My first working week went ok in the end. I think it will work out alright and the commute seems to not be quite as long a walk as I had feared. I can do it in half an hour quite comfortably.
I’m not sure how I’ll actually structure my time yet. Coryla is keen for me do so some stuff with the kids and I am happy to do odd bits here and there. Yesterday after they had had their outside time Eve brought me a pine cone as a present (she had brought me in a holly leaf skeleton and a daisy in the morning from her walk to school). I said thankyou and pointed out that part of it was closed and part was open and talked to her and Joss about pine cones opening and closing which led to us all going back outside with a bucket to collect a load more and then putting them in various hot, cold, light and dark places around the school to check up on next week and see if they have changed. The phone then rang and it was for Coryla so I was talking to Eve and Joss more when Davies and Scarlett arrived to meet me and said in incredulous tones ‘were you educating them?!’ 😆
Walking home with Davies and Scarlett and talking about education, schools, curriculum based versus interest learning had Scarlett telling me she plans to take her children off traveling in a campervan and home educated them *exactly* how she has been educated while Davies told me that he intends to travel too but will ‘always have a home on Rum’. Stuff like that reassures me we are doing the right thing by our kids.
I’d rung my Mum from the school, mostly so they have the number there and know that they can reach me on a landline four mornings a week, talked to Stuart the headmaster, sent a few work related emails and done a load of shredding of paperwork. My plan is to maybe spend an hour a day gradually clearing and tidying the office space, learning what is where and starting to inventorise the resources a little and organise where stuff is. Once I’ve done that with the office there is another cupboard and small room to do, then two sheds and then a polytunnel to do stuff with and various outside things.
After lunch I made pizza dough and then all of us went down to the shop for a Friday evening beer. It was nice and felt good to celebrate the start of spring, the end of my first working week and Friday 🙂 Home for pizza.
Today was Saturday pancakes for breafkast and then Ady and I went to the village to get stuff from the freezer. We saw Claire and Vikki who were heading up here to dig polytunnel holes and I said I would join them. Ady stayed with the kids and did various stuff while I helped dig a couple more holes – just one to go and all 12 are done. Vikki, Claire and I all had a rant about various things and then they headed off. I came in for a cup of tea and we did some training tricks with Bonnie as a new book had arrived in the post. It’s clear to me that unless we do some proper training with Bonnie we are likely to have problems with her as she seems bored so I ordered a book for some inspiration as dog training is outside of all of our scope of experience although Ady was around dogs in the years before he was with me. This books looks like a good starting point and the kids did well with it.
After getting pretty muddy and achey of arms (not to mention the cummulative effect of many, many walks to the village and back this week) I had arranged to take Vikki up on her Christmas present to me voucher of bubble baths whenever I like at her house, so I gathered up towel, kindle and shampoo and headed down there. I had a cup of tea while my bath was running which I took in with me to finish off, it being too early for wine and enjoyed a lovely hot bubbly soak while reading my kindle. I then had another cup of tea and chat with Vikki before leaving. I have been rather sucked in of late to the issues surrounding Vikki and her job at which she is not always very good but actually she is a very good friend and I am intending to focus on that aspect of her above all others. It was a good chat 🙂
Back home again Ady had tidied up and got the fire going and then he was off out to watch James Bond at Paul’s house for a lads night. I suspect it will only have been the two of them plus James but he gets on well with both of them and some sitting in a house watching telly drinking beer with blokes will have been a nice few hours for him. I cooked curry and rice (for me, the kids had plain chicken and plain rice which meant every saucepan in the house used as I also did some poppadums), we listened to Queen and Adele in concert (I’d been telling them the other day how different Adele’s speaking voice was to her singing voice so showed them a youtube clip of her in concert ‘Albert Fucking Hall’ er yes, that demonstrated it alright! 😳 ) and then we watched some Miranda. Bonnie has been very very restless, clearly missing Ady so in the end I put her in her crate where she instantly settled down.