Blogging by the wrong person

really today – I think the other 3 Gees had far more interesting days :). Fortunately Ali blogged about the smaller people’s pm.

I was at work all day – this morning that entailed doing the banking – two of us count up all the money, replace the floats (there are 3 tills at work) and then cash up involving various data entry and things like adding up in columns which I’d not done for years before I got this job. One person then bags up all the money and fills in the paying in slip while the other sends all the information to accounts, then goes to the bank to deliver the sealed cash bag. While released into the town you also post any post in the post office post box and go and buy tea, coffee, milk supplies if required for the staff room. It was my turn to go to the bank so I did the post office, the newsagents for milk and then stood outside the bank for about 10 minutes waiting for it to open. I chatted to an old lady who was also waiting about lottery tickets. She was 85 and had walked from the seafront very quickly and was telling me about how her and her husband,when he was alive had played the lottery every week but now she didn’t always bother if she felt her luck wasn’t good. It made me think about phases of our lives chatting to her.

You have your childhood, then your teens and depending on how your life pans out many of us then spend the biggest proportion of our lives in a relationship, often with children. It is easy to assume this is it but having spent more time than ever before in my life these last two years talking to elderly people since working at the library I have come to appreciate that it is not just people who divorce who then have another, sometimes very long phase of their life living differently. This 85 year old was very fit and sprightly. She didnt’ say when her husband had died but I got the impression it was not very recently – maybe 5 years. She could easily have 20 plus years altogether of living alone at the end of her life – well over half my life so far. I hope I live to be very old and cantankerous and it makes me ponder deeply to imagine how many phases of living there are still yet to come for me.

Back to the library where I did some preparation for baby rhyme time for going to tea. I try and vary slightly which songs we sing, more for my own benefit than the little attendees. I was on the enquiry desk when the first mothers and babies started to arrive and they all came over to say hello on their way past. One of the mothers who has twins who turned one last week came over and was enthusing about how much her toddlers loved rhyme time and how much they always engaged with me. Feels very strange to be an adult in the lives of children other than my own really, I’ve never quite got used to that.

During Rhymetime we sing songs and rhymes and bring out a box of instruments about halfway through which then get collected in again and we finish with a few more songs. The collecting in again is often a cue for the babies to get upset and whilst the training for rhyme time stresses how important in babies development that all is I’m more inclined to encourage baby anarchy so today as we had a smallish group (14 babies, 14 adults) I sat in the middle from about 10 minutes before we started, got the instruments out while chatting to the mums and encouraged the babies to come over and have a play with the instruments and then left them out for the whole session.

I did some work in the workroom and then had my lunchbreak. This afternoon I did various bits on the enquiry desk and the counter. It’s been an inset day for local schools so loads of children were around and at least 4 of the Rainbows came into the library today along with various other children. I spent ages chatting to one little boy who had come in at the weekend to borrow loads of books which he’d taken home in his Ben 10 rucksack so we’d talked about that then. Today he was talking to me about Doctor Who – fortunatly Ben 10 and Doctor Who are things I can chat to small boys about ;).

Ady was off this morning and took the children to see Horton Heard a Who at Brighton. They’ve seen it before (we all went to see it earlier this year) but I wanted them to see one with Ady this week so I’d booked it anyway. They had a good time and saw a couple of other HE families there at the end. Ady then dropped them off at Ali’s house and went off to work. They had a great time with Ali and all came to meet me at work at about ten to five. Scarlett was hilarious, digging out every single Rainbow Fairy book off the shelf and presenting them to Freya telling her ‘you can take all these home to borrow!’. She refused to accept that Freya isn’t a member of WS libraries (what with living in East Sussex and all) and I quite like the idea of running libraries according to Scarlett! Sian (another colleague) and I had been discussing what we would do if her and I ran the library earlier but I feel Scarlett would have even more of a flair for chaos ;). Davies and Ali came upstairs with me (or rather they took the lift, I used the stairs) and Davies came into the staff room and claimed some chocolates to take back and share with Freya and Scarlett) and we all left to come home.

I fed the children pizza and pasta (oh, so Italian!) while Ali and I drank wine and chatted in the kitchen, then Tarly and I ran round to Rainbows arriving late. Lucy and Rebecca were also running late so they ran in with us. They made coloured in pumpkins which were laminated and postit note pads added to make a sort of spooky noteholder type creation.

We came home to find Ali and Freya still here so Ady took them off home while I persuaded Davies and Scarlett into pjs and read them a story. It’s been a frantic week and Ady and I are off to a wedding tomorrow so I’m going to bed while tomorrow is still tomorrow and not suddenly today!