Back after the break

Monday

Spent the morning getting in some food shopping (seriously over estimated on the milk, seriously under estimated on the bread, got the alcohol quantities about right! 😉 ), tidying up a bit, getting the children to gather any precious belongings and stashing them in our bedroom and batch baking snickerdoodles.

Layla and Alison arrived by car and train within about half an hour of each other, we banned the children from the room for a good hour and a half and set about drinking tea to line our stomachs for wine later!

Ady got home in time to take over shepherding children away from us, I pulled off a feat of management of pierce film lid type readymeal finger foods, we started drinking wine and Ros and Ali arrived. I think all readers either have first hand experience of such evenings in such company or are able to draw pretty good conclusions as to what it might entail. We pined for Joyce, spoke with great affection for many of the rest of you and of course not having an audience of Chris to perform to didn’t hold us back from making the most of the music channel to sing along to. I recall once saying to Layla that it’s not a good night unless you offend at least two people – Alison and I had to go to the pub to find likely suspects to uphold this law and even then I don’t think we really bothered the barman and the sole customer! 😀

Tuesday

Dawned earlier than it should for people who didn’t go to bed til 3am (which is actually fairly early for such nights really!) – I had no children in my bed but could overhear a very loud conversation about Centerparcs drifting in from Davies’ room and involving children from 3 families all trying to tell their CP stories at the same time. I then had a true HE moment when Claudia and Tilda appeared in the room, sat on the bed and we talked about African tribespeople who stretch their necks with multiple necklaces and Oriental children who have their feet bound to keep them dainty. (Which went some way to restoring my own confidence in my geography, culture and history skills having been laughed at for talking about Indian jungle dwelling tribes living along the River Nile the night before! :roll:).

After multiple toast cooking we gathered ourselves together and walked down to the seafront to the local park. It was every single one of the 15 minutes walking I’d promised it might be, and perhaps rather a few more too :oops:, into the wind but bracing for hangovers and wearing out for children nonetheless so still a good idea (well I thought so!). We did some shivering on a bench while watching the children in the playground and then half decided to spend their £1 each budget on the bouncy castle and the rest went on the train with the 6ft bunny and chick in residence. And then we walked home again.

I dashed out for supplies (including more bread) and the children scattered around the house watching Grease, drawing, playing and so on while we drank tea, ate pringles and then got a very nice dinner of chicken curry, rice, naan breads, poppadums, assorted indian snacks and bombay potatoes cooked. Ady and Simon arrived home within about half an hour of each other, children were sent upstairs and more wine drinking and curry eating commenced. An early night of around midnight was required to restore visitors for their journeys home today.

Today
Garden playing, drawing, indoor playing (using seperate toys to the garden playing, naturally 😉 ) and some film watching for children, further tea drinking and chatting for adults. I went out for more bread and Lucy came round for an hour or so with Rebecca and Richard increasing her real life experience of meeting Home Educators hugely. My Granny appeared at one point, innocently brandishing a four pack of chocolate eclairs and asking if it was a convenient time to call – the chaos and naked children wandering around in the background behind me and me explaining just how many children and how many adults were inside the house and how 4 cakes would not stretch too far was (thankfully) enough to send her packing and will hopefully put her off ‘dropping in’ again for a while (I *hate* being dropped in on).

We waved guests off in two stages but the house feels very quiet and for once in its life pretty large 😉 Davies is putting effort into his parting instruction from Poppy to grow before she next sees him while drawing pictures, Scarlett is painting my toenails, the house has been hoovered and everything restored to it’s usual home. I have six CVs to do which arrived in the post this morning (woo hoo) and tonight it’s The Apprentice. Thanks for coming one and all, it’s been a lovely, lovely few days – looking forward to Chris and Helen’s next. 🙂