It’s like the Grand Old Duke of York round here…

Yesterday was all day away training day. It was held in Chichester so Ady dropped me off and picked me up which was handy – even more so as I get to claim train fare expenses without actually having gone on the train – hurrah! 😆

The morning was a training session on Local Studies – which apparently used to be called Local History but has been changed because now they gather recent and current stuff aswell as historical stuff. The man running it is something of a celebrity on the local studies circuit by all accounts, having won awards and lots of lottery and heritage grants to set up initiatives such as this one and this one. He is very knowledgable and passionate, knows his subject inside out and has made it his life’s work and a legacy to pass on. Sadly despite all this and being a Very Nice Man he was also rather on the dull side so his delivery and pace was lacking that certain something necessary to pull off really good training. The course was also over-attended really with 13 of us crammed round an 8 seater table, at least two of whom were either disinterested or openly not wanting to be there.

That said, I found the subject matter really fascinating and once he got to the crux of the session which was an example of how you can dig around the information available within the libraries resources you can uncover a lot of stuff. He does public speaking on the example he gave us which was how he uncovered a whole map of the lives of a family living in the mid 1800s from Worthing starting from one interesting picture of a group of people stood on an unidentified road. I won’t retell it as it would lose all of it’s appeal without the props anyway but as anyone who once loved Moonlighting will know there is something very appealing in the idea of playing detectives and piecing together clues and evidence.

We broke for lunch which I spent walking round Chichester. I went and inhaled deeply in the Lush shop for a while but resisted spending any money. I didn’t do quite so well in a couple of clothes shops but did manage to get a skirt and five tops for £2o in the sale so felt frugal anyway. By now my feet had started to hurt in the high heeled pointy toed boots I was wearing in an effort to pull off Serious Library Worker look instead of sticking the Cleavage and DMS person we all know I am really. I veer between wanting to have A Look and then thinking that actually being comfortable is far more important and the look doesn’t suit me anyway. Time for a wardrobe overhaul I think and putting a few outfits together for such occassions that I know I can wear but still walk in afterwards.

I staggered on to the County Records Office for the second half of the day. This was another case of an interesting subject matter delivered in a boring manner and to be fair by this point all I could really focus on was the agony of my blisters while I moved from one foot to the other. But I did take in some of the amazing 100s of year old maps, documents, family history studies and finally the work of the conservator who does things like restore very damaged documents, maps and so on and also works on preserving things too. All very interesting stuff but sadly not really brought alive as much as it could have been.

We finished there and Ady picked me up and we were home in time to feed Davies and whisk him back out again to Badgers while Ady and Scarlett stayed home. The traffic along the seafront has been awful both nights we’ve driven along it this week and last night was worse than ever so we were running nearly 10 minutes late arriving at Badgers. Davies was still only the 3rd child to arrive though so the leader was thinking about cancelling the session when another 2 turned up, making a total of five and in her opinion worth doing something then. I was sat in the car outside anyway but it sounded like they had a nice time in their little group and were visited by the Badger Leader for the area who wanted to know if any of them wanted to be in the carol concert in December. They all did and Davies is very enthusiastic about it. It’s to be held in the church nearby which is actually where I did carol concerts in my senior school years so will be nice to revisit to see Davies doing his later in the year. They are practising at Badgers over the next month with one additonal Saturday practise nearer the time.

Ady and Scarlett had walked down to Brooklands and were in the park waiting for us by the time we’d parked and arrived there after Badgers. They had various Halloweeny things going on but all at great cost. It was very well patronised though with loads and loads of people there, many in fancy dress. I was up for going round the spooked up train (prices hiked up from the normal £1 per person to a massive £3 per person :shock:) but the children wanted to do the ‘haunted house’ walk through, which was cheaper at £2 per person and had no queue so we went for that instead and got to walk round twice. It was a themed walkthrough with about 5 different scenes (graveyard, dungeon, witches cauldron spell casting room, etc.), very well dressed with props and various dressed up people leaping out at you at various points. The kids loved it and both asked the man if they could come back next year and dress up to be scarers too :lol:. They got to take sweets from a big cauldron on the way out and then we headed back home again.

I think being out Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights for Davies anyway is often a lot but we’ve gone on somewhere else from each one this week (Ikea on Monday, giving blood on Tuesday and Brooklands last night) so it’s all felt like a very long week really.

Today we went over to see Ali and Freya. It didn’t start well with us failing to find a parking space. The road next to Ali’s has recently become one you have to pay to park in which means all the people who used to park there now park in Ali’s road. We drove round for a while, including meeting a dustcart in a narrow bit before ringing Ali to see if the drive is hers or not. She confirmed it was and came out to help me navigate up it but due to the extreme angle of the drive (very, very steep) and it being a narrow space with low walls on each side and cars parked on the road opposite it simply wasn’t possible. The revving and speed required to get my great big car to reverse up in wasn’t possible when you had to go slowly and cautiously so as not to crash into any of the many obstacles. Nightmare :(. Finally Ali had the brainwave of asking her across the road neighbour if I could park in her (still sloping but not so bad) driveway instead and I did that.

The children were not in moods condusive to playing together nicely – or indeed at all, or staying out of trouble so we cut our visit a bit short in the end and came home. Davies and Scarlett played with the bantams for half an hour or so when we got home – so sweet, they are really tame and happy to be picked up and petted, the bantams not the children. And now they are playing with various things including magnetic shapes on a metal tray, the version of Rush hour I got in a charity shop, geomags and Tomb of Doom, oh and a pile of books from the library that I want to take back tomorrow so have promised to read them after tea. I’m about to cook their tea and do some reading aloud before getting them bathed and early to bed to make up for all the chaos this week, then start doing some present making and hopefully have a calm and relaxing evening before another full day at work tomorrow. It’s all go here!