I’d like to teach the world to sing…

It’s been pouring with rain here all night, all day and looks set to be all night again. Which aside from giving me the idea of dismantling pallets to craft an ark and rustle up breeding pairs of any animals I can get my hands on (not many for sale on ebay I notice) was also responsible for flooding Lewes, where we went to collect Ali and Freya from on the way to Magical Mondays. It did mean that in a brief sunny spell there was an impressive rainbow over our house which we oohed over for a while and Davies came up with a fab idea for marking a party ‘or other cool place to go to’ by firing guns loaded with colour in the right order for a rainbow from the party location to lure people in, similar in style to the star which led the three kings to baby Jesus, so perhaps not original but a nice colourful twist on the idea just the same.

We then spent some time googling for instructions to make a whistle from a paper straw, it was unsuccessful but fun to try. I also told them about laser light and how on the night a nightclub was opened on the end of Worthing Pier when ‘I were a lass’ there was a very impressive laser light show visible all the way from my parents house.

On the way to Lewes we’d been magpie spotting and I’d taught them the ‘one for sorrow, two for joy’ thing which Richard Herring so fabulously explained the flaws in which got me telling them about superstitions and old wives tales. We thought of some we knew and talked about whether there was a basis in truth to any of them or whether they were all a load of bunkum. We decided stuff about the moon might be true but things like determining the gender of a pregnant womans’ baby by dangling a threaded wedding ring over her tummy was probably rubbish and the whole chucking salt over your shoulder if you spilt some was not just nonsense but also a bit crazy too.

When we got to Ali’s we’d driven past a flood which we pointed out again on the way to MM and was the inspiration for a very surreal ten minute conversation. It started as a debate about the depth of the puddle and whether it would come over the top of boots. I felt it would go over the top of a child’s ankle boots but not knee high boots, possibly an adults ankle boots but not knee high ones, unless of course your ankles had failed you and in a groundbreaking and medical science first a knee joint to ankle position operation had been carried out in which case your ankle boots would actually reach your knees and therefore would get wet. This, naturally with three children and two somewhat prone to the fantastical adults in the car degenerated pretty rapidly and we had a whole world transformed by a teeny tiny person with a magical remote control who made everyone else in the world the same size as themselves and everything else in the world with the exception of the puddle teeny tiny too so everyone lived underwater. This meant a whole new species evolved – a cross between a fish and a human – Davies initially liked the idea of mermaid style for this with human upper body and fish tail but changed his mind to a fish head and human legs. This was all well and good until I realised it would totally wreck that feminist claim that ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ because actually if you had human legs instead of your fish tail a bike could well be a good way to get around. Scarlett liked this idea as it allowed Queen’s Bicycle Race to become the new national anthem. We decided rather than end feminism we’d have a new motto – ‘a woman needs a man like a fish need a knife and fork was put forward’ but this of course would put an end to Sheffield’s stainless steel knife and fork factories and through The Babs and The Barts and everyone else we know up Sheffield way into local crisis, it would become a ghost town with tumble weeds drifting past that bit of the M1 and northern folk turned savage making their survival by looting and pillaging and stuff. I think that was about the point we arrived at MM (correct me if I’ve forgotten any salient points Ali, please) but it was a useful example of surrealism which is something I mentioned to Davies just last week and enabled all sorts of stuff like evolution, cause and effect, feminism, naming of new species, creating anthems and means of survival and all sorts – a sort of car-based Sims if you will. And that ladies and gentlemen is what Home Education is all about! 😆

I was slightly carried away with all this lunacy, that and my bunches. My hair is at that inbetween stage of needing a haircut to wear short and slightly too short to wear up so I’ve been sporting bunches. Which probably make me look really quite ridiculous all by themselves but coupled with the effect of overweight children’s TV presenter they seem to have on my personality definitely put me into ridiculous territory (as though you’d not already gathered that from the above paragraphs! ;)). So when Scarlett circled the craft table set out once while trying to decide where to sit and led me behind her it seemed only natural to turn her to circle the other way and try and coax her to do jazz hands while we went. The craft was musical instruments from junk such as fruit punnets, elastic bands, dried pasta and some unidentified pulses and lentils. I was really brave about this and even handled them, infact I think at one point I even said ‘oh I need the lentils!’ which of course would be a sentence I’d have sworn noone would ever hear me utter. We made all sorts of cool stuff including some musical jam jars and sang ‘Music Man’ and the Doctor Who theme tune. Fortunately there are at least 3 other adults at MM who are equally as lunatic as me so I had plenty of company in my crazy mood today.

