A swimming Rainbow Badger

I imagine she’ll be called worse in her time, and she’s certainly had tribute paid to her in more conventional terms before but tonight that’s what she decided she was :).

But in classic Julie Andrews style we’ll start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start) – sorry if that puts the song in anyone’s head but I now have it in mine so we can be needles pulling thread together :).

I had to set my alarm for 8am this morning as Dad was dropping my car back and he generally considers me a lazy slattern who neglects my children horribly cos I can’t be arsed to get myself up in time to take them to school – and other flattering things as well of course ;), so I wanted to be up and about when he arrived. So I was :). We drank tea / coffee and chatted, he stayed with D&S while I dashed round the shop for milk having given myself a huge fright when going into the semi darkness of the garage to try and get a six pinter out of the freezer to defrost only to be smacked in the face by a brace of pheasant and a brace of partridge hanging by their necks from one of the garage rafters :shock:. I did venture further but we were out of milk anyway :rolls:.

Dad left and we made birthday cards for T and then I begged half an hour peace on my laptop while they entertained themselves so they got the brio out and made an elaborate track to play trains on. We had crumpets at about 1130 as the last time we’d gone to E’s Scarlett had only eaten carrots and Davies hadn’t eaten anything from the wholemeal, vegan food on offer 😳 – and erm, although I’m sure it is delicious fayre I’d only picked at it out of politeness too. Everyone else was very complementary so I know it is just me and my kids fussy eating habits rather than a slur on the homecooked refreshments but I’d rather they were able to quietly refuse than exclaim loudly about whether they like it or not and then moan about being hungry. Then they tidied up the traintrack while I customised some paper tablecloth bought and not used for Scarlett’s birthday party to make wrapping paper for T’s pressie – a paint your own bird feeder with paints and brush and a big bag of wild bird food. He seemed to really like it :).

Lucy and The Rs arrived and we headed off to Brighton for the party – I managed to not only remember exactly where it was but also get a parking space right outside their house :). Already there were two other lots of friends and Ali and Freya (although I am still not convinced it was them, they were so prompt ;)) arrived shortly afterwards. T rather hero-worships Davies – apparently he has a special song he sings called ‘Davies is so cool’ which his mum E hears very often 😆 and Scarlett gets on well with his sister L and having been there before and knowing all the other children they disappeared straight off – particularly as expected they didn’t like the food on offer so that didn’t keep them sitting down. I was able to sit and chatter and only had a child of my own to deal with right at the end when Davies was involved in a set to and got bumped on the head (not unprovoked I don’t think). It did feel slightly odd but then I do have the oldest children and I assuaged my guilt by remembering all the times at D or S’s parties when I have glanced enviously at the other parents chatting while I barely manage to nip to the loo, so I decided running after the children was E’s role and actually she is not only bloody good at it anyway, she is also really enjoying it :). So I drank tea and chatted instead, it was great!

It was interesting to note that having removed Davies from the MM ‘set’ I’ve been pleased to note it was MM specific behaviour that he was demonstrating and that particularly having given him wider access to different children and older ones too since Christmas he has been happier and easier that he fell straight back into noisy, boisterous leader of the loony masses when back with that gang again. Not that it was dreadful behaviour or even terribly undesirable, just not who I think he *really* is, more who the persona he adopts in that company. So we all enjoyed it, I managed to let him get on with it and am safe in the knowledge we’ll do that fortnightly or so and he can be that Davies and then go back to being the real Davies again afterwards. Not at all sure that will make sense to everyone but I know at least one mother will be sitting reading this knowing what I mean ;). We managed to do some feminist ranting too which was good for the soul :).

