I do like my life :). Pretty much most of the time I can think of little else I would rather be doing or people I would rather be doing it with :).
Today I had a bit of a recuperating lie in, cleared the laundry backlog, made a shopping list for the months food (the bits of the month we’re around for) and drank plenty of tea.
We had a brief trip out to local charity shops looking for rags for making a rag rug but had no luck. Eventually I remembered the several black sacks of outgrown clothes I’d failed to ebay and came home and started cutting them into strips instead though so that was for the best :). Davies and I – and consequently Scarlett – had an interesting discussion brought about by his question of why mostly older people work in charity shops. We talked about the nature of voluntary work, why you’d need to not have to spend your time earning money, how pensions work and the difference between state and private pensions. Then we noticed the people about in the town were either retirement age or people with small children and discussed why that was mostly mothers at home with babies instead of fathers. I love it when they make observations that lead to interesting discussions and how their ideas and opinions are forming. They have fascinating takes on things that I often take forgranted and they challenge plenty of my views and make me question myself which is a good thing.
They asked for something from the bakers for lunch so Davies chose a cream cake – he LOVES fresh cream cakes, really appreciates the treat of having one every so often :), Scarlett chose a shortbread penguin of which she only ate the chocolate dipped half, proclaiming the biscuit not very nice.
Once home I happily threaded up the peg loom, chopped up loads of old clothes and set about making my first rag rug – very theraputic and about 1/3 finished. I put on a documentary about evolution on which we all dipped in and out of. Davies and Scarlett spent about 2 hours making field guides having watched Spiderwick Chronicles yesterday. I’ve not watched all of it and what I did see went rather over my head but Davies has created an amazing 12 page book using paper than Ady brings home from work with plant images and information on one side. Davies has used that as the centrepiece for work all around the page including things gathered from the garden and stuck in with glue. There is information about life cycles of sprites and goblins, samples of various things including a goblin’s milk tooth and a griffin feather :). I am in awe and will try and photograph it tomorrow.
Scarlett also did a similar thing on a smaller scale and has made something equally fab; her drawing has really taken off suddenly, although she does have an excellent mentor ;). They tidied up, I made their tea and we had a visit from David and Je/Annette who had a birthday over the weekend and turned 50. I would have been surprised if she’d turned 40 as she looks really young so 50 was a real shock :shock:. They had brought us over some of the birthday cake as we’d missed the little party all the neighbours had been invited to as we were away (shame!). This does mean we have to make a card now, which we will no doubt have a thankyou card in return for and the whole saga may well continue into November!
Ady came home and he’d half heard something on the radio about extremely low tides today along the south coast at 7am and 7pm so we headed down to the beach to observe, but it was a not remotely interesting or extreme low tide so we came home again. With some coaxing from Ady I decided to go and get the food shopping done tonight instead of dragging children round with me during the day tomorrow so I went off to do that while he tidied up and put the children to bed.
He put the shopping away while I said goodnight to the children and had a bath, then I cooked a late dinner which we watched with recorded Dragons Den.
Swimming starts tomorrow and as we have to be at the pool for Davies’ lesson at 4pm I think that is going to mean Tuesdays become a not getting up to much sort of day for us now.
I worked in a charity shop one or two afternoons a week during my last year at college – actually in the first ever Oxfam shop, which I think means it’s also the first ever charity shop. And then when I’d finished proper work, I worked in another Oxfam shop in Oxford for a couple of months until Violet was born.
I volunteered in a charity shop when i was 16, think it was british heart foundation one, tis not just for old people!
Yes I have a friend who volunteers in Oxfam and a previous colleague had worked in a charity shop while she was unemployed. Also the job my mum is in the process of leaving is manager of a charity shop and I know she has volunteers of various ages but Davies’ observation was that it was *mostly* older people and he wondered why. Of course the demographic of Lancing could have a fair bit to do with it too 😆
Lol, wasn’t presenting myself as a counterexample, was just offering random vaguely interesting thoughts, as provoked by your post 🙂