One word? When seven would do…

MiFi battery running out so have plugged it into laptop which is also draining fast – don’t think the technology likes the cold!

Yesterday I did blog over on WW – we were with Chris & Owen all day. In the morning we did fence building – really enjoyed that. We’re using brash (cut branches and leaves etc from felled trees) laid into stakes put into the ground in X shapes diagonally to each other. We did the third side to add to two sides already made to go around some young hazel trees to protect them from the deer.

We then did some moving wood about and clearing in the afternoon, stuff I am finding really hard, not least because my boots just aren’t up to the job of keeping me upright on the steep and slippy hill. Honestly, if I’d known in advance just how testing the hill was I would not have brought us here but I am so glad we are here because it is an amazing experience, regardless of the hill!

Another bath in the evening, oh how I am loving that bath 🙂

Food yesterday was porridge in the morning, stew and dumplings for lunch and curry in the evening (rice and peas, veg curry and a fab salad with garlic oil very similar to the one KFish makes with carrots). I’m coping well with the food, trying everything and actually quite enjoying most of it. I can’t deny I’m missing meat and although it is now a veggie kitchen rather than a vegan one the stuff like cheese and butter gets consumed super fast so I am missing my dairy produce too. But I will definitely be eating a wider selection of veg and it will be a bigger part of my diet alongside the meat. It’s a total detox really – I’m getting by on about 4 small cups of tea (equivalent to 2 of my big cups at home, which I’d normally have before I do anything in the morning) a day, no alcohol aside from a speedy swig of brandy (which I don’t actually like) to warm me from the inside before getting into my sleeping bag each night. I’m very pleasantly surprised to find I am not suffering at all from withdrawal so maybe I’m not as much of an addict as I always suspected. Will be having a glass or two of wine tomorrow though I reckon to celebrate the end of a bloody hard weeks work!

Todays work has been way gentler – more fence building this morning. We had two French WWOOFers with us until this morning when we waved them off but a new guy arrived yesterday, Lee, who we’ve been working with today (and another guy arrived this evening who I have not met yet, from Tai Wan). Davies and Scarlett worked with us this morning on fence building and Davies particularly was really helpful.

After tea break we did some bringing bark up the hill to lay around the bottom of fruit trees to suppress weeds for a forest garden that is being planted. Again Davies was really helpful and worked hard on this, Scarlett had a minor thumb injury so was sitting it out. Davies spent some time with Owen who has a saw mill and runs green woodworking classes chatting to him about how the saw mill works.

Just before lunch we spent some time with machetes clearing a path for another fence so the kids went off to find the other kids to play at that point.

Lunch today was not communal as loads of people were not around today, so it was us, Chris and Owen and Lee the other WWOOFer, so C&O brought out some of their own cheese stash and we had cheese and marmite sandwiches with the remains of the salad from yesterday.

Ady and I walked down to Willow as I need some female supplies (argh, of all the timings!) and then this afternoon we built a wood store – six posts to lift three shelves off the ground for sawn timber to dry and season on. We had to find suitable logs lying around, dig them in so they were all spirit level straight and then construct the base of the wood store. Lee was really good at this and pretty much did it himself with us standing watching and doing a bit of helping here and there. We broke for tea and the cry ‘RIVERFORD’ came (everyone just shouts to each other for stuff here, voice carry a long way in quiet woodland), so we went back to the communal longhouse to gather wheelbarrows then down the hill to empty the Riverford van of a weeks supply of fruit and veg. Four barrow-fulls and several of us carrying stuff.

That was the end of work for today aside from bathhouse burner lighting so Ady, Lee and I all went off to sit and chat and man the fire, and I brought along our dirty washing to have a go with the washboard and mangle. I really enjoyed it actually, but need some decent detergent as I was just using shampoo, will get some hard soap at the weekend.

Dinner – roast potatoes, steamed veg and gravy. There was a salad too but it had mushrooms so I didn’t try that. Then Ady suggested I go and have 10 minutes all to myself in the bath which was just lovely :).

Tonight we’ve been invited to the jamming session that happens here on a Friday night, told by 4 different people how fab Davies and Scarlett are and how amazingly well they have settled in and how cool all the kids think they are 🙂 And we have also been invited to a big get together a load of them are going to this weekend somewhere nearby for some fishing and shooting. We won’t go, partially because we want some family time and partially because we offered to look after the chickens here so one of the other people could go, but we are really touched to have been asked and feel like we’ve been really accepted here, not just as WWOOFers but as part of the community 🙂 🙂

At the beginning of the week I was really wishing we’d only booked to be here for a week as I thought it would just be too tough, we are all loving it though and challenges aside are so pleased we still have another week, particularly as we are working with different members of the community next week and are really looking forward to learning more about them and what they do. We’ve been assured it’s not moving wood about which is good! 😉

Hot water bottles are in sleeping bags tonight so bed and kindle is calling me.

Laptop battery is limited although I can charge it up tomorrow once the sun is shining and solar power kicks back in 🙂 I will do a proper post over on WW but that may need more editing so getting more of a no-holds barred account here is better on limited time.

Last night was freezing. I didn’t sleep at all well, first night camping is always a struggle though and I don’t think it was any worse than that usually is. It wasn’t helped by lying there debating with myself about whether I needed a wee or not, finally getting up to do so and due to a wobbly aim getting my pj trousers rather wet! So back into bed with even less clothes than before 🙁

I did eventually fall asleep though and was woken again by the dawn chorus. There is loads of wildlife here, ravens and buzzards actually just above us – ravens are really noisy, they sound like pigs oinking.

This morning we went down for breakfast after a snuggle altogether in the tent and chat about how we were all feeling. We then nipped down to Willow to collect some more blankets and thermal layers. At least three people have offered us more bedding though and everyone is very concerned and thoughtful about us and how we are doing. Our next line of defence for tomorrow is hot water bottles but I want to work up to it ;).

Work this morning was carrying some stuff down the hill ready to be collected to go to the tip. I don’t know if I’ve really mentioned the hill, it is incredibly, incredibly steep, pretty muddy and sort of the entire focus of the place really. There are several phrases here about ‘learning to love the hill’ and ‘conquering your own hill’. We were working this morning with Seth, who lives here with Mel and their 3 boys. The oldest is 8 and in the local school, the younger two are preschool age. They’ve been here about 6 years and love it but like everyone else here say it’s not forever they are staying. It’s not an older persons lifestyle, mostly because of the hill. So we were taking rubbish – some old carpet, some old windows, some wood that is too rotten for burning down the hill. We did about three loads of that, with the kids helping with very light loads. Scarlett is doing really well with the work, she is pretty strong and way more sure footed than the rest of us so she streaks past with loads of enthusiasm. Davies is cheery but tends to gripe more about things being heavy, as Ady said he has the soul of a poet, not a worker! He is really coming into his own chatting to people though, he’s really popular with the kids here already and has been storytelling around the dinner table and made a real friend of Dan, one of the founders of this place talking about survival stuff. The guys we did the campcraft sleepout with at Sustainability Centre are friends of the people there so they were namechecking with each other :). Scarlett has also bonded with the kids here and is really chatty with one of the guys who knows all about birds.

Once we’d finished that we brought some stuff up the hill – lengths of wood ready for chopping for firewood. Next I did some chainsaw feeding – pushing lengths of wood along the saw horse and holding it steady while it was chainsawed up into smaller lengths – I got to wear ear defenders and everything :). Finally we stacked all the wood we’d gathered and cut into the wood storage place. All with plenty of breaks to catch our breath and chat to Seth. At one point he gave us a tree identification lesson for about 20 minutes and showed us all the nearby trees and ways to tell them – even more difficult this time of year without the leaves.

Then it was lunchtime – delicious (and yes I do mean it!) pumpkin soup. Everything here has optional chilli sauce which gives it a nice kick and allows me to pretend there are less veg in it. We get about 90 minutes for lunch, so when we went to find the person we were working with this afternoon and were told to go away again and chill for an hour we came back to the tent and I ordered myself a decent pair of boots online, having checked I can get post sent to me here.

Back down the hill to Chris and Owen, who are here with their son who also goes to the local school, but only started last week having been HE before that. They keep chickens and are trying to maintain a forest garden with stuff grown on different layers to make the most of the hill. With them we were brash clearing – moving various debris and wood from felled trees and then carrying planks of wood up the hill to their garden to make raised beds. Two hours of very hard work indeed, but again with regular breaks and refreshments. Chris is interesting and was chatting to me about our year and wondering whether we were interested in joining a community.

Laptop about to die, so shorthand – will come back and edit tomorrow –
dinner was delish, satay veg and roasties, we got to have a bath – bliss, we’re in bed now fortified by brandy and biscuits and hoping for a warmer night.

I’ll blog on WW tomorrow when we’ve actually done a full day but wanted to catch up on here with first impressions.

We left the campsite this morning after charging everything up and having showers and Willow started and got here fine. We only had a postcode and the community is not marked from the road. We drove up a narrow road where I could see a likely looking bloke and toddler hanging out and sure enough we were in the right place. We parked Willow, shook hands with the guy and were introduced to the toddler then started to walk up the hill. It is about 1/2 mile of the very steepest, fairly muddy pathway. We hailed people and introduced ourselves as we went and then reached the communal building where we met the guy (Jon) who we have met a couple of times before at the Green Fair at the Sustainability Centre. We got a warm welcome from him and were introduced to a couple of other people coming in and out before being shown where we were pitching our tent. They had offered us use of a tent but when it became clear they were digging one out of a buried pile we said we’d use our own. Really pleased we did as it’s gone up perfectly in the space and feels nice to be in a space that we are familiar with. We are pitched even further up the hill but with easily the most amazing view we have ever camped with. It’s right in the woodland too, two pairs of ravens nest in a nearby tree and it’s just breathtakingly gorgeous.

We then trudged back down, bringing a wheelbarrow and poor Ady did three barrow-loads of our stuff up while I packed it all up. Tent, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, pillows and blankets, one set of clothes to get dressed in tomorrow morning – I don’t think we’ll be changing outfits much these two weeks and a rucksack each with various essentials.

Davies and Scarlett had already disappeared into the woods, hooking up with children as they went. There are at least four families here but three of them use the local school, but there are two lovely Home Ed girls here who D & S have already clicked with. Then it was lunchtime – veggie soup and bread. I made the mistake of being heavy handed with the chilli sauce on the side (to try and take the taste of veggies away ;)) and was rendered speechless for about 20 minutes as it kicked in!

Then to the tent. It went up fine, we got it all set up, admired the view for a bit longer and then went to find out what we could do workwise. We ended up helping carry some wood up the hill, stack it up for firewood inside and chop loads of veg for dinner prep. So far I think we’ve talked to everyone and they all seem pretty friendly, some more reserved and cagey about giving too much away more than others. A couple of the families are particularly open and friendly and I’m hoping we’ll get some more chatting time as the days go past.

Ady and I walked back down to Willow to gather headtorches and then it was dinner time, which was slightly crazy and communal. There is definite friction and politics here, I guess an almost inevitable part of a community and there seems to be issues over entitlements, who is doing what and how the finances are sorted. But, it’s an established intentional community, albeit a fairly transitional one with regards to the actual individuals and I think we will learn loads, both from the individuals here and the community as a whole.

