One word? When seven would do…

The first night in Willow went really well. I had to get up twice for a wee which may mean we rethink who sleeps on the outside of the bed but it was cosy, comfy and already feels like home 🙂

Chris had already gone to work by the time we got up but we had a nice morning with Julie and the kids chatting, eating porridge and hanging out. I did some van re-organising and sorting and have already shed several things from the van into the car which we have with us until the weekend when it will go into storage. I had various paperwork and online stuff to sort as today was my payday so I paid final bills to BT and our water rates, sorted out the post redirection and other such mundane stuff.

We had lunch and then went back homeward-way as Ady had the dentist. We dropped him off and nipped to the house to collect some stuff that we’d left in the garden to go to the tip and went along to drop that off. On the way the sun was shining, the radio was on and the kids and I were singing along and I was hit with one of those waves of absolute happiness and contentment you sometimes get (well I do anyway) when all feels right with the world :).

We picked Ady up and went back for a last cup of tea with Chris and Julie and collected the van to drive the mile or so to Caz and Bid’s. They greeted us by the boys taking D&S off to play and Caz and Bid clambering in to squidge round the table with us to drink wine and toast adventure while looking at a beautiful sunset out of the window. Perfect 🙂

Fab evening followed in the house with plenty more wine, gorgeous food (lamb from the farmer across the road), chatting, laughter and general enjoyment. Davies and Scarlett have stayed in the house so Ady and I get our first night in the van alone. And we have hook up so everything is charging up 🙂

Ady and I both had really bad nights sleep last night. Practical reasons included it being bloody freezing (we’d foolishly gone to sleep with just fleece blankets over us as the fire was lit and the heating on so it felt warm. At 3am the fire had gone out, as had the heating.), the camping mats not being fully inflated and therefore not the most comfortable arrangement after a full day of lifting furniture around and cleaning, emotional reasons included it being our last night in the house before embarking on a crazy adventure.

So this morning when I finally woke properly after a 5am conversation with Ady including the dialogue; ‘are you alright?’ ‘no, I’m bloody shitting myself!’ it all felt quite surreal and tinged with sleep deprivation. Ady was sorting the garage, I made breakfast and ran the kids a last bath as they’d run out of time for one yesterday evening and then Dad arrived. He’d been in a slightly strange mood yesterday which I put down to feeling wobbly about us going but today he was fine and stood for ages looking at the chickens and checking details on our itinery for the next week or so.

Ady did a run to the tip, I started loading more stuff into Willow and the kids had their bath, then Dad took me along to the letting agent to drop the keys and paperwork off. Mike, the agent was the perfect encounter, standing up to shake my hand, brimming over with a great mix of envy (if my wife would agree we’d be off doing the same thing tomorrow, I’d love to do it) and positivity (you are going to have such a great year, don’t give the house a second thought, have a fab adventure!) and telling me he’ll be praying for a gorgeous sunny summer and thinking of us along the way. 🙂 Yay Mike!

Mike also said the inventory isn’t happening until tomorrow so actually we then had until lunchtime tomorrow to be out of the house. This meant we lingered far longer over the final clean up and packing up and finally left about 2pm. It poured with rain for the duration so everything took longer to clean as we were treading muddy footprints behind us and having to take shoes on and off all the time but we eventually got there.

Ady and the kids headed straight for Chris and Julie’s in Willow while I followed in my car via Boots for a plastic mirror having realised I’d already packed the camping one into storage and my Dad’s to drop off one final box of kitchen stuff that we’d ambitiously thought we’d bring in Willow but since thought better of.

Chris and Julie have been perfect hosts, full of tips (both of them have had campervans and lived in them for summers in years gone by), loads of enthusiasm for it all and a lovely dinner complete with ham bought in our honour. They are early-to-bedders anyway so we retired to the van at 10pm and I think we could all do with the early night anyway. I’m going to do a quick post to WW and then try and get some sleep.

A huge job list today, pretty much all of which we got done. I did quite a bit of managing though as Davies and Scarlett were prone to meander about a bit if not guided and Ady has a tendancy to clean frantically while not actually achieving much. He spent ages on the draining board and kitchen windowsills today, valuable contributions both but perhaps not the best use of time… 😉

So I directed Ady to the bedroom to pack up his crate of clothes, empty the bed drawers into boxes and so on, while I wrapped up a couple of ebay parcels, made some phonecalls, typed up a How to guide for the house and chickens and emailed it across to the letting agent. Then Scarlett and I nipped out to post the parcels, drop the keys and payment for the hall hire off at the party hall, get petrol for my car and collect a small fan heater we’d reserved from Argos. I plugged that in in Willow to dry out the last of a small patch that had been wet in the kids bunk – we’ve had loads of heavy rain since getting the van back and no further leaking has happened so hopefully it is now sorted.

I packed up my clothes crate – mine seems fuller although I am maintaining it is because my clothes are bigger than everyone elses! 😆 and emptied the wardrobe completely boxing up the last few things that are not coming with us but we’d still needed til this point.

Then, to coin a phrase, we had lunch 🙂

Davies managed to get pretty much everything he is bringing into two rucksacks and his clothes crate so we issued Tarly with the same challenge and Davies pledged to help her while Ady and I went to start loading Willow properly. There has been some ‘shoving’ going on with stuff getting put in there so I insisted that everything was pulled out and then put back in properly so we all know where everything is and it is all logical with things we will need regularly in easily accessible places and things we won’t tucked away more. We put lights up around the van, stowed tools away, created a little bookshelf in one of the cupboards and have packed up about half of what will need to come along with us.

We then loaded my car up with rubbish from the house and garden including all the recycling from the weekend and headed for the tip then went on into town. We wanted to check out Millets to see if anything sprang out at us as useful to spend Ady’s vouchers from work on (it didn’t) and to get Tarly another rucksack. She has one but it is quite tatty and as Davies has two and has managed to contain all his stuff within them it seemed sensible to get her a second one to do the same. We did that, wandered round Poundland for a while lured in by the bright lights and then came home.

The kids had tea, finished packing up Tarly’s rucksacks and watched more taped stuff on TV while Ady and I went through all the kitchen cupboards and the freezers. We had a late and ecclectic meal consisting of food still in the freezers, packed another five or so boxes full of kitchen stuff, created another two boxes of kitchen stuff to come with us in the van and then emptied the chiller too and turned it off to defrost.

I read the kids the first couple of chapters of How to Train Your Dragon, most of it with them mouthing the words along with me they have listened to David Tennant reading it so many times on the audiobook and then they went to bed, Davies with the kindle tonight, which he brought back to me having bought Mr Gum using a combination of the text to talk function along with a bit of reading and typing in 😯

I’ve emailed our first hosts to confirm our booking, arranged places to stay on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week and am hoping we can have Saturday night parked on my parents drive before heading off to a campsite midway between here and Devon for Sunday night.

Tomorrow is van hire and moving day – off for my last sleep in my bed…

After a truly hungover Friday during which I failed to do much towards leaving the house next week let alone preparing for the party I was feeling better on Saturday but hugely unprepared for the party. I think it’s the first party ever when we’ve not had someone staying with us the night before so it felt quite surreal just being us in a pretty empty house. The kids and I finished decorating the cake with some details and then we headed to the hall.

There were already people there, a young band dressed all in black with greasy hair and expensive electric guitars doing a photoshoot with lots of dry ice on the stage. We were pretty early but I poked my head in to ask if there was a kettle and cups as the hall hire lady hadn’t been sure when I’d asked on Thursday and it’s a couple of years since we last hired it. The photographer was very friendly so I decided to ask if we could come in and start putting our posters up and he agreed, which meant we had a crossover of the band finishing the last few shots on the stage including some strange poses where the drummer was bound and gagged with black tape while the rest of the band mimed whacking him with their guitars and more dry ice was blown around while we blue tacked inspirational quotes up around the room.

I’d been wondering how to decorate the hall this time – in the past we’ve either had a party theme; Halloween, Wallace and Gromit, Princesses, Doctor Who or a celebration of Scarlett – this time I went for quotes that I find inspiring with regard to getting out there and really living life, chasing your dreams or to quote someone who I missed lots yesterday ‘getting off your backside and living your life’. 😉 So I spent time at work the last couple of shifts looking at quotes online and wrote down all the ones that meant something to me. Some just made me laugh for various reasons (I had one by Dale Carnegie who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People and was the creator of a course Ady attended a few years ago for work which used to make me laugh every time he came home and shared gems from the workshops with me) but most were ones that I genuinely felt talked to me or were relevant to us. The photographer chatted for a few minutes at the end to find out what we had the hall for and loved the idea of our year – I loved the idea we might have been lurking at the photoshoot for a band who may one day be famous :). My final nod towards organising a party was to create a cd with songs including wandering or wondering.

At midday, the official start time of the party we were sat in an empty hall, just the four of us and the cake. Babs rang to say she was almost with us and I had a complete wobble about inviting people to a party with no food or drink and send Ady and Davies out to Asda to buy some. Foolishly as it turned out, as by the time they had returned several people had arrived and the table was rapidly filling up. I’m not at all sure where the next four hours went really – there was dancing, chatting, hugging, laughing, blasts from the past in the shape of a couple of guests and worlds colliding as local friends met not-so-local friends and some people were able to put faces to names.

Just as I went to nip off to the loo we got called up to go on the stage so I ran off anyway and came back to be presented with some fantastic gifts – a kindle with a gorgeous handmade cover and the most fabulous table cloth ever made of self timer photos of our friends 🙂 🙂 🙂 Truly overwhelmed at the generosity and thoughtfulness of them and also now appreciative of the stress and angst caused by some of my comments in various places in the weeks leading up to the party ;). I got Ady to do the speech as I was far too likely to get emotional and silly so I threw that into making a spectacle of myself by line dancing instead 😉 😆

I realised suddenly it was getting dark and we were supposed to have already been out of the hall so a concerted effort from everyone meant we had it cleared, hoovered and loaded into cars in record time, goodbyes to those heading off for home said and the remainder of us decamped to our house. A squeeze for 18 adults and 23 children 😯 (even more 😯 I just did a quick count up of how many extra people were at the party and that was another 18 adults and 20 children – 79 people in total, yep, we definitely needed that hall – and that’s a lot of goodbye hugs in the last week given the 13 people at my work meal and the 12 people at Reading Group. I’m starting to feel my wussiness at being in bed before midnight last night was almost justified!)

