One word? When seven would do…

Work this morning. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually described my workmates here, have I? The whole of West Sussex is split into regions with each region having about 5 branches within it. The five branches have a Senior person overseeing all of them with a Senior Library Assistant working in each branch running it day to day with a team of Library Assistants – which is what I am. The Senior Library Assistant (SLA) at Lancing is called Yvonne and she is lovely. She is my direct line manager. Above her is the Senior Support Manager who oversees our local group of branches, Wendy. Above Wendy is the Operations Librarian, Brenda, who runs the book group I go to, so I know pretty well, certainly better than most of my colleagues and above her is Louise who is the Senior Librarian, who I’ve also worked with when I did the couple of recent evening events. Due to the way my own rota works I end up working 2 of my days with Yvonne and 2 with Wendy so I know them equally well although Wendy is more senior.

We have a new person who will be doing relief work but is in for training at the moment so as it was my turn to ‘do the papers’ this morning I had her with me showing her how to do that (mark them as recieved, stamp them with DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY and the date, put them out, take away yesterdays and file them – all very high level stuff 😉 ). Quite nice not to be the new girl any more and to realise I can acually show someone stuff that I know how to do now, however menial :). I had a glut of training sessions just before Kessingland and we have a pre-training objective setting meeting and then a post training evaluation meeting for each session. With me being on leave and then Wendy (who does the post training sessions) on leave too we had three still to catch up on, so my first hour at work was spent out the back doing that. I like Wendy, we get on well and kept drifting off the subject of what we were supposed to be talking about. 🙂 Then it was tea break time and then I had an hour and a quarter on the Enquiry Desk with Wendy doing training. Then I was doing some book repairs, glueing spines and fitting new jackets, so I didn’t do any of the stuff I normally do on the counter or shelving books. Consequently the morning flew by. 🙂

I came home for lunch – Ady was working from home today and looked after D&S while I worked. I’d brought home a Doctor Who (from the first series with The Ecclestone and Billie, the stuff they’ve not seen yet) dvd so they watched the first one on that while having lunch. Then we gave Ady some peace and headed off to the park to meet Lucy and The Rs. Davies and Rebecca had their bikes – Scarlett decided she didn’t want hers. This was a good choice as I’m pretty certain she’d have gotten bored of it and I’d have ended up pushing it or carrrying it, so I supported her wholeheartedly in her decision. She can run faster than Rebecca and Davies were managing on their bikes so I guess she didn’t need it anyway! 🙂 We began in the playground park bit where I recalled just how much I hate taking Davies and Scarlett to parks. If we go to the beach, the woods, fruit picking, pretty much any outdoor space where they are required to find their own fun then they are very very proficient at it. If I take them somewhere where they need to carry out their play in a dictated manner on specific play equipment then we seem to have problems. 🙄 At their ages, and with their ability I feel I have done my time of standing behind a baby swing and pushing them (and believe me I really have done that, for many hours if you were to tot it all up. When they were toddlers it was something I actually quite loved to do, now it just makes my arms ache), or watching every single slide down the slide they do, or rescuing them from the top of the climbing frame or ‘just standing there’ while they go across the monkey bars. I feel I have earnt my stripes to be able to sit it out on the bench while they play now if we go to parks. But this does not often happen, so as such we don’t often go to parks… Parks are NOT fun, they are dreadful places and I think I may start a one woman boycott of them from now on until they are old enough to go to them on their own. So there. Na.

We left the playground bit and walked / rode a bit further ending up at some rocks. When I was a child the rocks had a slide coming down from them so you clambered up the rocks and slid down the slide. The slide has long since gone but the rocks are still a big draw for the children. Utterly proving my theory above we stood for well over half an hour while they very happily played at clambering over the rocks, finding a game to play using their imagination and then befriended a small boy and started a game of hide and seek with him. We didn’t have to get involved once! Davies and Scarlett were calling the boy ‘Oliver’ and I heard him ask how they knew his name and then they came down from the rocks and said they had seen him there before last summer. This is entirely probable and I could maybe even dig back in my blog and find out but there is no other explanation for them remembering his name so I guess it’s true. Amazing, kids, aren’t they? :). We then wandered on from there, round the lake following the path and then back retracing our steps when the path ran out and D & R couldn’t cycle on the grass. We offered a choice of ride on the train or ice cream and they all chose ice cream so we went to the cafe and had ice creams. On the way to the cafe Scarlett had climbed down close to the lake near some grasses and suddenly screamed in utter terror claiming to have seen a snake. I don’t think I’ve ever heard either of my children cry out in fear before so I guess she must have done. She has now elaborated the story to contain her stroking it, wrestling with it and it being a veritable rainbow of colours so I’m guessing that a grain of truth, like her seeing a slow worm has now escalated into full blown python taming though :lol:.

We had all had enough and Lucy and The Rs were invited back to ours but Davies had Badgers and it would have been a small window of time back here so they declined. We got home, the kids had tea and then Davies and I went to Badgers. I’d taken a book I’d very nearly finished (fell asleep during the last chapter last night in bed) and a new one. The old one I finished quickly and the new one was rubbish so I undid the car windows to let in a lovely breeze and laid back for a quick snooze – it was bliss 🙂 I was only dozing and was still aware of all the sounds around me but I love being able to feel the sun and the breeze and listening to the seagulls calling was just lovely.

After handling the chickens a bit when Lucy and Ali were round yesterday I’ve been feeling bad that I’d stopped spending much time with them and don’t want to lose their tameness so I spent some time with them free ranging round me. They clearly still have the imprint thing going on with me though – they can see me through the lounge window and all come running to one corner when I go to the window, come running when I go outside and I leant out of the upstairs bedroom window this morning and called them and they all came running out of their house :). I’m going to research it a bit but I think we might start letting them free range in the garden during the day if we’re around and not out all day long. Maybe at the weekend we’ll have a go for a few hours and see what they get up to. They can fly probably to my shoulder height now and I think they’d like a bit more freedom than the run allows them.

We watched The Pursuit of Happyness tonight – well I did, Ady got fed up with how long and depressing it was and went to bed, but I saw it through. I won’t say much about it incase people haven’t seen it, but I liked it, thought it was a good story if a little predictable. Like Will Smith though 🙂 which helps.

Tomorrow we’re off to Drusillas. We’ve not had membership for over a year but it has been much missed by me and the children so we’ve kept back a little of A’s bonus to fund annual passes which we’re getting tomorrow. They have a Wallace and Gromit day there in August which it would have been a shame to miss and as membership is only about the cost of 3 visits I know we will get our money’s worth. Going to keep the W&G day a surprise for Davies though, we’ll just turn up on that day and not mention they’ll be there. 🙂