One word? When seven would do…

I was enjoying a nice lay in this morning but Ady brought me a cup of tea and told me I had to get out of bed because he wanted to strip it and change the bedding! The cheek! 😆

Davies has been wearing his crocs but he does insist on wearing socks which quite apart from the ‘ewww’ ness I feel towards crocs and socks means the socks get filthy as we often seem to be in places where it is dusty / muddy / otherwise dirty. In short I think he needed some better shoes for the summer. So we whizzed along to a localish parade of shops and I managed to get him a couple of pairs of shoes for the summer. One is a sort of smart trainer type, the other is deck shoe style ones. Scarlett could do with something a bit more substantial than crocs too but there was nothing there that wasn’t either pink and sparkly, high heeled or branded with High School Musical. She considered some of the ‘boys’ shoes but nothing really appealed to her out of those either. Might try and get her something tomorrow and I suspect they both need new wellies too in readiness for the camping season ;).

We came home to collect the chicks and set off for Tom’s house. We’d only got a couple of miles from home, although it was taking ages due to loads of traffic when my phone rang and it was my Mum all panicky as my Dad had gone off 3 hours previously to collect logs (with a chainsaw) and not returned yet. He’d not taken his phone and she was imagining all sorts of dreadful possibilities. So we turned the car round and drove back to where he goes for logs. It is down a very long lane off of the main road which has a gate midway which is often locked. It was today so I started half running off down this lane as the car couldn’t go any further fretting that I’d find him, in a pool of blood with the chainsaw still revving away when my phone rang again and it was him. He’d just got home. He and Mum were arguing – her from relief I think, she said she’d had a really bad feeling about it,and he from me being called to go and look for him. I left them to their arguing, just relieved that he was okay.

Ady did ask why she’d rung me when both she and Frazer were home (we’d not long driven past their house and seen the cars there) and either of them could have gone and the truth is I don’t know, but in my family when emergencies happen the first port of call is always ringing me to see if I can deal with it. My Mum is a bit hysterical, Frazer isn’t really much use and Dad is usually the one either requiring help or the reason for the emergency really. It’s a shame we neither ask or indeed are offered the same level of rallying round when we’re in need (ie when our boiler broke down) but there you are. At least this was a false alarm.

So, somewhat delayed we rejoined the traffic we’d already sat in once and headed off to Tom’s again. I had to make a makeshift watering bowl for the chicks from a waterbottle lid as they were getting a bit dehydrated from the prolonged time in the car but they are now happily in Tom’s shed and the house is all the more peaceful for not having them here.

We had a really nice hour or so at Tom’s; it’s so Davies and Scarlett’s sort of place. One of his hens has chicks so we saw them, had a go at catching his cockerels which are not as friendly as ours, the kids ran and threw sticks for the dogs (a motley collection of labs, terriers, dalmations), we installed the chicks in their new home, looked at the housemartins which come every year and had just arrived there this morning and then walked down to the lakes to cut some bamboo. We need some canes for our peas at the allotment and having discovered they are selling for about 50 pence each in garden centres we went and cut down some of the abundance of the stuff growing round the lakes there.

It was really marshy and they are still working on the drainage issues there (man made lakes) but it does dry out in the summer. We took the bamboo back up and stripped the leaves and loaded it in the car. There is a huge pile of horse manure under a covered tarp where Tom had seen a nest of adders so we lifted the tarp.hoping to see some. We didn’t find any adders but did find two slow worms,one larger than the other. Both the kids held them and we all remembered quite a bit of what we knew about them although I had suspected one might be pregnant and on reading up on them again it would appear too early in the year for that to be possible. No photos of any of it as sadly we both left our cameras in the car. Grr.

We could have happily stayed there all day but I was really keen to visit a windmill so we said goodbye and headed off with our bamboo – a great swap for the chicks!

