Thank you very much for feeding William…

The thankyou card saga continues….

Davies’ glittery creation was drying off on the window sill while we made cakes. While the cakes were in the oven cooking I was hanging out washing, then while the cakes were cooling we were planning to get the children dressed, then we were going to decorate the cakes to take over to Ali’s house.

Didn’t quite happen like that of course 😉

We did the cake making and got them in the over, I hund the washing out and the kids came out in their pjs to run barefoot round the garden and just as I was herding them back into the house Jeannette and David appeared at the gate. With a birthday card for Davies!!!

So Davies excitedly dashed into the house to get them his thank you card for the pressies and we stood talking to them for bloody ages. I heard the kitchen timer go for the cakes, started to smell the cakes burning through the kitchen window, got invited round for tea and coffee and the children to play in the garden with the ball which used to belong to their cat that died, then their mother came over too to tell me about her trip to the chiropedist yesterday, then they started asking about our back garden (which was clearly a ruse to be invited round there), shared with me their plans for the day (Bognor Regis – dreadful place!) asked about mine (Lewes to see Ali) and finally buggered off with promises of going over for a coffee still ringing in my ears in time for me to dash into the kitchen and rescue the cakes before they caught!

Fuck! This means I will have to not only take them up on their offer to go round for coffee (which I don’t drink!) while my offspring play with the toy of a deceased moggy (and the resulting thank you card for their hospitality!) it also means I will have to return the invitation and have them in our house. This means I will have to offer them sherry and probably some sort of bakery product from Mr Kipling – which I will have to go and purchase specially, and then ‘keep in’ for when they might call in unexpectedly (but I could get that when I go to buy the Thank you card). Anyway the birthday card is all festooned with stickers on the envelope so they have already stepped up a gear with their greetings cards, I’m glad we used lots of glitter on our thank you card!

I’m thinking of a postcard to them from the kids while on holiday too although I suspect it will spark off a new wave of card exchange with them sending us one daily as they enjoy jaunts to places such as Bognor Regis and erm, Worthing town centre!

I guess there is plenty of comedy value mileage in there to compensate for the amount of cash I’ll be lavishing on greetings cards and my time in catering for them visiting me or over at their house looking at their holiday slides from 1997 or similar!

Anyway, obviously the master plan went somewhat to pot after that so we got the children dressed, hung around to wait for them to all get in their car and go off to Bognor before getting in ours and picking up provisions on the way to Ali’s. Pondered slightly about offending Ali’s vegan sensitivities by bringing cadburys mini rolls into her home but she was having a day off so it was fine 😉 Also picked up the Funny Bones magazine issue one for the kids which Davies has totally got into and he sat in the car both ways looking through the magazine astounding me with how much he already knew, how much he was getting from the illustrations and the questions he was asking – thinking about signing up for that for him and also possibly for the Dora one which I’ve seen advertised with cdroms for Tarly too…

Had a lovely time as ever at Ali’s. Children were delightful playing inside and out, bieng noisy, messy and shouty at various times but also engaging in a fair amount of imaginative play too. Ali gave them water to play with which of course became mud within moments and they also got very sandy at one point so we did a sheep dip style shower hose down in the bath with them production line fashion!

We talked about all sorts as usual – relationships past and present and other peoples’, Home Ed, parenting, life history swapping, breaking up being hard to do, a potted blog summary as she can’t read mine at the moment, police, criminal records, fear of authority, flutters for other people and home ed groups.

We also had a couple of moments of near hysteria brought on by various things. One was brought to us in association with The Fimbles as I got buried under a Fimble and child mountain and managed to escape by singing, one was Bodger and Badger inspired which if you have ever seen the show will need no further explanation and the last was a combination of Davies singing a song about not being able to see (it went, I can’t see, can’t see, really, really can’t see!) and Scarlett suddenly calling Ali ‘Freya Mummy’ all day and bringing us in a varierty of dead creatures including very amusingly a beetle which Davies threatened to put in my bag to bring home with us, coining the phrase ‘Freya Mummy’s bug cemetary’ as the new name for Ali’s house.

An excellent few hours without even the aid of alcohol – thanks Ali 🙂

Came home which was an epic due to Tarly deciding she needed a poo at the last minute (Tarly does lengthy poos and cannot be rushed…) and me struggling to gather together various items of clothing and so on which had been strewn around the place (not mine, obviously!!) but we arrived home only shortly after my Dad who had come to mind the children while I went off to the dentists for a hygienist appointment.

I like the hygienist. I like her personally and I also like going cos she had this great whitening machine which gets all the tea stains off my teeth and makes them all shiny white and receptive to wearing red lipstick for a couple of days and smiling widely at all and sundry! She is about my age and has a 7 yo boy and a 4 yo girl. The girl started school this week and the boy has just changed schools. He has been diagnosed with epilepsy and she has moved him to a really small village school with 8 pupils per year group and 45 pupils in total. She is very interested in HE and always asks loads of questions although she does tend towards wondering what work books we are using!

Got home to find my grandmother here baiting my dad, she left and was replaced by Ady and then my Mum for an hour or so and then they left as we started to get the children to bed.

I had grand plans to wrap up Davies’ remaining birthday pressies tonight but that might end up being put off til tomorrow in favour of lounging around and getting excited about our HOLIDAY 🙂