Defenders of anarchy

Today we met up with Mel, Liam and Lily. Despite the school holidays being nearly over and us making arrangements right at the beginning today was the first – and only – day we could all manage during the whole 6 weeks they were off school. Busy lives and part time working mums make for full diaries :).

Ady arrived home just before we were about to leave to show off his courtesy car. His car may well take a couple of weeks to fix although he seems to get a different guestimate from each person he speaks to, so we’ll see. The courtesy car is another Touran, slightly higher spec as it has tinted rear windows, all electric windows and air con controls in the back seats. It is a lovely blue colour too, but of course that makes no difference to the driving experience. That will be different to normal as it’s an automatic which I have very little experience of driving only ever having driven two previous courtesy cars over the years that were automatic. Never mind, it’s motorway most of the way to Chris and Helen’s so it won’t make much difference! It is of course missing the built-in dvd player with wireless headphones which Ady’s car has so my musical choice won’t be as free as usual.

Ady left to go about his days work and we headed off to Mel’s. My new peg loom had arrived so we went via a charity shop which seems to specialise in materials and wools and threads for some cotton to thread it with. I wasn’t sure how much the big spools would be so selected three and was amazed that they were only 10pence each for miles of thread just perfect for the threading of the loom 🙂 I got white, pink and green. Scarlett picked up a toy lemur and Davies picked up a balance science experiment box thing both for 75pence and in the shops’ BOGOF offer on toys – bargains ahoy! 🙂

We arrived at Mel’s and were very enthusiastically greeted by their 3 dogs (shudder). Mel lives with her mum in the house she grew up in and moved back to with her (then) husband and children when her Dad died. It’s an arrangement that seems to work quite well for them and allows her mum to stay in the house she loves but would be too big for her alone and Mel to have a bigger house than she could afford to buy with a built in babysitter when required. They have just had a load of building work done to create an additional bedroom for Liam downstairs (it is 3 bedroomed upstairs and Mel had one room, her mum another and Liam and Lily were sharing one). It’s looking really nice and it’s a deceptively sprawling house behind a smallish looking frontage.

The last time we met up, which I think was in the February half term or maybe the Easter holidays the four children had struggled a little with Davies being a bit too boisterous and Lily feeling left out when Scarlett joined in with the boys games. Today they all rubbed along really well together. Scarlett and Lily actually found some common ground (it’s only taken them nearly 3 years :lol:) and bonded over their pet tortoise. We had an hour or so at their house and then walked to the local park for a play in the playground before heading to their nearby Emmaus centre. Mel has talked about Emmaus before so it was interesting to actually go there and see it. We had lunch in the cafe and then wandered round the stuff for sale. Mel had a full basket of stuff (mostly toys) which she got for a quid (A QUID!) and we got 3 soft toys for Scarlett which they just gave us and a stargazer thing for Davies which was marked up at £3 but he only took £2 for in the end. We had a walk round the gardens there and then went back to Mel’s for another cup of tea and further playing for the children.

The day went really quickly and I had to tear the children away at 430pm to come home as they were really enjoying themselves. Mel either gets HE or does a very good job of pretending she does and often shares with me her frustrations with school and the institutionalisation of her children although she does see the good side of school for them too. This makes her good company among my friends with children at school as it is neither a subject we both studiously avoid or one we are trying to convince the other of our own viewpoint on. So we had a good ‘never like that when we were young’ and ‘youth of today’ type chatter which was nice, if made me feel like a proper grown up :lol:.

Just before we left Davies and Scarlett had a go on Liam’s Dareway which was a Christmas present to him last year after weeks of begging for one, that he only ever went on once on Christmas morning. Both my two fell in love with it instantly and were whizzing around on it like pros. They were very taken with it but I don’t think we have a suitable house for such toys really. Shame, because it did look like lots of fun :).
Once home I threaded up the peg loom and had a try with it. The threading is quite slow and laborious but worth doing as the result of the little bit I did weave was very promising. I need to get my hands on a load of rags now to make a rag rug which I think is going to be the very best first project. I’ve found various websites with patterns to properly make stuff like clothing on peg looms but I don’t want to try anything too ambitious until I have made at least one basic thing that has worked well. Any suggestions of good free rag sources gratefully recieved :).

Davies and Scarlett had a bath which all the new soft toys joined them in for a good wash and then the stargazer thing was set up in Davies’ room. It is American so has ‘fall’ written on the autumn globe (it comes with four different globes) and comes with a 30 minute tape telling you all sorts of interesting star facts. Scarlett went up to listen to it with Davies and they both kept having to pause the tape and run to tell me what the tape had said about various things. A definite bargain that :).