The communal kitchen has recently become vegetarian rather than vegan and actually many of the people here are meat eaters. There was much scoffing about consensus and decision making and meetings and I get the feeling we’ll be witness to the odd falling out, it’s a very interesting place to be.

Dinner was a different experience of food, jacket potatoes but they are out of butter and don’t do cheese communally as it’s too pricey so we all had it with cold pressed oil instead of butter and then added marmite and chilli sauce for flavour. It was surprisingly delicious. Then a quiche, made with rye flour and oil pastry, eggs and oat milk and mucho veg. It was interesting – not very quiche like and definitely lacking cheese and bacon, but edible. The kids all had apple crumble – they always feed the children first here which seems like a nice way of doing things.

I’m missing tea – there is hot water and there were tea bags around earlier but I couldn’t easily see them later on and everyone headed off to their own dwellings by about 7pm. We hung around for a while and helped clear up the kitchen before deciding it was cold and dark and we had a crazy hill climb to do so we’d head for our tent, meaning we were all tucked up in our sleeping bags before 8pm. I’m feeling achey of knee – that hill is a killer – and slightly hungry, given I have already eaten and it’s earlier than I’d normally have dinner.

The kids are having a ball, it’s very much their sort of environment, loads of mud, people to play with, dangerous pursuits and interesting adults to talk to, they have slotted in perfectly. I can see us getting plenty of use out of the kindle and limited everything else as although I suspect I could plug a phone charger in a couple of times I don’t think appearing with a laptop, mifi and various other chargers every day would go down well.

We seem warm enough all snuggled in together, we all have really good sleeping bags and in a small space our body heat alone should see us through the night. We have biscuits, and a bottle of brandy and hip flasks so while it is a wildly different experience to what we are used to, I think it will be the perfect start to our adventure in demonstrating how very different other people’s lives are.

So, quick summary, we’re here, we’re fine, I think we’ll manage the two weeks and get loads out of it. 🙂

Yesterday we walked along the canal path to Tesco for two days food supplies. It’s a good hours walk at a fairly good pace so I reckon it must be about 5 miles there and back. We took some self timers today and one of them was dreadfully unflattering catching me at my worst angle I reckon – I look pregnant with several chins.

I’m putting it here as I am very hopeful this year will have an added side bonus of fulfilling the two rules of weight loss; eat less and move around more. Certainly this week I’ve been doing lots of both!

I prefer this one 🙂
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(fleece undone – I was wearing three layers – and child positioned infront of me 😉 )

We got stuff for dinner last night (we all had pasta – Davies with secret butter (he likes to not be able to see evidence of the butter on it so calls it secret butter although he does obviously know it is on there), Scarlett with pesto and pinenuts, Ady and I with beef bolognaise and all with garlic bread), breakfast today and dinner tonight and then walked home again. There are two routes home, when the path splits – one is along the canal path the rest of the way; longer and with a couple of very muddy and slippy bits, the other by road; shorter but involves walking along with no pavement. I was worried about slipping as my ankle has been slightly protesting at all the walking and I *really* don’t want to put myself out of action before we even begin the year properly, so Davies and I took the road path while Ady and Scarlett took the canal path. We beat them back by about 15 minutes which was enough time to get some scones in the oven and the washing up done so we could all have cream tea with scones, jam (home made, brought from home) and local clotted cream. Very delicious 🙂

We watched Christian, the lion at Worlds End that we’d picked up in a charity shop earlier in the week. Funnily enough I’d tried to get it before when we watched Born Free last year and failed to find a copy so was really pleased to pick it up for a couple of quid. It was a good watch, brought up lots of discussion.

Dinner was nice, eaten all together, we’re doing lots of that and it’s enjoyable. A late night with all of us going to sleep around the same time although the kids had been in their bunk for about an hour before we actually turned the lights out and got into our sleeping bags.

Today was a very late start – I think it was nearly 10am before we actually all got properly out of bed. The kids have taken to coming onto our bed area for cuddles and chats which is lovely. Ady did some van checking and bought a new gas bottle for our spare as they sell them at this campsite while I cooked breakfast for us and then the kids did the washing and drying up under Ady’s supervision.

We then went out for a final walk, there has been a path we have not taken yet as we were always on our way to Tescos so we went that way today and it leads to a section of the River Teign. It was gorgeous, really fast flowing with steep banks and plenty to look at. We must have met about 50 people walking dogs which almost had me feeling we were missing a furry companion of our own. I can see us ending up getting a dog at the end of this year but always knew that was a strong possibility.

We walked for about 90 minutes at a fairly leisurely pace, talking, stopping to look at the river and enjoying the sunshine. At the very end of the walk as we had slowed down to fall in step behind a herd of young bulls who were all moving towards one corner of the field and then had stopped completely to watch a flock of crows all coming in to roost for the night at the top of a tall elm tree when I suddenly caught a glimpse of something on the opposite river bank and realised it was an otter. We stood and watched as it went down the riverbank into the water, swam for a while, then clambered back out and up and down the riverbank again, back in the water, back out and finally back in again. It was very magical, walking alongside it on the other side of the river and we were all so taken in by the moment that it was a while before we even thought to take a camera out and try and capture it, so the couple of pictures we have are of very poor, ‘you’ll just have to believe us that brown thing is an otter, honestly’ quality, but better to have watched with eyes rather than through a camera lens anyway I reckon.

Davies asked if we could ring Granny and Grandad to tell them, so he did that and we all talked to them. We’d had a long phonecall with them last night but it was nice to feel we were sharing the moment with them. The only time I have felt teary at all this week was a brief moment on Friday when Davies said to me ‘you sound just like Grandad’ when I said something silly and I was hit with a wave of missing him :(, getting teary again thinking of it so need to change the subject…. ahem.

Back at the van Ady got cracking at dinner, an attempt at a campervan roast. It was lovely, but took ages – I suspect dinners that require 2 hours of oven use are not really that practical but we do love our Sunday roast so it was nice to have a last one before we start living with other people for many Sundays to come.

We’re all feeling quite mixed emotions today, nervous about sleeping in a tent for two weeks, meeting a whole load of new people tomorrow, what will actually be expected of us and it being our first hosting too, but very excited and ready to be active, busy, useful and properly get going. It’s been a long time in the planning and tomorrow it really, properly starts. 🙂

We’ve done lots of walking these last two days. Walking seems to be the new driving and in the same way we often had our most interesting questions from the kids and general conversations while driving we are doing plenty of talking too.

The walking is a mix of death defying walks along roads with no pavements – single file all the way with Ady and the front and me at the back on the basis cars will swing right out to get round me 😉 and a gorgeous path which runs with a railtrack on one side and a canal on the other. Yesterday we did start Willow up (I get nervous about leaving her sitting unstarted for more than a couple of days) and drove a couple of miles to a nearby Co Op to stock up on food for a couple of days. Getting our heads round the fact we have a fridge and an oven, hob and grill for storing and cooking food and so can graduate from our usual camping fayre while still being limited by the smaller space, less utensils and more cramped prep area than at home in a kitchen is meaning we need to meal plan. Ady has been cooking so far so I offered to cook for us and made tortillas and tacos which is one of our favourite meals at home. We’d decided to buy burgers from the campsite (it’s a beef cattle farm) for dinner tonight and eggs (they also have a large flock of hens) for breakfast so got the rest of the bits we needed for those meals.

We came back to the campsite – Willow was running fine – and then headed off again on a walk. The campsite owner had told us a walkable route into Newton Abbot so we did that to post a couple of letters I’d been carrying around for days and failed to post, and checked out the Tescos for reduced to clear bargains so walked back to the campsite eating cheap fruit and Scarlett had a large portion of sushi as a starter for her dinner. We got back and I decided to tackle the pile of dirty washing so took the kindle and a supply of change and went and sat in the laundry room while Ady sorted the kids tea. It took way longer than expected as they were just domestic machines and I had two loads which then took bloody ages to dry. I did hang towels over the radiators in the toilets and we left Ady’s sweatshirt on one overnight. Felt quite cross with how much money I spent compared to the industrial dryer at the previous campsite which had everything dry in one go.

Davies rang to say he was missing me so then I popped back to Willow inbetween feeding the tumble drier. We watched Flushed Away on the laptop and the kids went to bed when the washing was finally dry, then I finished Ady and my dinner. We had quite a late night (by campervan standards 😉 )- and set the bed up about midnight.

Today was a slower start, listening to the radio and all cuddled up together on our bed before packing everything up and setting the table and chairs up. We waited ages for the little office on site to open so we could buy eggs and burgers, finally ringing and getting the farmer to come to us, which he did, hanging out at Willow for about half an hour hearing all about our WWOOFing adventure. He veered between being very ‘seize the day’ and very ‘but not for me’ :).

I cooked a lovely brunch of sausage, bacon, eggs and toast which filled us all up enough to keep us going on another long walk. We’d found some wild garlic yesterday and today we found all sorts of fungi but were not able to id any of it. We came up with a list of things we *really* must bring with us on walks including our Food for Free book. We saw a poster showing various wild life living along the path which included otters and herons. Scarlett and I looked out for otter signs, I’ve just finished reading Phillipa Forrester’s book ‘The River’ which talks lots about otter spotting so was able to tell Scarlett about spraints and other signs (thanks Kirsty, enjoyed that read 🙂 ) but didn’t see any. We did spot a heron though which almost made up for the lack of otters.

We had a sit down and chat midway along the walk at a pretty point with a handy stone for sitting on and just talked about what wobbles we were having and how we were all feeling. I’m so proud of Davies and Scarlett and how they are dealing with everything, helping each other through tricky moments, being articulate about what they are struggling with, enjoying, dreading, excited about. We got to talking about retrospective perspective and how I kept comprehensive diaries as a teenager and now look back at them and see how I did get over that love I swore I never would recover from, those worries that kept me awake and night and had me crying into my pillow never came to anything. Everyone is really benefitting from having three other people living the same experiences on hand to talk stuff through with and the kids are both citing having Ady around all the time as a great thing.

Back at the campsite we had tea and biscuits and sat chatting and catching up with screens before dinner. Dinner is later than planned thanks to the gas bottle running out mid-cooking but we’re about to set up a film and all eat together tonight.

We had showers this morning and a fairly lazy start to the day. It was freezing cold and the van was cosy so no one felt particularly inclined to leave it. But we had things to do and didn’t want to just let the day drift by too much. So we listened to Popmaster and I paid for the campsite for the week and got directions to the nearest bus stop as Ady had said he didn’t want to drive into a town he didn’t know and struggle to find parking etc. Plus we want to get used to walking / planning journeys and ensuring we are being as frugal with our travelling as possible.

