and if she felt she would have any regrets for things not said, done or thrashed out then she should attend to them. Frazer has been very consoling of her, sharing her grief and saying he would have gone to his funeral, whereas Dad and I are both rather at a loss as to what the appropriate response is. I suspect all four of us are rather messed up in our responses with Mum and Frazer going for emotional and Dad and I going for rational when neither is probably entirely appropriate.

This year has seen all sorts of evidence of life dealing hard blows to people I care about. I have witnessed a friend lose a child, a friend lose a sibling, a friend deal with health scares, friends lose parents, parents lose their parents, a child deal with losing pets and just been reminded over and over again of my own and everyone I love being mortal and here for a limited period only. I am finding myself grieving for people I never even met and missing people who were never part of my life. It makes me question what it is all about after all – and hardens my resolve to go off and find the right path for us even more.

Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna arrived and we headed into PYO. The four older cousins wanted to be off and about really so we tended to let them while Julie, Lorna and I did fruit picking and chatting. I picked raspberries and sweetcorn – the apples were not up to much. Julie picked lots of plums too. We sat and ate a picnic, all Julie’s as I had not thought to pack anything, but fortunately Julie always over packs and was only too happy to share :). I updated Julie on all our firm bookings for WWOOFing places and we talked about the kids all growing up (J&M will be 8 a couple of weeks after D is 10). I’ll miss Julie a lot while we’re away, I couldn’t wish for a better SIL, it really is like having a sister I chose myself :).

We finally left there at about 3pm ish I think. We came home and I did some laundry processing, Scarlett played with the ducks and then I did some dealing with the fruit on the patio. We had two huge tubs of plums that my Dad had given us but he has been sweeping all of his patio into the tubs and they were filled with fruit flies and pine needles along with a mix of very rotten and okay plums. After a while I concluded it was one of those tasks where the output simply won’t justify the input so I gave up and threw all the plums to the chickens and ducks. I then peeled and chopped the windfall apples we’d collected yesterday, cooked them up and have two jars of chunky apple sauce to do something with at some point.

The kids needed to do some bedroom tidying so they did that and then Davies set up a load of toy soliders in the lounge. I sent Davies round the shop to buy some tinned pasta and he was *ages* prompting Scarlett and I to go after him. It turned out he’d been caught by our neighbour David who was out looking under the bonnet of his car and wanted to show Davies what he was doing and then he couldn’t find the pasta. By the time we’d done all that we were too late to be cooking pasta so they chose some pitta breads and we nipped home for Davies to pack some dinner for them while I got changed before we headed up to the allotment.

We met Ady up there and spent a last hour there digging up the last few potatoes, digging up the apple tree and cutting a load of rosemary. We collected our tools, left the wheelbarrow that someone had donated to us in the area for giving stuff away and said a fond farewell to the plot. We’ll have to pay again for a year in September and knowing we won’t be around to reap the rewards of anything we sow now it seems like the right time to give it up. It felt quite strange as we have loved having the allotment and it is in no small way responsible for our current plans but there is such a long waiting list I want to give someone else the chance to enjoy growing their own. Another goodbye though…

Ady brought the kids home while I nipped to the CoOp for some bits for dinner, I arrived back only to realise I’d forgotten one of the key ingredients so nipped out again to Sainburys. Ady had been held up coming home by a lane closure as a motorbike had crashed and it had obviously been fatal as the whole road was now closed while accident investigation units were on the scene. It took ages to get to the supermarket and on the way home I attempted to dodge the traffic with a long way round diversion which was equally trafficky so I was gone for ages.

Another example of life being so very tenuous.

I cooked dinner, we watched the news and while I still have a bed within a house I am going to go and do sleeping in it.