One word? When seven would do…

This morning was a field trip for my Waste Prevention Advisors course to a MRF (said as ‘murf’) which stands for Materials Recycling Facility. It’s a new all singing, all dancing jewel in the crown of West Sussex County Councils recycling that opened earlier this year complete with classroom and viewing platform. I’d asked ages ago if Davies and Scarlett could come along and had it agreed before realising it was half term. Several other people asked last week if they could bring their children and were told no, it was fully booked so I was a bit nervous about rolling up with D and S and had pre-warned them about ‘impeccable behaviour’ which is our current family joke after I’d lectured them about my expectation of their behaviour while being looked after by Elizabeth last week. As we left Scarlett informed me ‘we have done impeccable behaviour Mumma. Haven’t we Elizabeth?’ 😆

We arrived and were greeted by the Education Officer who runs the visits for both adults and children. She talked to the children and said she was worried they might be bored so while we talked and looked at slides perhaps they’d like to design their own cloth bags before giving them a blank cloth bag each and a huge tub of fabric pens. They were delighted with this and spent the whole time we were being talked to and shown slides decorating their bags.

We started with an overview of the site, how it came to be built and what it’s targets and aims are. We then were shown the way the plant works by way of a flow diagram and shown some videos and some live webcam shots from around the plant. Scarlett pretty much kept her head down as many of the slides were just text but she did watch all the films and camera stuff and clearly loads was going in as it very much shaped her drawings on her bag. Davies participated more fully and was following the slides aswell as decorating his bag.

We then donned high-vis vests and hardhats with built in ear defenders which plugged into hand held radios. They are two way radios but we were just using them to hear a running commentary from Jen, our guide. I had to lie about Scarlett’s age and claim she was already seven as that is the youngest children are allowed on the viewing platform but I suspected 6 weeks tacking on her age wasn’t too criminal!

The viewing platform gave us a fab birds eye view of the whole operation; 93 conveyor belts dealing with all of the recyclable material that comes in from household waste collection including paper, cardboard, glass, some plastics, foil, aluminium, steel. It is an amazing place running with a tiny amount of actual staff. Waste comes direct off the lorries and has an initial human eye cast over it to pull out large cardboard and any obviously not recyclable materials. It then makes it’s way to a big drum with various sized holes which spins it and waste falls out onto appropriate belts depending on size and weight. Next it passes under giant magnets which pick up aluminium and throw that to a different belt, then past an eddy current which repels steel sending that to a different belt again, glass and paper/card fall through on weight grounds until it is just plastics left. Finally a light reflecting machine similar to bats echolocation shoots beams of light at the plastics and determines by how quickly it is reflected back what density it is and therefore what type of plastic, then directs blasts of air at items to push them to the correct belts. Everything has a last human eye cast over it to check before being baled into cubic metre bales (except for glass) ready for collection off the relevant destination for recycling.

Photos are rubbish as the belts move soooo fast it was practically impossible to get any photo that wasn’t a blur

We then headed back to the classroom. The children and I spent some time looking at the displays on the walls particularly the one charting how old water bottles can be turned into fleece jumpers along with jars of each step of the way displayed for you to touch and feel.

There was another display showing rubbish, what new raw material it could be made into and then an example of what that could be turned into (water bottles to fleece, old baked bean tins to paperclips, tetrapacks to cardboard boxes etc.). The children went off to wash their hands and then Davies got chatting to the old lady on my course for quite a while. I was also complimented on ‘how cute’ the children were and how well behaved they’d been. The old woman came up to me afterwards to check she’d understood correctly that they don’t go to school and asked a few questions. She then offered to help with music lessons if they were interested and said she’d love to talk to me about Home Ed more another time :).

We then had a Q&A session and some more general information on recycling. Davies asked a question and we learnt about some end destinations for materials recycled from Ford. All the glass from there is currently being ground up and used as aggregate for the M25 road widening happening at the moment. We were amused to think we drove past our old wine and beer bottles at the weekend! Davies and Scarlett both added a note to the feedback wall about what they’d learnt and then we left.