We seem to be fairly inbetween Newton Abbot and Bovey Tracy so we decided to go for Newton Abbot. Layla did warn us it was ‘shit’ and maybe we should have listened – certainly the kids hanging around the bus stop didn’t do a great PR job for the town :(. We set off walking and after about 2 miles hit a bus stop so waited. It was only about 10 minutes before a bus arrived so we asked for the town centre and jumped on. I always want to use public transport but bus travel is just so pricey (nearly a tenner for the four of us return) and it seems to be some sort of quest worthy of unlocking the secrets of the pyramids to get information about times and places to catch one back again. I guess for one or two of us it is probably the same price as parking and petrol in the van but for all four of us it just costs too much.

Even more annoying was that having no idea how far from the town we were it was only another mile or two before we were there, so entirely walkable, although it was scary, no pavement roads so for safety’s sake it was probably better to be on the bus. We did enjoy the walk though, swapping to walk in different combinations along the way. I really enjoyed a chat with Scarlett about bodies, weight, plastic surgery and appearance linked to happiness and feelings of self worth. Interesting to hear her take on stuff, what she has heard and picked up from other kids and, I guess, the media too.

Newton Abbot is charity-shop-tastic, there must be about 15 charity shops there so we had a very enjoyable time walking round those and picked up a couple of dvds including some of the ones you get free with newspapers and charity shops just ask for a few pence donation for. I needed to go to the post office to send an ebay package that I’ve been carting around with me as it was paid for after we left the house and we needed some bits for dinner tonight. We have still not quite perfected food in the van but have been talking about ideas for meals this evening so will hopefully improve from now on. We have discovered that the kids like pepperoni on their pizzas though so that was dinner tonight for everyone.

We were all starving by about 2pm and having promised fast food junk at some point this week we decided today was the day and headed to the nearby KFC. We all enjoyed it 😳 and it triggered a really interesting conversation about what is bad about it; health implications, non-ethical food (battery chickens, probably cheap and non-fair trade other stuff), massive amounts of packaging and what we could do to offset the occassional lapse. We came up with our walking and using the bus rather than the car and using charity shops for the few bits we’d been wanting rather than buying them new. We did talk about the fact we’d still been in a town, buying at all too. For me this year is about consuming less and having a bigger conscience about stuff but it is not an endurance test and I have no desire (yet!) to opt out of society generally and live totally without comforts or treats. It will be interesting to see how what we learn, people we meet and experiences we have change us over the course of the year.

We also picked up various things to help with travel sickness – aromatherapy roll-on stuff for pulse points, those pressure bands for wrists and the more conventional pills. Hoping to find something that works even if it is all snake oil ;).

We then waited ages for a return bus, asking two different drivers on other busses for information and gaining none, the information office was closed so we decided to wait for the same number bus as we’d come in on and do a circuitous route if needs be. As it happened it did the same route in reverse and the driver was lovely and let us off closer to the campsite than we’d got on so less walking on scary pavement-less roads, although the walking was mostly now uphill and carrying shopping so certainly still good exercise.

Back at the van we had tea / coffee / biscuits, I went off to do the washing up from earlier and Ady cooked the kids some tea which they ate watching a dvd then we went for a star gazing wander in the field next to the campsite. A really clear (if cold) night and loads of stars were out twinkling at us and making us all wish we knew more about astromony. We do have a ‘night sky’ book so if tomorrow is a clear night we’ll go out again and try and identify some of the constellations. We did spot Orion’s belt and the plough but that ended our knowledge, and there was no moon.

Back at Willow the kids watched the end of their dvd and ate loads of apples as they claimed to still be hungry. We had a loose wire or tripped switch on the lights but Ady sorted it and was most proud of himself :).

We did Bad, Good, Learnt and the kids finally went up to their bunk.

Davies
Bad – it was a bugger to get to KFC – he seems to be experimenting with bad language. Sadly we are far too slack to stop him and instead find it very amusing 😆 We tramped back and forth on the street it was on having asked for directions from two different people and got conflicting advice (bit like the busses!)
Good – Lots of time with Daddy today, really enjoyed chatting to him while out walking
Learnt – how to identify a squirrels drey

Scarlett
Bad – Felt sick on the bus
Good – feeling better generally (not been sick yesterday or today)
Learnt – about plastic surgery

Ady
Bad – we still bought stuff today
Good – Time with the kids
Learnt – public transport is pretty rubbish!

Nic
Bad – it is cold! I’m super twitchy about our planned two weeks in a tent from Monday onwards
Good – settling in to our new life, it already is starting to feel like real life rather than a holiday
Learnt – a fact about how tiny squirrel poo is from Tarly.

let me see how much I can remember:

Thursday we had a really nice evening with Caz and Bid. Davies and Scarlett slept in the house while Ady and I slept in the van.

Friday Ady, Bid and Scarlett took the dogs for a long walk in the morning and spent time looking at nesting herons and deer, which pretty much made her morning :). I hung out with Caz chatting, drinking tea and donating the bantam eggs we’d brought along with us to the cake Caz was cooking. We had a bit of a taste of WWOOFing by helping out at Caz & Bid’s Friday volunteer day. The jobs for the day included moving a load of mypex (black plastic sheeting used for weed suppressing / warming the ground) from one area to another. It was heavy, smelly (had been covering ground and had stagnant water sitting on top in puddles) and had been weighed down with various things including metal guttering, a polytunnel frame and lumps of hardcore. So we moved stuff off, rolled the stinky mypex up and then carried it across to it’s new location, then carried all the weighing it down stuff over and weighed it down in it’s new location. We broke for lunch (home made soup, selection of home made cakes) and then I spent some time really sorting the van out getting belongings tidied into various cupboards and cubby holes. Ady and I walked into town to buy various things for dinner and some work gloves and I had a phonecall from the letting agent to say the tenants were not going in as planned. 🙁

I did some paperwork, made some phonecalls and booked a mid-point campsite for Sunday night and we helped cart pallets about to construct a pig ark for the pigs they have arriving in the next couple of weeks. Harry had a look over the van with us and combined with the help James gave us identifying what is under the bonnet we now feel comfortable we are able to do weekly maintenance checks on oil, water and various other fluids. Then we had a really nice evening communally cooking curry, rice, breads, potatoes and drinking beer and wine with Bid and Harry (who also lives on site). The kids slept back in the van with us again.

Saturday We waved goodbye to everyone and had a comedy moment when everyone cheered when Willow started and no one realised my car (which was infront) hadn’t started and was refusing to do so. It did eventually so we got a second cheer and headed off in convoy to say a final farewell to Julie & co. Then Ady and the kids took Willow to my parents while I drove to meet my Dad at the garage where my car is being stored for the year. Comedy moments a-go-go when I managed to reverse it in but couldn’t actually get out of the car myself. I tried ducking under the wing mirror but realised I was likely to get wedged there so struggled round behind the car and down the passenger side. I considered clambering on the roof and rolling down the bonnet but Dad was already laughing at me.

Back home Ady and I nipped to the supermarket to pick up some stuff for lunch and came back to spend the afternoon with Dad and Frazer. I realised I’d forgotten to grab the car tax out of my car so Dad said he’d call over and get it in the morning. Mum came home and we went out for fish and chips and had a nice evening with them. The kids slept in the house again and Ady and I went out to the van.

Sunday morning we’d realised we’d also forgotten the tent from the car but had been too late to catch Dad before he left to go over to the car so Mum and I went over to get it and I repositioned the car a bit better in the garage so it was just a slightly tight gap to squeeze out. Hopefully it won’t even be that by the time we come home and I’ll just slip down the side of the car ;).

Back to Mum & Dad’s for lunch with Frazer and Granny who had also come up to say goodbye. It felt quite hard finally saying goodbye and Mum cried. I didn’t make eye contact with Dad but suspect he was also a little misty-eyed. I know I was. It did feel good to be driving away at last though, it has been far too prolonged a goodbye in many ways and I know I was really ready to get going. I enjoyed staying with Chris & Julie and Caz & Bid but I was just keen to actually get started with being on the road and starting the adventure properly.

The drive along to Dorset was lovely, waving at all the other campervans along the way (it’s a bit like the early days of motoring when people with same make of vehicle waved to each other) and there were plenty of them it being the end of half term. We passed the New Forest at sunset which was just gorgeous. Scarlett was feeling a bit car sick so she swapped places with me and sat in the front and was pony spotting against a gorgeous orange and pink streaked sky.

We found the campsite at the end of a rather hole-ridden track and got a warm welcome from the campsite owner and his collection of ducks and hens. He had told me when I rang that the showers were not working so he would not charge me for the kids staying and he then told us there was no running water either but the toilet cisterns had been filled up so would flush and he could fill any container we wanted with water, so he’d just charge us a tenner for the night (pretty good considering we had hook up).

It was already dark so we snuggled into the van and had some food. Unfortunately Scarlett’s earlier travel sickness hadn’t quite gone away so within minutes of eating she was being sick into the portapotty 🙁 She seemed fine afterwards and they snuggled up in their bunk while I read a couple of chapters of How To Train Your Dragon. The Mifi wasn’t getting a signal so I made use of the wonderful kindle instead and we all had an early night.

Monday morning was just lovely. Even after years of not working on Mondays and the kids never having gone to school it is still a Monday morning that I feel the most free and of course now we really are free with Ady there too. We all sat eating breakfast looking out the window at a buzzard giving us a spectacular fly-by display over the camping field. It was one of those perfect moments, sitting in our van, drinking tea and all laughing and wow-ing together. Hopefully the first of many :).

We’d decided to split the journey again – Willow sits comfortably at about 50mph and we reckon 90 minutes is about right for an installment of journey with a good half hour rest time between installments. It is one of the first lessons we have learnt – slow and steady and enjoy the view rather than speedy and whizzy and look at the blur! I calculated that would mean our 90 minutes in stop would be at ‘our’ Morrisons in Bridport. We got there, bought lunch provisions and ate in the van before filling up with fuel and heading off. The campsite I booked weeks ago and found on Cool Camping, I’d spoken to the owner on the phone and it all sounded fine, he’d mentioned a couple of places he could site us. Again it was down country lanes and a slightly hairy drive but we pulled up and were warmly welcomed. He took Ady and I on foot to show us the two choices of pitch – one in their garden next to a swing and the other lower down next to a stream. Both utterly beautiful but both very muddy and very tight to navigate in to. I fell over while walking through the garden as it was pretty muddy so was already covered in mud. We had a very tense 15 minutes trying to get into the first space which involved reversing down a very tight lane on a curve, holding up several cars. The owner was trying to direct us which mostly seemed to involve shouting ‘whoa, whoa’ at us and failing to understand we don’t have power steering or the ability to rev the engine much, while poor Willow got hotter and hotter and more splattered with mud, the kids were getting battered by things flying around the van and it was all very stressy. Eventually we decided it wouldn’t work and then had to try and get back out of the gap we’d slid into. We let the cars go past and then had a brief attempt at getting in the second space but quickly realised that was going to be equally unsuitable and so with regret on both parts we said goodbye to the owner and coaxed poor, protesting Willow back up and down scary hills. It was nearly 4pm, Willow was really not happy and we had nowhere to sleep even if we could get there. We found a layby and put the kettle on which seemed to be the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. I got the Camping and Caravanning Club book out and started looking for sites nearby open all year. I found one about 10 miles away but got no reply, then another also about 10 miles away and got a reply and was told we could camp if we could be there by 5pm. Scarlett was in the loo feeling sick again so she stayed there for the drive, I drank my tea as we went along and with fingers firmly crossed and prayers to god of campervans and crazy adventures we got Willow started, plugged the post code into the satnav and headed off to the campsite, arriving just in time.