Home again where Ady was waiting having left his keys in the house so been unable to get in til we got home. The children had tea and then Scarlett and I walked round to the church for Rainbows. She was nervous but in that excited dancing around sort of way. She is very good at going up to people, smiling and saying ‘Hello, I’m Scarlett, what’s your name?’ and has her brothers talent for suggesting games or activities and getting others to join in so she was flitting between trying that and clinging onto my hand. She wasn’t the only new girl tonight but all the other mothers crept off after ten minutes or so except me. There were 17 girls there tonight and that was with 2 regulars missing so it’s a busy old group of 5-7 year old girls. They started with a circle of holding hands which Scarlett kissed me and then ran into the middle of, happily grabbing the hands of her neighbours but looking slightly doubtful about announcing ‘I’m Rainbow Scarlett!’ and then sitting down like all the others so she just grinned in a rather embarrassed fashion and sat down. The first activity was a cutting out and sticking together paper owl making one so she was in her element with that, happily running off to sit down at the far end of the room, where she couldn’t see me without stretching round the girl sitting next to her. I could hear her asking people to pass the glue, share the scissors and talking to the adult helpers quite happily. I also watched her getting slightly fed up when people were taking too long and saying ‘can you hurry up with the glue please’. There was then a bit of ‘free play’ where the girls got out skipping ropes, hula hoops and various similar playgroundy things to play with while everyone finished. Scarlett tried really hard at that point to join a group of chatting girls, join in with a game already happening and start up a conversation with a couple of lone girls. She didn’t get very far with any of them which was a shame because she honestly tried and just couldn’t penetrate friendships clearly already made. One of the girls – dressed in very party type skirt and leggings and proper high heeled boots (at 6 FFS!) with elaborate plaits snarled at her to ‘Stop it!!!!’ when she tried to join in their game and did a sort of flounce. Scarlett sort of shrugged at wandered off to the next group (made me very proud of her that – I’d have been smarting for weeks, Davies would have come running to me in tears and flatly refused to ever go back again). The little girl with the fiesty one sort of hung back and really smiled at Scarlett though in a sort of apologetic way. Scarlett eventually made her way over to the box and dug out a hoopla board and some hoops and played that. She tried to engage three girls sitting on the seats (which always shocks me, it looks so odd to see small children sitting down when there are things to play with on offer) but although they were not unfriendly they didn’t want to play either. Then they all got herded into a smaller room while the helpers tidied up and they sat in a circle and had a Rainbow doll to pass round. It seemed to be some sort of show and tell type session where the person holding the doll got to talk and they all spoke about what they got for Christmas. I found that slightly offensive somehow although I’m sure that was the sort of thing we did back at school even in my day as there was plainly a real competitive element to it even with these really little children and much boasting about ‘going skiing this year’ etc. Scarlett was about halfway round the circle and said she couldn’t remember what she got but she did have a Fur Real cat at home after the person before her mentioned she’d got one of those. I deliberately didn’t correct her or jump in as actually it’s not really relevant what she got for Christmas anyway. They then did a sort of singing action game where they had to touch the knees of the girls either side of them which Scarlett declined to join in with on the basis it was ‘a bit mad’. This reminded me very strongly of Davies at exactly the same age when he moved up to Gym Bobs from Tumble Tots and flatly refused to play some of the games because he didn’t see the point to them and they were ‘a bit crazy’. Spontaneous lunacy goes down a storm here, organised fun grates on the children and they just opt out, which not only do I understand as I’d be the same I also respect, admire and applaud really. They finished with another song – similar to the starting one which encorporates the Rainbows promise and has a jazzy little dance routine (me and Em could do it no problem :lol:) which Scarlett looked equally bemused by and that was it.

We chatted about it as we walked home. Her summary was that it was ‘a bit good and a bit silly’. The good bits were ‘the cutting and sticking and all the children’ the silly bits were ‘the singing and clapping and that girl who was a bit horrible to me’. She didn’t realise I’d witnessed the whole thing as it was a very fast exchange so she recounted to me precisely what I’d seen including the other girl catching her eye and smiling. She said that she thought it might be a bit like at Davies’ Beavers where there are a couple of not so nice boys and that probably the girl wasn’t so happy about people joining in her game and that’s why she’d been unfriendly. I agreed that could be it but stated clearly that Scarlett had done nothing wrong and said she had two choices on how to deal with it; she could either keep trying to be friendly and try to win her over as a friend or she could decide that actually she probably isn’t a very nice girl and she’d rather not be friends with her anyway and try and make friends with someone else instead. Without hesitation Scarlett said she’d like to keep trying. I’m really proud of her for this as I know I wouldn’t manage to do that but best of all I know that Scarlett’s endeavours to win her over will never involve compromising Scarlett herself, just clever social tactics :). She is happy to go back, seemed pleased with it overall and I can see that if she makes friends (or actually even if she doesn’t) it will be a nice enough hour a week for her with fun activities in a big group where she might well make friends and at the very least will get a small taste each week of life without any other Goddards nearby. She says she’ll let me know when she is ready for me not to stay and I doubt it will take many sessions (which is good, it is not an environment I particularly enjoy, it brings back way too many unhappy memories of school and girls social set ups for me). The whole thing was also very demonstrative of Scarlett’s sunny nature and optimistic standpoint on most things, she was very quick to identify the things she had enjoyed and focus on them. 🙂

I whizzed off to the supermarket taking Ady’s current work car, a Golf which is very nippy but way too small, can’t quite believe we managed Kessingland and Melrose and The Goddard Tour Of The North (including Scotland) in one when we had one all the time. He gets the Touran back tomorrow :). I’m off to work in the morning and we seem to have a nothing planned weekend which will be nice before embarking back on yet another every day filled up week again on Monday.