Chuck another sausage on!

Today has been a day of many provisional plans which including Ady working, us going Suffolk way to camp with The Barts, Ady working again and finally Ady not working but working on Monday therefore it not being worth us going camping for one night and having to pack up early before the party tomorrow and take all our stuff with us even if we could have got into the campsite on a bank holiday weekend at late notice. Our other very provisional arrangements had been two seperate barbecues – both of which we ended up going to today.

The first was a final get together with Chris, Julie, Maisie and Jack, while there is just still the four of them – Julie is just 6 days away from her due date now, which is more pregnant than either she or I have ever been before – Jack and Maisie were born at 37 weeks and both Davies and Scarlett were over a week early too. Some friends were there putting up some amazing flags in their garden like you get at festivals (which is what they do for a living – putting up festival flags) to celebrate the coming of the baby – they made the most amazing flapping sound while looking fantastic and Julie is planning to make them her focus while she’s in labour sitting in her birthing pool in the sunroom looking out over the garden. I’m not remotely envious about her having a baby but I am feeling sad never to be planning another birth of my own again, I have so many cool ideas I’d like to try out – not at all sure that is the right reason to have another baby, and of course it would involve either divorce or infidelity and I wouldn’t actually want the child at the end of it, so I guess I’ll just have to enjoy Julie’s experience in a vicarious fashion 😆

The children had a great time playing in the garden and Ady got an updated picture of the four of them while they are still just four:
Here they are in 2004:

2006:

and today in 2008:

On the way over there Davies had asked me what a hippy was – all of the definitions I could come up with just sounded rather like describing us – I think today at Chris and Julie’s just cemented that :lol:.

We had barbecue food and chatted about all sorts of things – Chris has just done a beekeeping course and bought a hive which he was assembling in preparation for getting bees, Julie and I talked about birth plans, Infinity food orders and generally caught up with each other. It was lovely :). At about 3pmish we left Chris behind and the rest of us went up to the stables to feed and groom Honey:

Then we parted company and we headed off to our second barbecue. This one was for Tom, Ady’s workmate, supplier of logs, pheasants and partridges, incubators and fertilized eggs, our bantams and cheap cricket match tickets that my Dad has enjoyed for several summers running. Tom’s parents are terribly terribly rich and terribly terribly posh but in the thoroughly nice people mould.Tom and his siblings all went off to boarding school aged 8 and came home for the ‘hols’ to sprawling houses with dogs, horses and probably lashings of ginger beer – they really are a cross between the Famous Five / any film with Hugh Grant playing a foppish bumbling Englishman and a Jilly Cooper novel. It is Tom’s birthday and as his parents are away on hols he and his girlfriend are housesitting and decided to have a birthday barbecue. There were a few others from Ady’s work there and a load of Tom’s uni mates all of whom had names like ‘Bunty’ ‘Guv’ and ‘Sissy’. The house is in dire need of attention with all sorts of leaky roof / falling our window type issues but the ground are stunning and are what they have focused time and money on since moving there once all four children had left home. There is a sandschool and stables for the 3 horses, a big electric fenced chicken run where the parents of half our chicks live, various vegetable and herb gardens, a paddock, a meadow, a big patio complete with more tables and chairs than a pub beer garden and two huge patio heaters and finally a woods with a lake (man made) complete with electricity supply, more tables and chair and a rowing boat.

We arrived and were greeted by a pack of 5 dogs in the style of Hairy Mclary all different shapes and sizes, the children were imediately befriended and spirited away by Tom’s sister down to the lake where several people were fishing and Ady and I were sat down and plied with Pimms (proper pimms with 5 types of fruit and cucumber and mint leaves :)). It was great :). The children were in paradise and we barely saw them, they charmed everyone there, made friends with all the dogs and just had the time of their lives :). I sat and drank Pimms and chatted to various people about Home Education, while lapping up all the praise for how lovely the children were and how wonderful HE must be 🙂 🙂 (it was a good day, can you tell?! :lol:). I was so relaxed I even made friends with the dalmation!

One of Ady’s workmates who has just had a baby was very interested in HE and I chatted to her for ages and then discovered that it is her sister who has just been offered the job at the library so I will be working with her soon 🙂 – small world! There was a chicken emergency when we realised Tom’s cockerel was bleeding quite profusely. Ady caught him and I held him while we examined him – he had managed to lose one of his feet feathers, which have very thick and deeply positioned shafts so was bleeding. Ady snipped all the surrounding feathers down short and then we sprayed his foot with some special spray to kill germs and seal it and he seemed much happier. It restored my confidence in handling cockerels as he was more than happy to be caught and held and I felt quite happy doing so. We have 3 of his chicks, actually all of which I think are roos so I’ll be happy to keep one if it has his temprament.

It got to way past 8pm and we decided we really had better make a move so we said our lengthy goodbyes, promised to return so Tom can take the children fishing and shooting (clay pigeon) and out on the rowing boat and then headed for home. One chapter of Famous Five and they were both fast asleep within moments of going to bed (they have not stopped running around all day, they looked really happy, healthy and filthy :lol:) and now as we have to be up really early to get going for Ipswich I really should be off to bed myself.