A lovely evening with people drifting off as the night wore on until we hit 1130pm and I just couldn’t stay awake any more. I had a cracking headache and my bed was calling with the siren song of ‘just three more sleeps’ so I sloped off and collected Davies and Scarlett from the kids hang out to come to bed with me and sent the other kids downstairs so I had a chance of actually getting to sleep. The kids and I cuddled up and chatted for a while and when I checked the clock it was 1230am so I turned out the light.

Today I woke about 830am and could hear Ady chatting in the kitchen. When I emerged from the bedroom though there was no one to be found so Scarlett and I sat on the stairs for a while talking about how excited we were :). Ady had gone out to sweep the chickens area but after a chat about the plans for the next few days I persuaded him back in the house and we found people had started to get up so we decamped to the lounge.

A nice easy morning spent chatting with Chris & Helen, Kirsty & James, Jax and Jo while the kids were off playing in various combinations. We finally cut the Willow cake which had been forgotten at the party thanks to the line dancing and then the rush to clear the hall. A plan had been put forward to head to the beach so eventually we did all manage it, saying bye to Jax who was heading for home.

The kids pretty much all got wet, particularly Scarlett and Elinor who both got swept over by a large wave and ended up drenched head to toe! 😆 Scarlett predictably got up and said ‘that was BRILLIANT!’ but chattering teeth and soaked clothing meant the end of the game so we headed back to the cars, stripped children off and brought them back home again. Davies had a shower, Scarlett and Alex had a (very, very long) bath, Kirsty made hot chocolate for children and we had leftovers lunch and more cake.

Further chatting before finally our last guests left us – about five minutes after Kirsty & James said goodbye Helen rang to ask if Chris’s coat was still hanging up – yes. Five minutes after that Kirsty texted to ask if they’d left a bag in the kitchen – also yes! Chris (who never normally forgets anything 😉 ) came back and kindly took The Barts bag to pass on too.

Davies and Scarlett had tea, watched Flushed Away (sky has now been turned off so we just have freeview channels and they are wanting to watch everything stored on the HD DVD player before we go) and then went to bed, theoretically for an early night but neither of them managed it. I did set the kindle up for Tarly on text to talk mode so she had what sounded like Stephen Hawkins reading her a bedtime story. Davies appeared at least twice and shared some of his ‘I’m worried about X and excited about Y’ thoughts with us which we talked through.

Ady and I had a very late curry dinner and made a job list for the next two days to work through. I’ve blogged in all places, mourned the fact I stupidly didn’t take any pictures yesterday including of the finished decorated cake and now I’m off for the penultimate sleep in my bed.

It is a universal truth that if you have a crashing hangover men will come and dig the road up outside your bedroom window from 8am 🙁

The four cockerels were doing a crowing chorus, there was a mini digger trashing our daffodils on the verge outside the house putting in electricity to the new street light and the kids were being rowdy so despite needing at least another four hours sleep I got up. Ady had put cinnamon roll dough on for me – I’d be trying to drunkenly do it last night but the kids had had pancakes for tea so there wasn’t enough milk so Ady said he’d get some milk and stick the dough on for me before he went to work. He’s not been sleeping at all well and was downstairs by about 5am so I was aware of him too. I made the cinnamon rolls, quickly realised that I would not be eating any when I couldn’t even face my cup of tea so sat and felt sorry for myself on the sofa for an hour.

I’d just decided I could face food after all and made myself another cup of tea when Dad arrived so he joined me in a late breakfast and gave me a nice legitimate excuse to do nothing off my job list and sit chatting instead, which I’m sure aided my return to wellbeing all the quicker.

He’d come to put some trim around the bath and check what else needs doing in the house on Monday and Tuesday, but also I suspect just to see us. He’s seen me every day this week except yesterday and the kids every single day. We had a very companiable couple of hours chatting. He’s feeling his age at the moment I think and even made a couple of comments about deep, pondering things which Dad is very not prone to.

We all had lunch and Dad left about 3pm at which point I intended getting on with stuff and did sort out the landlord insurance for the house online then there was a knock at the door and it was Ady and Tom who had brought him home. This was very welcome, because it was great to see Tom, because Ady was home loads earlier than I’d expected and because I’d thought I’d need to go and collect him. He’d had a good last day too and been presented with £60 worth of Millets vouchers, an emergency car tool kit, a first aid kit, about six bottles of wine, a massive box of biscuits, a big container of screenwash and another of deicer 🙂 he had a card full of ‘will miss you loads’ comments too.

Tom stayed for a coffee and to laugh at me in my hungover state and then he left. Ady and I sort of looked at each other a bit dazed really, realising that neither of us have a job any more 😯 which galvanised us into action and we cleared the bookcase, put all the stuff that’s been collecting in a big heap to ‘go in the van’ into the van – not organised, just shoved in there for now, we’ll do a proper organising where everything goes on Monday in there, and cleared the playroom completely.

Ady and Davies went off to get some bits for dinner while I got the fire lit. The kids are having yet another sleepover so they were awake for ages. We had dinner and both kept looking at each other and laughing about how tired and dazed we both look.

On which note, given I don’t expect tomorrow will be an early-to-bed evening I am off for one of my last nights in my bed.

My last day at work. A really odd feeling leaving a job without another one to go to. I’ve done it once or twice before; once I was asked to leave a job and didn’t have another one lined up, once I left one myself without another lined up because I hated it so much I simply couldn’t stay any more. It felt most similar to when I left a job because I was 39 weeks pregnant with Davies I think, except instead of jokes about sleepless nights and dirty nappies there were jokes about freezing cold nights and muddy shoes – oh and dogging, the fact WWOOFing is so similiar sounding tickles everyone.

I spent much of the day sitting on the enquiry desk which is always my favourite place anyway. One of the book group people came in and we ordered in the next few books for the group and then she gave me a big hug and said I had made the library ‘fun’. Not at all sure that is something libraries are meant to be ;). I did some tidying up loose ends with emails to the Book group members, cleared my tray, signed my keys back in and put my last few books back on shelves. The last hour or so dragged a bit really and then I went round saying goodbye to shelves and stairs and book trolleys :).

Back home I had a very quick turnaround to get ready to go out. Ady had the kids with him for most of the day and dropped them off with Dad for a couple of hours in the afternoon so he could go into the office. They’d spent the morning cleaning out Ady’s car ready to be handed back. Ady had run me a bath and ironed a top for me and I had just painted my nails when I got a text to say my ride was already outside five minutes early – so Ady and the kids had to help me put my boots on so I didn’t smudge my nails! And yes, I know, princessy behaviour like that won’t be able to continue in the weeks and months to come!

We collected another 2 people along the way and were first at the restaurant. It’s one of those where you go up and order and pay for your food which I like as it means no one ends up subsidising anyone else. They also have a two for a tenner deal so we all chose a dinner buddy and got our meals for a fiver each :). I was really touched and slightly overwhelmed at the turn out as historically the staff at Lancing are dreadful for not going to evening get togethers. But every single member of staff came, along with three ex members of staff and Brenda the big boss librarian who I run Book Group with. So there were 14 of us in all.

Sian had bought me a gorgeous little notebook with a purple silk cover and recycled handmade pages and written a very lovely message in it so that got passed round the table and everyone wrote something in it including contact details so we can stay in touch. There are some very tear jerking things written in it 🙂 I did some seat hopping as it was a long banquet style table so I could only talk to about 3 people at once so I made sure I could have some time with everyone.

It did mean I didn’t do much eating though, the food wasn’t great and so much talking meant I left most of it. It didn’t prevent me drinking unfortunately and I suddenly found myself with about 5 glasses of wine lined up that people had bought me. I should have course have left them or tipped them into a plant pot or something, but I didn’t. And I regretted that about an hour after I got home and even more when I woke up this morning… 🙁

But, while still sober enough to function I was presented with a bottle of wine, a card and a £30 gift card from everyone, with strict instructions to spend it on treats as and when I felt I needed them most over the course of the year :). Brenda made a lovely speech about what I will be missed for (sense of humour, irreverance and unusual qualities for library staff ;)) I went round the table and said nice things about everyone and thanked them all for a lovely four years at the library. I’ve learnt loads, gained new skills, enjoyed being back in a workplace and made many friends who I hope to stay in touch with. I think it is the most appreciated I’ve ever felt in a job and whilst it wasn’t challenging enough for me long term it was something I felt I was good at and worthwhile.
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More chatting (and drinking) and then we all said our goodbyes. I made at least two of the people getting a lift home with me cry, and cried myself by getting all emotional about how much I loved them and will miss them. I wish I’d left at least two of the glasses of wine on the table but it was a lovely evening and a true celebration of leaving my job for all the right reasons.

Today’s job list included making a cake for the party on Saturday and moving more boxes to Mum & Dad’s. I also had a couple of online bits to do including a sponsored post which I was rather agonising over. I did some of the online stuff while Tarly finished a painting she was doing then we went along to Sainsburys for cake ingredients. On the way home Ady rang and Davies took the call as I was driving and asked me to ring him back. I did and he said he’d just crashed his car 🙁 He’d been in nose to tail stop: start traffic and managed to start rather than stop and go up the back of someone. It all seemed quite amicable and was at about 20mph so no injury and no real damage done but as new cars do they had both creased up a fair bit. I told him to go and get a coffee and calm down, to ring work and tell them and to ring me back as he was in a bit of a state. He’d managed to not get any details off the other driver, who had taken his business card and reg number. Ady was clearly at fault so it doesn’t matter too much as I guess the other driver will be in touch but it did occur to me they may not be insured. It also means there is likely to be paperwork and further contact needed to sort it out after Ady leaves although he talked to the HR manager this evening and they may pay for the repairs on the two cars rather than claim on the company insurance in which case Ady won’t be needed for anything.

I got cracking on the baking and we had lunch, I finished the rest of the online stuff I needed to do and then Ady came home for a coffee. He gave me a hand loading my car up with the first run of boxes and some bits for the tip including the old battery off the van which needed to go in for recycling. We took a load to Dads via the tip and then came home for a second load. The dalek is now at Mum & Dad’s and all that is left now is the kitchen which we’ll clear on Friday.

The cake went better than anticipated and is already assembled and iced and just needs decorating now which I’ll do on Friday. I can’t quite believe how well my planning is going. There, now I’ve jinxed it!

Davies and Scarlett were desperate for a sleepover, which amuses me so much – they spend all day, every day together, will be sharing a bunk in the van for the year yet still beg to sleep in the same room now. I was so adamant they would have their own bedrooms because I felt personal space was so important – I guess they may be less keen to be together all the time by the end of the year ;).