It was expensive, poncy and with no view at all other than other campervans and statics BUT it had showers, hook up, water and a laundry room :). Scarlett was indeed sick again 🙁 but perked up afterwards. Ady and I had showers and then he headed back to the van and set up a laptop to watch a dvd with the kids while I took the huge bag of dirty washing and the kindle and sat in the laundry room for a washing machine and two tumble dryer cycles emerging with a nice big pile of clean dry washing and a far more chilled out attitude thanks to the warm dry laundry room and the comfort of losing myself in a book. The only blip was the light in the room was motion activated and went off every four minutes (yes, I timed it) so I had to get up and wave my arms around every four minutes doing the security light motion trigger dance. Fortunately that amused rather than annoyed me 😆

Back at the van all was calm and I was able to blog and check emails etc. The kids snuggled in their bunk and watched the end of their film from up there, then we snuggled up too. Ady had a bad nights sleep reliving some of the stress of the day but we’re doing plenty of talking through the challenging stuff and he is trying really hard to let go of stress after the event and learning to live in the moment. Worrying about the future I can understand, fretting about things that have already happened, particularly if nothing actually went wrong is something I rather struggle to empathise with!

Today I’d found another campsite online last night and booked us in. It is cheaper at £16 a night with hook up and although it still has not much in the way of a view and we can see lots of caravans parked up on out of season storage (a bit like a caravan graveyard) but it is a farm with loads of chickens and a huge herd of cattle who we can hear mooing so it is far more our sort of place.

We did have a wobble this morning when we checked under the van and found a huge puddle under the radiator with a constant drip still feeding it. Ady and the kids walked to a nearby garage to see if they sold radweld (they didn’t) but bought consolatory chocolate instead :). We found a postcode for the nearest Halfords, put water in the rad and headed off. Willow took a bit of starting but got there and has been fine with the temp gauge staying in the safe zone.

The kids stayed in the van while Ady and I got radweld from Halfords and lunch from the big Tesco next door and we ate in the van. The water had totally stopped dripping and all seemed well with Willow. We arrived at the new campsite and have spent the afternoon mostly in the van as it is *freezing* cold. I’ve been catching up online, reorganised the cupboards and just enjoyed sitting and chatting. Ady has been cannoning off the narrow walls trying to find things to tidy and the kids have been DSing / PSPing. Tomorrow we’re planning some walking and exploring very nearby stuff, we are just down the road from House of Marbles so may have to do a visit there sometime this week.

The very best news of the day though is that the tenants have finally moved in – what a bloody relief! No need to worry now until they are due to pay next months rent I guess!

Finally, in honour of getting to my blog and brought to you from our confined space in the van we did a quick bad, good, learnt since we left the house (blimey that feels both 100 years ago and just yesterday):
Ady:
Bad: Trying to get into Sweet Meadows camping pitch
Good: We are getting through the challenges, feels like fortune is on our side.
Learnt: how to start Willow 🙂

Davies:
Bad: Scarlett has been sick a couple of times
Good: Still enjoying it, lots of laughter and lots of exciting stuff.
Learnt most of the ingredients for a pizza are grown from crops.

Scarlett:
Bad: been ill a couple of times
Good: loved seeing herons, deer and buzzards
Learnt: the legend of Lady Godiva (reading a childrens road atlas of the UK with lots of pictures of things in various places and Lady Godiva is in Coventry so we did a proper google and found out about her.

Nic:
Bad: transition phase means everyone is wobbling which is hard to witness, particularly as I feel mostly responsible
Good: Loving the family time, the laughs and camaraderie of shared experiences, highs and lows and feeling like we’re really, really living
Learnt: bloody loads! Mostly about campervan living, handy tips for being all bijou and compact and that.

The first night in Willow went really well. I had to get up twice for a wee which may mean we rethink who sleeps on the outside of the bed but it was cosy, comfy and already feels like home 🙂

Chris had already gone to work by the time we got up but we had a nice morning with Julie and the kids chatting, eating porridge and hanging out. I did some van re-organising and sorting and have already shed several things from the van into the car which we have with us until the weekend when it will go into storage. I had various paperwork and online stuff to sort as today was my payday so I paid final bills to BT and our water rates, sorted out the post redirection and other such mundane stuff.

We had lunch and then went back homeward-way as Ady had the dentist. We dropped him off and nipped to the house to collect some stuff that we’d left in the garden to go to the tip and went along to drop that off. On the way the sun was shining, the radio was on and the kids and I were singing along and I was hit with one of those waves of absolute happiness and contentment you sometimes get (well I do anyway) when all feels right with the world :).

We picked Ady up and went back for a last cup of tea with Chris and Julie and collected the van to drive the mile or so to Caz and Bid’s. They greeted us by the boys taking D&S off to play and Caz and Bid clambering in to squidge round the table with us to drink wine and toast adventure while looking at a beautiful sunset out of the window. Perfect 🙂

Fab evening followed in the house with plenty more wine, gorgeous food (lamb from the farmer across the road), chatting, laughter and general enjoyment. Davies and Scarlett have stayed in the house so Ady and I get our first night in the van alone. And we have hook up so everything is charging up 🙂

Ady and I both had really bad nights sleep last night. Practical reasons included it being bloody freezing (we’d foolishly gone to sleep with just fleece blankets over us as the fire was lit and the heating on so it felt warm. At 3am the fire had gone out, as had the heating.), the camping mats not being fully inflated and therefore not the most comfortable arrangement after a full day of lifting furniture around and cleaning, emotional reasons included it being our last night in the house before embarking on a crazy adventure.

So this morning when I finally woke properly after a 5am conversation with Ady including the dialogue; ‘are you alright?’ ‘no, I’m bloody shitting myself!’ it all felt quite surreal and tinged with sleep deprivation. Ady was sorting the garage, I made breakfast and ran the kids a last bath as they’d run out of time for one yesterday evening and then Dad arrived. He’d been in a slightly strange mood yesterday which I put down to feeling wobbly about us going but today he was fine and stood for ages looking at the chickens and checking details on our itinery for the next week or so.

Ady did a run to the tip, I started loading more stuff into Willow and the kids had their bath, then Dad took me along to the letting agent to drop the keys and paperwork off. Mike, the agent was the perfect encounter, standing up to shake my hand, brimming over with a great mix of envy (if my wife would agree we’d be off doing the same thing tomorrow, I’d love to do it) and positivity (you are going to have such a great year, don’t give the house a second thought, have a fab adventure!) and telling me he’ll be praying for a gorgeous sunny summer and thinking of us along the way. 🙂 Yay Mike!

Mike also said the inventory isn’t happening until tomorrow so actually we then had until lunchtime tomorrow to be out of the house. This meant we lingered far longer over the final clean up and packing up and finally left about 2pm. It poured with rain for the duration so everything took longer to clean as we were treading muddy footprints behind us and having to take shoes on and off all the time but we eventually got there.

Ady and the kids headed straight for Chris and Julie’s in Willow while I followed in my car via Boots for a plastic mirror having realised I’d already packed the camping one into storage and my Dad’s to drop off one final box of kitchen stuff that we’d ambitiously thought we’d bring in Willow but since thought better of.

Chris and Julie have been perfect hosts, full of tips (both of them have had campervans and lived in them for summers in years gone by), loads of enthusiasm for it all and a lovely dinner complete with ham bought in our honour. They are early-to-bedders anyway so we retired to the van at 10pm and I think we could all do with the early night anyway. I’m going to do a quick post to WW and then try and get some sleep.

A huge job list today, pretty much all of which we got done. I did quite a bit of managing though as Davies and Scarlett were prone to meander about a bit if not guided and Ady has a tendancy to clean frantically while not actually achieving much. He spent ages on the draining board and kitchen windowsills today, valuable contributions both but perhaps not the best use of time… 😉

So I directed Ady to the bedroom to pack up his crate of clothes, empty the bed drawers into boxes and so on, while I wrapped up a couple of ebay parcels, made some phonecalls, typed up a How to guide for the house and chickens and emailed it across to the letting agent. Then Scarlett and I nipped out to post the parcels, drop the keys and payment for the hall hire off at the party hall, get petrol for my car and collect a small fan heater we’d reserved from Argos. I plugged that in in Willow to dry out the last of a small patch that had been wet in the kids bunk – we’ve had loads of heavy rain since getting the van back and no further leaking has happened so hopefully it is now sorted.

I packed up my clothes crate – mine seems fuller although I am maintaining it is because my clothes are bigger than everyone elses! 😆 and emptied the wardrobe completely boxing up the last few things that are not coming with us but we’d still needed til this point.

Then, to coin a phrase, we had lunch 🙂

Davies managed to get pretty much everything he is bringing into two rucksacks and his clothes crate so we issued Tarly with the same challenge and Davies pledged to help her while Ady and I went to start loading Willow properly. There has been some ‘shoving’ going on with stuff getting put in there so I insisted that everything was pulled out and then put back in properly so we all know where everything is and it is all logical with things we will need regularly in easily accessible places and things we won’t tucked away more. We put lights up around the van, stowed tools away, created a little bookshelf in one of the cupboards and have packed up about half of what will need to come along with us.

We then loaded my car up with rubbish from the house and garden including all the recycling from the weekend and headed for the tip then went on into town. We wanted to check out Millets to see if anything sprang out at us as useful to spend Ady’s vouchers from work on (it didn’t) and to get Tarly another rucksack. She has one but it is quite tatty and as Davies has two and has managed to contain all his stuff within them it seemed sensible to get her a second one to do the same. We did that, wandered round Poundland for a while lured in by the bright lights and then came home.

The kids had tea, finished packing up Tarly’s rucksacks and watched more taped stuff on TV while Ady and I went through all the kitchen cupboards and the freezers. We had a late and ecclectic meal consisting of food still in the freezers, packed another five or so boxes full of kitchen stuff, created another two boxes of kitchen stuff to come with us in the van and then emptied the chiller too and turned it off to defrost.

I read the kids the first couple of chapters of How to Train Your Dragon, most of it with them mouthing the words along with me they have listened to David Tennant reading it so many times on the audiobook and then they went to bed, Davies with the kindle tonight, which he brought back to me having bought Mr Gum using a combination of the text to talk function along with a bit of reading and typing in 😯

I’ve emailed our first hosts to confirm our booking, arranged places to stay on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week and am hoping we can have Saturday night parked on my parents drive before heading off to a campsite midway between here and Devon for Sunday night.

Tomorrow is van hire and moving day – off for my last sleep in my bed…

After a truly hungover Friday during which I failed to do much towards leaving the house next week let alone preparing for the party I was feeling better on Saturday but hugely unprepared for the party. I think it’s the first party ever when we’ve not had someone staying with us the night before so it felt quite surreal just being us in a pretty empty house. The kids and I finished decorating the cake with some details and then we headed to the hall.

