And Timmy the dog

Ady was off today so he came along with us to the Green Diggers event at Tilgate Park.

We faffed around in the morning and didn’t actually get out the house until gone 11am but arrived at Tilgate and had time to sit and have lunch and look round some of the animals before the event started at 130pm.

It was a classroom based event talking about the wildlife you might find in a compost heap complete with slide show, an activity of digging around in some earth and leaves to find (I suspect especially planted) bugs to put in magnified bug viewers, a meet the bugs session and finally a make a plant pot with stickers craft activity.

There was a funny old age mix with some very toddly tiny children, a fair few Davies and Scarlett age children and a couple of rather older ones. This made for a tricky task for the woman speaking to capture everyone’s attention and interest which she more or less did. I don’t think I was ever particularly guilty of dragging D and S along to things way before they were ready and I know that if I have ever realised something is unsuitable or clearly pitched above their heads I have ensured we either quietly deal with the implications of that or remove them from the situation. It is one thing struggling with the younger sibling being disruptive but quite another when there are 2 adults ‘in charge’ of a young child who is very clearly expressing a desire not to be somewhere, not enjoying it and therefore disrupting other’s enjoyment too :(. Anyway D and S got lots out of it and managed to be interested in the classic line up of Giant African Landsnail, Madagascan Hissing Cockroach and tarantula in a box that was wheeled out to show them ;). I learnt stuff about spiders and the bug searching activity was a bit of a winner :).

Ady spent most of the session chatting to the elderly woman sat next to him who had recognised him off the telly. I remain shocked at how many people are recognising him, clearly QVC has a wider audience than I’d appreciated ;).

We then had a fairly brisk -because it was getting cold – walk round the park before heading for home.This was done via Asda for Ady to purchase various vegetables (cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, chilis, aubergine) to have to dress his set for Saturday’s tv appearance and Tesco for McDs for childrens’ tea and me to get milk and chicken.

We started FF 3 (Five Run Away Together) but Tarly who has been very good about the fact she is clearly still under the weather and slept for part of the car journey was ready for bed very early. Davies was still pottering about at 1030pm :roll:.