I fed the kids, Ady chainsawed the last of the firewood which should pretty much perfectly last us til next week and we all watched One Man & His Campervan. We did bad, good, learnt:
Davies:
Bad: Hurt my leg
Good: Finished emptying my bedroom
Learnt: Martin Dorey (One Man & His Campervan) can speak French

Scarlett:
Bad: I thought there would be cinnamon rolls for breakfast and there wasn’t
Good: I finished my duck painting
Learnt: that more girls are abducted than boys

Ady:
Bad: I crashed my car
Good: No one was hurt
Learnt: it is easy to change your spouse at Costco

Nic:
Bad: Ady is blue 🙁
Good: Productive day
Learnt: About ebuzzing – wrote my first sponsored post and earned forty quid – blimey! Only took about 20 minutes to write 🙂

The kids went to bed, we had baths and I cooked dinner. Ady seems to be feeling a bit better about the whole car accident and promises me it won’t put a cloud over him for the rest of the week.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, dough on for rolls for lunch, various laundry processed, chickens dealt with and job list written for the day and systematically ticked off.

So this morning I did car insurance for the Sharan sorting (I’ve moved to a PAYG policy and needed to check the end date), cancelling breakdown cover for the Sharan and then spent time with Scarlett in her room boxing everything up to take away while Davies finished his room. We had some tears, she had chosen her favourite 20 soft toys to stay in her bed and today we needed to reduce that to about 10 to bring with us – still excessive but this is not an endurance test and it is not for me to dictate what is important to her. She did well, worked out what she could cope with and what she couldn’t and then it was lunchtime.

We had home made soup and home made rolls which were delicious and very filling – to the point that we all had to sit down for a while to let our lunch go down before embarking on Davies’ room. He’d also done a fab job but his boxes were rather too heavy so while I spread them across a couple more boxes sufficiently to mean I could carry them down the stairs Davies and Scarlett worked on packing up the stuff he is bringing.

My car comfortably takes 8 boxes so we loaded it up and went to Dad’s via the post office where I needed to send an ebay parcel on it’s way and collect forms for getting a car tax refund and doing a SORN declaration for the Sharan. Mum has apparently seen the boxes in the spare room and refrained from comment so Dad was relieved he doesn’t seem to be in too much trouble 😉 . Back home for a second load which was much harder as it was 8 boxes from Davies’ room. So, down the stairs, through the hallway, down the fairly steep front door steps, past the narrow bit between the pillar of the driveway and Willow (which involves turning boxes the narrow way round), into the car, then from car along drive way, into house (up steps) and into the spare room at Mum & Dad’s. I was pretty wheezy by about a quarter of the way in.

We laughed at the idea of drum roll through the village road where speed humps meant a five minute rumbling from the box containing Davies’ drum kit. We laughed less when on driving round a corner the box rolled forward and the kids had to catch a drum!

Second load dispatched the rain started to fall so any vague thoughts of a third run ended there. There was a moment when I was running through with Dad what was left to do when I could see him suddenly struggling so had to stop talking. We have talked often about living together one day and I still hold out hope it could happen. For all our many differences and clashes on things I will miss him terribly and I know we will leave a gaping hole in his life. Argh for changes and the tricky side of the adventure.

Back home again I made a cup of tea and washed up lunch stuff and was dealing with more laundry when Ady arrived home. We all gathered the books we have been stashing on one bookshelf in the main bookcase and created a small library. All non-fiction and hopefully all relevant to the year including the ladybird series of ‘what to look for in Spring / Winter / Summer / Autumn’, our collection of Collins Little Gem books, various wildlife, tree, bird, seashore, plant, insect, flower spotter books, food for free, some night sky and weather books, whittling, survival skills, fishing and so on. Not at all sure what we’ll do for fiction yet and it will be mostly me who struggles with that, along with the kids at bedtime I guess but hopefully we can pick up second hand books at charity shops and drop them off when picking up the next one along the way. Am trying really hard not to think about the Jean Auel, Jodi Picoult, Dorothy Koomson, Jill Mansell books due out in the next few months I was at the top of the library reservation list for… let alone the next Andy Stanton, Michael Morpurgo etc.

Ady had bought the kids liver to try for their tea so he cooked that. They both ate it but agreed they are not desperate to have it again. I’m really not keen on liver or kidney so totally understand although I am keen to try other, rarer parts of animals. We didn’t manage bad, good, learnt but all agreed we can do a double one tomorrow spanning two days.

We watched One Man and his Campervan and then I shot off to Book Group. I was cutting it fine but sort of expected to walk in and find it already set up, so was quite surprised when everyone was outside waiting and I had to let them all in! Brenda was running late so while the group all gathered chairs I set up drinks etc and then Brenda arrived too. We were both presented with flowers and cards (she is taking voluntary redundancy so it was her last time too) and there followed much chat about how the group will arrange themselves to carry on – was much heartened that they will and hope to make it along to maybe their December meeting :).

I had many cuddles, wishes for good luck and happy adventuring and my flowers some willow in them, Rose (not swinger) did the organising and specifically asked :). Lots of people took the blog details and it was all very lovely :).

Back home the kids were in bed but got up when I came home, Scarlett was painting a picture from a photo of ducks (yes, painting in bed!) and Davies had questions about whether you can be an illustrator *and* an author.

Ady has been reading the WW blog – having given all his workmates the link for it he felt maybe he should have a look and as a result is suddenly realising what a big deal it is I think! 🙂 I am contenting myself that this time next week we will be going to sleep in a totally empty house and this last gutty bit of hulking boxes about will be done with.

I watched the Morpurgo lecture which made me cry, guess it’s not just his books and stories then, it’s the man himself. One day I hope to shake his hand.

I am dilemma-ing about a couple of ebuzzing things I’ve been offered on the WW blog and will need to decide about tomorrow but for now I really should stop using up my mifi megabites!

It was Pulborough Brooks day today and we’ve not made it along for months but we made the effort today as it’ll be the last time we go there for quite a while. It was another gorgeous spring-like day. I saw one of Julie’s friends in the car park but despite seeing Julie’s car we didn’t catch up with them until nearly halfway round. The kids and I walked for ages on our own chatting and looking for signs of spring, then Julie’s friend R caught us up with her daughter F. She is one of those very friendly people who launch straight into talking about themselves as though you are already intimate with all sorts of details about them. She’s very sweet if a little full on.

We then caught up with Julie & co and walked the last half altogether before retiring to the playground for a sit down chat while the kids carried on playing. Lovely to sit in the sunshine although Julie was a little down and loathe to talk too much about why as she felt it wasn’t fair when we’re about to head off. Managed to be some help I hope. I really hope she manages to be online more or we at least have fairly regular phone calls as I’d hate our closeness to be a casualty of our time away.

Lorna had an appointment at the hospital to either remove or replace her cast so they headed off and we left at the same time. On collecting the kids from where they’d been playing they appeared with a dead barn owl :(. It had been dead some time and started rotting away but was tagged and one of the ones that reside and are watched there so we took it in to give to the volunteers at the visitor centre.

I was quite disappointed at the staff response really; the kids were both upset but interested in it and I’d have hoped they’d been more engaged with them over it really but the girl on the desk sort of flinched, snatched it into a paper bag and ushered them away. They were not expecting thanks but some acknowledgement and explanation of what will happen to it would have been good. They were all (particularly my two) really interested in the ringing, how old it might have been, any ideas about cause of death and so on. I’m going to email them and see if I can get more details and hope it was passed to the relevant person to get those sorts of answers.

We said goodbye and headed for home. We listened to Jeremy Vine talking about disabled badges for parking and Davies piped up after a while with ‘I wish I had a blue badge, you can do all sorts of things if you have one’. I bit straightaway with ‘how could you say such a thing, a blue badge means you are disabled and need the special priviledges because you can’t function without them. How can you possibly wish for a disability? I’m really surprised at you Davies’. To which he looked puzzled and then said ‘No, sorry I meant a Blue Peter badge, that’s what I want so you can do lots of things with it like go to Legoland’ 😆 😆

Back at home we had lunch and I had an unsuccessful attempt at hacking up the last few very large logs. I failed and was very cross about it but they are beyond the axe and probably need a chainsaw really. The broadband and then the landline both went off within about an hour of each other which felt both a bit scary and pretty liberating, and of course means more things can be boxed up.

I then decided to start moving boxing to Mum & Dad’s so we took two carfulls of boxes over there. We probably have another four car fulls to go and then stuff in the van next week. I’m hoping to move all boxed stuff over by the end of Wednesday so I can focus on the party on Friday. I imagine Dad is still getting shrieked at about the fact boxes have started to arrive over there but he seemed pretty philosophical about it 😆

Back home again I drank tea, did some party decorations, booked a campsite for the week before the first host so we can have a mini holiday down in Devon before we start, getting used to the van and having a transition stage with just the four of us. The kids had dinner and Ady arrived home in time for One Man & His Campervan and we realised we’ll be in the right place for the salmon leaping this year 🙂 🙂

We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: Found a dead barn owl at Pulborough Brooks
Good: Had a good time with Jack & Maisie at PB
Learnt: Today is National Bird Box Day

Scarlett:
Bad: Dead barn owl upset me
Good:First proper close up look at a barn owl
Learnt: what a pessimist is.

Ady:
Bad: Still ache from the weekend!
Good: No more Mondays!
Learnt: There is a gas emitted from fruit which makes cut flowers wilt faster

Nic:
Bad: Julie was a bit low today and I felt like I’m abandoning her 🙁
Good: Taken some boxes to my parents house!
Learnt: We’ll get a refund from the TV licence people.

We all tried sushi, some of us liked it, some didn’t, the kids went to bed, Ady and I had steak and exchanged boxes of chocolates (the kids both got some chocolate hearts this morning and had both made cards for us).

I’m Nic and I used to not eat lentils and blog every day!

Yesterday morning we’d arranged to go and collect Willow, so I made some cinnamon rolls (at kids request I’d stuck the dough on the night before) and we left them to prove and headed over to Lance. He stuck to the promised £150 which included the antifreeze we’d asked him to do as an afterthought :). Ady drove her home and the kids went with him. I’d double backed as Ady had forgotten to collect the petrol can so then couldn’t work out which route home they would have taken in the van and knew they’d be stopping for petrol. So I beat them home, got the cinnamon rolls in the oven and the kettle on and tried to ring the Tax Credits Helpline. Thanks to Kirsty’s prodding and a borrower at work also nagging me about checking entitlements I’d decided I would ring them after all but just got stuck in a queue for ages. There was a knock at the door and it was my Dad so I gave up on the queue and then started fretting that I’d now been home well over 20 minutes and Ady and the kids had a good 5 minute head start on me so even allowing for a petrol stop they were being a long time.

