Look for the bare necessities

Just been watching Jungle Book and listening to Baloo’s song about Bare Necessities (although I suspect it’s probably called Bear Necessities I can’t be bothered to check!) which resonated a fair bit with me. All about finding what makes you happy and enjoying it, not searching for stuff which you can’t find and therefore not feeling as though you are lacking anything.. or perhaps it’s just a big fat cartoon bear who can’t resist a good beat and is too lazy to find anything other than what drops into his big old paw – whatever, I know which version makes me feel good today :-).

So today me and The Boy went up to The Smoke 🙂 Ady was able to work from home in the end so he stayed and had a nice Father Daughter day with Tarly (although apparantly she missed me and Davies lots – missed her too actually and spent lots of time talking about her in glowing proud maternal fashion!). They dropped us at the station at 9 and we caught the train to Brighton, then got a cup of tea and a cake for me and a banana for Davies (I know, weird choice when stood at a cake shop concession on the station but who am I to argue! Rare treat to be spending two quid on tea, cake and banana anyway but what the hell, we claimed it back on expenses!) and then got on the train to London Bridge.

So nice to be just Davies and I and be able to give all his questions and observations full attention for once. We chatted about London Bridge and it falling down (inevitably!), looked at stuff out of the window and talked about that, Dreamieland and the stories and the whole TV thing. He also worked his way through the little packed lunch Ady had made for him despite it being 10am!

We arrived in London, found a taxi and hopped in, chatting about general stuff all the way and arrived at the studios to find Miranda already outside. The PR agent arrived shortly afterwards and we went in. I’ve not actually been to a TV studio before but it was exactly as I would have expected with trendy young things running around with clipboards dressed all in black, snake hipped and gelled haired camp blokes calling everyone ‘Dahrling’ and glossy receptionists who already knew who we were before we announced ourselves (which always makes me wonder exactly what description they have been given to make me so instantly recognisable 😉 )

Davies was a total superstar, talked to everyone, was effusive with his pleases and thankyous, sat and drew some beautiful pictures and then described them to everybody in great detail and was just utterly charming. I had my make up done and enjoyed being told my hair was ‘already perfect’ – it wasn’t but clearly in my role as ‘Busy Mum, Nicola Goddard’ I looked suitably harrassed with it all over the place! Also inevitably someone asked Davies how old he was and when he answered 5 he was asked ‘no school today?’. I was having my lipstick done at the time so Davies expertly fielded it himself and then I took over. I’m semi expecting a phonecall from them now actually, so interested in it were the researchers although the channel is really for pregancy to preschool so it’s probably slightly out of their remit. The make up girl was really into the idea and very quickly grasped the concepts of autonomy and child led as opposed to structured school at home.

Ironically the people who were on the show after us were a hypnotherapist who specialises in pain free labour, baby signing and all that jazz and one of her satisfied customers who had her twins with no pain relief and also just so happens to be a sleep training expert too. Both very, very into extended bfeeding, cosleeping, EC and overall APing – one has 4 girls and the other 3 boys. I didn’t speak much to them directly as lots of what they were talking about was either stuff I have a fairly good basic knowledge of or agree with in principle but have not done myself but Miranda was getting very twitchy just being in the same room as them. the funniest moment had to be when we were leaving though. The mother of three who co-sleeps all five of them in a bed (her and her DH and the 3 boys) and was by far the more evangelical about the child being part of your body pre birth and not being cast aside after birth and how society has it all wrong with our parenting seperating our children from us too early and so on stopped me as we left and asked if I was ‘Home Schooling?’ (a term I loathe for some reason anyway!) when I replied yes she said ‘oh we thought about that but decided not to do it in the end and sent them to school!’ Just tickled me somehow. 🙂

The actual interview went well – the set up was that I vaguely knew Miranda through mutual friends and use the website to read the bedtime stories to my children who love them. We pulled it off pretty well, I did my caring Mum bit, Davies butted in to show how much he knew about all the characters and Miranda did her hard sell bit too. Davies had noticed the screen to one side showing the camera angles so spent some of the time he wasn’t being talked to pulling faces at himself or waving the soft toy around but monkey infront of a mirror impressions aside he did well! 😉 It’s scheduled to go out a week on Monday I believe, I’ll update as soon as I know more and it will be on sky channel 285 – more info about the channel here.

We then headed off for lunch where the PR woman (pregnant with third child) quizzed me loads on HE (apparantly she’s been dying to meet me ever since Miranda mentioned me a while back and was expecting some awe inspiring, earth mother type – not sure whether she was disappointed or relieved at the reality! 😉 ) so the word was spread yet further. She, along with Miranda was most amazed at the idea of someone who could have a career choosing to give it up (this is Miranda’s biggest issue with the whole thing I think, but TBH I think she has always overestimated my ‘career’ and its potential anyway! 😉 ) but I think I put across that it is not a forever side effect of Home Ed and that indeed I still feel that somehow a business opportunity will arise as a result of it somehow.

Taxi back to the station and trains home again to be back for 4pm ish. The journey home was equally filled with questions and observations – Davies asked me ‘what’s the very last number?’ which I actually recall asking my Dad as a child. I think I probably gave him the same answer as I got which is that there isn’t one – you could keep counting to infinity and still keep going. Not at all sure I answered it properly and indeed I suspect there is a sort of last number named (might attempt to google it actually just to get my own head round it) but I told him that if for example the last number was a gazillion then you could carry on counting with a gazillion and one, a gazillion and two and so on… I think he grasped the idea if not the magnitude of what it meant.

I’ve been fairly ranty since getting home, partially because the laptop bloke called to say it’s pretty mashed and although I could still access the wireless network using a USB adaptor (or something) really it could still go kaput and I probably need a new motherboard. He’s getting in touch with Evesham for us to get a price on that which I will then take to the insurance company and see whether it’s worth getting fixed or if they’ll cough up for a new laptop if not… so that will be a delay one way or another anyway, and man am I feeling bereft without it!

Tomorrow we’re spending the afternoon with my Mum, which will either put me in a good or bad mood depending on how supportive a mood she is in. But let’s think positive and hope she will be angelic and maternal and lovely 🙂