One word? When seven would do…

Last night before I went to bed I’d stuck on some cinnamon roll dough. I was late to bed (about 2am) so decided to make them and leave them to prove overnight rather than making them up and waiting for them to second rise this morning. It didn’t really work so I won’t do it again but I was struck at the lunacy of standing in the kitchen at 2am getting all floury and cinnamon scented.

Scarlett slept through just fine and had happy dreams, crediting me with making her happy before she went to sleep :). We had our cinnamon rolls and got dressed, pottered around a bit doing various things and then got ready to drive over to Ali’s. It’s the longest I’ve driven for weeks and weeks with my car off the road for so long and despite feeling really rather frantic about Willow being ready and sorted I was hit anew with excitement for our whole plan today. We’ve been watching One Man and his Campervan which rather nicely glorifies campervan living and today the sun has been shining with the full promise of the spring round the corner. I keep sort of hugging the whole thing to myself and thinking how incredibly jealous I’d be feeling if it was someone else about to embark on this adventure.

Just wish I had that van on the drive ready to go…. 🙁

We had a lovely few hours at Ali’s, the kids all got on well, Davies and Freya enjoyed playing together on the ps3 while Tarly mostly chatted to Ali and I and played on her DS, then they all played PS3 for a while before having a quick go on the Kinect. Davies thought it was good but said afterwards he much prefers PS3, Scarlett was entranced by the animal game and could probably have stayed there for days playing it :).

Davies got upset just before we left as I’d been giving him a hard time about stroppiness over very short turns to try and make sure they both had a go on as much as possible on the kinect before we left. He tried to correct me when I called something the wrong name and then got really worried I would think he was being mean to me, when he’d never be mean to me because – dissolved into tears – I *love* you sooo much Mummy 🙁 We had a cuddle and made up and talked about it once he had recovered his composure a bit. Clearly still feeling very lucky to have a mummy and wanting to make sure I know it. Bless him and 🙁 for any child needing to worry about such things.

We came home and Ady had just got home and lit a fire so I sorted the kids tea out and we all caught up with each others days. We watched One Man and his Campervan all snuggled up together but then Ady went off for a bath and I read some How to Train Your Viking and then Tarly got all upset about bedtime and somehow we all forgot bad, good, learnt today.

The dentist rang to say my fillings will be fine til we come back from WWOOFing and to wish us a fantastic trip :). One less expense to fret about at least.

I sat and talked to Scarlett again and whether she was worried about having the nightmares or the nightmares coming true. She said both, so we deconstructed the nightmare and agreed it definitely wouldn’t come true which just left worrying about having it again. We agreed that if she was thinking about it there was a good chance it might happen again and I said I thought nightmares often happened when you were worried about something real in the daytime so your brain carried on worrying into your dreams. We talked about a few minor things she was worrying about and then agreed I would have my bath and she could listen to a story tape and then I’d go and sit with her. I came back out to eat my dinner and then nipped back for about five minutes before she was fast asleep. Fingers crossed she’ll have another nightmare free night having had a calm going to sleep and a nice day which will give her confidence at bedtime tomorrow that she won’t have the nightmares.

Davies did some excellent drawings (rather than going to sleep – grr) of Little Big Planet levels he wants to create. We’d been looking at the downloadable stuff online but there was nothing he felt inspired by. It really is the perfect game for him, loads of space for easy creativity.

Ady’s gone off to bed early as he is up again in a few hours to drive to Wales for something work related in the morning. I’m off for my last Wednesday shift and my brother, who has just been made redundant so is looking for a job and therefore home is coming over to be with Davies and Scarlett. I am very tentatively hoping the van may be back tomorrow but not holding my breath.

Poor Scarlett was awake in the night with nightmares, one of those horrid ones that remains clear and continues to haunt you through the day. Reading back over my blog she tends to have the odd episode like this every so often. Yesterday both kids were tired after two very late nights in a row, they listened to Ady and I talking about Eira and of course they are about to leave family, friends and home behind so can be forgiven for wibbling a little. I stayed with Davies for about an hour before he fell asleep last night and then Scarlett spent half the night in our bed. Whilst I wish they were not feeling sad / fretful / otherwise wibbly I know the years of wanting me to sit beside them as they go to sleep are coming to a close so I don’t mind at all and almost cherish them a little. Like those poignant middle of the night feeds with tiny babies where it’s hard and tiring and you wish someone else could borrow your breasts and do it instead but know onw day you’ll be looking back and feeling all nostalgic.

So a slower start to the morning and surprise when I looked out of the windo to see one lone chicken out while all the others were still locked up, he must have been out all night. He is the youngest cockerel and this morning found his crowing voice. I wonder how long the tenants will be pleased they have cockerels…

My task today was to sort the insurance out before it got cancelled and I was hit with a hefty £75 cancellation fee. It’s been a bloody nightmare, spanning several weeks and including at least 8 phonecalls, dealing with automated dialling systems, talking to people who don’t really understand English, trying to remember the phonetic alphabet to spell out my email address, countless emails (none of which have actually been responded to) with one company and many, many emails with the other as they are solely online and have no phone number other than a technical help line at £1.50 per minute if you are having trouble with their website and tend to respond to all emails with ‘thank you for your email. Please note we need the no claims discount proof by 8th Feb or we will cancel the policy and charge you £75’ rather than paying any attention to the actual content of the email.

So today I found an 0800 complaints telephone number on their website and was quite taken aback to be talking to the Chief Executives Office. The woman listened to my tale of woe, took my email address again along with my phone number, gave me her name and promised to sort it out and call me back. Which she did within about half an hour, followed up with the promised email. I sent that to the new insurers who sat on it for a while before emailing back to say actually it wasn’t what they wanted but they had rung my old insurers themselves and gotten verbal clarfication from them. Why on earth they couldn’t have done that in the first place I don’t know. There was further toing and froing but I am so bored of the whole tedious episode now and it would appear to finally be sorted that I can’t bring myself to type it out,

That done I looked at a flag set with Davies that I’d promised to do with him last night. It was one we picked up from the EH bargain shop at FoH a couple of years ago but has sat in the Emergency Present stash in the back of our wardrobe. That got cleared out over the weekend so as there were two flag sets Davies and Scarlett got one each. They happen to be from a company that the kids were looking at gift items from in a shop recently and cooing over the very cool packaging on some ship in a bottle kits. They have the nautical flag for each letter printed on tiny flags and a spool of thread all in a lovely little box. Davies made two flags to hang in the van; one saying Wondering and the other saying Wanderers. We talked about wonder and wander, the difference in spelling and meaning and then the two different word endings ‘ing’ and ‘ers’ and how they can change words.