They had struggled to get the van started again at the petrol station and I know from reading a Bedford CF forum that it is a very common problem with them restarting while still warm. Fortunately Ady was approached by an older bloke who had driven one himself for years and gave him some moral support and starting it advice which helped to keep him unflustered and did get it started again. It’s been fine ever since and has been on and off the drive several times and started no problem.

We all had cinnamon rolls and tea and coffee together and then Ady went out to start washing my car, the kids went to play in the garden and Dad and I chatted for half an hour or so before he headed off. It was a gorgeous day, bright blue skies and sunshine and real warmth which was great, a real spring is coming feel perfect for heading off in a campervan :).

The kids and I cleared the inside of my car out and then Ady hoovered it all while we did some organising inside Willow. We had been planning to shelve the wardrobe but I tried a stacking crate and was really chuffed to discover they fit and four will stack easily in there so we’ll be having one stacking crate of clothes each with a bit of room for them all to be slightly overflowing, pjs can be shoved in sleeping bags, coats & shoes will have space elsewhere so that is just for underwear, tops, jeans and jumpers which I reckon will be fine. Everyone nominated the cupboard they will have for the rest of our personal stuff and we did lots of grinning at each other like fools in our ‘the sun is shining, we’ve got our van back and we’re less than 2 weeks away from the start of our adventure’ excitement :).

We did then find a small patch of dampness up in the kids bunk which on closer inspection had spread through the sponge mattress, corner of the carpet and onto the wooden bit which is the base of our bed. It was clearly recent and not mildew or moldy and was the corner above the passenger seat which had been soaking wet so either there is a recently happened leak somewhere or a window had been left open or the heavy rain had caught it at an angle previously not exposed in the last couple of weeks as it certainly wasn’t happening before it left us. We’ve got heaters in there drying it out and having checked the price of a replacement sponge / foam (£60) we’ve hung that one over the washing line in the rain today and are hoping the wind and sunshine forecast over the next week will come along and dry it fresh and aired. I took the cover along to the laundrette for a wash and dry and Ady scrubbed down and disinfected the wooden board and Ady machined the carpet so no lasting damage done and hopefully a one off. Ady pugged up the area which has been previously pugged at least once where it could potentially have come from so if is was that it should now be fixed and we’ll staple down some polythene over the bed base before putting everything back to ensure it doesn’t come through on to the kids bedding if it leaks again.

I quite enjoyed my 90 minutes in the laundrette, the door was open and the sun was shining in and I had a book with me and it was just nice to be doing something necessary and productive while getting to sit and read in the sunshine at the same time! 🙂

Back at home I fed the kids and then Ady and I got changed and Mum & Dad arrived to look after them as we were off to Mike and Rose (the not swingers) for a Bye Then dinner party. Dad ran us up there and we were greeted with glasses of wine and the first course of a seven course meal. Stuffed quails eggs (with mayonnaise, tumeric and veggie bacon). They were nice although the whites are even more rubbery in texture than hens eggs so I’d not bother again.

We moved through for the second course to what is their recently converted dining room, previously a second bedroom in their bungalow. They have pulled out a gas fire where the chimney is and are hoping to be able to open up the open fire again, particularly having seen and loved ours. I’m not big on dining rooms (all about the tables) really but it was beautifully done out and Mike does lay a good table with sparkling glassware and proper table linen. The second course was a warm lentil salad. I coped as it was cooked with plenty of spices and large pieces of walnut to give crunch so I was able to wash it down with several glugs of wine and pretend there were no lentils in it.

We paused to look at the photos from their New Year trip to New York which looked fab – they were there for the heavy snow and didn’t go to Times Square to see in 2011 but instead joined the smaller but still pretty big crowd in Central Park instead. Loved looking at their pictures and remembering our trip there back in 2000. Will definitely get there again one day.

Third course was delicious; apple and parsnip soup with parsnip crisps. Very chunky pieces of apple and a nice warming hint of spices. Liked that a lot.

Next came a palate cleansing melon sorbet, very nice and refreshing.

Sadly the Main Event course five was mushrooms. I’m sure the reason we’ve avoided mushrooms before is because they are one of the things that I do state in advance I really don’t like. I am very aware of what a nightmare I am to cater for and in the main will at least try things if they are set infront of me and someone has gone to effort to make them. For the average vegetarian (or even the average person probably) I am just too tricky to provide with a list of what I’ll eat and not eat so I try to pick out the bits I really can’t cope with, at least try everything to see if I might actually like it (and sometimes I do) and rely on scraping things onto Ady’s plate if all else fails. I guess my No Mushroom stance must have been forgotten though and on a plate of mushroom stroganoff served on a bed of rice with a pea shoot salad there is not many places to hide it really. I tried a bit to check that I really don’t like mushrooms and no, I really don’t like mushrooms. I ate the pea shoot salad which was very nice although I did comment that I hated to ponder where pea shoots come from in the world in February, picked the mushrooms off the rice and ate that and then Ady saved me by saying ‘that was delicious Mike, poor Nic doesn’t really like mushrooms much’ so I was able to put my cutlery together and say ‘the rest is delicious though’.

Course six was probably my favourite, twice baked stilton souffle served with port. Very nice :).

A long conversation about what port is ensued with us speculating on whether you could just mix red wine and brandy together and make port yourself.

The final course was Sussex Pond Pudding, served with a bottle of prosecco and a touching speech from Mike about how he hoped the pudding would be enough to lure us back to Sussex at the end of our year as we would be much missed :).

Then we had tea, coffee, brandy and posh chocolates and heated discussions about whether literacy and numeracy are king and how important it is to know 7×8 and what the correct means to get that knowledge are. It was, as always a very enjoyable evening in their company.

Ady and I tumbled home at about 130am gossiping as we went and getting the giggles as we approached and then overtook a very drunk bloke interacting with a woman about to get into a car and drive off. I can’t recall what we gave them as stories but I know we had them named and a whole life planned out for them as we walked along.

Davies was still up when we got in so I took him to bed and sat with him awhile before coming back down and chatting with my parents for a bit. They left about 2ish I guess, Ady went to bed and I just closed my eyes for a second and then woke up after 3am sprawled on the sofa freezing cold.

Today we all had a lie in, some of us even longer than others 🙂 Ady was efficient with oven cleaning, the kids did something Valentines Day related and creative and I boxed up 2 boxes of stuff from the lounge. Sometime in the next 24 hours the landline and internet go off so further boxing up can happen then but we are pretty close to clear in the lounge now with just stuff that will go over to Mum & Dad’s in the van on the last day.

Mum & Dad arrived and Dad touched up a couple of areas of paintwork which had flaked off since he did it in December, Ady got the dinner on and Mum and I nipped along to the nearest Tesco as she wanted a new laptop / netbook. We ended up getting her one identical to mine. She has an ancient one which Frazer uses a lot and is slow and filled with things she struggles to use so she has now given him that one and has a new one which I’ve set up everything on tabs from her google homepage including a gmail email address so she doesn’t even need to use OE, quick links to our WW blog and our flickrstream so she can keep up with us.

We all had dinner together which was nice – a mix of roast chicken and roast beef as we had one of each in the freezer. It was good to see them but Dad was in one of his bolshy moods and Mum took the opportunity of not having seen me for a while to unload plenty of stored up ‘woe is me, my life is rubbish’ stuff. I do have enough physical and personality resemblances to my Dad to know I’m not a cuckoo but it’s just as well otherwise I really would wonder sometimes, particularly when I see so much of both Ady and I in Davies and Scarlett.

We all watched Countryfile then the kids went to bed and Mum, Dad and I watched the People’s Supermarket together. Ady went off for a bath and I went and sat with Tarly for 10 minutes til she was asleep (unsettled from us being out last night and had fallen asleep on the sofa and been put to bed half still dressed by my parents last night (so that’s one not put to bed at all and one just about chucked there after she’d fallen asleep, not great on the babysitting stakes really 😉 )) then said goodbye to my parents before having a bath myself.

So I ate more lentils, please don’t hold it against me. I have this nasty suspicion it may be a (quite literal) taste of the year to come…

I worked today. It’s a funny feeling being so close to leaving somewhere, particularly when I have such an unusual reason for leaving. Before I have left jobs to have babies, to change career, due to promotion or in one memorable instance because they asked me to go and called me a taxi to speed me on my way.

The day passed quite merrily with me in a very distantly supportive role at Baby Rhyme Time as the new Rhyme Time Lady had her first solo attempt. My lovely colleague Sarah had baked a cake to honour our last shift working together and then she cried on me twice during the course of the day about me leaving. 🙁

Ady rang me twice saying ‘do you want the good news or the bad news?’ I always go for bad first and the first time it was to say he’d been to Lance (the mechanic) to drop off a fuel can of petrol – having driven past at least 3 petrol stations on the way from Richard to Lance yesterday he told me on the way home that he’d been really worried about how low the petrol was. I asked why he’d not stopped for petrol and he replied that he didn’t really know! So he’d then fretted about it overnight and taken a can along. When he arrived he discovered the van was already at the MOT test centre. So it had started this morning and got there without fuel. The bad news was it cost nearly £8 to fill the fuel can when you’d always used to struggle getting a fivers worth in.

The second call was at 5pm to say the bad news was he couldn’t go and collect it as I wasn’t home to run him there but the good news was Willow was MOTd and ready to collect. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

The rest of the day the others had spent bimbling about from what I can tell. They left the house after I did this morning, came home for lunch and beat me back home again in the evening by a good hour or more. They had watched various animal documentaries on TV and had a nice day together.

I got home and we watched One Man & His Campervan then the kids finished off watching Peter Pan on dvd that they’d been halfway through. We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies
Bad: my PSP keeps crashing (on one particular game.)
Good: Had a good day out with Daddy
Learnt: Elephants don’t forget. They’d watched a programme about an elephant that left a sanctury at a couple of years old and came back some 25 years later and seemed to recognise the people and place.

