A busy old weekend again chez Goddard.
First thing yesterday I headed off for my basket weaving one day course with Julie. Ady and the children were supposed to be coming over with me and staying with Chris, Jack and Maisie but Davies insisted he felt ill and didn’t want to go. TBH Ady was not hugely bothered about going either and knowing it would be a long day and a late night he was more than happy to spend the day in the house with them pottering and taking it easy.
Collected Julie and drove to the college. I’ve never done an adult education type thing before always considering them the territory of newly divorced people looking to meet new friends and learn new skills in one easy hit, or librarians called Mavis, Doris or Agnes who have little else to do in their spare time so leave their pet cat alone for the day with the radio for company and come along to improve themselves. And actually that was pretty much what it was like! 😉
Julie and I arrived 10 minutes late because she had insisted on hanging her washing out before we left and then we couldn’t find the right room where the course was being held. So we walked in when basket lady was already part way through her ‘hello I’m basket lady, welcome to the course, this is what we’re going to do today’ speech. Which was hard on the other three attendees as it meant they had to sit through it again and what had probably appeared to be ad lib, unscripted little humourous asides in the speech became apparant as practised rehearsed lines which she brings out in the opening speech for every course she ever does!
So we laid out our penknives and sharp secuteurs, our spray bottles filled with water and arranged our damp towels and then we all stood and watched basket lady demonstrate how to select the right willow to start off your basket bases. I won’t go through the day step by step but Julie and I upheld our positions of Course Rebels by going to the nearby pub at lunchtime for a sandwich instead of bringing them in from home in a tupperware container and sitting with the others to chat during the break! 😉
The course was actually really enjoyable. We could pretty much choose to create whatever we wanted and she’d brought along various styles of her own making as examples. I liked her bread basket with finger holes so made a fairly good approximation of that with a few colour and pattern changes of my own:
I’m rather pleased with it although it comprised so many various techniques I certainly couldn’t sit straight down and do it again. We’ve got a frame basket course booked with her next year and I might get some books from the library and buy in some willow and see how I go as I have a few ideas of home made things to fill home made baskets which would make really nice presents at Christmas.
Got home about 5.30pm and we had tandem baths – Scarlett with Ady, Davies with me before getting dressed up to go to a housewarming party of some friends who have moved into the next road. Mum and Dad came with us and it was a very pleasant couple of hours. The children were very well behaved and played with another little girl who was there, Charley, really nicely.
Left there at about 9.30pm and walked home with Dad carrying Tarly and Ady carrying Davies. Me and Mum walked arm in arm, not sure who was holding who up really! Kids went straight to bed and we ordered in an Indian takeaway which I managed to eat this time without decorating the sofa with it. Had a drunken, loud and evangelising spout at my dad about HE. I think I spoke with passion, clarity and put up a convincing argument, carefully constructed examples of why it is such a great decision and blew away all his arguments and concerns. But I had drunk rather a lot and so had he so the chances are we were both talking total bollocks! All stayed amicable though and he does concede that he has changed from opposed to it to feeling there are fors and againsts. Semi result!
This morning we were all up by 8am and the plan was for PJs all day, movie watching (we recorded all the Wallace and Gromit films which were shown on UK Gold yesterday) while I polished off the rest of this weeks CVs which needed to be emailed back today. It worked really well with Ady (bless him) bringing me a constant supply of tea, buttered toast and supportive ‘how’s it going?’ type questions and entertaining the children. They made playdough figures of all the characters (Ady’s first time of making the playdough too, he really enjoyed it and kept coming ack in with another batch!), Davies did some drawing and some writing and it was nice to have occassional cuddles and interactions with the children as I got on with the work.
Finished at about 2.30pm, had also done three loads of washing and got it all dry 🙂 so headed off to Sainsburys to get dinner for tonight and some bits for the rest of the week.
My parents are over for dinner again as they needed to collect their car (left here last night after drinking so they walked home) and I am feeling happy that a bad week ended with such a lovely, productive weekend.
Today was hard for us. Didn’t have Ady making us bacon butties.
Comment by Chris — 16 October 2005 @ 7:54 pm
Hmmm. This librarian doesn’t own a cat, and couldn’t weave a basket to save her life!
Did you grow up in Brighton too?
Comment by Allie — 16 October 2005 @ 8:15 pm
Well done you.
Comment by Barbara — 16 October 2005 @ 8:44 pm
I nearly made bacon butties yesterday, but we didn’t have any bread, or money, so it had to be the full fry-up instead …
Really glad you’ve had such a good weekend, you sound far more relaxed now 🙂
Comment by Alison — 16 October 2005 @ 9:26 pm
grew up in Worthing Allie. Suprised at you not having a cat or basket weaving skills – does your boss know? 😉
Comment by Nic — 16 October 2005 @ 11:01 pm