Scarlett was doing some more painting. She had laid in bed last night and copied out loads of animal names into a notebook from one of her books. I’d told her what they all said and now she has memorised them. She had interestingly managed to make all her letters upper case despite the ones in the book not being so and her claiming to not know any letters so clearly she does, but perhaps doesn’t actually realise that herself yet. Her painting and drawing really is getting very good – all very wildlife, animal, landscape themed but with some really interesting attention to detail and definite desire to make it look as lifelike as possible. This is a big contrast to Davies who has a more caricature type style, picking one or two attributes to something and focussing on those, or making his drawings very much in his personal style, rather like a childrens book illustrator (I’m thinking Nick Sharratt, Quentin Blake, even Lauren Child although she is more about the mixed media). I’m so looking forward to seeing the artwork that this year will inspire in them both :).

I was rather distracted this morning with the whole insurance thing but did semi watch Shrek 2 and then Shrek Forever After with them and we did have several conversations although the contents of them totally escape me now.

We had lunch and in the process of making it Scarlett told me we had 8 tins of tuna in the cupboard. They are in wrapped stacks of four tins so I asked how she knew and she said ‘two fours are eight’. I asked how she knew that and she said she knows two fives are ten so she took off the two extra ones to get down to eight. I tested her reasoning with two twos, fives, threes, sixes and sevens and it appeared a very solid way ot mental arithmatic for her :). We ate and were cuddled up on the sofa together when Ady came home. He’d printed off various information about H&S on farms and children on farms including an activity type book each for the kids so they had a go at some of them. Scarlett sat with me and Davies with Ady and we looked at some anagrams, some farm yard produce based sums and a few other bits. Not the sort of thing we’d do often but quite relevant at the moment and the kids enjoyed them. Davies did a fair bit of spelling and writing, Scarlett was more word recognition. We then both showed them how to add numbers together on paper in columns which led to subtracting too. Scarlett and I also looked at estimating and multiplying using addition. I’m always surprised at how quickly they grasp these concepts without the need for hours of lesser going over it again and again in reception and lower age classrooms when I know what a big deal is made of numeracy from preschool upwards.

We all brushed our teeth and walked across to the dentist. We waited ages in the waiting room (about 25 minutes I think) although I was very happily reading a very interesting science based magazine which had all sorts of interesting facts and a couple of short articles including one about rebellion and whether we are prorammed to be someone who stands up and speaks out or just goes along with things referencing the Milgram experiment and later replications of it and another about cults both of which were really interesting and the sorts of things I read loads about while doing A levels and found fascinating then.

Ady needs some hygenist work so we booked an appointment (and paid a deposit – not at all sure of the mentality of that but at least there will be less to pay after the actual visit) for that. Davies is fine, teeth nice and clean and all coming through okay. He will definitely have some overcrowding in his mouth and so the dentist was explaining to me how that might be dealt with in years to come. I have pretty straight and very small teeth with just one slightly crooked one to the right of my top front teeth that sits just behind, almost the identical set up to my Dad but Ady has very wonky teeth and has had various problems with them and I think both children are set to have his smile but of course these days corrective work is done rather than leaving the teeth to their own devices. Scarlett’s teeth seem fine, the protective fluoride coating that was painted one seems to have prevented any decay and her brushing is good :). Again she has teeth coming through with no real room and she also has quite big teeth – both the kids top front teeth are bigger than mine! But the dentist was unconcerned and said it should all be problem free for a few years until orthodontist work kicks in. I have two fairly old fillings that I’d already thought might be coming to the end of their lives, they pre-date children certainly and are pretty big fillings, I suspect done by an over zealous private dentist in my past. I was due an x ray which showed a small amount of decay underneath them so the dentist wanted to consult with a colleague about whether they should be replaced now or left until we come back. She’ll ring me tomorrow with an answer. I think I’d prefer to leave them alone, both from a financial point of view and because we have a lot going on in the next couple of weeks and I’d almost rather not mess about with them as they are not causing any discomfort at the moment.

While we were in the surgery the kids were asking questions – about Ady’s x rays, why there was an electric point in the floor for the dentists chair, what a plastic bag of liquid hanging on the wall might be, why patients wore goggles etc and I was replying and the dentist commented on how curious they were and how able I was to answer (hardly rocket science ;)) and then it came up that we were going away so she asked about the kids and school. I explained they are Home Educated anyway so they’d just be Van Educated for a year. She said that she was Home Educated herself for a time although didn’t elaborate further – nice to know a medical professional clearly wasn’t held back by it though, I imagine she may even have been to a Russell Group uni 😉 .

Back home via the chemist for prescription mouthwash for Scarlett and then we all settled down to watch Elephant Man
Ady had been telling the kids about John Merrick the other day and they’d asked if I could get the film from work so I’d brought it home. We all watched together and although it made Davies sad and Scarlett cry they were both really glad they’d watched it. We talked for ages afterwards about appearance, what people are like inside and how humans treat each other. With Scarlett a bit wobbly it was perhaps not the best film to watch although actually there are uplifting parts to it too but I think it will definitely be one that stays with them.

They had dinner and we did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: The way people treated John Merrick
Good: Enjoyed a lovely weekend with friends
Learnt: About adding a column of figures on paper – he later showed me and then we took it to three columns of numbers, looked at subtraction in more detail and then I showed him a whole column of numbers to add up and gave some examples of times when you would need that skill.

Scarlett:
Bad: Had a bad dream last night
Good: one chicken got left out last night by accident but was fine
Learnt: About the life of John Merrick

Ady:
Bad: Dentist today 🙁
Good: All watched Elephant Man together
Learnt: There is a market for growers of edible flowers sold to top restuarants in London (thank you Countryfile last night and a prompt from Davies when he was struggling to think of something :))

Nic:
Bad: Very stressful sorting out insurance this morning
Good: Finally did sort out insurance
Learnt: About orthodontic work on children and that our dentist was Home Educated.

