Due to me being rubbish at planning childcare past the end of our hoildays we ended up with noone to look after Davies and Scarlett this morning. I did do some attempting to sort it with various asks but didn’t manage anything. In the end, predictably, two different people could have happily helped if I’d asked but I hate asking. Either I will learn to ask and that actually it’s not the HUGE favour I think it is for someone to have Davies and Scarlett round to play for a few hours (word is that people actually enjoy their company and find them a pleasure to be around;)) or I’ll keep finding myself in this situation…
In the end Ady and I discussed various options for dealing with it (i) one of us invented a swine flu type condition and ring in to work sick (ii) we flip a coin for who gets to ring in to work and explain due to childcare issues we won’t be in this morning (iii) we bribe the children to never tell anyone, lock them in the house, both go to work and hope for the best (iv) Ady puts his workphone to voice mail for as long as he thinks he can get away with and at the point he finally gets tracked down by someone from his work asking ‘where the hell are you?’ he drops them off at the library to me.
We went for (iv). And Ady managed until about midday which I thought was pretty good going, whereupon they joined the many other children milling about the library for the last hour and then came home with me. It was fine, worked well and was not an issue at all, Ady managed to do work on his computer from home so didn’t feel he was swindelling his work out of anything and the children were quite happy with the arrangement all round.
Back at home we had lunch, Davies and Scarlett continued with hama and aqua beading, I swapped some washing about (wet for dry, that sort of thing) and made a couple of phonecalls. Then we were off the park, yes another one, yes again for the second day running, yes during school holidays, to meet up with Caz and her youngest, Elliot.
Davies and Scarlett were disappointed not to see Archie, who is the one they get on best with but the 3 of them played very happily for over 2 hours. They spent a brief time in the actual playpark before heading out to explore the trees, grass and the holes in the walls which lead out on to alleyways and roads. Caz and I sat and chatted at great length which was just lovely. So nice to catch up properly with her and so sad to realise in just a couple of months time they’ll be off permanently to the other side of the world although of course we wish them well and hope all their dreams come true.
We parted at about 5pm and as Davies and Scarlett claimed to be ravenous and I’d not even thought about their dinner we called in a nearby fish and chip shop for a large adult cod and chips for them to share. They demolished that, Ady came home and we all caught up with each others days before I read them the rest of which we enjoyed but isn’t a patch on the Mr Gum books we’ve all loved. Might be to do with the school heavy content in the setting and the bullying theme which was faintly depressing rather than amusing. A good strong message in there I guess but that’s not really what we’re after from Andy Stanton. Bring on the stupidly named unlikely heroes and their Tourettes we say! 😆