There were already people there, a young band dressed all in black with greasy hair and expensive electric guitars doing a photoshoot with lots of dry ice on the stage. We were pretty early but I poked my head in to ask if there was a kettle and cups as the hall hire lady hadn’t been sure when I’d asked on Thursday and it’s a couple of years since we last hired it. The photographer was very friendly so I decided to ask if we could come in and start putting our posters up and he agreed, which meant we had a crossover of the band finishing the last few shots on the stage including some strange poses where the drummer was bound and gagged with black tape while the rest of the band mimed whacking him with their guitars and more dry ice was blown around while we blue tacked inspirational quotes up around the room.

I’d been wondering how to decorate the hall this time – in the past we’ve either had a party theme; Halloween, Wallace and Gromit, Princesses, Doctor Who or a celebration of Scarlett – this time I went for quotes that I find inspiring with regard to getting out there and really living life, chasing your dreams or to quote someone who I missed lots yesterday ‘getting off your backside and living your life’. 😉 So I spent time at work the last couple of shifts looking at quotes online and wrote down all the ones that meant something to me. Some just made me laugh for various reasons (I had one by Dale Carnegie who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People and was the creator of a course Ady attended a few years ago for work which used to make me laugh every time he came home and shared gems from the workshops with me) but most were ones that I genuinely felt talked to me or were relevant to us. The photographer chatted for a few minutes at the end to find out what we had the hall for and loved the idea of our year – I loved the idea we might have been lurking at the photoshoot for a band who may one day be famous :). My final nod towards organising a party was to create a cd with songs including wandering or wondering.

At midday, the official start time of the party we were sat in an empty hall, just the four of us and the cake. Babs rang to say she was almost with us and I had a complete wobble about inviting people to a party with no food or drink and send Ady and Davies out to Asda to buy some. Foolishly as it turned out, as by the time they had returned several people had arrived and the table was rapidly filling up. I’m not at all sure where the next four hours went really – there was dancing, chatting, hugging, laughing, blasts from the past in the shape of a couple of guests and worlds colliding as local friends met not-so-local friends and some people were able to put faces to names.

Just as I went to nip off to the loo we got called up to go on the stage so I ran off anyway and came back to be presented with some fantastic gifts – a kindle with a gorgeous handmade cover and the most fabulous table cloth ever made of self timer photos of our friends 🙂 🙂 🙂 Truly overwhelmed at the generosity and thoughtfulness of them and also now appreciative of the stress and angst caused by some of my comments in various places in the weeks leading up to the party ;). I got Ady to do the speech as I was far too likely to get emotional and silly so I threw that into making a spectacle of myself by line dancing instead 😉 😆

I realised suddenly it was getting dark and we were supposed to have already been out of the hall so a concerted effort from everyone meant we had it cleared, hoovered and loaded into cars in record time, goodbyes to those heading off for home said and the remainder of us decamped to our house. A squeeze for 18 adults and 23 children 😯 (even more 😯 I just did a quick count up of how many extra people were at the party and that was another 18 adults and 20 children – 79 people in total, yep, we definitely needed that hall – and that’s a lot of goodbye hugs in the last week given the 13 people at my work meal and the 12 people at Reading Group. I’m starting to feel my wussiness at being in bed before midnight last night was almost justified!)

A lovely evening with people drifting off as the night wore on until we hit 1130pm and I just couldn’t stay awake any more. I had a cracking headache and my bed was calling with the siren song of ‘just three more sleeps’ so I sloped off and collected Davies and Scarlett from the kids hang out to come to bed with me and sent the other kids downstairs so I had a chance of actually getting to sleep. The kids and I cuddled up and chatted for a while and when I checked the clock it was 1230am so I turned out the light.

Today I woke about 830am and could hear Ady chatting in the kitchen. When I emerged from the bedroom though there was no one to be found so Scarlett and I sat on the stairs for a while talking about how excited we were :). Ady had gone out to sweep the chickens area but after a chat about the plans for the next few days I persuaded him back in the house and we found people had started to get up so we decamped to the lounge.

A nice easy morning spent chatting with Chris & Helen, Kirsty & James, Jax and Jo while the kids were off playing in various combinations. We finally cut the Willow cake which had been forgotten at the party thanks to the line dancing and then the rush to clear the hall. A plan had been put forward to head to the beach so eventually we did all manage it, saying bye to Jax who was heading for home.

The kids pretty much all got wet, particularly Scarlett and Elinor who both got swept over by a large wave and ended up drenched head to toe! 😆 Scarlett predictably got up and said ‘that was BRILLIANT!’ but chattering teeth and soaked clothing meant the end of the game so we headed back to the cars, stripped children off and brought them back home again. Davies had a shower, Scarlett and Alex had a (very, very long) bath, Kirsty made hot chocolate for children and we had leftovers lunch and more cake.

Further chatting before finally our last guests left us – about five minutes after Kirsty & James said goodbye Helen rang to ask if Chris’s coat was still hanging up – yes. Five minutes after that Kirsty texted to ask if they’d left a bag in the kitchen – also yes! Chris (who never normally forgets anything 😉 ) came back and kindly took The Barts bag to pass on too.

Davies and Scarlett had tea, watched Flushed Away (sky has now been turned off so we just have freeview channels and they are wanting to watch everything stored on the HD DVD player before we go) and then went to bed, theoretically for an early night but neither of them managed it. I did set the kindle up for Tarly on text to talk mode so she had what sounded like Stephen Hawkins reading her a bedtime story. Davies appeared at least twice and shared some of his ‘I’m worried about X and excited about Y’ thoughts with us which we talked through.

Ady and I had a very late curry dinner and made a job list for the next two days to work through. I’ve blogged in all places, mourned the fact I stupidly didn’t take any pictures yesterday including of the finished decorated cake and now I’m off for the penultimate sleep in my bed.

It is a universal truth that if you have a crashing hangover men will come and dig the road up outside your bedroom window from 8am 🙁

The four cockerels were doing a crowing chorus, there was a mini digger trashing our daffodils on the verge outside the house putting in electricity to the new street light and the kids were being rowdy so despite needing at least another four hours sleep I got up. Ady had put cinnamon roll dough on for me – I’d be trying to drunkenly do it last night but the kids had had pancakes for tea so there wasn’t enough milk so Ady said he’d get some milk and stick the dough on for me before he went to work. He’s not been sleeping at all well and was downstairs by about 5am so I was aware of him too. I made the cinnamon rolls, quickly realised that I would not be eating any when I couldn’t even face my cup of tea so sat and felt sorry for myself on the sofa for an hour.

I’d just decided I could face food after all and made myself another cup of tea when Dad arrived so he joined me in a late breakfast and gave me a nice legitimate excuse to do nothing off my job list and sit chatting instead, which I’m sure aided my return to wellbeing all the quicker.

He’d come to put some trim around the bath and check what else needs doing in the house on Monday and Tuesday, but also I suspect just to see us. He’s seen me every day this week except yesterday and the kids every single day. We had a very companiable couple of hours chatting. He’s feeling his age at the moment I think and even made a couple of comments about deep, pondering things which Dad is very not prone to.

We all had lunch and Dad left about 3pm at which point I intended getting on with stuff and did sort out the landlord insurance for the house online then there was a knock at the door and it was Ady and Tom who had brought him home. This was very welcome, because it was great to see Tom, because Ady was home loads earlier than I’d expected and because I’d thought I’d need to go and collect him. He’d had a good last day too and been presented with £60 worth of Millets vouchers, an emergency car tool kit, a first aid kit, about six bottles of wine, a massive box of biscuits, a big container of screenwash and another of deicer 🙂 he had a card full of ‘will miss you loads’ comments too.

Tom stayed for a coffee and to laugh at me in my hungover state and then he left. Ady and I sort of looked at each other a bit dazed really, realising that neither of us have a job any more 😯 which galvanised us into action and we cleared the bookcase, put all the stuff that’s been collecting in a big heap to ‘go in the van’ into the van – not organised, just shoved in there for now, we’ll do a proper organising where everything goes on Monday in there, and cleared the playroom completely.

Ady and Davies went off to get some bits for dinner while I got the fire lit. The kids are having yet another sleepover so they were awake for ages. We had dinner and both kept looking at each other and laughing about how tired and dazed we both look.

On which note, given I don’t expect tomorrow will be an early-to-bed evening I am off for one of my last nights in my bed.

My last day at work. A really odd feeling leaving a job without another one to go to. I’ve done it once or twice before; once I was asked to leave a job and didn’t have another one lined up, once I left one myself without another lined up because I hated it so much I simply couldn’t stay any more. It felt most similar to when I left a job because I was 39 weeks pregnant with Davies I think, except instead of jokes about sleepless nights and dirty nappies there were jokes about freezing cold nights and muddy shoes – oh and dogging, the fact WWOOFing is so similiar sounding tickles everyone.

I spent much of the day sitting on the enquiry desk which is always my favourite place anyway. One of the book group people came in and we ordered in the next few books for the group and then she gave me a big hug and said I had made the library ‘fun’. Not at all sure that is something libraries are meant to be ;). I did some tidying up loose ends with emails to the Book group members, cleared my tray, signed my keys back in and put my last few books back on shelves. The last hour or so dragged a bit really and then I went round saying goodbye to shelves and stairs and book trolleys :).

Back home I had a very quick turnaround to get ready to go out. Ady had the kids with him for most of the day and dropped them off with Dad for a couple of hours in the afternoon so he could go into the office. They’d spent the morning cleaning out Ady’s car ready to be handed back. Ady had run me a bath and ironed a top for me and I had just painted my nails when I got a text to say my ride was already outside five minutes early – so Ady and the kids had to help me put my boots on so I didn’t smudge my nails! And yes, I know, princessy behaviour like that won’t be able to continue in the weeks and months to come!

We collected another 2 people along the way and were first at the restaurant. It’s one of those where you go up and order and pay for your food which I like as it means no one ends up subsidising anyone else. They also have a two for a tenner deal so we all chose a dinner buddy and got our meals for a fiver each :). I was really touched and slightly overwhelmed at the turn out as historically the staff at Lancing are dreadful for not going to evening get togethers. But every single member of staff came, along with three ex members of staff and Brenda the big boss librarian who I run Book Group with. So there were 14 of us in all.

Sian had bought me a gorgeous little notebook with a purple silk cover and recycled handmade pages and written a very lovely message in it so that got passed round the table and everyone wrote something in it including contact details so we can stay in touch. There are some very tear jerking things written in it 🙂 I did some seat hopping as it was a long banquet style table so I could only talk to about 3 people at once so I made sure I could have some time with everyone.