We read for bedtime and then began a round of bath, long conversation with my Mum on the phone, eating dinner, sitting on Tarly’s floor til she fell asleep, going back up with Davies when he came down for a glass of water and then asked to be tucked in and watching The People’s Supermarket that we had taped last night. That provoked some interesting discussion between Ady and I and after one too many ‘well we’ll see won’t we’ type responses from him I rather went off the deep end with a rant of self promotion about how I do indeed see through things I say I am going to do, I do stand up for stuff I am passionate about, I do stick to my beliefs and put myself out for things and I do not just pay lip service to ideas. I think having known me since I was 16 and been with me since I was 19 Ady can have a habit of being a bit like my parents and clinging to an idea in his head about who I am and what I am like that is now rather outdated and not at all true. There is something of a notion that I am lazy, spend a lot of time on the sofa ‘messing about on that laptop’ and not doing a lot else, spend money on nail varnish and drink too much wine. He does keep mentioning things about the coming year and saying ‘well I’ll be fine but I think you’ll really struggle with X, Y and Z and I just hope you don’t take it out on me’ which may be fair and would certainly have been true 15 years ago but I like to think I have done enough to alter that idea in recent years really. He did back down but I’m never sure if that is because he has conceded I was right or he just doesn’t do conflict ;).

I guess the trouble with marrying someone 10 years younger than you is that younger sibling syndrome where for you they are always a bit childish and need looking after… maybe I should put that to him 😉 😆

Kirsty & James arrived around midnight, shunted kids into bed and we had a very nice couple of hours catching up, chatting and maybe drinking beer.

Saturday morning I went off to work for my last Saturday shift. It was Save Our Libraries day and whilst we did have various people coming in and taking out armfuls of books, we had new borrowers coming in to join and we were definitely busier than usual for a Saturday morning it was still a disappointing non-event. I’d talked to a couple of senior staff about doing some stuff – I was up for roaming the library handing out instruments for a flash mob style Baby Rhyme time or storytime, standing up and reading aloud from an adults book, trying to coordinate a live reading group, poetry reading or *something* but I seemed alone in being prepared to be active so instead consoled myself with signing up new borrowers, encouraging people to take out more books and telling anyone who asked me what they could do to help make sure we don’t get closed ‘use us or lose us. Write to your MP, the local council, the local paper. Shout about how important the library service is to as many people as possible’.

I currently have about 28 items on my ticket, both kids came and filled their tickets to capacity of 20 and Ady came and joined and took out another 20 so we have nearly 100 books home here at the moment. Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex came along too and helped with choosing books so we felt we’d done our bit.

Meanwhile at home Ady and James had taken the washing machine to a second hand appliance place and failed to get even a tenner for it so very grudgingly taken it to the tip 🙁 It’s been in the local free ad paper for 2 weeks and after the fiascos with freecycle over other stuff I am really not inclined to list a non working washing machine and have it sat on the driveway awaiting collection for days. Kirsty did some painting and Ady popped along to the mechanic about Willow.

We all came home for lunch and then Ady and James did kitchen cleaning and tidying while Kirsty and I cleared out our wardrobe and ensuite bathroom. We now have a tiny amount of clothes hanging up for our last few days at work and stuff coming WWOOFing with us, all of the rest is in boxes. The bathroom is also reduced to stuff coming with us.

Various people had baths, Ady fed the kids and then they went off to watch dvds in bed and we had dinner and watched Hot Fuzz which happened to be on TV. We were all wusses and went to bed at 1am when it finished.

Today Ady was efficient and carried on cleaning and sorting but the rest of us were less inclined although I have blogged a couple of times and pretty much coordinated as many hosts as we need to start with. I also made 3 phonecalls to the insurance company to try and get this no claims proof sorted but despite yet another promise of an email I have still not had it and therefore will be doing yet more phoning again tomorrow. Argh!

Ady ran me over to Brighton at lunchtime as I’d been invited to lunch with Eira, our friend who has terminal cancer. I was so pleased to be invited although it was last minute and have been really keen to see her but waited for her to contact me to arrange it and fretting that we might not manage it before we head off. I’d also not told her about our WWOOFing plans before. Ali was there along with 3 other women I know from HE circles, Eira of course and then four other women I’d not met before. It was fab to see Eira, so wonderful to find she is just the same as she’s always been, irreverant, funny, warm and lovely :). She is clearly ill and took quite a cocktail of drugs when we first arrived but she cleared her very large plate of food really quickly, downed a couple of Crabbies alcoholic ginger beers and aside from the very poignant subject matter of most of the conversation it was all too easy to forget the underlying reason we were all gathered there together.

The food was actually delicious despite being vegetarian, obviously a slice or three of beef wouldn’t have gone amiss but the company more than made up for it.

Ady and the kids came to collect me and I walked with Ali to the station too meet them. Am hoping Eira can make it along to our Bye Then party for a while but am hugely pleased to have seen her before we go incase she can’t. I am humbled and inspired by her dignity and humour and feel very lucky to know her and count her as my friend.

On the way home conversation obviously revolved around Eira, how she is doing, how her husband Ade is doing and how their two children are coping with it all. Davies and Scarlett joined in with the conversation and asked questions and made observations. I suspect we will return to the topic a fair bit in the next day or two as they are both still processing it and were very clingy at bedtime to me despite being really tired from the late night last night. I guess if I am empathising with Eira, Ady will be doing so with Ade and the kids with L & T, Eira’s children on the impact of this on all of them.

We came home and Ady got dinner on with some help from Scarlett, Davies had a bath (which Scarlett then jumped in after him) and we all just snuggled infront of the TV and the fire really until dinner was ready. I was still fairly full from lunch so had a very mini token dinner. We watched Countryfile and the kids went to bed (although not to sleep). Ady and I had baths and I spent about half an hour each sitting on the kids floors beside their beds.

Dad came over this morning, ostensibly to drop off some post that we’d already redirected to his address, but he then stayed until about 3pm :). I’d had another ‘you need to come and collect something from the post office’ card (I’m a regular in there this week) so Dad ran me round there and parked outside to save me having to park. It was a notification from the insurance company to say they need my no claims discount proof or they will cancel the policy (I changed to a different supplier for my car on a monthly basis ready to cancel when we go). Sigh. Never straightforward. Two phonecalls and several emails later today I am still not sure it’s sorted, particularly when speaking to call centre to someone who promised to email me and wished me a nice day and was about to hang up when I asked if they actually had my email address. No, they didn’t. Trying to spell that out to someone who’s first language is not English was far from straightforward particularly when I couldn’t for the life of me remember it was N for November and S for Sierra and went for S for Siesta which of course sounds just like F for Fiesta…

Scarlett did some painting and then spent ages with sellotape, lots and lots of sellotape and paper making a rocket. It wasn’t hugely successful but she enjoyed the test runs and we talked about what made a rocket work (cue Dad, it’s not rocket science, erm well okay maybe it is :lol:) and how we could replicate it. Scarlett came up with the idea of balloon power (blown up then let go so air rushes out) and rang Ady to ask him to pick some balloons up on his way home later.

