I worked all day.

There is a new girl at work – actually there are two new girls but I’ve not met the other one yet. The one I have met seems nice enough, very library-ish.

I did storytime today, it was busy with 18 children and 18 adults and the kids were all very frisky and lively. I got them to do lots of singing and lots of action songs like heads, shoulders, knees and toes and only read two stories which I encouraged shouting out during.

I got really pissed off at the return of 4 of my request to buy for the library service books as they are ‘teachers resource books’. There is a very comprehensively stocked schools library service which is not open to Home Educators. I know other ones around the country are and I am half tempted to make a big fuss about how *my* children are being denied books from the council by not attending school and not being given access to them otherwise. But I suspect I would be successful and then have to be registered in some way and brand myself as a trouble maker and become ‘that mad home educating woman at Lancing library’. So I contained my ranting to my immediate colleagues instead who probably all went up to the staff room to talk about me afterwards! It does also annoy me that the subject in question (they were all philosophy and critical thinking books about big questions such as Does God Exist and Is There Life After Death?) is considered one that should be taught in schools and not at home by parents anyway though quite aside from the HE side of things. Surely parents get asked these sorts of questions by their kids regardless of whether they are in school or not, and surely parents would like to be able to borrow books to assist with talking these things through? Grrr

Feeling very militant about all our parenting rights being eroded this week after the swimming pool little boy, the having to make Tarly’s hair tidy and now the philosophy is the teachers domain with your children, not the parents. Or maybe I’m being sensitive?

I helped a woman with her CV – she was trying to print it from the body of an email and the pc kept crashing (unrelated) so I helped her format it into a presentable document, she was very grateful :). I sent a fax of 17 pages to Canada for someone at a massive cost of £34. He was very excited as it was all his documents to get a working visa to go out there :). I spent some time photocopying pages and photographs out of a load of books and then ageing the print with old teabags ready for a display on ‘stories from history’ I’m doing on Saturday. I did a hard sell on someone who rang up about reading groups and she is coming along to ours next week and I picked up a huge pile of new books for us to read at bedtime as we’ve been on a bit of a non-fiction kick and sometimes just plain old stories are the best :).

Ady was on a course today for intermediate level excel. He seemed to enjoy it and said he learnt a bit. He was more enthusiastic about the welcome tea and posh biscuits, three course sit down lunch and afternoon tea and cakes though :lol:.

Mum was here all day with Davies and Scarlett. They watched Wallace and Gromit from Christmas, Scarlett took delivery of a parcel containing a soft toy that sings a song (Davies said my Mum put up with it for about ten minutes before banning her from playing it anymore! :lol:) and they did some more birdwatching. The pictures are excellent but unfortunately my Mum’s ability to use the bird book to identify them seems a bit sketchy. Davies had labelled one of his as raven, which is highly unlikely in this part of the country and far more likely to be a crow or jackdaw. They had both done really good pictures of what they’d labelled as ‘winter gulls’ but some investigation showed them to actually be black headed gulls in their winter plumage. I rolled my eyes a fair bit about that :rolls:

Mum and Davies had gone through the W&G calendar she’d got him for Christmas and Davies’ had written in all the family’s birthdays. Not sure what else they got up to but it all seemed to go okay.

I got home shortly after Ady and caught up with the children while Ady heated up their pheasant casserole. Scarlett really liked it and ate most of hers. Davies didn’t like the sauce although he said he liked the pheasant meat so he picked at it and then had some bread and butter and ketchup (nice!) at which point Scarlett suddenly declared she didn’t like hers actually either and wanted bread and butter and ketchup too. Davies said he’d have the pheasant again cooked without a sauce so at least we’re still explanding what they’ll eat.

They got to pick two books each from the pile and went for Storm Cats, Emily Brown and the Thing, The Catnapping Cat and Ordinary Oscar.

Bed for them, curry for us and I am very excited that we have arranged to collect a sofa bed from a freecycler to put in the playroom meaning we have a proper spare bedroom for guests now. So roll up and book your stay :).