Lay down that boogie and play that funky music til you die!

Up early with children this morning (6am – urgh!) so I did lots of organised stuff like getting two loads of washing done and on the line and getting croissants for everyone for breakfast. 🙂

Ady sorted a picnic out and we were off and away by 10am to The Sustainability Centre where they had a ‘sussed it’ event. It was very good actually, if quite low-key. I still struggle with such events not being managed to within an inch of their lives with people with clipboards on every corner, in constant radio communication with a minute-by-minute schedule of events, but spending so much time with other Home Educators is helping to get me used to it 😉

We met up with Chris and Julie slightly earlier than planned by virtue of bumping into them by the straw bale house being built next to the tombola raising funds for homeless otters (or similar!), we walked round the grounds for a bit and then stopped for our picnic. On the way me and Ady, Davies and Scarlett stopped to chat to some volunteers who were cutting down and burning some bushes to clear a copse in a chalk area to encourage wild flowers to grow and wildlife and insects. Davies had brought his camera along so he was taking pictures of butterflies and grasshoppers. The volunteering for projects like that sounds really interesting and we talked about maybe doing something like that all together when the children are a bit older.

After lunch we walked round the green burial site which is in the same site and chatted a bit about such things – Chris and Julie both want to be buried there and as executors of their wills – and an interested party in the idea myself it was interesting to see it. Ady was quite spooked out by the whole thing as there is none of the feeling of reverence somehow that you get in a church graveyard, more a feeling of peace and a normal area of woodland. No gravestones but plenty of carved wood, woven willow shapes and so on adorning the graves.

We then ended up on a diversion which led us uphill and down dale on about a five mile trek. We ended up on the main road and walked back to the entrance of the centre again where we had to convince the people on the gate that actually we’d already paid once to get in and had accidentally come out! We did have photographic evidence on cameras if necessary but I think they could tell by the fact we were all carrying a child each that we’d done a fair old trek!

We had some restorative tea and cake in the organic cafe and the children all had a go on the people-powered swing roundabout and then Chris and Julie went off to get Maisie’s face painted before going home while we went round the various bits of the children’s corner. Davies made a kazoo while Tarly petted a little puppy tied up outside the teepee where the kazoo carving was going on, they both had a go at making a clothes peg pixie and then we went back to check on the progress of the straw bale house. Very Hesfes! 😉 We also talked at length to a beekeeper who showed the children his hive and had glass covered bees (drones, queen, bumble, honey etc), pollen and beeswax and honey for sale.

We came home via the scenic route – I love Sussex at this time of year, the downs look exactly like the sort of fields and hills you used to draw pictures of as a child with vibrantly different coloured crops -rape being the most striking at this time of year. We also went past some of the places Ady lived and worked in his younger days – some of the commentary suitable for the children (this is where Daddy used to cycle to work at the Game Farm – see all the bluebells like a carpet) and some less so (this is the pub outside which part of my anatomy was clipped by a car wing mirror…) .

Home for tea, bath, bed for the children, sewing of Totty, spot of gardening, roast dinner and soon to bed for us.

Lots of pics on flickr, but here’s a couple of the nicest: