Work all day for me today. I went to the post office before work to collect a parcel we’d missed yesterday which turned out to be the Mifi from Three. Had a quick play to check it all works okay and am very pleased with it 🙂 The broadband here gets turned off on 14th so it’s good to know we have the alternative done and dusted for now. The deal so far is for it pre-paid for ‘a couple of months and we’ll see how we go’ so please forgive in advance the fact I’ll be mentioning it on the WW blog in order to justify having it to Three.
I had a good day at work. We had three class visits this morning, so over 100 children in 3 batches for stories with the Childrens Librarian and then book choosing. As is always the case there are a couple of children without library cards and then the even sadder cases of children with cards with such large fines or defaulter status (where we’ve written to them 3 times about overdue books and never had them back or had letters returned to us as Gone Away, so the cost of the fines and replacement books is added to their ticket until such times as they come in and pay or return the items). This morning we had at least 4 children with Defaulter status on their ticket for fines over £10 and / or missing books so we had to say they couldn’t have the books they’d chosen which was really hard. Their teachers / parent helpers dealt really well with that and we put any books they’d selected behind the counter for them to ‘come back in with Mummy or Daddy after school to collect’. There was one little girl who’s mother was actually being a parent helper and she got really shirty about having to pay the fines before we’d let her daughter have the books. Later in the afternoon we then had two of the children come back with a parent to sweep off the fines and both had the audacity to moan about the fact we’d not let their child take books out! 😯
I spoke to the mechanic about Willow and it continues to rumble on so Ady is ringing him tomorrow to add his voice. I fear he has now consigned me to ‘Nagging Woman’ status and probably forgets all about me and the van once he’s put the phone down so am hoping Ady is able to move things along or arrange to get the van back so someone else can have a look at it. I’m very aware that my ‘no rush’ feeling five weeks ago when he took it away is changing to a ‘bloody hell!!!’ feeling now we only have 3 weeks to go. He is needing a part which he is struggling to source and this worries me rather a lot but I suspect he is not treating it with much urgency.
Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the day and they went to various places including Costco in Croydon where they all learnt about Amy Johnson, how the Purley Way was the site of an airfield years ago and bought a power pack / compressor / jump starter thing which you can charge from mains or cigarette lighter and holds charge to power mains plugs, has a light and so on and will hopefully be a really useful thing to have in the van. Ady’s been researching them for a while.
They also came home for lunch and gave Ady’s car a valet – mine is being done this weekend. The big news at home today was one of the hens has started laying again 🙂 Probably the speckledy who is an excellent layer judging by the whiteness of the egg. Really pleased we will be leaving the tenants with laying hens (hopefully the others will follow suit) and get to have had a few eggs from our chickens ourselves before we go :).
I arrived home and we all caught up on each others days and did bad, good, learnt:
Scarlett:
Bad: Learnt that Daddy won’t be able to get an upside down plant to show me tomorrow
Good: first egg of the year from one of the chickens 🙂
Learnt: The Costco in Croydon is built on an ex-airport and that Croydon is within London – she didn’t realise quite how far London sprawls.
Davies:
Bad: Nasty hurty ulcer in my mouth
Good: Nice day with Daddy today
Learnt: Amy Johnson was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic
Ady:
Bad: Campervan is a pile of poo – he did later agree it isn’t actually but was feeling bleak about it tonight 🙁
Good: Don’t need to go into the office tomorrow or even get up early as have a meeting at very local B&Q at 830am
Learnt: If jumping a car off a power pack you need to attach the black lead to a metal part of the vehicle rather than the black connector on the battery
Nic:
Bad: class visit children not being able to take books and then cheeky parents coming and giving us a hard time for their fines!
Good: Four shifts left at work, all ‘lasts’ – Saturday, Wednesday, Friday and Thursday to go.
Learnt: the song title for The Happy Wanderer, I never knew it was called that before.
This evening I’ve spent far too much time playing PvZ after everyone else went to bed and have just checked emails to find two confirming dates for Zone Three and one lovely one saying yes, including a bio about them, some pictures of their croft and a really warm welcomming invite to come and stay :). Just need that van sorted now.
My (paternal) grandad took my nan for a trip in a little plane at Croydon Aerodrome for their first date 🙂 As a child I was almost more surprised to learn that they’d voluntarily gone south of the river.
Comment by Alison — 04 February 2011 @ 9:38 am
I once took C and her friend I was childminding to the library to sign them up to the summer reading challenge. The library wouldn’t let the childminded friend sign up as there was over £10 of fines. Was a really embarrassing conversation with the mum later (more embarrassing for the mum – my friend).
Does the mechanic not appreciate that you will be homeless?
Comment by michelle — 04 February 2011 @ 6:11 pm