Great British Sunday

Last night Ady and Scarlett were talking about Car Boot Sale-ing today so Davies and I said we’d go along too. I’m not at all sure what possessed me to trade in a lie in for tramping round a field viewing other peoples unwanted tat and offering them money for it but clearly I was having some sort of seizure or something at the time.

So this morning saw me in a field, viewing other people’s unwanted possessions and trying to curtail Scarlett’s desire to give every unwanted soft toy in Sussex a new home in her bedroom – no toy too skanky with cigarette smoke odour, stain of other child’s dribble or needing batteries to make it perform annoying noises turned down. No toy too ugly, no price for this made in China by poor overworked infants and won at the fairground then kept in someone’s garage too high.

Davies isn’t much better. He is on a mission to collect every single Happy Meal toy every given away FREE in McDonalds since the mcnugget began but for a quirky twist he wants to have paid for them instead. Long live consumerism! 😆

Ady is collecting videos. He has an extensive library of politically incorrect, racist, sexist sitcoms from the 70s and a full back catalogue of ‘treasures’ such as Only Fools and Horses.

I, for once, unusually I know for a self confessed spendaholic walk alone in my disdain for the fayre of the car boot. I sneer at the dusty, smelly wares spread out on paste tables and pride myself in finding nothing I want. Of course this could be some sort of alfresco purchasing snobbery because there is every chance if you were to puff eau de la charity shop over the same goods and tidy up the presentation a bit, put the clothes on hangers, the books on shelves and the glassware in a cabinet I might be persuaded to have a better look and even pay three times as much for it then!

Davies and Ady walked together while Scarlett stayed with me. About half way round I was hailed by my old boss from the library so had to make some small talk with her whilst keeping my eyes on her rather than the table of old stuff she didn’t want any more and was selling. There might have been loads of ex library books or something! We then bumped into Tasha, Ryan and Vinnie and shared some ‘I hate car boot sales’ mutterings with them.

We were cutting it fine for getting to the nursery where the Made in Worthing kids artwork display was but got there with about 10 minutes before it was officially closing. Ady and I both admitted afterwards we’d been on the defensive about even going into the building but it was lovely and we were greeted in a really friendly manner with handshakes and everything by the nursery manager (who had an accent just like Miss Hooley’s from Balamory which seemed so very fitting 😆 She was really interested in Home Ed, chatted as much to Davies and Scarlett as to Ady and I and showed us all round the building which is huge and spread over 4 floors. They have over 100 children and over 50 staff there. The grounds are also huge and quite magical with all sorts of areas. She was very passionate about the ethos of the nursery and some of the things she was saying were so in line with my ways of thinking it was uncanny to hear them from a worker in a childcare institution. After some research it turns out to be not just any nursery and one with a very special philosophy. What a shame the whole idea doesn’t extend beyond pre-school age. I left a very positive comment in the comments book and then as we left we popped into the office to say thank you and goodbye and Scarlett told them ‘If I ever went to school I’d want to go somewhere like this!’ which touched them so much they asked us to put that in the comments book too, so I wrote it and Scarlett signed it :). I loved what the manager said about ‘maybe we can change the world from this one small place…’ much the same as the way I feel I guess.

We came home and slumped. Scarlett was being challenging and has been shouted at lots by both Ady and I this weekend for not listening and pleasing herself without thinking of the consequences. She fell out with Ady again and then I made his mood even worse (yes, sometimes he does get grumpy ;)) by messing up the music software for our phones and muddling up the computers that are active. Worst case scenario is he has to use my laptop for downloading music for 3 months before I can swap them back again which isn’t the end of the world but he wasn’t in a resilient place this afternoon. I have emailed their support to see if it can be remedied sooner and apologised profusely.

All was redeemed with a lovely roast beef dinner and communal watching of Drop Dead Fred. There is rather more swearing (quite a lot of ‘piss off’ s and a couple of ‘pile of shit’s) than I remembered and some allusions to sex which don’t quite go over the kids’ heads any more but it’s only a 12. Overall though it had them laughing loads and they both now know where the affectionate term ‘Snotface’ which is used here all the time comes from (complete with actual snot wiped on actual faces, might discourage that ;)).

We finished reading which made us all laugh. Infantile and purile but really quite funny stuff, very much in the same style as the Andy Stanton stuff we’ve been enjoying.