One word? When seven would do…

Or even about 15 given how verbose I can be at the best of times ;). And today I had it brought home to me just how quickly I speak, which probably goes some way to explaining my one word, when seven would do approach to blogging ;).

I had a really bad night’s sleep last night and finally fell back asleep at about 6am. Hence I fell back asleep again after turning my alarm off. I woke with a start and we had to dash about like mad folk eating breakfast, packing picnics, sorting out chickens and getting dressed. I have to say if I’d known what was ahead I may have dressed and done make up more carefully but never mind.

We left home on time and were at the station with minutes to spare for our train and met Tasha, Toby and Vinnie as planned on the platform. Toby was keen to go to Brighton Museum and I was keen to visit the Bead Shop and the Infinity Shop (I wanted a couple of Tisserand products and didn’t want to pay P&P for them) so we walked to the museum via the Laines. I got the bits I wanted and I think everyone got a few bits in the bead shop – I got beads to make two new necklaces – a metal cow pendant which I’ve strung with some black and white beads and on impulse a very cool metal person figure which I’ve strung with rainbow beads. Tasha said it looked like the figure was scaling the crevice between my cleavage which I quite liked 😆 The kids both chose some beads and some string and have made themselves pendants too. Davies chose a ying and yang thing which he asked me to remind him the name of again later saying ‘That’s right, ying and yang. I always want to call it Dick and Dom’ 😆 😆

Then to the museum. Predictably the 3 of them didn’t actually get much out of it for pressing buttons and chasing around but both Davies and Scarlett hung back with me at least twice each to ask a question about something or tolerate me trying to educate them ;). I maintain museums are places best visited without friends really.

We decided everyone was in need of food and open space to run around in so went to the adjacent Pavillion Gardens to start eating lunch / chasing pigeons. We’d not long been sat down when Ali and Freya arrived, Ali bearing her phone and a plea to take over the radio interview she’d set up while she did TV stuff instead. I’d never volunteer to be on the radio and certainly wouldn’t ever phone in to a show. Mostly because when impassioned I know I can get carried away and am all too often to be found shouting abuse at the TV and radio when I don’t agree with something – I don’t really trust myself not to carry on with abuse and swearing if I find myself actually with a real voice.

So while Tasha watched over the children and Ali headed off to be filmed for TV I spoke to Danny Pike. All nerves disappeared when I realised he was only asking me questions I’ve answered probably 100 times before in different places and on listening back I can hear myself in full on ‘like me, I’m great, believe everything I tell you and I’ll be your mate’ mode including trademark laughing heartily at things I don’t find at all amusing. I also smiled when I heard back the bit where he tries to interupt and I carry on recalling how I’d mentally slapped his wrist with an ‘I’m not finished yet!’ feeling. It’s fine, I feel I conducted myself okay and aside from changing Ed Balls job title I think it’s not a bad reflection on me and HE at all. 🙂

By the time I returned to my sandwich it was lost to the pigeons though so I never did eat my lunch.

Gradually more and more HE folk started arriving and it was ace to see some faces we’ve not seen for ages and catch up with people. We moved across to infront of the museum where Ali did a fab job of directing people including air hostess arm movements. The TV reporter came over and asked if I’d be happy to be followed and interviewed and when asking to be introduced to my children said ‘Oh this is Davies. I’ve heard all about him from Freya!’ 😆 She said she’d follow us and the group we were in on our path to New Road which was where the bubble blowers were to converge so I chatted with her along the way about what we do, why and how we do it and stuff.

We walked a little way in the other direction and then at 145 all turned back towards New Road and walked back blowing bubbles and handing out leaflets as we went. By 2pm the whole group of about 60 had all re-met in a haze of bubbles and kids in Liza’s fab tshirts and adults handing out leaflets. We carried on in much the same way for about half an hour I guess, chatting, laughing and being very clearly a community. It was peaceful, happy, very visible and tear-jerkingly what we’re all about really. There were kids there from heyc which is another fab HE thing I feel very proud to be even tenuously linked to (by virtue of knowing a couple of the kids, being a Home Educator and hoping that my children will be following in similar footsteps) and just a whole load of people who are so proud and confident in what we do we are prepared to take to the streets to sing about it.

I did the on camera bit that was used on the local evening news – you’ll also notice my lovely offspring on the still and camera panning round 🙂 and was also talked to and comprehensively photographed with Davies and Scarlett by the local paper too who are planning a big spread and will be following up with a phone interview at some point soon. Blanket media coverage all fantastically arranged by Ali, who also came up with the idea of the flashmob and organised the whole thing. Yay Ali 🙂

There was a great moment when the reporter said to me ‘We thought it was only supposed to be going on for five minutes’ and I replied with ‘Well that’s how Home Ed works really – you start something and if everyone is having fun, enjoying it and learning you just carry on with it’ 😆

We went back into the gardens afterwards for more sitting and chatting while the children ran around playing together which is what forms the backdrop of the to camera piece the reporter does. Davies and Freya were interviewed but it wasn’t used. Once all the high drama was over it all seemed to settle into just another day sat around with friends really while education happened all around us.

