And a bit of stuff from today

well yesterday technically 😉

Ady was off to London for a QVC meeting today so he offered to run Davies and Scarlett to Liza’s house for me. The plan was for him to take them while I got dressed and then come back to collect me and drop me at work, leave his car at the library and catch the train to London.

However thanks to a mad dash to feed children and find coats for them they were late leaving and hit traffic on the way to Liza’s. I spent ages trying to work out where all the dressing gown cords are in the house. I have 3 dressing gowns – one short fluffy pink one, one long purple fleecy one and one short purple waffle one. I rarely wear them and they hang on the ensuite bathroom door in our bedroom. All three of them are minus the cords as the children have filched them to use as leads when playing ‘puppies’ or tying each other up or something. This means all three are effectively useless as I only ever wear them chucked on with nothing underneath so they definitely need fixing round the waist. Will have to fashion a ragrug belt or something ;).

I got dressed, sorted out the chickens, spoke to Ady and organised that as he wouldn’t be back in time to get me to work I would take my car in to work and then he should drop his car keys in to me at the library so I could have his car for the afternoon and leave mine at the library so he could bring that home when he came back on the train. The library doesn’t open until 930am so he’d need to bang on the door and I’d come and open it to get the keys from him.

I then had about 10 minutes spare so thought I’d quickly check my emails and got caught up in the whole Lion Man thing. And then realised the 9o’clock news was on in the kitchen and I should have been at work!!!!

With many a swear word I gathered up my stuff, dashed out to the car and realised it was all frosted up so de-iced the windscreen with a cd and then drove to work peering through a small patch of defrosted windscreen convinced Ady would already be there knocking on the door to hand over keys to me while everyone at work wondered where the hell I was. I scrambled in at 10 past, made excuses about the children being over in Hove at the traffic being bad (all true, just not the reason I was late!) and then Ady arrived so I spent another five minutes with him. I finally started work at about 20 past nine. Fortunately I have plenty of Good Employee credits saved up 😳 😳 :oops:.

Work was fine, it was busy and the morning went quickly. I then swapped some stuff over from my car to Ady’s (must have looked strange having two cars both open parked next to each other while I moved stuff between the two) and drove over to Liza’s to collect them. Liza greeted me with tea and we had a quick chat before my parking ticket ran out so she got to update me on today’s tales of horror at the hands of Davies and Scarlett 😉 (thanks again Liza x). Then we headed to the park to meet Lucy and The Rs.

We’ve not seen them for quite some while (aside from at Rainbows each week) as there was just too much friction between them all and too much adult intervention required to make it either fun for them or enjoyable for Lucy and I but it worked really well today at the park where they all had the option of playing together or spacing out and ignoring each other. We got there about 230pm and stayed for a full 2 hours. Lucy and I managed the longest chat we’ve had in ages and the kids had a great time :).

We got home and Ady had sorted out leftover stew from yesterday for the childrens’ tea so they had that and then it was off to Badgers. Scarlett has been a bit hesitant about Badgers the last few times although has been fine once she’s there and enjoyed it each time but I have noticed she is slightly clingy at the moment anyway and seems worse on days when I have worked. She insisted she wanted to stay but didn’t want me to leave so I did stay for the first 15 minutes or so and then Julie the leader said ‘right Scarlett Mummy has to go’ and she reluctantly let me. She’s not sleeping well at the moment and veering lots between being incredibly mature and independent and then regressing with loads of baby talk, wanting her dummy outside of bedtime and generally being babyish. I’m inclined to believe there is a reason for it even if Scarlett doesn’t know what it is herself and wonder if we’ve been overdoing it a bit on the ‘you’re nearly a big girl of 6 now’. On the one hand I don’t want to pander to her and allow her to be manipulative and take the piss out of me but on the other hand I do think that even if her motives are questionable if what she needs is more of my time and attention then despite her methods not being great that is what she needs and therefore what I should provide. We’ve talked about it more and she insists she doesnt want to give up Badgers and that nothing else is wrong so maybe the half term break from all the ‘after school’ stuff will be well timed coming next week.

On our various car journeys today we have had all sorts of very interesting and varied conversations. It began with talking about gold, silver and platinum and them asking why they were expensive and what makes something ‘precious’. Scarlett said it was when something is rare and I agreed and said it also had to do with demand. That led on to a discussion about supply and demand and me telling them I had done Economics at A level and talking a tiny bit about it. They wanted to know what else I had done so we talked about Politics which they already know a little about but led onto government and monarchy, our current royal family and lines to the throne and why Henry VIII was the eighth Henry. We then talked about sociology and touched on religion and a very, very long conversation about law & order and crime & punishment including the differences between morally and criminally wrong, how laws are decided, how they are enforced, magistrates and crown courts, solicitors, judges and juries, innocent until proven guilty, defence and prosecution, evidence, motives and loads more. They were enthralled :). Some of the words they already knew they had some great definitions for and as usual the questions they were asking were pertinant, relevant and thought provoking. There was loads there it would be great to come back to, both conversationally and indeed in other ways. I must investigate potential museum type visits for some of it (they want to learn more about precious stones and metals, more about the justice system, more about government and monarchy etc.).

Ady and I had our usual walk, albeit a briefer one than usual and then returned to collect them. Home for a quick perusal of their RSPB magazines which had arrived today and a bit of doing some of the activities in them while I finished the first Olga Da Polga book off. I brought another home today and notice there are at least two more in the series so I’ll get them on order.

We had dinnner and watched episode one of the second series of Torchwood as I’ve also brought home the box set of the entire 2nd series from work to watch again :).