It did mean I didn’t do much eating though, the food wasn’t great and so much talking meant I left most of it. It didn’t prevent me drinking unfortunately and I suddenly found myself with about 5 glasses of wine lined up that people had bought me. I should have course have left them or tipped them into a plant pot or something, but I didn’t. And I regretted that about an hour after I got home and even more when I woke up this morning… 🙁

But, while still sober enough to function I was presented with a bottle of wine, a card and a £30 gift card from everyone, with strict instructions to spend it on treats as and when I felt I needed them most over the course of the year :). Brenda made a lovely speech about what I will be missed for (sense of humour, irreverance and unusual qualities for library staff ;)) I went round the table and said nice things about everyone and thanked them all for a lovely four years at the library. I’ve learnt loads, gained new skills, enjoyed being back in a workplace and made many friends who I hope to stay in touch with. I think it is the most appreciated I’ve ever felt in a job and whilst it wasn’t challenging enough for me long term it was something I felt I was good at and worthwhile.
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More chatting (and drinking) and then we all said our goodbyes. I made at least two of the people getting a lift home with me cry, and cried myself by getting all emotional about how much I loved them and will miss them. I wish I’d left at least two of the glasses of wine on the table but it was a lovely evening and a true celebration of leaving my job for all the right reasons.

Today’s job list included making a cake for the party on Saturday and moving more boxes to Mum & Dad’s. I also had a couple of online bits to do including a sponsored post which I was rather agonising over. I did some of the online stuff while Tarly finished a painting she was doing then we went along to Sainsburys for cake ingredients. On the way home Ady rang and Davies took the call as I was driving and asked me to ring him back. I did and he said he’d just crashed his car 🙁 He’d been in nose to tail stop: start traffic and managed to start rather than stop and go up the back of someone. It all seemed quite amicable and was at about 20mph so no injury and no real damage done but as new cars do they had both creased up a fair bit. I told him to go and get a coffee and calm down, to ring work and tell them and to ring me back as he was in a bit of a state. He’d managed to not get any details off the other driver, who had taken his business card and reg number. Ady was clearly at fault so it doesn’t matter too much as I guess the other driver will be in touch but it did occur to me they may not be insured. It also means there is likely to be paperwork and further contact needed to sort it out after Ady leaves although he talked to the HR manager this evening and they may pay for the repairs on the two cars rather than claim on the company insurance in which case Ady won’t be needed for anything.

I got cracking on the baking and we had lunch, I finished the rest of the online stuff I needed to do and then Ady came home for a coffee. He gave me a hand loading my car up with the first run of boxes and some bits for the tip including the old battery off the van which needed to go in for recycling. We took a load to Dads via the tip and then came home for a second load. The dalek is now at Mum & Dad’s and all that is left now is the kitchen which we’ll clear on Friday.

The cake went better than anticipated and is already assembled and iced and just needs decorating now which I’ll do on Friday. I can’t quite believe how well my planning is going. There, now I’ve jinxed it!

Davies and Scarlett were desperate for a sleepover, which amuses me so much – they spend all day, every day together, will be sharing a bunk in the van for the year yet still beg to sleep in the same room now. I was so adamant they would have their own bedrooms because I felt personal space was so important – I guess they may be less keen to be together all the time by the end of the year ;).

I fed the kids, Ady chainsawed the last of the firewood which should pretty much perfectly last us til next week and we all watched One Man & His Campervan. We did bad, good, learnt:
Davies:
Bad: Hurt my leg
Good: Finished emptying my bedroom
Learnt: Martin Dorey (One Man & His Campervan) can speak French

Scarlett:
Bad: I thought there would be cinnamon rolls for breakfast and there wasn’t
Good: I finished my duck painting
Learnt: that more girls are abducted than boys

Ady:
Bad: I crashed my car
Good: No one was hurt
Learnt: it is easy to change your spouse at Costco

Nic:
Bad: Ady is blue 🙁
Good: Productive day
Learnt: About ebuzzing – wrote my first sponsored post and earned forty quid – blimey! Only took about 20 minutes to write 🙂

The kids went to bed, we had baths and I cooked dinner. Ady seems to be feeling a bit better about the whole car accident and promises me it won’t put a cloud over him for the rest of the week.

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, dough on for rolls for lunch, various laundry processed, chickens dealt with and job list written for the day and systematically ticked off.

So this morning I did car insurance for the Sharan sorting (I’ve moved to a PAYG policy and needed to check the end date), cancelling breakdown cover for the Sharan and then spent time with Scarlett in her room boxing everything up to take away while Davies finished his room. We had some tears, she had chosen her favourite 20 soft toys to stay in her bed and today we needed to reduce that to about 10 to bring with us – still excessive but this is not an endurance test and it is not for me to dictate what is important to her. She did well, worked out what she could cope with and what she couldn’t and then it was lunchtime.

We had home made soup and home made rolls which were delicious and very filling – to the point that we all had to sit down for a while to let our lunch go down before embarking on Davies’ room. He’d also done a fab job but his boxes were rather too heavy so while I spread them across a couple more boxes sufficiently to mean I could carry them down the stairs Davies and Scarlett worked on packing up the stuff he is bringing.

My car comfortably takes 8 boxes so we loaded it up and went to Dad’s via the post office where I needed to send an ebay parcel on it’s way and collect forms for getting a car tax refund and doing a SORN declaration for the Sharan. Mum has apparently seen the boxes in the spare room and refrained from comment so Dad was relieved he doesn’t seem to be in too much trouble 😉 . Back home for a second load which was much harder as it was 8 boxes from Davies’ room. So, down the stairs, through the hallway, down the fairly steep front door steps, past the narrow bit between the pillar of the driveway and Willow (which involves turning boxes the narrow way round), into the car, then from car along drive way, into house (up steps) and into the spare room at Mum & Dad’s. I was pretty wheezy by about a quarter of the way in.

We laughed at the idea of drum roll through the village road where speed humps meant a five minute rumbling from the box containing Davies’ drum kit. We laughed less when on driving round a corner the box rolled forward and the kids had to catch a drum!

Second load dispatched the rain started to fall so any vague thoughts of a third run ended there. There was a moment when I was running through with Dad what was left to do when I could see him suddenly struggling so had to stop talking. We have talked often about living together one day and I still hold out hope it could happen. For all our many differences and clashes on things I will miss him terribly and I know we will leave a gaping hole in his life. Argh for changes and the tricky side of the adventure.

Back home again I made a cup of tea and washed up lunch stuff and was dealing with more laundry when Ady arrived home. We all gathered the books we have been stashing on one bookshelf in the main bookcase and created a small library. All non-fiction and hopefully all relevant to the year including the ladybird series of ‘what to look for in Spring / Winter / Summer / Autumn’, our collection of Collins Little Gem books, various wildlife, tree, bird, seashore, plant, insect, flower spotter books, food for free, some night sky and weather books, whittling, survival skills, fishing and so on. Not at all sure what we’ll do for fiction yet and it will be mostly me who struggles with that, along with the kids at bedtime I guess but hopefully we can pick up second hand books at charity shops and drop them off when picking up the next one along the way. Am trying really hard not to think about the Jean Auel, Jodi Picoult, Dorothy Koomson, Jill Mansell books due out in the next few months I was at the top of the library reservation list for… let alone the next Andy Stanton, Michael Morpurgo etc.

Ady had bought the kids liver to try for their tea so he cooked that. They both ate it but agreed they are not desperate to have it again. I’m really not keen on liver or kidney so totally understand although I am keen to try other, rarer parts of animals. We didn’t manage bad, good, learnt but all agreed we can do a double one tomorrow spanning two days.

We watched One Man and his Campervan and then I shot off to Book Group. I was cutting it fine but sort of expected to walk in and find it already set up, so was quite surprised when everyone was outside waiting and I had to let them all in! Brenda was running late so while the group all gathered chairs I set up drinks etc and then Brenda arrived too. We were both presented with flowers and cards (she is taking voluntary redundancy so it was her last time too) and there followed much chat about how the group will arrange themselves to carry on – was much heartened that they will and hope to make it along to maybe their December meeting :).

I had many cuddles, wishes for good luck and happy adventuring and my flowers some willow in them, Rose (not swinger) did the organising and specifically asked :). Lots of people took the blog details and it was all very lovely :).

Back home the kids were in bed but got up when I came home, Scarlett was painting a picture from a photo of ducks (yes, painting in bed!) and Davies had questions about whether you can be an illustrator *and* an author.

Ady has been reading the WW blog – having given all his workmates the link for it he felt maybe he should have a look and as a result is suddenly realising what a big deal it is I think! 🙂 I am contenting myself that this time next week we will be going to sleep in a totally empty house and this last gutty bit of hulking boxes about will be done with.

I watched the Morpurgo lecture which made me cry, guess it’s not just his books and stories then, it’s the man himself. One day I hope to shake his hand.

I am dilemma-ing about a couple of ebuzzing things I’ve been offered on the WW blog and will need to decide about tomorrow but for now I really should stop using up my mifi megabites!

It was Pulborough Brooks day today and we’ve not made it along for months but we made the effort today as it’ll be the last time we go there for quite a while. It was another gorgeous spring-like day. I saw one of Julie’s friends in the car park but despite seeing Julie’s car we didn’t catch up with them until nearly halfway round. The kids and I walked for ages on our own chatting and looking for signs of spring, then Julie’s friend R caught us up with her daughter F. She is one of those very friendly people who launch straight into talking about themselves as though you are already intimate with all sorts of details about them. She’s very sweet if a little full on.

We then caught up with Julie & co and walked the last half altogether before retiring to the playground for a sit down chat while the kids carried on playing. Lovely to sit in the sunshine although Julie was a little down and loathe to talk too much about why as she felt it wasn’t fair when we’re about to head off. Managed to be some help I hope. I really hope she manages to be online more or we at least have fairly regular phone calls as I’d hate our closeness to be a casualty of our time away.

Lorna had an appointment at the hospital to either remove or replace her cast so they headed off and we left at the same time. On collecting the kids from where they’d been playing they appeared with a dead barn owl :(. It had been dead some time and started rotting away but was tagged and one of the ones that reside and are watched there so we took it in to give to the volunteers at the visitor centre.

I was quite disappointed at the staff response really; the kids were both upset but interested in it and I’d have hoped they’d been more engaged with them over it really but the girl on the desk sort of flinched, snatched it into a paper bag and ushered them away. They were not expecting thanks but some acknowledgement and explanation of what will happen to it would have been good. They were all (particularly my two) really interested in the ringing, how old it might have been, any ideas about cause of death and so on. I’m going to email them and see if I can get more details and hope it was passed to the relevant person to get those sorts of answers.

We said goodbye and headed for home. We listened to Jeremy Vine talking about disabled badges for parking and Davies piped up after a while with ‘I wish I had a blue badge, you can do all sorts of things if you have one’. I bit straightaway with ‘how could you say such a thing, a blue badge means you are disabled and need the special priviledges because you can’t function without them. How can you possibly wish for a disability? I’m really surprised at you Davies’. To which he looked puzzled and then said ‘No, sorry I meant a Blue Peter badge, that’s what I want so you can do lots of things with it like go to Legoland’ 😆 😆

Back at home we had lunch and I had an unsuccessful attempt at hacking up the last few very large logs. I failed and was very cross about it but they are beyond the axe and probably need a chainsaw really. The broadband and then the landline both went off within about an hour of each other which felt both a bit scary and pretty liberating, and of course means more things can be boxed up.

