Had a really nice day today. We made fairly last minute arrangements with Chris and Julie to go for a winter walk with them at our usual woodland haunt this morning, meeting at the ridiculously early hour for a Sunday of 10am. Somehow we were at our most efficient ever in leaving the house and arrived a full ten minutes early. So we started to walk around the entrance and looked at various fungus, small bugs, moss, fox and mouse droppings and so on. Ady worked as a game keeper many, many years ago and has a pretty good knowledge of nature-type stuff and considering how un-outdoors-y I’d think of us generally we probably do spend a fair amount of time doing woodland walks through the year so the children have a pretty good knowledge of nature-y stuff through the changing seasons.
Chris, Julie, Jack and Maisie arrived and we headed into the woods for our walk. It was loads muddier than I’d been anticipating so although everyone else was wellied up and coped well I was a bit more dainty treading between the muddy puddles in my DMs. We stood and watched the ducks for ages and then walked round to where there has been a ‘camp’ built with tall sticks all through the summer and autumn. It had been dismantled much to Julie and I and the children’s dismay but all the sticks were still strewn around nearby so we set to and rebuilt it. Chris mainly stood and took the piss, Ady mainly stood and took photos, the kids veered between helping and hindering before losing interest (except Davies) but we did a pretty fine job of it we thought. See it all over on flickr along with every other photo we took today indiscriminately loaded up cos I’m having computer problems so they are safer there for the time being and I don’t have time to be all selective with them right now. We talked about how we would finish the camp if we were building it as a genuine shelter with woven bracken and mud and leaves daubed on top, at which Davies’ eyes lit up and we promised we might come back and do in the spring. Actually I have seen several workshops advertised lately for camp / den / shelter building in woods so maybe I should investigate that for him.
We walked leisurely back to the carpark with everyone at their own pace and the speedier walkers waiting for the slower paced ones on a chopped down tree trunk before saying our goodbyes and going our seperate ways. Julie and I have planned to come back again the week after next when we may well sneakily do some more work on our camp :lol:.
Ady and the children came home to wash Ady’s car and get dinner on, while I went and did the food shopping for February. I normally really struggle to get everything in one trolley which is a nightmare and ends up with me never fitting back in again bagged up properly so trying to push a trolley with bags in each hand too. This time I was more sensible and filled one trolley, queued and paid for it, loaded it into the car and then went back in and started again with the second. Still well within budget but a good £50 more than we’ve been spending. The organic meat is definitely costlier but we’re noticing a real difference in taste so even if our conscience wasn’t sufficient to break the frugality our tastebuds won’t let us now ;). We have started to use our under the stairs cupboard as a larder though, with loads of tinned and other dried goods stored there and it does seem rather crammed so I’ve a feeling I have topped up with far more than a month’s supply of some stuff, which means March will be cheap at least :lol:.
We had our roast dinner and Frazer never appeared despite me sending a couple of texts and calling the house. So after dinner, ever conscious that my parents would likely ring either today or tomorrow I called over there to check that everything was ok. It does really annoy me that I feel obliged to check on a 30 year old man but he has recreational habits that dictate I would fret about him alone in the house unheard of for a couple of days and I know I would get an earbashing if he’d failed to turn up and I hadn’t chased it up when my parents do ring :roll:. I scared the living daylights out of him appearing in the kitchen though, so got my evil cackle out of that one ;). He was fine and had been sleeping off the excesses of a Saturday night, we had a brief chat, the house looks fine and I was able to leave confident I have been a good big sister. I’m even going round to see my granny with Tarly on Wednesday while Davies is at Badgers, so I am fulfilling all my promises to my mum to look after everyone while she’s away…
The children had a bath and instead of tidying up the marble run they’d been playing with Ady and I had a marble run building championship tournament instead. I built a plastic one and a wooden one and Ady built a plastic one and then the children judged them and ranked them first, second and third when they got out of the bath. I reign supreme at marble run engineering :lol:. Bed and stories for the children, a bath and a fruitless hunt for the receipt for my laptop for me and Ady. The laptop is not at all well and will be being taken to PCworld in the morning with hopes of a speedy and cheap recovery. In the meantime this blog is brought to you by way of my old laptop which is fine other than not having wireless abilities so is tied to the router with a phone cable. This will severely hamper my online activity, so I may be gone some time. Wish me well!!
I guess you’ve seen the den-building thing in Farnham that was advertised on the EYHE list? I know the woman who’s doing it, though I haven’t seen her for ages so I don’t know if there are still places on it. It’s probably doable from yours, but if you wanted to come up here, it’s certainly not far from us.
Any news on your plans for this week? I’m going to postpone Wednesday’s lunch, so I really don’t have *anything* planned now and may well be a teensy bit bored 😉
Comment by Alison — 28 January 2007 @ 11:27 pm
That’s kind of what my girls are doing in there forest workshops. Den building, campfire making and cooking on, wood cutting and making things with it etc etc. They are loving it! Will see if I can dig out the details for you.
Comment by Roslyn — 29 January 2007 @ 7:47 am
Ooh thanks, yeah it was the Farnham ones Alison, and they run one at Wilderness Woods where we went last year with everyone called Ali / Allie too.
This week has gone all mental Alison with me finding out I’m doing training on Thursday, so tomorrow is the only day I’m free and Ady has ended up going to Reading just for the afternoon today instead. Can’t remember what he’s doing tomorrow now – will check and see if could involve a detour your way to drop us off, I’d come up alone but can’t afford the petrol 😆 – and I guess the Bongo isn’t up to the drive down here either? Shame about your plans on Wednesday 😉
Comment by Nic — 29 January 2007 @ 8:17 am
Your brother sounds a bit like mine.
Comment by Lucy — 29 January 2007 @ 10:37 am
Well I had a plan this morning to swap cars with Ady for the day tomorrow and come up – he’s at college in the afternoon and local in the morning but now I need to be home all afternoon for my laptop coming back so it’s all been scuppered 🙁 Will try and sort out something for next week, actually will just email you. 😆
Comment by Nic — 29 January 2007 @ 5:11 pm