I run for the bus dear…

Finished the book I was reading today. I probably covered a good 300 pages and it was no mean feat – I had to keep going and hiding in places from the children and allowing them to eat all sorts of weird and wonderful creations they put together themselves from the fridge. But it was worth it! I’d got it from the library on one of their Top Ten 7 day borrows with no renewing allowed so it had to be back today. I probably have much to say on it but as I know at least two of my readers are hoping to read it themselves I won’t do so just yet and I’ll save my thoughts for in person chatting.

The children watched all the extras on the Were Rabbit dvd again 🙄 and did loads of drawings for each other which they kept going and opening the front door and posting through the letterbox for effect. Some very good art work coming along there. Davies also asked me to do him some ‘puzzles’ which was something I did the other week. I wrote out various easy-ish to read words, draw the corresponding pictures and he has to draw a line to connect the word and the picture. Today I did some fruit (banana, apple, grape, strawberry, orange, lemon) and some objects (hat, glove, man, car, bird, ball) and he did them fairly effortlessly with minimal assistance. He is inclined to look at the pictures and find the word that starts with the right letter rather than read the words and find the right picture but it’s a start. Maybe next time I’ll do words that all start with the same letter and work up from there. He then left me to read a bit more of my book and coloured all the little pictures in. 🙂

I finally finished it just before 3pm so we shot out of the house and round the corner to the bus stop to catch a bus into town. Now I’d looked at the local bus company website and cast back in my dim and distant memory of a very short public transport users period in my life and was fairly sure it would be just under two quid into town – which is cheaper than parking and a mini adventure. But no it was £3.20 return which I thought was shockingly overpriced. Particularly given it’s only a fiver for a travelcard all round London on tubes and buses so WTF is that all about then. Shan’t bother with that again!

The children quite liked the novelty of being on a bus (with Tarly charmingly but rather loudly commenting on every single person who got on or off for the duration! :oops:) and we hopped off in the middle of town and set about the few things we needed to do. These included getting Tarly’s doodles checked for size as I was fairly sure her toes are at the very end of them. And sure enough they are and equally sure enough there was not a suitable pair of shoes in the shop in her size 🙄 The guy agreed that unless they are actually hurting they are fine for another week or so and she does have sandals as well so we’ll scout Clarks on our Tour of the North as most of the Doodles seem to have gone into the half price sale so we might get a bargain.

Whilst sitting in Clarks (not looking my best having dashed out of the house without looking in a mirror with my hair scraped back and Tarly’s artwork adorning my toes (one purple with pink sparkly nail varnish daubed on top, the other purple with peach smeared all over the nails and toes, all prominantly on display!) trying to contain two small children in a shoe shop I saw two women I knew – one the daughter of a friend and ex colleague who I’d actually have quite liked to chat to but when I finished sorting Tarly out she’d gone and we only managed a quick ‘hello, how are you, don’t they grow up fast’ over the heads of two children each and another a girl I went to school with and have not seen since. We did that smiling in recognition of having realised it was each other thing but as the guy who served us went on to serve her and her small daughter it was not feasible to chat. Ah well.

A quick peep in The Works, a stop in Woolies for some sweeties and we headed up to the main library to return the book. We stopped in a couple of charity shops along the way and on route I must have dropped my library ticket as it was clearly in my bag at Woolies but clearly gone by the time we reached the library. So a lengthy and tiresome with two small children wait at the desk to get a replacement with me doing lots of shushing and wide eyes glares at the children followed by Scarlett messing around in the revolving entrance doors while I was trying to sort out which of the pile of books to leave behind as I already have a pile of books at home on my ticket so two of our choices had to be left. The other librarian left her post at the in desk to dash out after Tarly yelling ‘NO! DON’T PLAY NEAR THE DOORS!!’ just to draw the attention of every person in the library who hadn’t already noticed my inadequate parenting earlier. So that was nice. 🙁 But it made the decision on which books to leave easier as she lost her choices…

Ady was practically passing the town centre on his way home so rather than catch the bus home with all the finishing work people he detoured and picked us up and we got chip shop chips for the kids’ tea on the way home.

Read the children this rather good book we got from the library to fit in with all of Davies recent ‘what’s it all about then?’ questions and packed them off to bed. Lost! night (and I need to watch next week’s too as we’ll be with Miranda this time next week and she definitely won’t be a fan) and I really should plan to pack a picnic for tomorrow as we’re off at stupid o’clock to London via Reading for a get together with various friends.