I then decided to start moving boxing to Mum & Dad’s so we took two carfulls of boxes over there. We probably have another four car fulls to go and then stuff in the van next week. I’m hoping to move all boxed stuff over by the end of Wednesday so I can focus on the party on Friday. I imagine Dad is still getting shrieked at about the fact boxes have started to arrive over there but he seemed pretty philosophical about it 😆

Back home again I drank tea, did some party decorations, booked a campsite for the week before the first host so we can have a mini holiday down in Devon before we start, getting used to the van and having a transition stage with just the four of us. The kids had dinner and Ady arrived home in time for One Man & His Campervan and we realised we’ll be in the right place for the salmon leaping this year 🙂 🙂

We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: Found a dead barn owl at Pulborough Brooks
Good: Had a good time with Jack & Maisie at PB
Learnt: Today is National Bird Box Day

Scarlett:
Bad: Dead barn owl upset me
Good:First proper close up look at a barn owl
Learnt: what a pessimist is.

Ady:
Bad: Still ache from the weekend!
Good: No more Mondays!
Learnt: There is a gas emitted from fruit which makes cut flowers wilt faster

Nic:
Bad: Julie was a bit low today and I felt like I’m abandoning her 🙁
Good: Taken some boxes to my parents house!
Learnt: We’ll get a refund from the TV licence people.

We all tried sushi, some of us liked it, some didn’t, the kids went to bed, Ady and I had steak and exchanged boxes of chocolates (the kids both got some chocolate hearts this morning and had both made cards for us).

I’m Nic and I used to not eat lentils and blog every day!

Yesterday morning we’d arranged to go and collect Willow, so I made some cinnamon rolls (at kids request I’d stuck the dough on the night before) and we left them to prove and headed over to Lance. He stuck to the promised £150 which included the antifreeze we’d asked him to do as an afterthought :). Ady drove her home and the kids went with him. I’d double backed as Ady had forgotten to collect the petrol can so then couldn’t work out which route home they would have taken in the van and knew they’d be stopping for petrol. So I beat them home, got the cinnamon rolls in the oven and the kettle on and tried to ring the Tax Credits Helpline. Thanks to Kirsty’s prodding and a borrower at work also nagging me about checking entitlements I’d decided I would ring them after all but just got stuck in a queue for ages. There was a knock at the door and it was my Dad so I gave up on the queue and then started fretting that I’d now been home well over 20 minutes and Ady and the kids had a good 5 minute head start on me so even allowing for a petrol stop they were being a long time.

They had struggled to get the van started again at the petrol station and I know from reading a Bedford CF forum that it is a very common problem with them restarting while still warm. Fortunately Ady was approached by an older bloke who had driven one himself for years and gave him some moral support and starting it advice which helped to keep him unflustered and did get it started again. It’s been fine ever since and has been on and off the drive several times and started no problem.

We all had cinnamon rolls and tea and coffee together and then Ady went out to start washing my car, the kids went to play in the garden and Dad and I chatted for half an hour or so before he headed off. It was a gorgeous day, bright blue skies and sunshine and real warmth which was great, a real spring is coming feel perfect for heading off in a campervan :).

The kids and I cleared the inside of my car out and then Ady hoovered it all while we did some organising inside Willow. We had been planning to shelve the wardrobe but I tried a stacking crate and was really chuffed to discover they fit and four will stack easily in there so we’ll be having one stacking crate of clothes each with a bit of room for them all to be slightly overflowing, pjs can be shoved in sleeping bags, coats & shoes will have space elsewhere so that is just for underwear, tops, jeans and jumpers which I reckon will be fine. Everyone nominated the cupboard they will have for the rest of our personal stuff and we did lots of grinning at each other like fools in our ‘the sun is shining, we’ve got our van back and we’re less than 2 weeks away from the start of our adventure’ excitement :).

We did then find a small patch of dampness up in the kids bunk which on closer inspection had spread through the sponge mattress, corner of the carpet and onto the wooden bit which is the base of our bed. It was clearly recent and not mildew or moldy and was the corner above the passenger seat which had been soaking wet so either there is a recently happened leak somewhere or a window had been left open or the heavy rain had caught it at an angle previously not exposed in the last couple of weeks as it certainly wasn’t happening before it left us. We’ve got heaters in there drying it out and having checked the price of a replacement sponge / foam (£60) we’ve hung that one over the washing line in the rain today and are hoping the wind and sunshine forecast over the next week will come along and dry it fresh and aired. I took the cover along to the laundrette for a wash and dry and Ady scrubbed down and disinfected the wooden board and Ady machined the carpet so no lasting damage done and hopefully a one off. Ady pugged up the area which has been previously pugged at least once where it could potentially have come from so if is was that it should now be fixed and we’ll staple down some polythene over the bed base before putting everything back to ensure it doesn’t come through on to the kids bedding if it leaks again.

I quite enjoyed my 90 minutes in the laundrette, the door was open and the sun was shining in and I had a book with me and it was just nice to be doing something necessary and productive while getting to sit and read in the sunshine at the same time! 🙂

Back at home I fed the kids and then Ady and I got changed and Mum & Dad arrived to look after them as we were off to Mike and Rose (the not swingers) for a Bye Then dinner party. Dad ran us up there and we were greeted with glasses of wine and the first course of a seven course meal. Stuffed quails eggs (with mayonnaise, tumeric and veggie bacon). They were nice although the whites are even more rubbery in texture than hens eggs so I’d not bother again.

We moved through for the second course to what is their recently converted dining room, previously a second bedroom in their bungalow. They have pulled out a gas fire where the chimney is and are hoping to be able to open up the open fire again, particularly having seen and loved ours. I’m not big on dining rooms (all about the tables) really but it was beautifully done out and Mike does lay a good table with sparkling glassware and proper table linen. The second course was a warm lentil salad. I coped as it was cooked with plenty of spices and large pieces of walnut to give crunch so I was able to wash it down with several glugs of wine and pretend there were no lentils in it.

We paused to look at the photos from their New Year trip to New York which looked fab – they were there for the heavy snow and didn’t go to Times Square to see in 2011 but instead joined the smaller but still pretty big crowd in Central Park instead. Loved looking at their pictures and remembering our trip there back in 2000. Will definitely get there again one day.

Third course was delicious; apple and parsnip soup with parsnip crisps. Very chunky pieces of apple and a nice warming hint of spices. Liked that a lot.

Next came a palate cleansing melon sorbet, very nice and refreshing.

Sadly the Main Event course five was mushrooms. I’m sure the reason we’ve avoided mushrooms before is because they are one of the things that I do state in advance I really don’t like. I am very aware of what a nightmare I am to cater for and in the main will at least try things if they are set infront of me and someone has gone to effort to make them. For the average vegetarian (or even the average person probably) I am just too tricky to provide with a list of what I’ll eat and not eat so I try to pick out the bits I really can’t cope with, at least try everything to see if I might actually like it (and sometimes I do) and rely on scraping things onto Ady’s plate if all else fails. I guess my No Mushroom stance must have been forgotten though and on a plate of mushroom stroganoff served on a bed of rice with a pea shoot salad there is not many places to hide it really. I tried a bit to check that I really don’t like mushrooms and no, I really don’t like mushrooms. I ate the pea shoot salad which was very nice although I did comment that I hated to ponder where pea shoots come from in the world in February, picked the mushrooms off the rice and ate that and then Ady saved me by saying ‘that was delicious Mike, poor Nic doesn’t really like mushrooms much’ so I was able to put my cutlery together and say ‘the rest is delicious though’.

Course six was probably my favourite, twice baked stilton souffle served with port. Very nice :).

A long conversation about what port is ensued with us speculating on whether you could just mix red wine and brandy together and make port yourself.

The final course was Sussex Pond Pudding, served with a bottle of prosecco and a touching speech from Mike about how he hoped the pudding would be enough to lure us back to Sussex at the end of our year as we would be much missed :).

Then we had tea, coffee, brandy and posh chocolates and heated discussions about whether literacy and numeracy are king and how important it is to know 7×8 and what the correct means to get that knowledge are. It was, as always a very enjoyable evening in their company.

Ady and I tumbled home at about 130am gossiping as we went and getting the giggles as we approached and then overtook a very drunk bloke interacting with a woman about to get into a car and drive off. I can’t recall what we gave them as stories but I know we had them named and a whole life planned out for them as we walked along.

Davies was still up when we got in so I took him to bed and sat with him awhile before coming back down and chatting with my parents for a bit. They left about 2ish I guess, Ady went to bed and I just closed my eyes for a second and then woke up after 3am sprawled on the sofa freezing cold.

Today we all had a lie in, some of us even longer than others 🙂 Ady was efficient with oven cleaning, the kids did something Valentines Day related and creative and I boxed up 2 boxes of stuff from the lounge. Sometime in the next 24 hours the landline and internet go off so further boxing up can happen then but we are pretty close to clear in the lounge now with just stuff that will go over to Mum & Dad’s in the van on the last day.

Mum & Dad arrived and Dad touched up a couple of areas of paintwork which had flaked off since he did it in December, Ady got the dinner on and Mum and I nipped along to the nearest Tesco as she wanted a new laptop / netbook. We ended up getting her one identical to mine. She has an ancient one which Frazer uses a lot and is slow and filled with things she struggles to use so she has now given him that one and has a new one which I’ve set up everything on tabs from her google homepage including a gmail email address so she doesn’t even need to use OE, quick links to our WW blog and our flickrstream so she can keep up with us.

We all had dinner together which was nice – a mix of roast chicken and roast beef as we had one of each in the freezer. It was good to see them but Dad was in one of his bolshy moods and Mum took the opportunity of not having seen me for a while to unload plenty of stored up ‘woe is me, my life is rubbish’ stuff. I do have enough physical and personality resemblances to my Dad to know I’m not a cuckoo but it’s just as well otherwise I really would wonder sometimes, particularly when I see so much of both Ady and I in Davies and Scarlett.

We all watched Countryfile then the kids went to bed and Mum, Dad and I watched the People’s Supermarket together. Ady went off for a bath and I went and sat with Tarly for 10 minutes til she was asleep (unsettled from us being out last night and had fallen asleep on the sofa and been put to bed half still dressed by my parents last night (so that’s one not put to bed at all and one just about chucked there after she’d fallen asleep, not great on the babysitting stakes really 😉 )) then said goodbye to my parents before having a bath myself.

So I ate more lentils, please don’t hold it against me. I have this nasty suspicion it may be a (quite literal) taste of the year to come…

I worked today. It’s a funny feeling being so close to leaving somewhere, particularly when I have such an unusual reason for leaving. Before I have left jobs to have babies, to change career, due to promotion or in one memorable instance because they asked me to go and called me a taxi to speed me on my way.

