These boots were made for walking…

I had a quiet day at home planned today as I had various things I needed to get done and I thought we could do some snuggling with books too. I spent some time online applying for passport renewals for us all which led to a long conversation about passports and travelling abroad. I found a container suitable for a kitchen compost material gatherer and set that up, then talked to D&S about compost and showed them where it was and talked about what could go in it. Davies had lots of questions so I got out a book I’d uncovered by happy coincidence yesterday called Create Compost which is a soil association book that we picked up either at the South of England Show or Open Farm Sunday earlier this year. We read bits of that and chatted about various stuff around it. All interesting stuff we’re learning together.

Next we had to go out briefly as I’d arranged to collect a couple of bags of rags from a freecycler for rug making. Unfortunately she’d forgotten to get them ready or tell her poor husband who was most confused to open the door to a strange woman claiming to have been promised rags! 😆 I’m collecting them later in the week now, she assures me she’s got it organised now.

When we got home the children insisted they wanted to go out again this afternoon so I suggested we walk to the allotment to see how far it is on foot and how long it takes. They were both really up for it but I suspected they might change their minds after lunch.

We ate and they got engrossed in playing something with the toy animals but then they started to get restless and wanted to go and gather composting materials from the garden so we decided to go for that walk. I took my old phone which has a pedometer on it so we could measure the distance and decided to dust off my DMs for the occassion. I’ve been in flip flops all summer aside from my week of welly-wearing while camping so my feet protested rather at being all enclosed.

The route on foot should be shorter than that by car I’d have thought, particularly as the way we went isn’t possible by car due to a one way system. But I measured it as 1.8 miles when we drove the other day and it was 2 miles exactly to walk there. I put this down to the footbridge over the main road that we used which has 3 slopes on each side of the road. But we’ve never walked over it before so it was interesting to do. On the way back I used the steps while the kids used the slopes again and I was far quicker than them. It took just over 40 minutes at their pace although I was hurrying them a little as they are prone to meandering. It was nice to glance back over my shoulder every so often to watch them walking, shoulder to shoulder, deep in conversation about all sorts of things though. I sort of envy them their relationship sometimes; it’s very uncomplicated, honest and affectionate :). We spotted conkers on the way and Scarlett found 50pence so plusses on top of the whole exercise and fresh air thing going on there! 🙂

Once there we had nothing specific to do so peeped in to see how many people are around on a weekday afternoon (quite a few actually) and then went back to the park. The allotments are at the top of a very big park, playground and leisure centre. I think they are still a bit too little now but it probably won’t be long before Davies and Scarlett could be in the park while we’re in the allotment. For now there is a big field right next to the fence our plot lies along where they can run around if they have enough of digging and planting which is bordered by woods and footpaths to Lancing Ring.

We had a play in the playground – I went on the giant swing while Davies and Scarlett went on the see saw thing for awhile. There was just a couple of older women and very small children in there. Then the kids had a few gos each on the zipwire before we realised it was getting close to school chucking out time and started to head for home. We stopped at the shops for some sweets and found ourselves on the footbridge facing hundreds of school children coming out of the college. It is a huge school which has a nursery on site, a family centre, the senior school and sixth form college so probably well over 1000 children. When I was a kid it had a very bad reputation although I think it is supposed to be okay now. Scarlett was horrified at how many of the kids came out and lit up cigarettes including the ones in school uniform so we talked about that a bit. Then they overheard some swearing so we talked about that too. It’s no good preaching at Davies and Scarlett about stuff like that – quite apart from the fact I remember doing both of those things at that age I am fairly sure they will reach an age where they want to experiment with various things and I see far more point in talking to them openly about stuff and trying to explain properly why teens want to try stuff like smoking and drinking and swearing than in trying to pretend they are all stupid and that I hope D and S will never do that. Bizarre environment I am pleased to never have to go back to myself though – just in the few minutes we were in the thick of the crowd we witnessed various low level name calling and nastiness, various kids being excluded from the crowd and plenty of generally undesireable behaviour such as graffitti and petty stuff like kicking people’s walls etc.

Back at home I drank lots of tea, made the children their tea and they watched Raven. Ady arrived home and we read 3 longish stories before bed; The Lion & The Unicorn by Shirley Hughes, The Wild Swans (Barefoot books) and Big Blue Whale (another Nicola Davies one) which all led to much additional conversation, especially Lion and Unicorn about an evacuee.

Bedtime for D and S and curry and Jumper for me and Ady which we thought was ‘ok’. I lost interest a bit and got on with some of my ragrugging which has slowed down rather but is over halfway done on the latest blue and green creation which will be a bath mat.