and all for under a pound you know…

It’s been quite a nice day today really. Very laid back and relaxed.

I’ve done lots of washing and putting clean washing away, blogging, photographing stuff for ebay and listing far less than I’d hoped to (why does listing take so long?) and needle felted a belated birthday pressie for Ros’ Boo 🙂

The children watched Scientrific, Cre 8, Dr. Dog and Crash Test Danny on Discovery Kids (Love that channel and happily so do they, it’s soo educational 🙂 ), they did some drawing, some playing with alphabet
letters (including Davies working out how to spell ‘box’ and finding the letters to do so) and the continuation of their plastic dinosaurs and animals and geomag game from yesterday. I meant to do some reading aloud to them today and only managed a little bit of Winnie the Pooh with Tarly.

Around midday I finally parcelled up a denim jacket which has been sold for over a month and the payment finally arrived, amid many excuses while we were away so we walked to the post office. It’s not far, ten minutes or so walk at child pace so we had a lovely walk in the sunshine spotting things in people’s gardens as we went, chatting about the flowers and all sorts of various other things. They were both so utterly charming in the post office, making their voices sound like aliens by talking right infront of the big fan so the vibrations made their voices funny and entertaining the PO clerk that having cashed the postal order payment and paid for the postage I let them choose some sweets each. Tarly chose a bag of rainbow chocolate drops but Davies spotted the loose sweets – in my day called penny sweets but now at least 2 pence each so he got a little bowl and counted out 21 of them and then counted them out with the shopkeeper woman too, so we walked all the way home with them clutching their bags of sweets. I can’t think of a single example but I know I have refered back to my own childhood several times in the last couple of days and it is funny to hear the children getting their heads round that and picturing their Granny and Grandad as a Mummy and Daddy and likening me and my brother to the two of them (albeit with the age gap the other way round). I was also reminded of Milly Molly Mandy last week when someone was talking about skeins of wool which just always makes me think of the MMM stories when she was sent to the shop to buy them and walking back from the shop with paper bags filled with sweets was just so MMM and my own childhood it was lovely. 🙂 Kessingland last week had lots of shades of a ‘real’ childhood as I remembered it too, with endlessly long summery days, the beach, groups of children making up their own games as they went along, very little adult intervention, sand in your shoes and a new adventure every day making friends with every child you came across. Ah the nostalgia!

On Saturday I’d replied to a freecycle offer of a small hexagonal fish tank with light, gravel and filter and the freecycler had asked me to ring her on Sunday afternoon to arrange collection. When I did she sounded terribly vague and suddenly burst out that it wasn’t a good time as she was at the local hospital as her daughter had just taken an overdose :shock:. She emailed me this afternoon so I rang her and went round to collect it. Her daughter is still in hospital but recovering although she and her husband still seemed utterly in shock as they showed me how to set the tank up. We brought it home and have set it all up and transfered a very cheery Fred2 and Albert3 to it. Unfortunately it will necessitate a move round in Davies’ room so he can have them back in there again but his room is long overdue an overhaul having been repainted while we were at Melrose and then left with nothing more having been done so some serious sorting out in there is planned for this week.

I had Reading Group tonight but it was very brief as a) no one had anything much to say about the book other than it was ‘alright’ and b) the men in the group, and one of the women were desperate to get back for the football anyway. Next months’ choice is an Ian Mckewan who I have never read before so I’m quite looking forward to that. I picked up a Dr Seuss book for the children while I was there and as I was back before the children went to bed we sat and read it together with Davies spelling out / guessing most of the words. They went off to bed adhering to the new ‘routine’ beautifully.