Back with a bump today – poor Ady went off to work, struggling to get up and learning he has yet another new boss lined up.
We were off to the local Not Back to School Picnic. I’d stuck a time and date to suit us personally out on local lists but made it clear that other than doing that and turning up I wouldn’t be doing stuff like contacting press or inviting our MP. As it happens I have maintained contact with him over the year and suspect he would have come along but quite apart from the propsect of it scaring off other attendees I wasn’t feeling up to the scrutiny. For me it was a celebration of another year of Home Ed, a victory that a year on we are still free to educate our children as we see fit without state intervention. A celebration of being free both to HE at all and to be sat in a park when everyone else is back at school.
We pottered about in the morning, I did some online catching up with things including a first bash at sorting out camp balance prices which proved very tricky. I think this has been the touhghest yet to organise with numbers jumping about all over the place with people not sure if they are coming, how many of them there might be and so on. I think I’ve reached the easiest decision at setting a price assuming all confirmed people will come and taking any latecommers money off the food kitty. I feel like I need a Worzel Gummidge ‘Organizin’ head’ to put on for all this, I’ve even been creating spreadsheets for the WWOOFing planning.
I dealt with some washing and made a picnic, took a phonecall from Jax around the time I was half expecting her to arrive and then we headed to Brooklands where the picnic was being held. I felt obliged to be there by midday nominally being ‘the organiser’ but predictably I was the only one there. Davies and Scarlett ran off to play leaving me alone in the middle of the green sitting on my picnic rug and looking like a nutter! 😆 I was soon joined by a woman I loosely know who always insists on calling me ‘+Nicky’ with whom I once had a big debate about smacking children with and then a new and shiny HEor with a 12yo girl just taken out of school. Her and her daughter were lovely and I loved the way they confided they didn’t think they could be doing it right because it all seemed like too much fun and as though life was one long weekend 😆
Other people arrived and we ended up with 10 families which I thougt was a very respectable number 🙂 I chatted to most of them about various things and enjoyed the lack of needing me demonstrated so ably by my children :). Scarlett took some bread off and when I started to miss her and went to check on her she was sat beside the lack with a huge crowd of ducks, coots and moorhens crowded around her while she talked to them all 🙂
Most people drifted off around the same time of 3pm – I was in need of tea so it suited me. Back home I had literally just made my tea when Jax arrived so I made her one too and we had a catch up chat while the older children disappeared upstairs and Soa was cute and smiley :).
Jax and Soa departed and I was very briefly in charge (fortunately no one but me realised 😉 ) before Ady arrived home and we had a proper grown up around again. Phew! Ady was a superhero with the four kids all night, feeding them, smoothing any issues and ensuring everyone was kept entertained and happy. Big and Davies seemed to really hit it off, either having ignored or not particularly gotten on when we’ve previously been together so Ady largely left them to it and concentrated on keeping Small and Scarlett out of their way without them realising it. Our kids have only ever met up in crowds and although there are only a few months between the older two and the younger two they just don’t really move in the same circles. I think they all enjoyed each others company this time and hopefully now consider each other friends :).
I, on the other hand escaped for the evening :). It was a leaving party for L at work who is off to uni next week. She has been a Saturday assistant at the library for just over two years and is off to do teacher training. The other Saturday assistant, J is going to Sussex uni and so will be staying on for the duration of his course. There were 8 of us there and we had a really nice evening with lots of laughs. The food was crap as it always is (Harvester) but it was really good to catch up with A, who works for the neighbouring library service now and has all sorts of crazy life changes going on and then a very interesting discussion with J about nuclear families, state intervention and why the standard mother, father, child model isn’t always the best IMO and is in his.
I got home not long after Jax had arrived to a very noisy house, which was only marginally quieter after Jax and co had left ;). We just about had Davies and Scarlett in bed before midnight and I told Davies his birthday didn’t start until 435am when he was born anyway and no, he wasn’t allowed to stay up til then 😆
Presenting wrapping for me followed by a late night with a certain early morning to follow….