The day passed quite merrily with me in a very distantly supportive role at Baby Rhyme Time as the new Rhyme Time Lady had her first solo attempt. My lovely colleague Sarah had baked a cake to honour our last shift working together and then she cried on me twice during the course of the day about me leaving. 🙁

Ady rang me twice saying ‘do you want the good news or the bad news?’ I always go for bad first and the first time it was to say he’d been to Lance (the mechanic) to drop off a fuel can of petrol – having driven past at least 3 petrol stations on the way from Richard to Lance yesterday he told me on the way home that he’d been really worried about how low the petrol was. I asked why he’d not stopped for petrol and he replied that he didn’t really know! So he’d then fretted about it overnight and taken a can along. When he arrived he discovered the van was already at the MOT test centre. So it had started this morning and got there without fuel. The bad news was it cost nearly £8 to fill the fuel can when you’d always used to struggle getting a fivers worth in.

The second call was at 5pm to say the bad news was he couldn’t go and collect it as I wasn’t home to run him there but the good news was Willow was MOTd and ready to collect. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

The rest of the day the others had spent bimbling about from what I can tell. They left the house after I did this morning, came home for lunch and beat me back home again in the evening by a good hour or more. They had watched various animal documentaries on TV and had a nice day together.

I got home and we watched One Man & His Campervan then the kids finished off watching Peter Pan on dvd that they’d been halfway through. We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies
Bad: my PSP keeps crashing (on one particular game.)
Good: Had a good day out with Daddy
Learnt: Elephants don’t forget. They’d watched a programme about an elephant that left a sanctury at a couple of years old and came back some 25 years later and seemed to recognise the people and place.

Scarlett:
Bad: Can’t find my newsletter (from Cambridge Zoological Society – she wanted to show it to me as it had her learnt today on it.)
Good: That I can still remember it without the aid of the newsletter
Learnt: a razorshell can burrow quicker than we can dig and people all over the world eat them, they are very sharp

Ady:
Bad: Pointless at work now I’m about to leave
Good:Nic’s car still starting even in the heaviest rain in weeks
Learnt: About the mating habits of sparrows – the females are about to eject the sperm of a male after mating apparently.

Nic:
Bad: Sarah at work cried today as she is sad I am leaving 🙁
Good: Willow is MOT’d!!! And at a bargain price
Learnt: about man with camera in his head – Scarlett and Michelle have both told me about it so it has to make it onto my list! Michelle mentioned it on ff and about 10 minutes later Tarly told me about it having heard it earlier today on the radio.

Bath, fizzy wine, curry, Fast & Loose on TV and now wuss o’clock. There’s a lot to do before this time next week.

The kids woke me up far too early this morning playing a loud game. As it happened I’d gone to bed fairly early (for me) so I didn’t mind too much.

Dealt with chickens etc. and bunged some cinnamon rolls in the oven (I’d made a double batch of dough a couple of days ago) and we breakfasted.

Ady came home and we went along to the mechanic to collect Willow. Both of us were nervous of a) a bigger bill b) a stroppy reception from the mechanic and c) it still not being ready, but all to no avail. The mechanic but was really friendly, charged us the mentioned 70 quid and wished us good luck, his son came and chatted to us about the plan too and sounded quite envious, the van started and Ady drove it out. We followed him in his car over to the other mechanic and despite very heavy rain it ran fine, Ady said he felt really comfortable driving it and very confident in it. The other mechanic seems to have gone into campervan renovation in a big way and had a traditional VW there that he is restoring, said he wasn’t all that busy at the moment so was pleased to have our van to do, promised to have it back for Wednesday at the latest and assured me he can get it through the MOT ‘no problem’. I am of course still poised to hear problems but keeping fingers firmly crossed we have now had the tense panicky bit just before we go that threatens the whole thing type part of the story necessary for a good story at the end of it.

Ady dropped the kids and I back home and came in for some lunch before heading off for the rest of his days work. We watched some Gastronuts and then I found a paint by numbers kit and showed Scarlett how that worked and left her to it with Davies doing some drawing and I did some sorting out in the spare room (Ady had been shoving stuff and it had gotten a bit muddled in terms of what was properly boxed up and what should be in other rooms but had found it’s way in there instead) and processed some laundry. Earlier I had condensed the contents of the two freezers in the garage into one and turned the empty one off. Little things like that bring home the fact we are leaving so imminently far more than the bigger things.

I spent some time creating an ‘About Us’ page on the blog. It now has a handful of signed up followers but I am very aware of how many more are reading it from people talking to me and from checking the stats. It’s not huge and it is mostly people we know but it is getting hits and links now from other people doing similar things, travelling, WWOOFing, off grid and self sufficiency type stuff so I wanted to put a little order in while I can still sit on a sofa and mess about with it for a couple of hours. I’d quite like to add another couple of pages in about how we came up with the plan and what we hope to achieve from it and about Home Ed and how that works for us.

I cooked the kids some tea, burgers which they’ve always previously turned noses up at but these were lovely 100% beef burgers from Tasha’s wedding and they both scoffed them and asked for more! I listed a few items on ebay which was the last remaining box of stuff we neither want to keep or take with us and we gathered up all the books from the library that we have finished with and can go back. Penultimate shift tomorrow…

Ady arrived slightly late so we paused One Man and his Campervan so we could all watch it together. We did bad, good, learnt:

Davies
Bad: I had a nightmare last night
Good:Extra excited about WWOOFing because we’re watching One Man and His Campervan and we saw Willow today.
Learnt: The reason football matches are played in two halves is because there used to be no rules so the first half would be played according to the rules of one team and the second according to the other team.

Scarlett:
Bad:Didn’t see Jack & Maisie today because Maisie is poorly
Good: Enjoyed playing with Davies
Learnt: Badgers fall from heights and hurt themselves by landing on their backs.

Ady:
Bad: passenger window left open on campervan and seat is soaking wet.
Good: really enjoyed driving the campervan 🙂
Learnt: an anagram of ‘astronomers’ is ‘no more stars’

Nic:
Bad: Didn’t cook enough dinner for the kids (did them burger and chips and suspected they wouldn’t like burgers so did one each, they loved them and could have eaten more)
Good: Feel so positive about the van
Learnt: that it takes an hour and a half to boil an ostrich egg.

Which took us to 8pm when a reminder about Human Planet came on. A speedy debate about suitability before bedtime took place and we agreed to give it a go rather than call bedtime so the kids stayed up and watched it with me. We really enjoyed it and they considered it very worthwhile and indeed kept up their end of the bargain and both went to sleep really quickly, including Scarlett without me sitting on her bedroom floor :).

Ady and I watched The 10 o’clock show which I really enjoyed tonight, felt it had found it’s stride after a wobbly start. I still don’t like Jimmy Carr though.

My last Wednesday shift today and my last working with a couple of colleagues too. They are both coming to my leaving meal next week but we had cuddles anyway 🙂

Frazer came to look after Davies and Scarlett as he is not working at the moment. The kids were thrilled to see him and really enjoyed spending the morning with him. He left when I got home as it’s his girlfriend’s birthday (they have been together nearly a year now 🙂 ) and he was taking her out for a meal. I’d love to get to know her better, she seems very nice but I guess that’s unlikely any time soon…

Ady had got up at 3am to drive to Wales for a gardening roadshow. He could have stayed over (and I think tbh I would have done, very little would induce me to get up at 3am) but he hates being away from home so chose to do it in one day. He was home by 5pm though and had had a nice day.

The kids and I had lunch and I plucked up the courage to ring the mechanic about the van.I got told he was at lunch so I battled with the old laptop trying to put rip some cds from work for a bit and then rang again. I got hold of him and he was fine with me (Ady and him had gotten quite shirty with each other yesterday on the phone), said he had started but not quite finished and it would be ready to pick up in the morning. I checked the price (have been dreading hundreds as he has clearly spent time on it even if he has not done the work, plus he did recover it from here on his truck so could feasibly charge even if it would be a bit low to do so) and was told ‘about 70 quid’ so said I’d bring cash hoping that will secure the price a little. In the meantime I had rung the other mechanic who services it and asked if the manifold can be welded, he reckons not but said it could be pugged to get through an MOT. I arranged to drop it off tomorrow to him, for him to get it through an MOT, said we are about to head off in it and I would need it back Wednesday next week at the latest and he agreed. Fingers very firmly crossed it is ready tomorrow, gets to new mechanic okay and is indeed ready for us MOT’d by next Wednesday at not too scary a price. I can’t pretend to feel remotely relaxed about it all but I do feel better than I did yesterday as though I have regained control a little again.

Buoyed up by that I rang a debt collector who has been trying to contact us using all sorts of foul means tactics. They have written on headed paper to ‘the occupier’ asking for information on me on a personal matter claiming to be the Scottish Bureau of Information. I Proper Googled them and found they use that name because on the phone it can be misheard as FBI when they say SBI. They rang and just asked to speak to me, checked my address as ‘we have some post for you’ and then hung up and in the last couple of days have written a couple of letters and rung leaving strange messages like ‘can Nicola urgently ring Cathering on this number…’. So I rang them, said the magic words ‘we have a debt management plan with the CCCS’ and was instantly asked the client number and thanked very much. I *know* we owe money, but we are paying it and reducing the debt and I just hate the bully boy tactics employed to scare people. It contravenes all sorts of financial governing body ethics and rules and one day I would quite like to get involved in something that helps people like me who mess up to put things straight without needing to be treated like that.

That done we nipped out to Sainsburys for petrol and vegetables for dinner and popped into Brantano for Davies to get some wellies at the same time. He now has decent wellies rather than the Woolworths ‘toy’ wellies he did have so everyone will be suitably shod :).

Back at home I continued to battle with the music and the laptop, cooked the kids some sausages and mash, lit the fire, put chickens away and answered my phone to one of our WWOOFing hosts who was ringing to check and confirm dates and details – very exciting to have spoken to one of them properly rather than just email 🙂

Ady arrived home, we all watched One Man and his Campervan, did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: Frazer still smokes
Good: Found out what LBP2 is like (playing F’s ps3 yesterday)
Learnt: The Sphinx is the god of the afterlife

Scarlett:
Bad: Worried about bedtime
Good: Good to see Frazer today
Learnt: It’s Kat’s (Frazer’s girlfriend) birthday today

Ady:
Bad: Had to get up at 3am to go to Wales today
Good: Came home 🙂 was supposed to stay overnight
Learnt: children who have paperrounds are under threat of not being allowed to work thanks to restrictions on the hours children can work

Nic:
Bad: still don’t have van back
Good: Due back tomorrow & it’s booked with next mechanic
Learnt: what Aga stands for and that it’s inventor was blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker

I got our dinner on and had a bath then sat with Tarly while she fell asleep (it took about 10 minutes, so no great hardship) and Ady and I both chatted to his mate Rob on the phone who has been reading the blog since Christmas when I put the link to it in most of our Christmas cards for people we’d not yet told so they could read the whole story rather than trying to retell it. He was full of positive things to say which was lovely. He did a lot of travelling in his 20s and is a couple of years older than Ady. They house shared together many, many years ago and Ady has always looked up to Rob so it was great for him to get such enthusiasm from someone he thinks a lot of :).

I feel like we’re in that middle dip on a rollercoaster at the monent, we’ve done a couple of scary climbs and loops in the last couple of weeks – I know there is far more to come but it’s a minor respite from fretting for a couple of days at least.