At one point Davies was talking quite animatedly to a woman over the other side of the gardens so I wandered over to check all was well. It turned out she was one of the people who keep the gardens in order and they were chatting about litter. Clearly he had initiated the conversation and he was so very much on her level chatting about our litter walk, recycling, how often the bins get emptied there and so on. She thanked him for the chat and said goodbye when he went off to start handing out more of the leaflets we had left 🙂

One of the HE lads had done such a good job of handing out leaflets he’d brought over a possible recruit to talk to us and she was delighted to find a whole crowd of HEors sitting there waving and smiling when she admitted one of her worries was whether she’d find other people doing it :).

I think we could have happily stayed there all day but I was conscious of the rest of our plans for the day so at about 3pm we headed off for home. The walk to the station was good – Davies, Scarlett and Toby still had a handful of flyers each left so they tasked themselves with getting rid of them all except for one to keep each. They chose to approach children and ask if they went to school and give them one if they didn’t.

They wanted to call in the library ‘to say hello’ as we were parked in the carpark there so did precisely that (and I collected a couple of books that had arrived for me) and then we came home. I did a hasty pasta dinner for them and we listeded to me on the radio before Ady came home and it was time to head off again.

This time it was to a long standing booking for Pulborough Brooks ‘Nighttime wing and other things’ event. I’d been really chuffed to book this at the time as one of the things D and S asked to do last year was see bats and we didn’t make it happen so I was hopeful tonight would remedy that.

It was the most perfect weather night to do it – it was still really warm, dry, clear and bright. There were loads of flying ants and midges about which are perfect for attracting bats and it had been a warm day to ensure plenty of wildlife was still out and about.

We started with looking at about 30 different types of moths that they’d caught last night in their moth trap. They’d been put into plastic boxes, chilled to put them into a semi-sleeping and therefore stress free condition during the day and then identified and brought out to show us. We all handed them round in their little magnified boxes and oohed and ahhed over how beautiful so many of them are. Then we all got to let some go 🙂


Then we walked out onto the reserve. First we paused to look at the deer and learnt a bit about them. They are fallow deer and have their origins in a group which escaped from the ground of nearby stately home, Parham House in the 1987 storms. Many stately homes which have their own bred group of deer keep a particular colour prevalant and Parham had gone for very dark deer. This has been all but bred out of them now as they breed with other wild deer in the area.

We also saw loads of rabbits, various birds and either a fox or a badger. The children were all insistent it was a badger and they do (claim to) have a badget sett on the reserve so the leader though that was a possibility.

We looked at various animal poo including deer, rabbit, green woodpecker and other tracking signs of wildlife aswell as the tiger moth caterpillars which live on the ragwort and are very distinctive with their fuzzy black and yellow colouring.

Next we lifted a couple of corrugated metal panels which had been laid out in the sun with the intention of attracting reptiles. Sure enough whilst there were only ants under the first one the second one was harbouring a grass snake and a slowworm :).

Further trekking across the reserve led us to bats. We looked at the bat boxes and had a long chat about bats and all we knew about them. They had fancy bat detectors and sure enough in the area they’d said we’d see bats we did :). About 5 in all, soprano pipistrelle bats all whizzing about in their trademark erratic way. The bat detectors were excellent in picking up the echolocation noises and their feeding noises too when they caught something. We learnt that each bat can catch up to 3000 insects per night and often when 2 are flying together it is a mother and child with the mother at the front doing the echolocation and then suddenly dropping down just before reaching the prey so the child behind her can make the catch.

Both children had been starting to flag (unsurprisingly after their very busy day and it being 9pm and all) but this perked them both up and they were thrilled to be seeing the bats swooping about right over us and they got a long chat with one of the volunteers about his bat detector machine.

We walked back to the carpark, stopping to look at a toad someone’s torch picked out and the moth trap with tonight’s haul starting to flock to it

and finally to shine the torches in the pond and see the newts

It was, as usual there, an excellent event. Really glad we went 🙂

We had to call into Sainburys on the way home which meant it was long gone 10pm by the time we actually made it home.The kids had toast and we watched ourselves on the news thanks to J’s youtube clip, then they went to bed. We had baths and finally sat down to dinner at ten to midnight. Honestly it’s all go being a minor local celebrity 😉