One word? When seven would do…

See the thing about a rollercoaster is that although you might have that dread before you get on, that trepidation as it makes that first s l o w climb and then scream your way all the way round yelling ‘oh my fucking goddddddd’ (well that’s what I did anyway, although I tempered the language and blasphemy slightly when I was riding with Anna 🙂 ) by the time it pulls back into the start again you are laughing, exhilarated and ready to queue up to go round again.

Anyway today was the start of one of the climbs back up again, a bit slow and not without the odd jerk here and there but totally back in love with my children again by the end of it. 🙂

This morning they played with geomags and watched LSOH (again :roll:, you know a film has made it onto Davies’ A list when it starts to get abbreviated on the blog!) with them both singing along. I did stuff like put clean clothes away, get a chilli cooking for batch freezing that I wanted to nick a bit of as pizza topping for tonight’s dinner, get a wash on and return some emails.

Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived then and Lucy and I managed to chat inbetween parenting. Davies had a bit of a talking to for boisterousness beyond what I consider acceptable with his toys but other than that they all played nicely with the toy cars.

Then we headed to a local park to meet up with Julie, Jack and Maisie. It was not our usual venue and although it’s a park attached to a leisure centre that we drive past most days I’ve never taken the children there. It has just had rather a lot of money invested in a new top of the range playground which is just groaning with all sorts of really interesting looking play equipment from these people. The old playground with it’s oh so retro see-saws and slides is still in situ behind the new one offering a cool mix of old and new contrasts. We set ourselves up inbetween the two and the children had a good old explore of the equipment it was possible to get on due to massive overcrowding from school summer holidays refugees. Can’t wait til they all go back to school and we get to play there on our own :lol:.

Davies was chatting to an older woman for a while so I called him over to find out what was being said. She was asking him his name and how old he was and he’d been pointing out Scarlett, Jack and Maisie and telling her they were his sister and cousins and how old they all were too. She was clearly completely harmless and was in there with a woman who was probably her daughter and a couple of lads who must have been her grandsons but it occured to me that although we’ve talked fairly abstractly about ‘baddies’ who might try and hurt or take children I’ve never really mentioned that actually you need to exercise caution with pretty much every stranger you meet. Davies tends to be very chatty with adults generally and would readily offer all sorts of personal information about himself and the rest of us in conversation if led that way. I have an additional reason to exercise caution particularly in regard to older ladies in that Ady’s mother lives local-ish and is still very much in contact with Chris and Julie despite Ady not having had contact with her for years and I know that she pumps them for information about us and the children, is aware of their names and dates of birth etc and could easily find out where we might be on a certain day from Julie in general chat. She is not dangerous but is desperate and I would really rather not have the children accosted by some mad woman telling then she is their granny. A short time after having a very brief chat to him about how you shouldn’t necessarily tell people all sorts of things about you just because they ask when you don’t know them he was chatting to a group of teens on one of the climbing frames and then we heard a small boy calling him across the playground ‘Davies, Davies, come over here!’ 😆 Davies, a friend to all today!

Predictably it wasn’t long before the playground ceased to hold Davies, Scarlett, Jack, Maisie and Rebecca and they wandered further and further afield staying just in vision. After a while we couldn’t see Scarlett and Jack so Lucy and Julie walked over to check their whereabouts while I stayed and guarded the picnic stuff. They came back to report they had strayed a little further to a circular path round some trees which led back on itself and suggested we all go over for a walk round it. Davies and Jack had gone on ahead and I popped to my car as we walked past the carpark to drop off our rug so I’d not seen Davies for about 15 minutes although the other’s had seen him shortly before. But when we got to the path Jack was there alone saying he didn’t know where Davies was and he couldn’t find him anywhere.

I started to call him getting more and more anxious as he didn’t reply and as I walked further into the path I realised it didn’t go back on itself at all it veered off in various different directions including the other car park, the road, a whole load of allotments, a field which led to the downs and another path to more woodland. My calling started to get ever more frantic as I went further into the woods, I told Tarly to go back to the others as she was echoing my calls and would have drowned out Davies if he’d replied to me. I’m sure it was no more than a couple of minutes but all sorts of scenarios went through my mind with me wondering how soon I could call the police for help when Julie appeared calling me to say they’d found him. Cue a classic lost child reunion with him tearstained and me close to it, both hugging each other as though we’d been parted for months and dramatic recountation to each other of what had happened from our side. He’d realised he’d lost Jack and double backed to where he’d last seen me, I had of course long gone from there so he’d cried and when a couple of old ladies had approached him he’d stayed with them until they caught sight of Lucy who had started to walk back to where we’d last been. Made me realise that we need to have a strategy for getting seperated and we definitely need to have that chat about who is a ‘safe stranger’ or at least your best bet on one. By his age I was going to the local shop on my own and riding round the block on my bike. I don’t think we live in any more dangerous times now than when I was a child really and I refuse to deny my children any freedom at all on the basis there just might be a pedophille round every corner. He is a sensible child who if he knows what he is supposed to do in a situation is more than capable of doing so, so I need to better inform him so we prevent future dramas like that one.

Once reunited we all walked up into the field leading to the downs where we sat down and enjoyed the view of the sea and town below afforded us once high enough while the children ran around together. I thought it was important for both of us that Davies did some wandering off again but this time with a clear plan of who would be where and that they would stay there to ease both our minds. We eventually walked back with Julie heading off to the carpark she’d parked in and Lucy and I standing chatting for a further half hour while the children sat in a circle playing with some stones made from sand and cement. They were even joined by another little boy and they all sat there discussing the properties of the sand they were making by crumbling the stone and whether it would build sandcastles etc.

We got home and there was more geomag play accompanied by LSOH while I sorted their tea out and made pizza dough before Ady got home to hear the story of Davies getting lost with added dramatic effects ;-).

Tomorrow I am Davies-less as Ady is taking him to work with him. It’s something we’ve been planning for a very long time for them to do every so often when Ady is just going round garden centres for the day. Scarlett is too unpredictable to be let loose and would either fall asleep or get grumpy being in the car all day but Davies will actually be good company for Ady, they can do some valuable bonding stuff, it will have heaps of educational value, give me a break and allow me and Scarlett do to the equivalent on our own. Not sure what we’ll do yet, it depends on her frame of mind in the morning really. We have an invitation to join Lucy at the library and back to hers for the day which might be interesting to see what the dynamic between Tarly and Rebecca is like without Davies around, or we might just do some reading, drawing, jigsaw puzzles etc.