It was Pulborough Brooks day today and we’ve not made it along for months but we made the effort today as it’ll be the last time we go there for quite a while. It was another gorgeous spring-like day. I saw one of Julie’s friends in the car park but despite seeing Julie’s car we didn’t catch up with them until nearly halfway round. The kids and I walked for ages on our own chatting and looking for signs of spring, then Julie’s friend R caught us up with her daughter F. She is one of those very friendly people who launch straight into talking about themselves as though you are already intimate with all sorts of details about them. She’s very sweet if a little full on.
We then caught up with Julie & co and walked the last half altogether before retiring to the playground for a sit down chat while the kids carried on playing. Lovely to sit in the sunshine although Julie was a little down and loathe to talk too much about why as she felt it wasn’t fair when we’re about to head off. Managed to be some help I hope. I really hope she manages to be online more or we at least have fairly regular phone calls as I’d hate our closeness to be a casualty of our time away.
Lorna had an appointment at the hospital to either remove or replace her cast so they headed off and we left at the same time. On collecting the kids from where they’d been playing they appeared with a dead barn owl :(. It had been dead some time and started rotting away but was tagged and one of the ones that reside and are watched there so we took it in to give to the volunteers at the visitor centre.
I was quite disappointed at the staff response really; the kids were both upset but interested in it and I’d have hoped they’d been more engaged with them over it really but the girl on the desk sort of flinched, snatched it into a paper bag and ushered them away. They were not expecting thanks but some acknowledgement and explanation of what will happen to it would have been good. They were all (particularly my two) really interested in the ringing, how old it might have been, any ideas about cause of death and so on. I’m going to email them and see if I can get more details and hope it was passed to the relevant person to get those sorts of answers.
We said goodbye and headed for home. We listened to Jeremy Vine talking about disabled badges for parking and Davies piped up after a while with ‘I wish I had a blue badge, you can do all sorts of things if you have one’. I bit straightaway with ‘how could you say such a thing, a blue badge means you are disabled and need the special priviledges because you can’t function without them. How can you possibly wish for a disability? I’m really surprised at you Davies’. To which he looked puzzled and then said ‘No, sorry I meant a Blue Peter badge, that’s what I want so you can do lots of things with it like go to Legoland’ 😆 😆
Back at home we had lunch and I had an unsuccessful attempt at hacking up the last few very large logs. I failed and was very cross about it but they are beyond the axe and probably need a chainsaw really. The broadband and then the landline both went off within about an hour of each other which felt both a bit scary and pretty liberating, and of course means more things can be boxed up.
I then decided to start moving boxing to Mum & Dad’s so we took two carfulls of boxes over there. We probably have another four car fulls to go and then stuff in the van next week. I’m hoping to move all boxed stuff over by the end of Wednesday so I can focus on the party on Friday. I imagine Dad is still getting shrieked at about the fact boxes have started to arrive over there but he seemed pretty philosophical about it 😆
Back home again I drank tea, did some party decorations, booked a campsite for the week before the first host so we can have a mini holiday down in Devon before we start, getting used to the van and having a transition stage with just the four of us. The kids had dinner and Ady arrived home in time for One Man & His Campervan and we realised we’ll be in the right place for the salmon leaping this year 🙂 🙂
We did bad, good, learnt:
Davies:
Bad: Found a dead barn owl at Pulborough Brooks
Good: Had a good time with Jack & Maisie at PB
Learnt: Today is National Bird Box Day
Scarlett:
Bad: Dead barn owl upset me
Good:First proper close up look at a barn owl
Learnt: what a pessimist is.
Ady:
Bad: Still ache from the weekend!
Good: No more Mondays!
Learnt: There is a gas emitted from fruit which makes cut flowers wilt faster
Nic:
Bad: Julie was a bit low today and I felt like I’m abandoning her 🙁
Good: Taken some boxes to my parents house!
Learnt: We’ll get a refund from the TV licence people.
We all tried sushi, some of us liked it, some didn’t, the kids went to bed, Ady and I had steak and exchanged boxes of chocolates (the kids both got some chocolate hearts this morning and had both made cards for us).