Work for me today. I had planned to get up with everyone else and I heard them all up and being noisy and getting ready but then suddenly it all went quiet and I realised they’d all left! Ady dropped Davies and Scarlett off at Julie’s. This left me a very leisurely morning to get dressed and ready for work. I still nearly blew it and was almost late though when I realised Michelle had blogged about five minutes before I was supposed to leave.
Work was fine, everyone is being very nice to me about my ankle (although to be fair it is still very visibly swollen so I have an obvious ailment) and making sure I don’t stand for too long. This meant I had an hour on the counter and then two hours sitting down on the desk where I could even kick my shoes off :).
I nipped home to change into jeans before going to collect D&S and the hen was back, looking fine and just scratching around with the others. She’d gone again by the time we all got home later and was not put away with the others at night. She is either sitting on or has hatched eggs (possibly while we were away?) and will appear with chicks at some point, has some sort of weird double life like Six Dinner Sid – and lives with other people the rest of the time, or she has infact been killed and eaten by a fox and is just haunting us as a frequently sighted ghost chicken. Need to fit a tiny webcam to her ankle or something next time she’s here.
I drove to Julie’s which is the longest drive I’ve done since I hurt my ankle and it was fine. I took the longer but less trafficky route so I wouldn’t have to do so much using the clutch. It has definitely turned a corner from waking me at night and constantly nagging at me to aching a bit by the end of a day and reminding me if I’m doing too much on it but being an odd whinge here and there rather than an all the time hassle. A bit like going from a toddler to a 7 year old ;).
Julie was surrounded by wet, half naked children as they’d been to the allotment, gotten dirty playing there and then been playing in the sprinkler in the garden to get clean. Jack and Maisie are big into Sarah-Jane Adventures at the moment and were desperate for Davies and Scarlett to watch with them so we stayed on. Julie and I drank tea and caught up with each other, then Chris came home, followed about 10 minutes later by Ady appearing for half an hour dropping some plants off. So all the Goddards were there which was nice. The kids were really funnily blase about it too – Scarlett and Maisie wandered through having not realised either Chris or Ady had arrived and just casually went ‘Hi Daddy, Hi Uncle Chris / Uncle Ady’ like they are transported there like that all the time 😆 There are no Davies’ other than my Mum, Dad and Frazer (Dad’s an only child and both his parents had died by the time I was 9) and my Mum’s family all already had different names and new spouses so I’ve never been part of a ‘clan’ before. I know there is only 9 of us but it was lovely to sit there being a big group of Goddards like that 🙂 I love that the five cousins have such a great open, lovely relationship with each other :).
We came home and I got myself changed then Ady dropped me at Lancing station before coming back home to feed Davies and Scarlett and get them to bed. I met up with GI Sarah (work colleague) at the station and we travelled to Brighton where we met up with Sarah Pyjamas (another work colleague) and Abi (ex work colleague) and all went to a very nice and cheap Italian for pasta, pizza and wine before going to the pub next door to watch Katy & Rach do their improvised comedy show and then stayed for the Q&A session afterwards.
It was a good night 🙂 We walked back to the station, got on respective trains and GI Sarah and I walked from the station to the library where she was parked and she dropped me home.
Not something I get to do often, and my ankle is rather protesting at all the working, driving and walking I have asked of it today but it was a really enjoyable evening.