I was really proud of them both, they did indeed behave impeccably, listened and learnt, were very interested and engaged and both did fab designs on their bags. Hurrah for my babies! 🙂

I’d made sandwiches to eat in the car and both children are very convinced by my homemade bread 🙂 Need to get into the groove of making the dough and getting a loaf in the oven with dinner each night now. We just about got to the petrol station for fuel leading to a chat about how very expensive petrol is and what journeys we’d done in the car since I put £25 in last week, which was more economical (long or short journeys) and which we could try and not use the car for (not many really). I said the car was our third biggest expense each month after the mortgage and food and we concluded that while we try really hard to walk rather than use the car if possible being without it would really hamper our lifestyle and restrict the things we do but that it does come with a financial and environmental cost.

We also had a talk about lineage to the throne brought about by Davies asking about the queen dying on Tales of Despereaux (film we saw at the cinema last week) which had me naming all the royal family I could and placing them in line to the throne. We concluded that was rather like Top Trumps and I got wobbly around trying to decide if a son born to William would be higher in line than Andrew or not. Still not sure actually as hypothetical offspring don’t appear on the wikipedia page I found 😆 Tried to decide if Philip outlived Elizabeth would be become known as ‘The King Father’ in the style of ‘The Queen Mother’.

We arrived at the park and Mel, Liam and Lily were not far behind. I’m really glad we persist in meeting each school holiday as while the children take a while to warm up to each other again with a break of a couple of months each time I like Mel a lot and I always enjoy hearing Tales from the Front Line of School ;). Davies and Scarlett led a game based on Prehistoric Park although Liam seemed a bit confused and asked if Davies really had a time machine at home. Not sure if Davies is a very convincing liar or Liam just doesn’t get the imaginative play D and S do 😆 Lily also asked if it was true D and S don’t go to school which amused me as Liam asked me that about 3 years ago so I’d always assumed she knew and accepted it. Ady says kids can be very unobservant like that and next time we see them one of them will probably ask if Davies and Scarlett are really brother and sister! 😆

I got slightly cross at one point when Scarlett was playing on a piece of play equipment in the playground and a queue formed behind her of children wanting a go. I think she was initially oblivious and then got cross about being hassled to get off it. She ended up with about 7 children waiting and then a grown up (presume she had a child in the queue) all telling her to get off it while she ignored them all and carried on. The woman was very persistant and I could see her talking to Liam who had already come over to tell me Scarlett was holding up the queue and I’d said she would get off when she’d finished. Liam then pointed out Davies to the woman and I could see her telling him to ‘go and get your Mum’ and him refusing. Eventually I called Scarlett over as I could tell she was getting stressed and sure enough she came over and sat on my lap and cried. She’d felt really pressured but as usual the more she was hassled the less inclined she was to lose face and back down. The thing with Scarlett is if you ask nicely or even say ‘I’d really like a go on that when you’ve finished’ she is so good natured she would probably hop down straight away or at least be mindful of you waiting but if you try and wade in with demands about taking turns she will dig her heels in. There had clearly been a ‘rent a mob’ mentality to the queue forming too as they all had really brief goes and then abandoned the thing anyway so she got to go back and play to her hearts content on it. It just pissed me off that this woman had gotten involved at all, that in a free park someone felt the need to manage turn taking and that an adult had been happy to create some sort of bullying mob atmosphere round a child. I didn’t go over as I’d have been likely to tell Scarlett to be as long as she bloody well liked and while I appreciate her behaviour was probably quite annoying to those waiting in line I am nonetheless proud of her for biting her lip and standing her ground.

We stayed until about 4pm and then all left; Davies and Scarlett had gymnastics while Liam and Lily both had friends coming over for sleepovers tonight.

Kids watched another Prehistoric Park while eating tea and then back out again to gymnastics. I’d had an email to agree a sweat band would be fine for Davies and that all went smoothly tonight. There were only two other children in their group tonight and the gym was very quiet. Not sure if people had assumed it wouldn’t run in half term or were away or ill or what but it was great for D and S to get such individual attention.

I came home again and Ady had already arrived home so we caught up with each others’ days and then went to collect the kids, arriving a bit early so we could watch the last ten minutes. We had planned to go to the beach afterwards as there is a Moonwatch week event being run by the local astonomy club with big telescopes on the beach to see the moon and Jupiter which is also currently visible but it was really cloudy tonight so we decided nothing much would be visible and we’ll plan to go another night this week instead.

Home for some stories – we have a pile of Colin Thompson books so we re-read and and all of which are just beautiful, with the most amazing illustrations.

Kids went to bed, they are both looking pale and wan and tired bless them although neither of them fell asleep very early. I cooked tacos for dinner and we’re planning a quiet day at home tomorrow.