Davies was joining in with the conversation every so often while doing something on his PSP which turned out to be making a level on Little Big Planet about rockets.

We had lunch which Tarly and I nipped out to get stuff for and watched some of the Attenborough Darwin dvd which was really interesting and sparked all sorts of conversations including everyone getting tenners out to see Darwin’s picture, then Davies asking if all current money would be worthless when the queen dies, then Dad talked about decimalisation and then a conversation which quickly degenerated into nonsense about being in line to the throne when Davies asked if something happened to the queen and all her close family who would be next monarch. We speculated on which of the neighbours would be first in line having decided pretty much everyone would be something in line to the throne.

Dad left and the kids went off to get their bedroom sleepover-ready while I aimed to achieve the two things I’d aimed to get done today – listing the tent on ebay and contacting a magazine about writing for them. Inbetween washing up lunch, putting on a couple of batches of pizza dough for dinner, answering various emails, processing some laundry, chopping some more logs (we had a day or two supply left so my planned 3 weeks only actually lasted 2 and I wanted to split some sticks too) I managed to do both.

Ady arrived home and I fed the kids, we did Bad, Good, Learnt today:

Scarlett:
Bad: banged my head on the table
Good: chicken laid another egg
Learnt: that you can suffocate from swallowing a balloon

Davies:
Bad: Scarlett hit my leg
Good: Grandad came round for the morning
Learnt: First milk is called colostrum

Ady:
Bad: Drove through a beautiful spot near Hastings today that was ruined by the amount of litter that had blown and collected against a fence. Made me feel sad about how humans trash beautiful places.
Good: Looking forward to seeing friends this weekend.
Learnt: Cow anatomy – each teat comes from a seperate chamber in the udder.

Nic:
Bad: Bloody insurance, inept previous insurers taking too long to send through proof of no claims discount and new insurers threatening to cancel
Good: Lovely email from WWOOF host
Learnt: Charles Darwin was the grandson of Josiah Wedgewood (of pottery fame).

The kids took ages to get to sleep knowing that Kirsty & co are on their way but finally did fall asleep.

Work all day for me today. I went to the post office before work to collect a parcel we’d missed yesterday which turned out to be the Mifi from Three. Had a quick play to check it all works okay and am very pleased with it 🙂 The broadband here gets turned off on 14th so it’s good to know we have the alternative done and dusted for now. The deal so far is for it pre-paid for ‘a couple of months and we’ll see how we go’ so please forgive in advance the fact I’ll be mentioning it on the WW blog in order to justify having it to Three.

I had a good day at work. We had three class visits this morning, so over 100 children in 3 batches for stories with the Childrens Librarian and then book choosing. As is always the case there are a couple of children without library cards and then the even sadder cases of children with cards with such large fines or defaulter status (where we’ve written to them 3 times about overdue books and never had them back or had letters returned to us as Gone Away, so the cost of the fines and replacement books is added to their ticket until such times as they come in and pay or return the items). This morning we had at least 4 children with Defaulter status on their ticket for fines over £10 and / or missing books so we had to say they couldn’t have the books they’d chosen which was really hard. Their teachers / parent helpers dealt really well with that and we put any books they’d selected behind the counter for them to ‘come back in with Mummy or Daddy after school to collect’. There was one little girl who’s mother was actually being a parent helper and she got really shirty about having to pay the fines before we’d let her daughter have the books. Later in the afternoon we then had two of the children come back with a parent to sweep off the fines and both had the audacity to moan about the fact we’d not let their child take books out! 😯

I spoke to the mechanic about Willow and it continues to rumble on so Ady is ringing him tomorrow to add his voice. I fear he has now consigned me to ‘Nagging Woman’ status and probably forgets all about me and the van once he’s put the phone down so am hoping Ady is able to move things along or arrange to get the van back so someone else can have a look at it. I’m very aware that my ‘no rush’ feeling five weeks ago when he took it away is changing to a ‘bloody hell!!!’ feeling now we only have 3 weeks to go. He is needing a part which he is struggling to source and this worries me rather a lot but I suspect he is not treating it with much urgency.

Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the day and they went to various places including Costco in Croydon where they all learnt about Amy Johnson, how the Purley Way was the site of an airfield years ago and bought a power pack / compressor / jump starter thing which you can charge from mains or cigarette lighter and holds charge to power mains plugs, has a light and so on and will hopefully be a really useful thing to have in the van. Ady’s been researching them for a while.

They also came home for lunch and gave Ady’s car a valet – mine is being done this weekend. The big news at home today was one of the hens has started laying again 🙂 Probably the speckledy who is an excellent layer judging by the whiteness of the egg. Really pleased we will be leaving the tenants with laying hens (hopefully the others will follow suit) and get to have had a few eggs from our chickens ourselves before we go :).

I arrived home and we all caught up on each others days and did bad, good, learnt:

Scarlett:
Bad: Learnt that Daddy won’t be able to get an upside down plant to show me tomorrow
Good: first egg of the year from one of the chickens 🙂
Learnt: The Costco in Croydon is built on an ex-airport and that Croydon is within London – she didn’t realise quite how far London sprawls.

Davies:
Bad: Nasty hurty ulcer in my mouth
Good: Nice day with Daddy today
Learnt: Amy Johnson was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic

Ady:
Bad: Campervan is a pile of poo – he did later agree it isn’t actually but was feeling bleak about it tonight 🙁
Good: Don’t need to go into the office tomorrow or even get up early as have a meeting at very local B&Q at 830am
Learnt: If jumping a car off a power pack you need to attach the black lead to a metal part of the vehicle rather than the black connector on the battery

Nic:
Bad: class visit children not being able to take books and then cheeky parents coming and giving us a hard time for their fines!
Good: Four shifts left at work, all ‘lasts’ – Saturday, Wednesday, Friday and Thursday to go.
Learnt: the song title for The Happy Wanderer, I never knew it was called that before.

This evening I’ve spent far too much time playing PvZ after everyone else went to bed and have just checked emails to find two confirming dates for Zone Three and one lovely one saying yes, including a bio about them, some pictures of their croft and a really warm welcomming invite to come and stay :). Just need that van sorted now.

