One word? When seven would do…

Saturday
A fairly slobbing about start to the day. High wind and heavy rain overnight had trashed the garden so Ady spent some time outside righting things, Davies spent some time on the pc playing online Wallace and Gromit games, Scarlett made potions with a perfume kit I’d picked up earlier in the week at Emmaus intending to give as a present for her birthday but then realised it was not complete and had been used a fair bit so gave her to play with now.

I nipped out to the library to print off tickets for London trips on Sunday and Monday which should have been simple but wasn’t, as all 5 of the staff on duty swarmed over to chat and catch up with me when I went in, which was nice but I’d intended being ‘in and out’. I did some photocopying of forms for a Badger Christmas party Davies and Scarlett want to go to but there had only been one set of forms left on Wednesday and then faffed about on one of the computers trying to log into my email account to print stuff off and fighting with a memory stick in different formats. I finally did it and collected all my printing, then came home via a further battle in Asda, both for parking, walking round the store and queuing up to pay. I hate town on Saturdays!

Back at home I had several repeated run ins with Scarlett who was being annoying while I was being intolerant. I really should learn to step away from the small person when I’m in that frame of mind rather than carrying on going head to head with her. The trouble is Ady and Davies know when to keep a low profile and Scarlett either hasn’t or more likely flatly refusing to. It wasn’t the most harmonious of afternoons but I took myself off to do some baking and at 330pm we headed off to E’s for T’s sixth birthday party which had a teddy bear theme.

I was expecting this to be gentle and charming, actually it was rather more of a free-for-all with teddies used as ammunition. We stayed and were very much the exception which as the only other remaining in situ parent commented marks us (and her) out as Home Educators ;), everyone else is either glad of the opportunity to drop and run or their kids get invited to so many birthday parties each year they simply couldn’t be staying at each and every one, and their siblings are probably invited to a different party somewhere else anyway!

We stayed out of the general party proceedings though and I pondered again the difference of this group of 12 children who were (mostly) expecting constant direction and entertainment with the parties of HE friends where we don’t give a second thought to ‘what the children will do’. The instant they were unsupervised chaos reigned and violence broke out. I was glad we’d stayed…

We left promptly at 6pm as we had a very quick turnaround happening. We got home at 6.20pm and my parents were due to arrive at 6.30pm. We were off to K’s for a meal with Mike and Rose, our Not-Swingers friends and were expected there at 7pm. The plan was for Dad to drive us there in my car, picking up Mike and Rose on the way and then come and collect us all again in my car later so we could all drink. K was cooking Japanese food so we were taking a bottle of wine and a bottle of sake which we’d never tried before.

Things started to go wrong when Dad arrived at the front door without Mum, he said she was just coming and they’d clearly been rowing. After a few minutes of her not appearing he finally went back out to the car to discover he’d got out and locked her in! When she was released it had to be said she was less than impressed! Dad, Ady and I got in my car to go and collect Mike and Rose but my car is very sensitive to damp (one of the variety of reasons I wanted to get under the bonnet two weeks ago) and decided to die just as we were passing a petrol station. Ady pulled onto the forecourt and 15 minutes of chaos ensued in the pouring rain. I rang Mike and Rose a couple of times to keep them updated, they rang K to keep her updated, Dad grabbed a taxi driver who had just come off duty and happened to be filling up with petrol on his way home to get a lift back to our house, Dad bought some dampstart from the garage (which didn’t work) and in the end the taxi driver, Ady, Dad and I managed to push the car alongside the garage, Dad jumped in the taxi and whizzed off and Ady and I were left standing in the rain, halfway between our house and Mike and Rose’s, already late for dinner and wondering what to do. Ady decided he’d drive so he set off for home to get his car (I am the only other person insured on it, Dad is too old to be covered on the company insurance), while I carried on walking up the hill to Mike and Rose’s. Rose rang me and said she’d send Mike out so he came and collected me and we tracked down Ady. Ady and I nipped in the house (taking everyone here by surprise), Ady changed his very wet jeans and we headed back out again in his car to pick Mike and Rose back up again. In the end we were only about 40 minutes late.

K is very sweet but not someone I have very much in common with at all. She is recently split up from a fairly long term partner and although she seems happy enough to have finished the relationship she still talks about him as though they are a couple. She is a vegetarian, and has a dog. So I spent my evening with Ady sober, a dog sitting in the same room as me, while Rose and I got progressively more drunk on sake (everyone had brought a bottle!) and then wine, and talked to K about Hitler and the war (she is German) and we ate a dreadful selection of Japanese themed Vegetarian food. The starter was soup – not too bad, the main was rice, lentils and tofu. I took the smallest possible amount to be polite and washed every mouthful down with copious volumes of sake, the dessert was rice pudding (which is probably the single thing Ady hates more than any other foodstuff).

We all left at 1130. 😆

We dropped Mike and Rose home and were home ourselves before midnight. We’d called at the garage as we passed and tried to start my car which did start first time so we left Ady’s car there and brought mine home. When my parents left later they took Ady and he brought his car home too.

We arrived home to find Scarlett not long asleep and Davies still awake with my mum in his bedroom. Ady made coffees while I chatted to Davies and my Mum about the evening including the most interesting topic of conversation which had been Rose telling us about the headteacher at one of the schools she teaches at (she is a primary school teacher in Maths, RE and PE and covers 2 schools, 2 days at each per week) who has brought in a new technique of rewarding children who sit really still and quiet infront of the interactive whiteboard. She has brought in a large cardboard box and the ‘winner’ gets to sit in the box.

GETS TO SIT INSIDE A BOX!!!!!!

I told Davies and he thought this was hilarious and outrageous in equal measures which was my opinion also. Rose is desperate for someone to take the story to the tabloids as sticker charts gone mad!

A late night to bed, bad dreams induced by sake and wine and an empty stomach about pushing cars in the rain, eating lentils and being watched by a dog made for a fairly disturbed nights sleep!