Scarlett:
Bad: Can’t find my newsletter (from Cambridge Zoological Society – she wanted to show it to me as it had her learnt today on it.)
Good: That I can still remember it without the aid of the newsletter
Learnt: a razorshell can burrow quicker than we can dig and people all over the world eat them, they are very sharp

Ady:
Bad: Pointless at work now I’m about to leave
Good:Nic’s car still starting even in the heaviest rain in weeks
Learnt: About the mating habits of sparrows – the females are about to eject the sperm of a male after mating apparently.

Nic:
Bad: Sarah at work cried today as she is sad I am leaving 🙁
Good: Willow is MOT’d!!! And at a bargain price
Learnt: about man with camera in his head – Scarlett and Michelle have both told me about it so it has to make it onto my list! Michelle mentioned it on ff and about 10 minutes later Tarly told me about it having heard it earlier today on the radio.

Bath, fizzy wine, curry, Fast & Loose on TV and now wuss o’clock. There’s a lot to do before this time next week.

The kids woke me up far too early this morning playing a loud game. As it happened I’d gone to bed fairly early (for me) so I didn’t mind too much.

Dealt with chickens etc. and bunged some cinnamon rolls in the oven (I’d made a double batch of dough a couple of days ago) and we breakfasted.

Ady came home and we went along to the mechanic to collect Willow. Both of us were nervous of a) a bigger bill b) a stroppy reception from the mechanic and c) it still not being ready, but all to no avail. The mechanic but was really friendly, charged us the mentioned 70 quid and wished us good luck, his son came and chatted to us about the plan too and sounded quite envious, the van started and Ady drove it out. We followed him in his car over to the other mechanic and despite very heavy rain it ran fine, Ady said he felt really comfortable driving it and very confident in it. The other mechanic seems to have gone into campervan renovation in a big way and had a traditional VW there that he is restoring, said he wasn’t all that busy at the moment so was pleased to have our van to do, promised to have it back for Wednesday at the latest and assured me he can get it through the MOT ‘no problem’. I am of course still poised to hear problems but keeping fingers firmly crossed we have now had the tense panicky bit just before we go that threatens the whole thing type part of the story necessary for a good story at the end of it.

Ady dropped the kids and I back home and came in for some lunch before heading off for the rest of his days work. We watched some Gastronuts and then I found a paint by numbers kit and showed Scarlett how that worked and left her to it with Davies doing some drawing and I did some sorting out in the spare room (Ady had been shoving stuff and it had gotten a bit muddled in terms of what was properly boxed up and what should be in other rooms but had found it’s way in there instead) and processed some laundry. Earlier I had condensed the contents of the two freezers in the garage into one and turned the empty one off. Little things like that bring home the fact we are leaving so imminently far more than the bigger things.

I spent some time creating an ‘About Us’ page on the blog. It now has a handful of signed up followers but I am very aware of how many more are reading it from people talking to me and from checking the stats. It’s not huge and it is mostly people we know but it is getting hits and links now from other people doing similar things, travelling, WWOOFing, off grid and self sufficiency type stuff so I wanted to put a little order in while I can still sit on a sofa and mess about with it for a couple of hours. I’d quite like to add another couple of pages in about how we came up with the plan and what we hope to achieve from it and about Home Ed and how that works for us.

I cooked the kids some tea, burgers which they’ve always previously turned noses up at but these were lovely 100% beef burgers from Tasha’s wedding and they both scoffed them and asked for more! I listed a few items on ebay which was the last remaining box of stuff we neither want to keep or take with us and we gathered up all the books from the library that we have finished with and can go back. Penultimate shift tomorrow…

Ady arrived slightly late so we paused One Man and his Campervan so we could all watch it together. We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies
Bad: I had a nightmare last night
Good:Extra excited about WWOOFing because we’re watching One Man and His Campervan and we saw Willow today.
Learnt: The reason football matches are played in two halves is because there used to be no rules so the first half would be played according to the rules of one team and the second according to the other team.

Scarlett:
Bad:Didn’t see Jack & Maisie today because Maisie is poorly
Good: Enjoyed playing with Davies
Learnt: Badgers fall from heights and hurt themselves by landing on their backs.

Ady:
Bad: passenger window left open on campervan and seat is soaking wet.
Good: really enjoyed driving the campervan 🙂
Learnt: an anagram of ‘astronomers’ is ‘no more stars’

Nic:
Bad: Didn’t cook enough dinner for the kids (did them burger and chips and suspected they wouldn’t like burgers so did one each, they loved them and could have eaten more)
Good: Feel so positive about the van
Learnt: that it takes an hour and a half to boil an ostrich egg.

Which took us to 8pm when a reminder about Human Planet came on. A speedy debate about suitability before bedtime took place and we agreed to give it a go rather than call bedtime so the kids stayed up and watched it with me. We really enjoyed it and they considered it very worthwhile and indeed kept up their end of the bargain and both went to sleep really quickly, including Scarlett without me sitting on her bedroom floor :).

Ady and I watched The 10 o’clock show which I really enjoyed tonight, felt it had found it’s stride after a wobbly start. I still don’t like Jimmy Carr though.

My last Wednesday shift today and my last working with a couple of colleagues too. They are both coming to my leaving meal next week but we had cuddles anyway 🙂

Frazer came to look after Davies and Scarlett as he is not working at the moment. The kids were thrilled to see him and really enjoyed spending the morning with him. He left when I got home as it’s his girlfriend’s birthday (they have been together nearly a year now 🙂 ) and he was taking her out for a meal. I’d love to get to know her better, she seems very nice but I guess that’s unlikely any time soon…

Ady had got up at 3am to drive to Wales for a gardening roadshow. He could have stayed over (and I think tbh I would have done, very little would induce me to get up at 3am) but he hates being away from home so chose to do it in one day. He was home by 5pm though and had had a nice day.

The kids and I had lunch and I plucked up the courage to ring the mechanic about the van.I got told he was at lunch so I battled with the old laptop trying to put rip some cds from work for a bit and then rang again. I got hold of him and he was fine with me (Ady and him had gotten quite shirty with each other yesterday on the phone), said he had started but not quite finished and it would be ready to pick up in the morning. I checked the price (have been dreading hundreds as he has clearly spent time on it even if he has not done the work, plus he did recover it from here on his truck so could feasibly charge even if it would be a bit low to do so) and was told ‘about 70 quid’ so said I’d bring cash hoping that will secure the price a little. In the meantime I had rung the other mechanic who services it and asked if the manifold can be welded, he reckons not but said it could be pugged to get through an MOT. I arranged to drop it off tomorrow to him, for him to get it through an MOT, said we are about to head off in it and I would need it back Wednesday next week at the latest and he agreed. Fingers very firmly crossed it is ready tomorrow, gets to new mechanic okay and is indeed ready for us MOT’d by next Wednesday at not too scary a price. I can’t pretend to feel remotely relaxed about it all but I do feel better than I did yesterday as though I have regained control a little again.

Buoyed up by that I rang a debt collector who has been trying to contact us using all sorts of foul means tactics. They have written on headed paper to ‘the occupier’ asking for information on me on a personal matter claiming to be the Scottish Bureau of Information. I Proper Googled them and found they use that name because on the phone it can be misheard as FBI when they say SBI. They rang and just asked to speak to me, checked my address as ‘we have some post for you’ and then hung up and in the last couple of days have written a couple of letters and rung leaving strange messages like ‘can Nicola urgently ring Cathering on this number…’. So I rang them, said the magic words ‘we have a debt management plan with the CCCS’ and was instantly asked the client number and thanked very much. I *know* we owe money, but we are paying it and reducing the debt and I just hate the bully boy tactics employed to scare people. It contravenes all sorts of financial governing body ethics and rules and one day I would quite like to get involved in something that helps people like me who mess up to put things straight without needing to be treated like that.

That done we nipped out to Sainsburys for petrol and vegetables for dinner and popped into Brantano for Davies to get some wellies at the same time. He now has decent wellies rather than the Woolworths ‘toy’ wellies he did have so everyone will be suitably shod :).

Back at home I continued to battle with the music and the laptop, cooked the kids some sausages and mash, lit the fire, put chickens away and answered my phone to one of our WWOOFing hosts who was ringing to check and confirm dates and details – very exciting to have spoken to one of them properly rather than just email 🙂

Ady arrived home, we all watched One Man and his Campervan, did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: Frazer still smokes
Good: Found out what LBP2 is like (playing F’s ps3 yesterday)
Learnt: The Sphinx is the god of the afterlife

Scarlett:
Bad: Worried about bedtime
Good: Good to see Frazer today
Learnt: It’s Kat’s (Frazer’s girlfriend) birthday today

Ady:
Bad: Had to get up at 3am to go to Wales today
Good: Came home 🙂 was supposed to stay overnight
Learnt: children who have paperrounds are under threat of not being allowed to work thanks to restrictions on the hours children can work

Nic:
Bad: still don’t have van back
Good: Due back tomorrow & it’s booked with next mechanic
Learnt: what Aga stands for and that it’s inventor was blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker

I got our dinner on and had a bath then sat with Tarly while she fell asleep (it took about 10 minutes, so no great hardship) and Ady and I both chatted to his mate Rob on the phone who has been reading the blog since Christmas when I put the link to it in most of our Christmas cards for people we’d not yet told so they could read the whole story rather than trying to retell it. He was full of positive things to say which was lovely. He did a lot of travelling in his 20s and is a couple of years older than Ady. They house shared together many, many years ago and Ady has always looked up to Rob so it was great for him to get such enthusiasm from someone he thinks a lot of :).

I feel like we’re in that middle dip on a rollercoaster at the monent, we’ve done a couple of scary climbs and loops in the last couple of weeks – I know there is far more to come but it’s a minor respite from fretting for a couple of days at least.

Last night before I went to bed I’d stuck on some cinnamon roll dough. I was late to bed (about 2am) so decided to make them and leave them to prove overnight rather than making them up and waiting for them to second rise this morning. It didn’t really work so I won’t do it again but I was struck at the lunacy of standing in the kitchen at 2am getting all floury and cinnamon scented.

Scarlett slept through just fine and had happy dreams, crediting me with making her happy before she went to sleep :). We had our cinnamon rolls and got dressed, pottered around a bit doing various things and then got ready to drive over to Ali’s. It’s the longest I’ve driven for weeks and weeks with my car off the road for so long and despite feeling really rather frantic about Willow being ready and sorted I was hit anew with excitement for our whole plan today. We’ve been watching One Man and his Campervan which rather nicely glorifies campervan living and today the sun has been shining with the full promise of the spring round the corner. I keep sort of hugging the whole thing to myself and thinking how incredibly jealous I’d be feeling if it was someone else about to embark on this adventure.