We’d arranged to meet Julie & co at some local ornamental gardens that we have visited together many times over the years since we had toddlers in pushchairs to watch the changing of the seasons with. Before we went I spent some time Proper Googling to understand what Candlemas / Imbolc / Groundhog Day are all about and was most cheered to notice it was grey and drizzly outside.

We had breakfast / dealt with chickens / drank tea etc and then headed off to meet the others. I remembered at the end of the road that I’d not picked my camera up so we double backed to get it which made us about 5 minutes late when for once Julie was on time. Rather annoyingly when we arrived and I went to take a picture of some snowdrops I realised the battery was flat anyway 🙁

We had a lovely couple of hours with them – we barely saw the older four but crossed paths with them a couple of times as Julie, Lorna and I walked round at Lorna’s pace chatting and catching up. We talked lots about parents, our upcoming trip, relationships and other stuff but Julie did mention the kids are limited to 2 hours a week screen time (computer and TV) and talked about their food and how white bread is poison. All very commendable but did make me feel the need to come home via the sweet shop 😆 and let the kids watch cartoons when we got in 😆 I do like the way Julie and I so clearly have such different views on some things but manage to support each other in them and never fall out or judge each other.

Back at home we had lunch and then a very chilled afternoon chatting, playing with geomags, cuddling, watching various things on TV (found a show hosted by Bindi Irwin which S loved) and I cleared the coats and shoes in the hall into boxes for storing and bags for charity shop / clothes bank. I lit the fire early as I was freezing (I even put a pair of socks on! 😯 ) and did the kids tea.

Ady arrived home with a Horrible Histories annual for the kids from a workmate and we also looked at a couple of books that had arrived from Amazon today: for Davies who wants to learn about various knots and for Scarlett who was thrilled to see ‘how to’ stuff on little ducks and chickens and trees :).

We did bad, good, learnt today:
Scarlett:
Bad: Wanted to play a game with Davies but he changed his mind (I think he is teaching her a lesson having been wanting her to play something with him last week that she kept changing her mind over)
Good: Went to Highdown Gardens with Julie, Jack, Maisie & Lorna
Learnt: how hard a parlour maid worked in Victorian times (thank you HH annual :)).

Nic:
Bad: Missed parcel being delivered – think it’s our MiFi from three 🙂 will collect tomorrow from Post Office
Good: Nice morning with Julie
Learnt: About Groundhog Day / Candlemas / Imbolc

Ady:
Bad: Colleague at work being pedantic and akward rather than just wishing me luck. (Stupid HR bint, I would have fallen out with her Big Time years ago!)
Good: Nic’s car still being reliable even in the rain
Learnt: Georgian dentists would replace rich people’s rotten teeth with good teeth from children (thank you HH annual)

Davies:
Bad: Scarlett threw away her unwanted dinner before I could interupt and say I’d have them.
Good: Went to the sweet shop
Leant: Indians used bison tongues to brush their hair (oh, guess what? Thank you HH annual!)

Usual round of bath, dinner etc and Ady and I watched some Outnumbered which seems to be on back to back on one of the channels at the moment. I do ♥ that show 🙂

1st February 1994 was the day we moved into this house. 17 years. Blimey. We didn’t have a lot really, I’d only ‘left home’ 7 months previously so aside from clothes, clock radio and stereo I didn’t really own much anyway. Ady had always rented furnished flats so he had very little too. Our car was a big red tank of a Ford Cortina and we trundled our meagre belongings over from my parents where we’d been staying for a month and then stood about the place feeling slightly shell shocked.

We had a dining table and four chairs from my Granny, a boxing glove shaped beanbag I’d had since I was about 12, a full size TV, a portable TV, a four poster bed we’d bought in a charity shop, four chipboard occassional tables, a flat packed kitchen and bathroom delivered by mates from the B&Q warehouse stowed in the spare room (now Tarly’s room) and a pretty mismatched selection of crockery, most of which had been part of an engagement present dinner service to Ady and his previous fiance which (whoops) I managed to ‘accidentally’ break pretty quick ;).

Some friends came over for a Chinese takeaway and a beer to celebrate moving in day and we were all highly amused at the grown up ness of ourselves.

Funny how 17 years on we’ve got double the house but double the mortgage still outstanding and are still surrounded by boxes, albeit ones we have packed up ready to move back over to my parents this time. Oh and not feeling at all grown up these days 😉

This morning I rang Richard the mechanic and got a big and scary list of stuff wrong with the van :(. I blogged and Davies who was feeling a bit coldy snuggled under a blanket next to me while Tarly did some painting. Davies decided to have a bath which Tarly ended up getting in with him into and then I brushed her hair out.

I had a phonecall from the local chemist about some cream I had ordered in for my eczema which is really bad at the moment so we popped into Lancing to get that – decided to drive both as it was drizzling and the kids had wet hair from the bath and because I am trying to at least start my car every day at the moment. I’d stuck some dough in the breadmaker so I shaped some bread rolls and left them to prove while we were out.

Home for lunch of freshly baked rolls and the rest of yesterdays soup :). The we all went upstairs and sorted Davies’ bedroom including going through all his clothes and paring them down to a ‘coming WWOOFing ‘ pile. D is far more resistant to getting rid of stuff than S so it was fairly tedious but we did it.

I came downstairs in search of tea, put chickens away, chopped some sticks and lit a fire, dealt with some laundry and then got the iids tea sorted. Ady arrived home and we all caught up on each others day and did bad, good, learnt today:

Ady:
Bad: Official email announcing resignation sent out today. Lots of people saying they’ll miss me lots.
Good: It’s out!
Learnt: The word ‘philatelic’ about stamp collecting. Learnt it from Nic when she saw the Ladybird book on Stamp Collecting I brought home and she said ‘oooh philatelist!’

Davies:
Bad: Can’t find PoC disc
Good: Bedroom all sorted.
Learnt: Arthur (of TV show fame) is an aardvark

Scarlett
Bad: Wanted to play a game with Davies but ran out of time today
Good:Tried something new to eat today and liked it – sharon fruit
Learnt: How to take the front of Mumma’s in car cd player (they thought they’d broken it! :lol:)

Nic:
Bad: Van is likely to be more expensive and probably take longer than I’d hoped.
Good: Van has been looked at (he’s had it 10 days!)
Learnt: That we will probably not appear on the 2011 census.