From there it was off to Salvington Windmill a very local windmill to us which despite having wanted to go probably since before we had children we’ve never quite managed to coordinate it’s open times with our getting there before. I’m quite fascinated with both windmills and watermills and have been since childhood although even more so now for the ingenuity of mechanics powered by nature and the ‘green’ ness of them.

We were very pleasantly surprised to only have to part with £2 for all four of us to get in and have a guided tour of the windmill. Even more surprised to get a cup of tea, a cup of coffee and a ice lolly each for the children for £1.50 in total! 😯

It is run by volunteers and we were guided round by a very knowledgeable man who told us all about the sails – they have two pairs of different sails; one is the original style of canvas covered ones which the miller would adjust the canvas according to the wind levels, the second set is a newer set of spring loaded ones which are adjustable from the ground without the need to clamber up the sail like the canvas ones require.

Next we were led into the roundhouse at the base of the mill. This would be used for storage and had the bottom of the post which supports the whole structure and the four trestle beams which in turn support that. The post is original – 300 years as a post and a 200 year old oak tree when it would have been cut down to be used so 500 years from being an acorn! The trestles had been replaced within the last 20 or so years.
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Next we went to the back of the mill where the stairs were raised and the children helped to push the whole mill round. I had no idea that mills did that but it does make sense that they needed to be pushed to the right direction for the wind. It was moved again later while we were inside it which was a very odd sensation.
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Then upstairs and into the first level. There are several trapdoors on each level and on this level you could see the two bedstones above and the chutes came down from above which would contain flour.

Up again to the top where a massive wheel was turned by the sails and in turn by a cog system turned the top wheel against the bottom wheel where corn went inbetween and was ground to flour. There were two wheels doing this. The trapdoors were explained as how the miller got the corn up to the top of the mill where the corn bins were (another level again but not open to us today) by opening the trapdoors and having the farmer delivering them to him tie them onto a pulley rope below at the ground then using the power of the sails turning to turn another spindle which reeled the sacks of corn up through the trapdoors to the top of the mill.

There was another trapdoor from the middle floor where milled corn would be returned back up to the top floor again to go through a sieveing process, also driven by a spindle turning a cog turning a cylindrical sieve with different grades of mesh through which white or wholemeal flour would fall. This was a newer addition and would not have been in the original mill.

In our little group was us, an older couple and a mother with three small girls so we didn’t have many questions over and above what he’d already told us. I took Davies and Scarlett over to the front of the top section again and we looked at the mechanism of the big wheel turning the cogs on the smaller wheel, which turned the spindle to turn the stone and so on as I don’t think they’d followed all that when the man had told us, partially because they were being distracted by the view out of the windows and the feeling of moving round as the whole mill was turned from below.

Coming down was slightly more daunting as the steps were steep and with rope handles. On the external steps coming out of the windmill Tarly misunderstood my telling her to put her hands on my shoulders for support and leapt on my back for a piggyback which could have been nasty if I’d lost my balance as I was not ready for that at all!
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We came home via the allotment to drop off the bamboo canes which I’ll try and get to on Tuesday to install for the poeas. Once home I got dinner going (ham in coke) and made some brownies too. Scarlett spent some time with the chickens and then came in to play her DS, Ady did some stuff out in the garden and Davies brought me a pile of books and read a load of Dr Seuss stuff to me. He’s on a bit of a roll with the reading thing now, starting to recognise words he’s come across before and not need to spell everything out which is meaning he’s getting quicker and therefore more confident and of course is succeeding which is always a great motivator! 🙂

Dinner was a late one so the kids had a bath (Scarlett) and a shower (Davies) to wash various grime from various places off them and then we all sat down about 730pm and chatted about camping and taking it in turns to cook dinners while we ate. I finished reading which they both understood and enjoyed more than I expected them too.

Quick bath for me before watching Lost and whilst I’m not stiff today (plenty of not sitting around) I am heartily sick of my cough which is now giving me a sore throat. I am desperate for all of us not to be snotty and coughy any more, it’s been a very long two weeks.

Lovely day today though, plenty of sunshine, time together and learning new stuff 🙂