One word? When seven would do…

Up with the alarm this morning and into the car to head off for a seed bomb workshop. I’m not fully sure what a seed bomb is myself, hence the need to attend a workshop really but as the website advertises it as ‘everything you need to grow a seed except the water’ it seemed rather ironic that it was torrential rain that prevented us from getting there 🙁

I’ve started to take my car starting forgranted again and today, after three solid days of very heavy rain, and not having been started since I got home from work on Friday, it refused to start :(. I was persistent and it did eventually fire up, I let it tick over for a bit and when I was fairly confident it was running okay we set off. I’d allowed plenty of time to get there so the 10 minute delay was fine but as the rain seemed to be getting ever harder I was seriously considering the wisdom of the journey as we still haven’t gotten round to sorting out breakdown cover for the car. It seemed fine and coped with a fair few stops, pulling away and braking incidents which are the usual dodgy bits with a car that might stall so I was feeling confident until we got to the other side of the Southwick tunnel at which point there must have been pooled water on the road, and I picked up speed which would have meant more water splashing underneath and it started to lose speed and power. At a really crucial slightly scary bit of the A27 where the slip road joins and cars often dart across 3 lanes to get to the A23 turn off I was pretty convinced it was going to die, leaving us in the middle lane of traffic doing 70mph plus in very poor visibility. At which point I got slightly wobbly about having the kids in the car with me.

I then made the decision that all the time the car was still running we should probably be heading for home rather than a very expensive per hour on street parking, leaving the car in the pouring rain for two hours and then hoping it would start again and get us home in time for Chatterbooks. Quite possibly the first time I’ve bowed to a sensible decision over an airy ‘it’ll be alright’ type one and we were all disappointed but it was the right, grown up thing to do.

We got home okay with much talk about cars I have previously owned that object to the damp and stall every time you hit the brakes and how I coped with them, what ‘tickover’ means and why Scarletts suggestion that we ‘get a new set of wheels’ was even funnier when Davies misunderstood her meaning and tried to explain to her that 3/4 of the tyres had been changed earlier this month! 😆

Back home again I emailed my apologies and rearranged another date for the seedbomb workshop as they are running over several weeks so at least we’ve not missed out. I booked Okehampton, spent some time discussing ‘making things happen for yourself’ with the kids and a bit of gentle prodding about thinking what they’d like to spend their days doing when they are adults and planning some sort of route to making that happen which may or may not have included Things A Mother Should Say like ‘and if you want to spend all your time sitting playing computer games young man, you are going the right way about it!’ 😆 Honestly I do believe my physical being was inhabited by some sort of Proper Grown Up spirit for a good part of this morning 😆

So Davies did some animation – a really good one using lego figures, while Scarlett did a fab picture of a bear catching a salmon.

We had chicken soup (made by Ady last night) and home made bread (put on by Ady this morning) for lunch which was delicious and seemed to pre-empt me feeling a bit rough later this afternoon with a cough and headache. Surely you’re supposed to have the chicken soup after you start to feel pants? I even took some paracetomol for my headache which is something I almost never do, I hardly ever use medication (mostly because it can interfere with my drinking ;)).

Davies and Scarlett were itching to get to Chatterbooks and I was ever conscious that we may need to walk so we left home just before 2pm. The car started just fine but stalled almost right outside the library in the middle of the road, when I had to brake to let a car come the other way. It simply refused to start again despite about ten minutes worth of trying and one sweet middle aged woman came and offered to push, which was lovely but I declined on the basis that last time we pushed my car three of us struggled and that was without two kids in it too. Eventually a strapping bloke came over and offered and I accepted as I literally needed pushing round the corner into the library carpark. I did say ‘it’s a big, heavy car’ to which he laughingly replied ‘s’fine, I’m a big, heavy bloke, I’ll just lean on it!’ 😆 and as it hit the slight downward slope of the carpark I managed to bumpstart it :). I revved it and let it run for a few minutes before reversing it into a space mindful of potential jump start requirements and content that it could be left there for however long if need be as it was safely in a staff only spot.

We nipped to the pound shop for labels and marker pens and then to the library to set up for Chatterbooks. I photocopied some blank comic strip pages, did a quick 9 section line drawing version of Little Red Riding Hood to demonstrate that if you know the story you can fill in all the words and even missing bits of a story, got the flip chart ready and was reading Davies and Scarlett ‘ish’ when Russell arrived and we had a quick chat about plans for today’s session.

We then became aware of a lady and a labrador wearing a ‘helping dog in training’ vest in the library with a small boy and a man and Scarlett and Davies were speculating on what sort of helping the dog might be doing one day. I started chatting to the woman and she came over to sit on the floor with us, introduce the dog, Rupert, and tell us all about it. He is a dog for people in wheelchairs and will be trained to pick things up that have been dropped, empty the washing machine/ tumble drier, put a credit card into a machine and retrieve cash from cashpoints, press the button at pedestrian crossings and loads more:shock: He was absoluetely gorgeous and even I was more than happy to have him slobber over me :). The woman is a ‘puppy parent’ who has dogs for the first year full time and the second year part time while they spend some time in kennels. Rupert is only about a third of the way through his training and is doing really well. Davies wandered off but Scarlett was enthralled and asked loads of questions about various kinds of helping dogs. We also learnt about various crosses and breeds and what their speciailities are eg German Shepherds are great police dogs, spaniels are great sniffer dogs, any poodle cross (labradoodle and another silly name I’ve now forgotten) are good for people with allergies as they have wool rather than fur, some dogs are slower breeds which is great for people with eg MS, others are more energetic and good for younger disabled people who might need a dog at work with them all day matching their busy pace. Really interesting chat and the woman was equally interested in Home Ed :).