Kids went to bed, I had a phone chat with Julie who is all sleep deprived thanks to poor Lorna’s broken arm meaning she isn’t sleeping well and so got all emotional about how she’ll miss me. It’s like being at our own funeral for me and Ady at the moment with people being all lovely about us and telling us how much we mean to them. Just as well we have each other (and friendfeed) to remind us how utterly unimportant we really are ;).

I watched Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and got all misty eyed about Scarlett’s fourth birthday and her Princess Party. Can’t quite equate that four year old with my current eight year old at all…

It’s all still a bit ‘limbo’ round here. The van is still at the garage so I can’t start packing stuff into it and gathering stuff in one area to move into the van feels a bit ‘for the sake of it’ rather than actually useful. I thought about boxing up dvds and games but they may still be watched in the last 3 weeks. Really it would only take 2 or 3 days to pack the whole house into boxes so it seems pointless cluttering up the playroom with boxes full of stuff we might as well still leave in cupboards or rooms where they might even still get used in the next few weeks. Suspect I have packing apathy 😉 I think I might be a bit logisticked out really and far more inclined to savour my last few days of languishing on the sofa wired up to my laptop before all that working for my supper kicks in.

In the post this morning was the standard accepting my resignation from the council along with a personal letter from the head of the library service wishing me success and thanking me for the Chatterbooks work and Reading Group stuff I have done. I suspect this has been orchestrated by B, the head librarian but regardless it is very touching to have been recognised and had noted the things I have done there. Felt quite glowy :).

I blogged over on WW and went to pack some ebay parcels up. D&S were playing with geomags and requested we walk into Lancing to the post office so we did just that. Interesting conversations along the way about deja vu, dreams (I’d had a horrible dream about Scarlett being hit by a car which haunted me still today 🙁 and after eating cheese and crackers late last night and laughing to Ady about how I didn’t believe all that cheese gives you nightmares nonsense too!), brains and memory. We spent a tiny bit of the journey walking in step with a woman who wanted to chat to us so I indulged her for a while and then we had a conversation about talking to strangers and why she might have wanted to – loneliness, friendliness etc. I mentioned how we get lots of people in the library who probably don’t talk to anyone else all day apart from us.

At the post office the queue was incredibly long, snaking all the way round their barriers and to the door, probably about 30 people deep. I guess we were there about 20 minutes. At the very beginning Davies noted a little reflector thing screwed to the wall and I spotted a LED opposite so we speculated on whether it was a counting device (they have one of those on the doors of our local ELC) or maybe an alarm and whether it would be a visible or invisible light beam if it was an alarm. I told the kids about the Mission Impossible scene where they come down from the ceiling and Davies told me about how that had been replicated in a W&G film. I promised to look out the original clip for him but we forgot, must try and remember tomorrow.

Then one of the women from Book Club came over to say hello and catch up on our plans which led the kids to ask whether I knew her, I think they’d decided I was an random chatty old woman magnet 😆 We talked about parcel boxes and packaging, Scarlett’s soft toy ducks that she’d brought along with her and played our usual game of guessing which cashier we’d be served by. Finally parcels sent we popped to the bookshop which is closing down, but prices not reduced enough yet, apart from all calendars for £1 so we bought a plain ‘decorate yourself’ one for the van, sure we can find somewhere to pin it. We also went to the bakers for rolls for lunch and cakes for after, the charity shop for a nose and the library to let them know some Book Group people will be dropping money in for a collection for some flowers for B.

We walked back home and had lunch – Scarlett and I had chicken soup that Ady made on Friday and was very delicious :). I had a quick check of emails and then we did some boxing stuff up. I did most of the bookcase before deciding the boxes of books take up far more room in the playroom than just leaving them on the shelves. Scarlett boxed up all her books and I went through her clothes to pack up everything she’s not taking. Davies went up to do his but didn’t qet quite so far without me prompting him. Felt like we’d made a start 🙂

The kids went off to play in Davies’ room while I sat down with tea and my cake from the bakers and checked emails, dealing with a couple of replies from hosts in Scotland. I put the chickens away, sorted out firewood and lit a fire and then sorted the kids tea out and tackled the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen. Ady arrived home while I was still in the middle of that and the kids were eating their tea.

We all had a big conversation about various things and I read out an email we’d had from a potential host detailing their concerns with WWOOFers with children along with my reply. It was interesting talking it through and coming up with ideas of scenarios we might happen upon and how we think we should deal with them along the way.

Nic:
Bad: Annoying email
Good: Yes email from Scotland
Learnt: cheese giving nightmares. I researched this a little, having always written it off as a myth and found nothing to properly substantiate it but that cheese does contain something that people on anti-depressants are advised to avoid. I also found some research about different cheeses giving you different sorts of dreams along with a theory that it is thinking about having the nightmare that gives you them and whilst the cheese may trigger the thought it doesn’t trigger the nightmare. I suspect this is more the case and if I’d not mentioned cheese and nightmares last night I either wouldn’t have suggested the notion to myself or would simply not have tied it in as cheese related.

Scarlett:
Bad: grazed my knuckle – not dreadfully, she had just noticed it when we were doing B, G, L and in Scarlett’s world it is the last 30 seconds that count more than anything which has gone before 🙂
Good: Tidied my bedroom, she was proud of this and happy that she is so excited about WWOOFing that any minor wobbles about chucking stuff away were overshadowed 🙂
Learnt: About how thermals work -Ady brought home another set each for them (as they had not taken the first set off yet!) and she looked at the packet with the explanation of how they work.

The length of conversation took us way past bedtime so they went to bed, we had dinner and tonight I expect to dream of boxes 🙂

Davies:
Bad: Feel sick 🙁 – he drank some coke with his dinner and it often gives him a weird feeling in his tummy. Not really sure why he still tries but he’s old enough to make the decision himself and it never goes further than mild discomfort so I guess if he decides it’s worth that to drink it I’m not going to stop him.
Good: Get to tidy up in the morning – he’s room had been left very much mid-tidy and he was supposed to be returning to it after dinnre but he got excused due to feeling wobbly.
Learnt: About deja vu. He’d described the feeling so I’d told him the name of it and what I knew of theories to explain it, then we dug further with a Proper Google and read some more about it.