Just wish I had that van on the drive ready to go…. 🙁

We had a lovely few hours at Ali’s, the kids all got on well, Davies and Freya enjoyed playing together on the ps3 while Tarly mostly chatted to Ali and I and played on her DS, then they all played PS3 for a while before having a quick go on the Kinect. Davies thought it was good but said afterwards he much prefers PS3, Scarlett was entranced by the animal game and could probably have stayed there for days playing it :).

Davies got upset just before we left as I’d been giving him a hard time about stroppiness over very short turns to try and make sure they both had a go on as much as possible on the kinect before we left. He tried to correct me when I called something the wrong name and then got really worried I would think he was being mean to me, when he’d never be mean to me because – dissolved into tears – I *love* you sooo much Mummy 🙁 We had a cuddle and made up and talked about it once he had recovered his composure a bit. Clearly still feeling very lucky to have a mummy and wanting to make sure I know it. Bless him and 🙁 for any child needing to worry about such things.

We came home and Ady had just got home and lit a fire so I sorted the kids tea out and we all caught up with each others days. We watched One Man and his Campervan all snuggled up together but then Ady went off for a bath and I read some How to Train Your Viking and then Tarly got all upset about bedtime and somehow we all forgot bad, good, learnt today.

The dentist rang to say my fillings will be fine til we come back from WWOOFing and to wish us a fantastic trip :). One less expense to fret about at least.

I sat and talked to Scarlett again and whether she was worried about having the nightmares or the nightmares coming true. She said both, so we deconstructed the nightmare and agreed it definitely wouldn’t come true which just left worrying about having it again. We agreed that if she was thinking about it there was a good chance it might happen again and I said I thought nightmares often happened when you were worried about something real in the daytime so your brain carried on worrying into your dreams. We talked about a few minor things she was worrying about and then agreed I would have my bath and she could listen to a story tape and then I’d go and sit with her. I came back out to eat my dinner and then nipped back for about five minutes before she was fast asleep. Fingers crossed she’ll have another nightmare free night having had a calm going to sleep and a nice day which will give her confidence at bedtime tomorrow that she won’t have the nightmares.

Davies did some excellent drawings (rather than going to sleep – grr) of Little Big Planet levels he wants to create. We’d been looking at the downloadable stuff online but there was nothing he felt inspired by. It really is the perfect game for him, loads of space for easy creativity.

Ady’s gone off to bed early as he is up again in a few hours to drive to Wales for something work related in the morning. I’m off for my last Wednesday shift and my brother, who has just been made redundant so is looking for a job and therefore home is coming over to be with Davies and Scarlett. I am very tentatively hoping the van may be back tomorrow but not holding my breath.

Poor Scarlett was awake in the night with nightmares, one of those horrid ones that remains clear and continues to haunt you through the day. Reading back over my blog she tends to have the odd episode like this every so often. Yesterday both kids were tired after two very late nights in a row, they listened to Ady and I talking about Eira and of course they are about to leave family, friends and home behind so can be forgiven for wibbling a little. I stayed with Davies for about an hour before he fell asleep last night and then Scarlett spent half the night in our bed. Whilst I wish they were not feeling sad / fretful / otherwise wibbly I know the years of wanting me to sit beside them as they go to sleep are coming to a close so I don’t mind at all and almost cherish them a little. Like those poignant middle of the night feeds with tiny babies where it’s hard and tiring and you wish someone else could borrow your breasts and do it instead but know onw day you’ll be looking back and feeling all nostalgic.

So a slower start to the morning and surprise when I looked out of the windo to see one lone chicken out while all the others were still locked up, he must have been out all night. He is the youngest cockerel and this morning found his crowing voice. I wonder how long the tenants will be pleased they have cockerels…

My task today was to sort the insurance out before it got cancelled and I was hit with a hefty £75 cancellation fee. It’s been a bloody nightmare, spanning several weeks and including at least 8 phonecalls, dealing with automated dialling systems, talking to people who don’t really understand English, trying to remember the phonetic alphabet to spell out my email address, countless emails (none of which have actually been responded to) with one company and many, many emails with the other as they are solely online and have no phone number other than a technical help line at £1.50 per minute if you are having trouble with their website and tend to respond to all emails with ‘thank you for your email. Please note we need the no claims discount proof by 8th Feb or we will cancel the policy and charge you £75’ rather than paying any attention to the actual content of the email.

So today I found an 0800 complaints telephone number on their website and was quite taken aback to be talking to the Chief Executives Office. The woman listened to my tale of woe, took my email address again along with my phone number, gave me her name and promised to sort it out and call me back. Which she did within about half an hour, followed up with the promised email. I sent that to the new insurers who sat on it for a while before emailing back to say actually it wasn’t what they wanted but they had rung my old insurers themselves and gotten verbal clarfication from them. Why on earth they couldn’t have done that in the first place I don’t know. There was further toing and froing but I am so bored of the whole tedious episode now and it would appear to finally be sorted that I can’t bring myself to type it out,

That done I looked at a flag set with Davies that I’d promised to do with him last night. It was one we picked up from the EH bargain shop at FoH a couple of years ago but has sat in the Emergency Present stash in the back of our wardrobe. That got cleared out over the weekend so as there were two flag sets Davies and Scarlett got one each. They happen to be from a company that the kids were looking at gift items from in a shop recently and cooing over the very cool packaging on some ship in a bottle kits. They have the nautical flag for each letter printed on tiny flags and a spool of thread all in a lovely little box. Davies made two flags to hang in the van; one saying Wondering and the other saying Wanderers. We talked about wonder and wander, the difference in spelling and meaning and then the two different word endings ‘ing’ and ‘ers’ and how they can change words.

Scarlett was doing some more painting. She had laid in bed last night and copied out loads of animal names into a notebook from one of her books. I’d told her what they all said and now she has memorised them. She had interestingly managed to make all her letters upper case despite the ones in the book not being so and her claiming to not know any letters so clearly she does, but perhaps doesn’t actually realise that herself yet. Her painting and drawing really is getting very good – all very wildlife, animal, landscape themed but with some really interesting attention to detail and definite desire to make it look as lifelike as possible. This is a big contrast to Davies who has a more caricature type style, picking one or two attributes to something and focussing on those, or making his drawings very much in his personal style, rather like a childrens book illustrator (I’m thinking Nick Sharratt, Quentin Blake, even Lauren Child although she is more about the mixed media). I’m so looking forward to seeing the artwork that this year will inspire in them both :).

I was rather distracted this morning with the whole insurance thing but did semi watch Shrek 2 and then Shrek Forever After with them and we did have several conversations although the contents of them totally escape me now.

We had lunch and in the process of making it Scarlett told me we had 8 tins of tuna in the cupboard. They are in wrapped stacks of four tins so I asked how she knew and she said ‘two fours are eight’. I asked how she knew that and she said she knows two fives are ten so she took off the two extra ones to get down to eight. I tested her reasoning with two twos, fives, threes, sixes and sevens and it appeared a very solid way ot mental arithmatic for her :). We ate and were cuddled up on the sofa together when Ady came home. He’d printed off various information about H&S on farms and children on farms including an activity type book each for the kids so they had a go at some of them. Scarlett sat with me and Davies with Ady and we looked at some anagrams, some farm yard produce based sums and a few other bits. Not the sort of thing we’d do often but quite relevant at the moment and the kids enjoyed them. Davies did a fair bit of spelling and writing, Scarlett was more word recognition. We then both showed them how to add numbers together on paper in columns which led to subtracting too. Scarlett and I also looked at estimating and multiplying using addition. I’m always surprised at how quickly they grasp these concepts without the need for hours of lesser going over it again and again in reception and lower age classrooms when I know what a big deal is made of numeracy from preschool upwards.

We all brushed our teeth and walked across to the dentist. We waited ages in the waiting room (about 25 minutes I think) although I was very happily reading a very interesting science based magazine which had all sorts of interesting facts and a couple of short articles including one about rebellion and whether we are prorammed to be someone who stands up and speaks out or just goes along with things referencing the Milgram experiment and later replications of it and another about cults both of which were really interesting and the sorts of things I read loads about while doing A levels and found fascinating then.

Ady needs some hygenist work so we booked an appointment (and paid a deposit – not at all sure of the mentality of that but at least there will be less to pay after the actual visit) for that. Davies is fine, teeth nice and clean and all coming through okay. He will definitely have some overcrowding in his mouth and so the dentist was explaining to me how that might be dealt with in years to come. I have pretty straight and very small teeth with just one slightly crooked one to the right of my top front teeth that sits just behind, almost the identical set up to my Dad but Ady has very wonky teeth and has had various problems with them and I think both children are set to have his smile but of course these days corrective work is done rather than leaving the teeth to their own devices. Scarlett’s teeth seem fine, the protective fluoride coating that was painted one seems to have prevented any decay and her brushing is good :). Again she has teeth coming through with no real room and she also has quite big teeth – both the kids top front teeth are bigger than mine! But the dentist was unconcerned and said it should all be problem free for a few years until orthodontist work kicks in. I have two fairly old fillings that I’d already thought might be coming to the end of their lives, they pre-date children certainly and are pretty big fillings, I suspect done by an over zealous private dentist in my past. I was due an x ray which showed a small amount of decay underneath them so the dentist wanted to consult with a colleague about whether they should be replaced now or left until we come back. She’ll ring me tomorrow with an answer. I think I’d prefer to leave them alone, both from a financial point of view and because we have a lot going on in the next couple of weeks and I’d almost rather not mess about with them as they are not causing any discomfort at the moment.

While we were in the surgery the kids were asking questions – about Ady’s x rays, why there was an electric point in the floor for the dentists chair, what a plastic bag of liquid hanging on the wall might be, why patients wore goggles etc and I was replying and the dentist commented on how curious they were and how able I was to answer (hardly rocket science ;)) and then it came up that we were going away so she asked about the kids and school. I explained they are Home Educated anyway so they’d just be Van Educated for a year. She said that she was Home Educated herself for a time although didn’t elaborate further – nice to know a medical professional clearly wasn’t held back by it though, I imagine she may even have been to a Russell Group uni 😉 .

Back home via the chemist for prescription mouthwash for Scarlett and then we all settled down to watch Elephant Man
Ady had been telling the kids about John Merrick the other day and they’d asked if I could get the film from work so I’d brought it home. We all watched together and although it made Davies sad and Scarlett cry they were both really glad they’d watched it. We talked for ages afterwards about appearance, what people are like inside and how humans treat each other. With Scarlett a bit wobbly it was perhaps not the best film to watch although actually there are uplifting parts to it too but I think it will definitely be one that stays with them.