Then children started arriving for Chatterbooks. Another full house today. We started with the book cover jigsaws I’d forgotten last week and recapped a bit on what we’d talked about then. One of the children had brought in a book she’d made which was fab – fully illustrated, a cast list on the inside cover, a really strong story, beautifully written with a happy ending and she’d even ‘done the blurb on the back’ 🙂 Was very impressed :). Some of the children wanted to talk about books they’d read / are reading this week and then we talked about illustrations. I had a whole pile of books with different, interesting or just beautiful illustrations including some that had no words, some that simply went with the words to tell the story, some that strengthened the story or added greater depth and some that told another story again to the words. Good examples included the fab Lauren Child, these Colin Thompsons

and a couple more because he is just such a wonderful illustrator, some George
you can’t talk about pictures without a bit of Where’s Wally, some wordless books including the lovely
and then some books about art including
and
(love Anthony Browne).

So we looked at those and talked about various pictures, how they made us feel, what mood or tone they set for the story and so on. Next everyone had some pens and paper to draw their own illustration. Some copied illustrations in books, some made up their own, some started writing and illustrating. Davies did a full colour story in comic strip, Scarlett couldn’t think of anything but did look through The Flower Man with another girl and they came up with their own version of the story together.

It wasn’t as calm and smooth as last week and I did have to call a couple of them to order once or twice and remind them they were there out of choice, didn’t have to be and could call their mum over and go home if they didn’t want to be part of the group. I have two I suspect will be the tricky ones but have some plans for next week to try and ensure they don’t spoil it for the others, or indeed me.

I tried to get some input from them all about what else they’d like to do but either the group dynamic prevented good thoughts / suggestions or I have a skewed view of how well children can respond to being given wide open choices like that. It’s fine as I have ideas for all the subsequent sessions anyway but would have been more than happy to shelve them in favour of something the children had suggested. They seem to work better when kept busy and not given too much ‘do it your way’ which I find slightly hard given my own experience with my own children but actually I do from the group of friends we have that lots of the children prefer proper guidance so I’m sure I can strike the balance.

Home Ed came up as obviously everyone other than Davies and Scarlett were in school uniform and one of the children asked me what school D & S go to so I explained they didn’t. I’d sort of rather it hadn’t come up as I don’t want them all to go home and talk about that and suspect several of the parents would rather they didn’t either but a direct question requires a direct answer…

We had squash and biscuits and then I read to everyone and we embarked on a group doodle. This involved me doing a random squiggle on the flip chart and then everyone coming up adding something to it. I encouraged them not to talk about what they could see too much and then we went round the circle saying what we thought it looked like. One of the children had drawn a deliberate horses head but all the rest were similarly random marks to mine. We had a great selection of ideas as to what the groups piece could be- some children saw mountain ranges, some clouds, some cars and planes, some satellite dishes, I saw kites and Scarlett saw a planet. That worked really well and everyone was utterly engaged with it and would happily have done that a second time. But we were already a good ten minutes over our hour so I got them all to come up and sign the piece and we finished up. Most of the children took at least one book each, plenty from the pile of illustrated books I’d got in so that was good too :).

After they’d all gone Russell remarked on what a difference there had been with them being cooped up at school all day and how restless they’d been compared to last week. I’d not given it a thought but of course that was what the change in behaviour was – straight from school all day to the library, no wonder they needed some down time. Maybe next week we’ll try something energetic first then follow with a story to quieten them down.

It was another good session though, great feedback from parents, Davies and Scarlett said they really enjoyed it and one of the mums was nagging Russell about the ongoing need for such a thing :).

Back to the car which again took a while to get started but did get us home fine. We’re supposed to be going to Book Group tomorrow over in Barnham (about 20 miles) and I just think we’d be silly to try with it being unreliable in wet still unless the day dawns bright and very dry. 🙁 Will have to go back to the mechanic who did the leads and see what he suggests next, along with breakdown cover so that at least if I can get it started I don’t need to fret so much about it conking out again somewhere.

Home for the kids’ tea and me to slump with a cough and a bit of a shiver. I got a fire lit and drank tea til Ady came home and took over things like hoovering, making our dinner and running baths. I read a chapter of Creation stories and a couple of the picture books Tarly had picked up at the library before proclaiming myself all read out and packing D&S off to bed.

Watched the last of the Tower Block of Commons and then some taped Masterchef, dealt with children who don’t sleep (Davies appeared with a plasticine box containing lumps of plasticine and googly eyes with ‘my making kit’ on the front), ate dinner and coughed.