Ady:
Bad: Official announcement not made at work – everyone was supposed to be told about his resignation today but the MD is off sick.
Good: Local fish and chip shop is stocking mackrell burger a la Hugh
Learnt: Mutant seeds at work (geraniums) – I didn’t really grasp this so Ady’s bringing home an actual seed to demonstrate but apparently in order to bring on germination of seeds they prick the seed shell and add some chemical to them to encourage them, but in messing about with nature had gone wrong somewhere and have confused the shoots to go away from the light rather than towards it. Or something 😉

Ady wanted to paint the garage and a garden wall today. To me these are unimportant tasks; they won’t affect the price or whether we get a tenant now but I guess plotting hosts on a google map could be viewed the same way and I really wanted to do that, so we all got on with whatever we felt like doing.

Ady did painting, the kids joined him for a while and then came in and sat with me. I contacted all of the Scotland hosts, created a new list of booked hosts from zones one and two and plotted them all on a map.

Ady cooked dinner and we all sat and chatted while eating; talking about how we might celebrate birthdays while we’re WWOOFing and plans for the Bye Then party aswell as thinking up things we’d like to do before we go.

Ady and Davies watched the second half of PotC3 while Tarly and I played some PvZ and messed about with googlemaps some more then we did Bad, Good, learnt today:

Davies:
Bad: burnt my hand while making a coffee for Daddy
Good: Enjoyed painting walls with Daddy
Learnt: The term ‘Davy Jones’ locker’ for dying at sea.

Scarlett:
Bad: Didn’t have enough pieces to build something out of Lego that I wanted to make.
Good: Played with chickens
Learnt: That paint is bad for chickens (fortunately not from experience, from Ady explaining that it would be best to keep the paint away from the chickens).

Ady
Bad: very achey from working hard this weekend
Good: Achieved everything I had planned for this weekend
Learnt: That masonry / exterior paint should be applied once the temperature is over 5 degrees.

Nic:
Bad: I accidentally deleted some emails
Good: I’ve emailed the zone 3 potentials hosts
Learnt: How to use google maps to create my maps and made a map of confirmed hosts.

We watched Countryfile and the kids went to bed. We watched TV and discussed whether I am ‘fun to be around’ as claimed in a message someone sent me :).

View Wondering Wanderers in a larger map

Scarlett brought me a cup of tea in bed this morning 🙂 I’d been awake a while listening to the others watching Pirates of the Carribbean 3 on dvd. Dad appeared first thing and ended up staying all morning and having breakfast and lunch with us. It was great to see him 🙂 I’m going to miss him very much this coming year although he has promised they will come and find us regularly wherever we are.

I suspect my parents are in the middle of one of their falling out with other episodes, this was backed up by Mum pulling into our road at lunchtime but never appearing, she must have seen Dad’s van here and driven past 🙁 I had a bit of a moan about a few things she has done wrong just recently (several of which I was quite hurt by but I’m determined to just get over as I really don’t want to fall out with her just before we go) which he will probably use in ammunition against her so I’ll regret having mentioned as now she’ll probably hear about it anyway. Kids eh? Oh yeah, wait I mean parents eh? 😉

Ady did tree lopping. We have an old dead cherry tree in our garden that we planted some ivy at the foot of years ago and the ivy had totally covered the old dead tree. We do trim it a bit most years as it grows pretty furiously and snatches light from our lounge and edges rather close to the telephone wires above it. Two of our neighbours had asked Ady if he could possibly take it smaller before we go as they have a complicated method of signalling each other using lights and our tree was restricting their vision of each others lights. So Ady took it right back to almost the bare dead tree again. It will grow back over in a year or two but means it will be maintenance free for the tenants.

Davies and Scarlett spent some time playing outside and ‘helping’ which mostly involved taking turns climbing up the ladder and having a go with the loppers aswell as whittling sticks that had been cut off. Then they came in and wanted a bath as they were rather covered in ivy pollen so they spent about an hour in the bath playing.

Ady came in for lunch, the kids got out of the bath and then Dad left. I had a phonecall from Mike the letting agent to say they have had some credit checks and landlord references back from the tenants and all seems well which is good 🙂 .

Ady did some trips to the tip with the tree loppings and then we all went on the last run and drove on into town. We got Scarlett some waterproof walking-style boots and some socks (I know 😯 Scarlett, socks!), both kids a set of thermals (leggings and tops) and a pair of waterproof over trousers for Davies. That more or less kits everyone out for the start of the trip I think :).

Home via two supermarkets as the first didn’t have everything we needed. The kids had tea watching Total Wipeout, they got out Davies Gruffalo theatre book and put on the play instead of a story at bedtime and spent ages playing at being Secret Agents dressed in their thermals (all black) which they have both gone to bed in as pjs :).
Ady:
Bad: No pepperoni in Morrisons!
Good: Tree lopped
Learnt: Pigeons carry on coming even when tree has gone

Davies:
Bad: didn’t whole film
Good: watched some of the film
Learnt: chicken anatomy

Scarlett:
Bad: pigeons tree chopped down
Good: Excited about WWOOFing
Learn: my shoe size

Nic:
Bad: Mum just drove past
Good: Dad came round
Learnt: you’re never too old to be immature 😉

Today was my penultimate penultimate at work in that I have now done my penultimate Wednesday, Friday and Saturday shifts and now just have a penultimate Thursday shift to go before I am on Last Shifts.

Ady took Davies and Scarlett off with him for the day, they went Ramgate way I think and had their lunch break walking round a lake, feeding some ducks and geese and talking to the woman who looks after them. I LOVE how buzzed up the three of them are after a day together and I also love althoug find hard, how much I miss the kids and they miss me when I work. It’s yet another indicator of how very right our plans for this year are – when there is nowhere you would rather be than with the other three members of your family it is only right that you make every compromise, every sacrifce and every endeavour to make it so. It won’t be long before Davies and Scarlett have other people and places they want to be so while it is our company they crave it would be crazy to do anything other than answer that really…

I did Rhyme Time with C, who will be taking it over. She did a fab job and I had to step in just once or twice when she wobbled but if I’d not been there she would have been just fine. In the afternoon I spent time plotting with my militant colleague S to try and do *something* for Save Our Libraries Day on Saturday 5th February when there is a national initiative to visit your local public library to join, take our books, read stories and just show your support. I also talked to the woman from the local ornithological society who has a display of bird photographs up at the moment about how Scarlett had identified them all. She is a retired teacher and on the strength of me telling her about Tarly invited her to come and join the local bird watching group. I explained we were off travelling and she made me promise to get in touch when we get home so Tarly can join up. Needless to say Tarly was most thrilled when I told her this :).