We sort of drifted away from that and as the children went off to play Jem broke out his guitar and did some strumming and we all sat round and had a singsing. It was ace 🙂 Really enjoyed it. We did stuff like Crowded House, Oasis, Beatles and the Kinks and it was just really lovely. Hardly any of the children joined in although Davies mentioned to me later at least two of the songs he’d heard us singing so they’d obviously been aware.

Sadly, just as I was feeling all warm and fuzzy (I think it was during A Little Mouse With Clogs On) I went to investigate some childish shrieking and discovered Davies thumping another child 😯 which wasn’t the cause of the childish shrieking but very quickly became the cause of my adult shrieking. He insisted he’d been hit first which was supported by independant witnesses and he stuck to his story even once ritually tortured at home but he still got a massive lecture on that not being an ok way to deal with something. Shortly afterwards, probably in an attempt to get the heat off himself he came and snitched on Scarlett for being outside. I had a quick look out there and couldn’t see her so then walked around the whole building looking for her and couldn’t find her, slightly raising my anxiety levels. When I did find her, indeed outside, in bloody November, without a coat, in the rain, digging mud with a stone and getting dirty when SHE IS NOT ALLOWED OUTSIDE I led her rather firmly by the arm back inside and shouted at her Very Loudly Indeed. Predictably she cried, at length. 🙁

But those two small incidents aside it was a really nice session and obviously I adored the singing :).

We left and dropped Ali and Freya home before heading back over to Tescos (sorry Ros ;)) and I made them listen to Mr Blue Sky just because it is such a fab record and needs to be listened to all the way through, before letting them choose and they both really liked a couple of Beatles songs (we were in Ady’s car today so had a different selection of cds to choose from to normal in my car). Tesco’s was fine, we got various bits for Scarlett’s party, some balloons and streamers, stuff to go in party bags and so on and a few bits for dinner tonight. They were both really well behaved and redeemed themselves beautifully :). They’d seen a paper on the stand of free publications which they wanted, right up the other end of the shop to where the tills were so while I was packing the bags Scarlett – with permission – went off and fetched one. She came back with it and then Davies decided he wanted one too so they went off together and came back to meet me at the entrance.

We got home and I had one of my regular tantrums about not being able to find any sellotape anywhere in the house so being unable to wrap an ebay parcel. I finally recycled one of the padded envelopes one of my dresses had come in and stuck it back together with PTFE tape 😆 It was pouring with rain by now so rather than drag everyone back out again I made lasagne for dinner instead. The children had promised to try it so I made them a little individual one each and a big one for Ady and I for later and cooked theirs. They played with a Hotwheels-alike ramp kit and the toy cars and listened to some more Beatles music – they particularly like Yellow Submarine :). Ady came home (he’s been to London to QVC again today, more meetings not filming) and I dashed out to my now nationally famous post office where I was able to sign their petition at the same time as sending my parcel.

The children ate their dinner – well they ate their garlic bread, Scarlett picked the meat out of her lasagne and Davies didn’t like it at all – and watched the Sarah Jane Adventures before I whisked Davies off in the rain to Beavers. We were slightly late and it was raining so we ran pretending to be Sarah-jane and Luke cos we thought they might do lots of running :). I got home and Scarlett was colouring and doing dot to dots but we were both really cold so we had a bath together and did face packs and body scrubs and deep hair conditioning treatment. She loves doing that and I really enjoy it too. I was telling her about the Lush shop and how my birthday present from my parents this year was a spending spree in there and I was hoping for the same again next year and promised if I do then she can come with me. Ady went to get Davies and he had a nice long bath after we got out, all Lush scented and smooth skinned :). Davies had had a good time at Beavers and made a cardboard rocket complete with tail fins and red crepe paper fire. He’d also plucked up the courage to correct them when they’d spelt his name wrong (missed out the ‘e’, they always do that round there :roll:) by apparently watching them write it and then telling them ‘I think you might want to try that again!’ – bet that endeared him to them 😉 :lol:.

Ady went off to Tescos to fill his car up with petrol as I’d failed to do it despite going to Tesco as there were huge queues at the petrol bit and I hate using his company petrol card. So I let the children stay up and play with the rocket while he was gone. Davies was teaching Scarlett how to count down from ten to zero (or rather, blast off!) and then we packed them off to bed.

Tonight there has been a spectacular thunderstorm which rumbled on for hours. It was sheet lightning but as I’ve just been googling it appears that is simply fork lightning hidden behind a cloud so the whole cloud and sky is illuminated by the lightning. I was also under the impression – presumably from personal remembrances although Ady said the exact same thing while I was just thinking it, that you only get thunderstorms in the summer, but googling proves that incorrect too. Interesting stuff; one way and another I’ve learnt a lot today :).