It’s only words and words are all I have…

Erm yeah, three days… I’m tired so I’ll be brief:

Friday
I worked, I learnt how to do the banking, so there were books, cash, books, borrowers, Mum and the children came to meet me for lunch which we went and had in the cafe she used to own when I was little – very odd to be sitting there with my Mum and my own children, I’ve not been in there since she sold it. I used to go there every single Saturday and have a tuna sandwich for lunch, so I had one on Friday for old times sake :lol:. Mum bought the kids a magazine each and nearly fainted at the cost 😯 I guess they have gone up from the 20 pence she used to pay for Twinkle and The Beano when we were kids! Afternoon for me was more of the same, books and borrowers.

I’d walked into work and back and when I got home Mum and the children were playing with Lego. Apparently in the morning she’d given them a ‘lesson’. I’m not altogether sure what it consisted of and I’ve not actually spoken to Davies about it but I did speak to Tarly about it to find out a bit more about what was going on. It would appear it was all very innocent and fun, playing with some letters and Mum was keen to tell me how well they’d both done but I’m seeing her again tomorrow and I’m going to try and explain a little bit about autonomy to her I think. I also told Tarly that if whatever Granny suggests is fun and she wants to do it then that’s great but she doesn’t *have* to do anything and I’m very anxious to ensure there was no bribery or conditions attached to anything.

Saturday
I went on another of the writing retreat days that Ali and I went on last month. It was very good, I enjoyed it a lot and dug deeper into myself to write some rather different stuff to my usual style. I probably have more to say about all that really, but I’ll maybe come back to it another time. I did get to have a proper go at the Brand New Heavily Taxed Ady Mobile though so that was good :). Ady and the kids had spent the day in the garden, getting grubby, digging stuff and painting our bench a very lurid shade of pink – it looks fab :). Davies sat and watched all of Dr Who with me, Scarlett bottled out of it about midway so Ady took her off for fluffy bedtime stories instead and I pyrographed a My Little Pony picture onto the back of Tarly’s chair at her request which she was rather delighted with.

Sunday
Davies had swimming this morning and once again we all slept in :oops:. As the weather looked pretty ropey and we are scrabbling for coppers this month anyway we gave the car boot sale a miss and I took Davies to swimming on my own while Ady and Scarlett stayed here. Davies chattered all the way there about Dr Who – I’ve been trying to persuade him for literally years to allow his thick, tufty hair to do it’s own thing and stick up at the front – as it now gives him a bit of a The Doctor like appearance he is convinced by this at last 😆 Ironically it was the day of Ros’s Buzz’s birthday party last year (Magagascar themed) when he started talking about his own Wallace and Gromit party for his birthday, today he decided he wants a Dr Who party for his 7th birthday and has started planning that . Swimming was back stroke stuff today, he did rather better today but it was a smaller group so that may have helped. I actually learnt to swim on my back way before I did on my front and I can clearly recall the first time I swam a width on my back in the same pool he is learning in. Actually watching a load of children having swimming lessons and the same little stumbles they all have has shown me loads of things I’d never thought about before so when we got home I got a Barbie out to demonstrate how your face in the water on front crawl brings your spine straight and your legs automatically come up rather than when you try and keep your head out of the water tortoise style which curves your back and pushes your legs down. Back stroke was the same, putting your head right back brings your legs up whereas trying to keep your chin on your chest pushes your torso into a V shape. I’m a shite swimmer myself but a combination of remembering what I struggled with when learning, coupled with actually watching others learn is making me realise all sorts of things which I am hopefully making sense of to Davies – I’m sure if someone had shown me when I was his age it might have made swimming and holding your body in a certain way more logical and easier to manage – like everything really, if you’re just told to keep your face in the water without realising what impact that has it is less easy to adhere to than if you actually appreciate why keeping your face in the water makes swimming easier.

Once home we did some party planning – must check what date to do the party and book the venue before forgetting the whole thing for at least 2 months and then organising it! 😆 Davies wrote Buzz’ birthday card and drew a Yoda picture for the front, Tarly wrote her name very nicely and then as we were all fairly grumpy for no explainable reason we decided to get going early and stop at a farm and farm shop along the way to check the prices of their meat.

I managed to jam a dvd in the dvd player in Ady’s new car by forcing one in when there was already a disc in there. That caused rather a lot of cross words to be exchanged and a silent journey to the farm where I took the kids in to look round leaving Ady in the car with a pair of tweezers. He came to find us about 15 minutes later with a pair of very bent out of shape tweezers but a success in getting the disc out which has not only left the dvd player in full working order still but the actual tweezered out disc remained undamaged too. Result. And erm, phew! We looked round the farm shop with the children naming all the various organic vegetables on show. I really laughed when I couldn’t for the life of me recall the name of one of them only for Davies to say ‘oh I know, it’s an aubergine!’ and he was right! This despite neither of them, or infact me for that matter ever having eaten one :lol:. There was old fashioned apple and pear pressing going on so we watched that for a while then went into the wine and cider shop and I sampled some of their prize winning local ciders. All very nice :).

Finally, with everything all in working order and tempers restored once more we headed off to Ros’ for Buzz’s birthday barbecue. Lovely time there as always, there was pimms, trampolining, pool splashing, lovely food and some singing :). Loads of pics on flickr – I couldn’t be arsed to be discerning about which ones I uploaded so they’re all there. It was very cold and very windy although that didn’t seem to bother the children, or indeed the fully grown loons who jumped in the pool at the end 😆 Well I say fully grown, one of them was Tony :lol:. We left there and were home by about 8pm. The children had toast and a bath and a very late bedtime so hopefully they’ll sleep in again tomorrow. I still haven’t really warmed up so I’m off to snuggle up in bed myself just incase they don’t sleep in.

And that, was the edited highlights of my weekend!