They had dinner and we did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: The way people treated John Merrick
Good: Enjoyed a lovely weekend with friends
Learnt: About adding a column of figures on paper – he later showed me and then we took it to three columns of numbers, looked at subtraction in more detail and then I showed him a whole column of numbers to add up and gave some examples of times when you would need that skill.

Scarlett:
Bad: Had a bad dream last night
Good: one chicken got left out last night by accident but was fine
Learnt: About the life of John Merrick

Ady:
Bad: Dentist today 🙁
Good: All watched Elephant Man together
Learnt: There is a market for growers of edible flowers sold to top restuarants in London (thank you Countryfile last night and a prompt from Davies when he was struggling to think of something :))

Nic:
Bad: Very stressful sorting out insurance this morning
Good: Finally did sort out insurance
Learnt: About orthodontic work on children and that our dentist was Home Educated.

We read for bedtime and then began a round of bath, long conversation with my Mum on the phone, eating dinner, sitting on Tarly’s floor til she fell asleep, going back up with Davies when he came down for a glass of water and then asked to be tucked in and watching The People’s Supermarket that we had taped last night. That provoked some interesting discussion between Ady and I and after one too many ‘well we’ll see won’t we’ type responses from him I rather went off the deep end with a rant of self promotion about how I do indeed see through things I say I am going to do, I do stand up for stuff I am passionate about, I do stick to my beliefs and put myself out for things and I do not just pay lip service to ideas. I think having known me since I was 16 and been with me since I was 19 Ady can have a habit of being a bit like my parents and clinging to an idea in his head about who I am and what I am like that is now rather outdated and not at all true. There is something of a notion that I am lazy, spend a lot of time on the sofa ‘messing about on that laptop’ and not doing a lot else, spend money on nail varnish and drink too much wine. He does keep mentioning things about the coming year and saying ‘well I’ll be fine but I think you’ll really struggle with X, Y and Z and I just hope you don’t take it out on me’ which may be fair and would certainly have been true 15 years ago but I like to think I have done enough to alter that idea in recent years really. He did back down but I’m never sure if that is because he has conceded I was right or he just doesn’t do conflict ;).

I guess the trouble with marrying someone 10 years younger than you is that younger sibling syndrome where for you they are always a bit childish and need looking after… maybe I should put that to him 😉 😆

Kirsty & James arrived around midnight, shunted kids into bed and we had a very nice couple of hours catching up, chatting and maybe drinking beer.

Saturday morning I went off to work for my last Saturday shift. It was Save Our Libraries day and whilst we did have various people coming in and taking out armfuls of books, we had new borrowers coming in to join and we were definitely busier than usual for a Saturday morning it was still a disappointing non-event. I’d talked to a couple of senior staff about doing some stuff – I was up for roaming the library handing out instruments for a flash mob style Baby Rhyme time or storytime, standing up and reading aloud from an adults book, trying to coordinate a live reading group, poetry reading or *something* but I seemed alone in being prepared to be active so instead consoled myself with signing up new borrowers, encouraging people to take out more books and telling anyone who asked me what they could do to help make sure we don’t get closed ‘use us or lose us. Write to your MP, the local council, the local paper. Shout about how important the library service is to as many people as possible’.

I currently have about 28 items on my ticket, both kids came and filled their tickets to capacity of 20 and Ady came and joined and took out another 20 so we have nearly 100 books home here at the moment. Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex came along too and helped with choosing books so we felt we’d done our bit.

Meanwhile at home Ady and James had taken the washing machine to a second hand appliance place and failed to get even a tenner for it so very grudgingly taken it to the tip 🙁 It’s been in the local free ad paper for 2 weeks and after the fiascos with freecycle over other stuff I am really not inclined to list a non working washing machine and have it sat on the driveway awaiting collection for days. Kirsty did some painting and Ady popped along to the mechanic about Willow.

We all came home for lunch and then Ady and James did kitchen cleaning and tidying while Kirsty and I cleared out our wardrobe and ensuite bathroom. We now have a tiny amount of clothes hanging up for our last few days at work and stuff coming WWOOFing with us, all of the rest is in boxes. The bathroom is also reduced to stuff coming with us.

Various people had baths, Ady fed the kids and then they went off to watch dvds in bed and we had dinner and watched Hot Fuzz which happened to be on TV. We were all wusses and went to bed at 1am when it finished.

Today Ady was efficient and carried on cleaning and sorting but the rest of us were less inclined although I have blogged a couple of times and pretty much coordinated as many hosts as we need to start with. I also made 3 phonecalls to the insurance company to try and get this no claims proof sorted but despite yet another promise of an email I have still not had it and therefore will be doing yet more phoning again tomorrow. Argh!

Ady ran me over to Brighton at lunchtime as I’d been invited to lunch with Eira, our friend who has terminal cancer. I was so pleased to be invited although it was last minute and have been really keen to see her but waited for her to contact me to arrange it and fretting that we might not manage it before we head off. I’d also not told her about our WWOOFing plans before. Ali was there along with 3 other women I know from HE circles, Eira of course and then four other women I’d not met before. It was fab to see Eira, so wonderful to find she is just the same as she’s always been, irreverant, funny, warm and lovely :). She is clearly ill and took quite a cocktail of drugs when we first arrived but she cleared her very large plate of food really quickly, downed a couple of Crabbies alcoholic ginger beers and aside from the very poignant subject matter of most of the conversation it was all too easy to forget the underlying reason we were all gathered there together.

The food was actually delicious despite being vegetarian, obviously a slice or three of beef wouldn’t have gone amiss but the company more than made up for it.

Ady and the kids came to collect me and I walked with Ali to the station too meet them. Am hoping Eira can make it along to our Bye Then party for a while but am hugely pleased to have seen her before we go incase she can’t. I am humbled and inspired by her dignity and humour and feel very lucky to know her and count her as my friend.

On the way home conversation obviously revolved around Eira, how she is doing, how her husband Ade is doing and how their two children are coping with it all. Davies and Scarlett joined in with the conversation and asked questions and made observations. I suspect we will return to the topic a fair bit in the next day or two as they are both still processing it and were very clingy at bedtime to me despite being really tired from the late night last night. I guess if I am empathising with Eira, Ady will be doing so with Ade and the kids with L & T, Eira’s children on the impact of this on all of them.

We came home and Ady got dinner on with some help from Scarlett, Davies had a bath (which Scarlett then jumped in after him) and we all just snuggled infront of the TV and the fire really until dinner was ready. I was still fairly full from lunch so had a very mini token dinner. We watched Countryfile and the kids went to bed (although not to sleep). Ady and I had baths and I spent about half an hour each sitting on the kids floors beside their beds.

Dad came over this morning, ostensibly to drop off some post that we’d already redirected to his address, but he then stayed until about 3pm :). I’d had another ‘you need to come and collect something from the post office’ card (I’m a regular in there this week) so Dad ran me round there and parked outside to save me having to park. It was a notification from the insurance company to say they need my no claims discount proof or they will cancel the policy (I changed to a different supplier for my car on a monthly basis ready to cancel when we go). Sigh. Never straightforward. Two phonecalls and several emails later today I am still not sure it’s sorted, particularly when speaking to call centre to someone who promised to email me and wished me a nice day and was about to hang up when I asked if they actually had my email address. No, they didn’t. Trying to spell that out to someone who’s first language is not English was far from straightforward particularly when I couldn’t for the life of me remember it was N for November and S for Sierra and went for S for Siesta which of course sounds just like F for Fiesta…

Scarlett did some painting and then spent ages with sellotape, lots and lots of sellotape and paper making a rocket. It wasn’t hugely successful but she enjoyed the test runs and we talked about what made a rocket work (cue Dad, it’s not rocket science, erm well okay maybe it is :lol:) and how we could replicate it. Scarlett came up with the idea of balloon power (blown up then let go so air rushes out) and rang Ady to ask him to pick some balloons up on his way home later.

Davies was joining in with the conversation every so often while doing something on his PSP which turned out to be making a level on Little Big Planet about rockets.

We had lunch which Tarly and I nipped out to get stuff for and watched some of the Attenborough Darwin dvd which was really interesting and sparked all sorts of conversations including everyone getting tenners out to see Darwin’s picture, then Davies asking if all current money would be worthless when the queen dies, then Dad talked about decimalisation and then a conversation which quickly degenerated into nonsense about being in line to the throne when Davies asked if something happened to the queen and all her close family who would be next monarch. We speculated on which of the neighbours would be first in line having decided pretty much everyone would be something in line to the throne.

Dad left and the kids went off to get their bedroom sleepover-ready while I aimed to achieve the two things I’d aimed to get done today – listing the tent on ebay and contacting a magazine about writing for them. Inbetween washing up lunch, putting on a couple of batches of pizza dough for dinner, answering various emails, processing some laundry, chopping some more logs (we had a day or two supply left so my planned 3 weeks only actually lasted 2 and I wanted to split some sticks too) I managed to do both.

Ady arrived home and I fed the kids, we did Bad, Good, Learnt today:

Scarlett:
Bad: banged my head on the table
Good: chicken laid another egg
Learnt: that you can suffocate from swallowing a balloon

Davies:
Bad: Scarlett hit my leg
Good: Grandad came round for the morning
Learnt: First milk is called colostrum

Ady:
Bad: Drove through a beautiful spot near Hastings today that was ruined by the amount of litter that had blown and collected against a fence. Made me feel sad about how humans trash beautiful places.
Good: Looking forward to seeing friends this weekend.
Learnt: Cow anatomy – each teat comes from a seperate chamber in the udder.

Nic:
Bad: Bloody insurance, inept previous insurers taking too long to send through proof of no claims discount and new insurers threatening to cancel
Good: Lovely email from WWOOF host
Learnt: Charles Darwin was the grandson of Josiah Wedgewood (of pottery fame).

The kids took ages to get to sleep knowing that Kirsty & co are on their way but finally did fall asleep.

Work all day for me today. I went to the post office before work to collect a parcel we’d missed yesterday which turned out to be the Mifi from Three. Had a quick play to check it all works okay and am very pleased with it 🙂 The broadband here gets turned off on 14th so it’s good to know we have the alternative done and dusted for now. The deal so far is for it pre-paid for ‘a couple of months and we’ll see how we go’ so please forgive in advance the fact I’ll be mentioning it on the WW blog in order to justify having it to Three.

I had a good day at work. We had three class visits this morning, so over 100 children in 3 batches for stories with the Childrens Librarian and then book choosing. As is always the case there are a couple of children without library cards and then the even sadder cases of children with cards with such large fines or defaulter status (where we’ve written to them 3 times about overdue books and never had them back or had letters returned to us as Gone Away, so the cost of the fines and replacement books is added to their ticket until such times as they come in and pay or return the items). This morning we had at least 4 children with Defaulter status on their ticket for fines over £10 and / or missing books so we had to say they couldn’t have the books they’d chosen which was really hard. Their teachers / parent helpers dealt really well with that and we put any books they’d selected behind the counter for them to ‘come back in with Mummy or Daddy after school to collect’. There was one little girl who’s mother was actually being a parent helper and she got really shirty about having to pay the fines before we’d let her daughter have the books. Later in the afternoon we then had two of the children come back with a parent to sweep off the fines and both had the audacity to moan about the fact we’d not let their child take books out! 😯

I spoke to the mechanic about Willow and it continues to rumble on so Ady is ringing him tomorrow to add his voice. I fear he has now consigned me to ‘Nagging Woman’ status and probably forgets all about me and the van once he’s put the phone down so am hoping Ady is able to move things along or arrange to get the van back so someone else can have a look at it. I’m very aware that my ‘no rush’ feeling five weeks ago when he took it away is changing to a ‘bloody hell!!!’ feeling now we only have 3 weeks to go. He is needing a part which he is struggling to source and this worries me rather a lot but I suspect he is not treating it with much urgency.

Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the day and they went to various places including Costco in Croydon where they all learnt about Amy Johnson, how the Purley Way was the site of an airfield years ago and bought a power pack / compressor / jump starter thing which you can charge from mains or cigarette lighter and holds charge to power mains plugs, has a light and so on and will hopefully be a really useful thing to have in the van. Ady’s been researching them for a while.

They also came home for lunch and gave Ady’s car a valet – mine is being done this weekend. The big news at home today was one of the hens has started laying again 🙂 Probably the speckledy who is an excellent layer judging by the whiteness of the egg. Really pleased we will be leaving the tenants with laying hens (hopefully the others will follow suit) and get to have had a few eggs from our chickens ourselves before we go :).

I arrived home and we all caught up on each others days and did bad, good, learnt:

Scarlett:
Bad: Learnt that Daddy won’t be able to get an upside down plant to show me tomorrow
Good: first egg of the year from one of the chickens 🙂
Learnt: The Costco in Croydon is built on an ex-airport and that Croydon is within London – she didn’t realise quite how far London sprawls.

Davies:
Bad: Nasty hurty ulcer in my mouth
Good: Nice day with Daddy today
Learnt: Amy Johnson was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic

Ady:
Bad: Campervan is a pile of poo – he did later agree it isn’t actually but was feeling bleak about it tonight 🙁
Good: Don’t need to go into the office tomorrow or even get up early as have a meeting at very local B&Q at 830am
Learnt: If jumping a car off a power pack you need to attach the black lead to a metal part of the vehicle rather than the black connector on the battery

Nic:
Bad: class visit children not being able to take books and then cheeky parents coming and giving us a hard time for their fines!
Good: Four shifts left at work, all ‘lasts’ – Saturday, Wednesday, Friday and Thursday to go.
Learnt: the song title for The Happy Wanderer, I never knew it was called that before.

This evening I’ve spent far too much time playing PvZ after everyone else went to bed and have just checked emails to find two confirming dates for Zone Three and one lovely one saying yes, including a bio about them, some pictures of their croft and a really warm welcomming invite to come and stay :). Just need that van sorted now.

We’d arranged to meet Julie & co at some local ornamental gardens that we have visited together many times over the years since we had toddlers in pushchairs to watch the changing of the seasons with. Before we went I spent some time Proper Googling to understand what Candlemas / Imbolc / Groundhog Day are all about and was most cheered to notice it was grey and drizzly outside.

We had breakfast / dealt with chickens / drank tea etc and then headed off to meet the others. I remembered at the end of the road that I’d not picked my camera up so we double backed to get it which made us about 5 minutes late when for once Julie was on time. Rather annoyingly when we arrived and I went to take a picture of some snowdrops I realised the battery was flat anyway 🙁

We had a lovely couple of hours with them – we barely saw the older four but crossed paths with them a couple of times as Julie, Lorna and I walked round at Lorna’s pace chatting and catching up. We talked lots about parents, our upcoming trip, relationships and other stuff but Julie did mention the kids are limited to 2 hours a week screen time (computer and TV) and talked about their food and how white bread is poison. All very commendable but did make me feel the need to come home via the sweet shop 😆 and let the kids watch cartoons when we got in 😆 I do like the way Julie and I so clearly have such different views on some things but manage to support each other in them and never fall out or judge each other.

Back at home we had lunch and then a very chilled afternoon chatting, playing with geomags, cuddling, watching various things on TV (found a show hosted by Bindi Irwin which S loved) and I cleared the coats and shoes in the hall into boxes for storing and bags for charity shop / clothes bank. I lit the fire early as I was freezing (I even put a pair of socks on! 😯 ) and did the kids tea.

Ady arrived home with a Horrible Histories annual for the kids from a workmate and we also looked at a couple of books that had arrived from Amazon today: for Davies who wants to learn about various knots and for Scarlett who was thrilled to see ‘how to’ stuff on little ducks and chickens and trees :).

We did bad, good, learnt today:
Scarlett:
Bad: Wanted to play a game with Davies but he changed his mind (I think he is teaching her a lesson having been wanting her to play something with him last week that she kept changing her mind over)
Good: Went to Highdown Gardens with Julie, Jack, Maisie & Lorna
Learnt: how hard a parlour maid worked in Victorian times (thank you HH annual :)).

Nic:
Bad: Missed parcel being delivered – think it’s our MiFi from three 🙂 will collect tomorrow from Post Office
Good: Nice morning with Julie
Learnt: About Groundhog Day / Candlemas / Imbolc

Ady:
Bad: Colleague at work being pedantic and akward rather than just wishing me luck. (Stupid HR bint, I would have fallen out with her Big Time years ago!)
Good: Nic’s car still being reliable even in the rain
Learnt: Georgian dentists would replace rich people’s rotten teeth with good teeth from children (thank you HH annual)

Davies:
Bad: Scarlett threw away her unwanted dinner before I could interupt and say I’d have them.
Good: Went to the sweet shop
Leant: Indians used bison tongues to brush their hair (oh, guess what? Thank you HH annual!)

Usual round of bath, dinner etc and Ady and I watched some Outnumbered which seems to be on back to back on one of the channels at the moment. I do ♥ that show 🙂

1st February 1994 was the day we moved into this house. 17 years. Blimey. We didn’t have a lot really, I’d only ‘left home’ 7 months previously so aside from clothes, clock radio and stereo I didn’t really own much anyway. Ady had always rented furnished flats so he had very little too. Our car was a big red tank of a Ford Cortina and we trundled our meagre belongings over from my parents where we’d been staying for a month and then stood about the place feeling slightly shell shocked.

We had a dining table and four chairs from my Granny, a boxing glove shaped beanbag I’d had since I was about 12, a full size TV, a portable TV, a four poster bed we’d bought in a charity shop, four chipboard occassional tables, a flat packed kitchen and bathroom delivered by mates from the B&Q warehouse stowed in the spare room (now Tarly’s room) and a pretty mismatched selection of crockery, most of which had been part of an engagement present dinner service to Ady and his previous fiance which (whoops) I managed to ‘accidentally’ break pretty quick ;).

Some friends came over for a Chinese takeaway and a beer to celebrate moving in day and we were all highly amused at the grown up ness of ourselves.

Funny how 17 years on we’ve got double the house but double the mortgage still outstanding and are still surrounded by boxes, albeit ones we have packed up ready to move back over to my parents this time. Oh and not feeling at all grown up these days 😉

This morning I rang Richard the mechanic and got a big and scary list of stuff wrong with the van :(. I blogged and Davies who was feeling a bit coldy snuggled under a blanket next to me while Tarly did some painting. Davies decided to have a bath which Tarly ended up getting in with him into and then I brushed her hair out.

I had a phonecall from the local chemist about some cream I had ordered in for my eczema which is really bad at the moment so we popped into Lancing to get that – decided to drive both as it was drizzling and the kids had wet hair from the bath and because I am trying to at least start my car every day at the moment. I’d stuck some dough in the breadmaker so I shaped some bread rolls and left them to prove while we were out.

Home for lunch of freshly baked rolls and the rest of yesterdays soup :). The we all went upstairs and sorted Davies’ bedroom including going through all his clothes and paring them down to a ‘coming WWOOFing ‘ pile. D is far more resistant to getting rid of stuff than S so it was fairly tedious but we did it.

I came downstairs in search of tea, put chickens away, chopped some sticks and lit a fire, dealt with some laundry and then got the iids tea sorted. Ady arrived home and we all caught up on each others day and did bad, good, learnt today:

Ady:
Bad: Official email announcing resignation sent out today. Lots of people saying they’ll miss me lots.
Good: It’s out!
Learnt: The word ‘philatelic’ about stamp collecting. Learnt it from Nic when she saw the Ladybird book on Stamp Collecting I brought home and she said ‘oooh philatelist!’

Davies:
Bad: Can’t find PoC disc
Good: Bedroom all sorted.
Learnt: Arthur (of TV show fame) is an aardvark

Scarlett
Bad: Wanted to play a game with Davies but ran out of time today
Good:Tried something new to eat today and liked it – sharon fruit
Learnt: How to take the front of Mumma’s in car cd player (they thought they’d broken it! :lol:)

Nic:
Bad: Van is likely to be more expensive and probably take longer than I’d hoped.
Good: Van has been looked at (he’s had it 10 days!)
Learnt: That we will probably not appear on the 2011 census.

Kids went to bed, I had a phone chat with Julie who is all sleep deprived thanks to poor Lorna’s broken arm meaning she isn’t sleeping well and so got all emotional about how she’ll miss me. It’s like being at our own funeral for me and Ady at the moment with people being all lovely about us and telling us how much we mean to them. Just as well we have each other (and friendfeed) to remind us how utterly unimportant we really are ;).

I watched Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and got all misty eyed about Scarlett’s fourth birthday and her Princess Party. Can’t quite equate that four year old with my current eight year old at all…