Back home we all caught up with each others days and did Bad, Good, Learnt today:

Scarlett:
Bad: Davies stole my bad
Good: Saw lots of red kites
Learnt: kites are named after the birds

Davies:
Bad: Long time in the car today
Good: Went to a duck park
Learnt: When a goose breaks it’s wing it is left with a bump where the break was.

Ady:
Bad: Drove a very long way for a five minute visit
Good: Lovely hour walking round a lake with the kids
Learnt: The best before date on crisps is always a Saturday

Nic:
Bad: Missed Davies & Scarlett today
Good: My penultimate Friday
Learnt: National Save Our Library day on Saturday 5th February

Ady went off to get bits for dinner while the kids and I read some stories. Davies came and talked to me in the bath for ages about Home Ed having watched Ady cut up a whole chicken (it was cheaper than just the breasts so the carcass is being boiled up for soup) and being given a swift biology lesson. I have a post in draft about celebrating the way we Home Ed but this was a lovely example of it and he came to me all fired up with enthusiasm about his freedom to learn all the time about the things he is interested in. 🙂

I probably have other stuff to say but I’m far too far into Friday night / Saturday morning to be remotely coherant so I won’t even try.

I had a lie in this morning, it’s been quite a week! 😉 Ady went off to the office to print off his resignation letter and hand it in. Although he was handing it in to the MD who already knew having been told by Miranda he was still really nervous. He said when he was folding the letter up to put it in the envelope his hands were shaking.

Ady has been asked to keep it fairly quiet until an official announcement on Monday but has told a couple of close workmates and got a mixed reaction of mostly positive but a couple who think he is pretty mad! I’m guessing they’ll be blaming me 😉 It’s weighed heavy on Ady not saying anything at work so it’s a massive relief to have it out in the open now.

I had some bits I wanted to do online so we decided to have a morning at home and go out this afternoon. We wanted to do the World Beach Project pebble pictures before we go and also Hove Museum which we’ve been meaning to get to for weeks so we decided to see what the weather was doing after lunch and make a decision based on indoor or outdoor weather conditions.

Davies did some Xboxing, Scarlett some DSing and I did some telling the world online 🙂 I also did some getting fed up with people collecting, or rather failing to collect freecycle stuff. Stupid questions today include: ‘will it fit in the back of my sister’s car?’ I don’t know, why don’t you come and try! and ‘can I lift it?’ I don’t know, do you have arms? Pillocks!

After lunch we decided it was dry and bright, if very cold so we should probably do the beach. We’d talked a bit about how we were going to do it and gathered a tub and a towel each having watched a video on the website . The kids decided they wanted to do their own. Davies went for the approach of finding some interesting stones and getting inspired by one to suggest a picture. He found one that looked to him like a T rex head so he found more stones to create a whole dinosaur
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Scarlett had already decided before we even got to the beach that she would do a cat so she was specifically looking for the component stones to become eyes, nose, whiskers etc.
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I had wanted to do a complete picture with full background and initially thought I’d do a sunset over the sea but I wasn’t happy with it so I changed it:
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It was enjoyable and we’d definitely do it again, I’d have stayed longer but it was very cold which sped us up a bit. So much so that we were done within the hour so we decided to go to the museum too. I’d thought the featured exhibition on moving pictures and stories in pictures would be bigger as last years recycled art was excellent and kept us engaged for ages. This was good but possibly aimed at a slightly younger age group and a bit too ‘guided’ if that makes sense. We do quite a lot of looking at pictures and talking about them but both the kids are pretty adept at drawing their own conclusions and projecting their own ideas and feelings on to art so didn’t need quite so much direction, it almost felt like reading the trail guide was interfering with us. Glad we went though.

We came home via the supermarket and were all really cold so we lit the fire early to warm up. D&S played with geomags for a while and we talked about the Scott of the Antarctic book we’d read yesterday as they both had some questions about it. Ady arrived home while I was cooking the kids tea so we had a nice hour or so just catching up on each others days while they ate and did bad, good, learnt today.

Davies:
Bad: Don’t have Pirates of the Carribean here to watch now – Ady was home early enough for them to have watched it today but I haven’t picked it up from work yet, they are on the third one now.
Good: Got to the museum after waiting ages.
Learnt: 104 weeks is two years

Nic
Bad: Too cold on the beach to stay for very long
Good: Did the beach AND the museum
Learnt: Even when you are *giving* people something for nothing they are still arses!

Ady:
Bad: A couple of my workmates were really sad about me handing my notice in today. I’ll miss them lots too.
Good: Handed my notice in – the last bit that we have control over, everything else is out of our control
Learnt: The sound of a whip cracking is the breaking of the sound barrier

Scarlett:
Bad: The museum wasn’t as good as I was expecting it to be
Good: We made pictures on the beach
Learnt: You can buy packets of sweets with all different ones in there (Randoms)

The kids brought me a pile of Dr Seuss books to read for stories and I watched Human Planet which was fascinating.

Work for me this morning so Ady took Davies and Scarlett over to Julie’s for the morning and then collected them and brought them home again arriving about 5 minutes after I got home. I had a nice morning at work, it was really busy so it went quick. Several more people asking whether our library will be closing… I am both pleased news of library closures is getting through and frustrated that people take no action other than telling a library assistant like me how important it is to them to have the library service. Write letters, march, protest, shout! I do despair of the majority just putting up with what they are told to do 🙁

Davies and Scarlett had a lovely couple of hours with their cousins – they are going to miss each other lots while we’re away 🙁 All of our scattered friends will probably see more or less as much as usual of us but J,M & L and some of our more local friends will definitely be missed. They went for a walk across the fields to visit Honey the pony and feed her sugar lumps. Both Davies and Scarlett were upset to see poor little Lorna with one arm in plaster from shoulder to hand as she broke her arm yesterday after colliding with another child. All three of the cousins have now been in plaster which prompted a conversation about how neither Davies or Scarlett have been. I am unfeasibly paranoid at the moment about one of the four of us doing an injury to ourselves which delays or prevents our departure. I did remind D&S that I’ve never been in plaster (despite cracked ankle last year and broken toe a couple of years ago) and neither has my brother, although several of their friends have.

Back home Ady shot off and the kids and I had lunch. We had planned to go to the beach this afternoon but it was very grey and cold and they had gotten up early to play a new (to him) X box game Davies got yesterday and were keen to continue it so instead we all settled into various things indoors. Scarlett did some plasticining; she is making a family of foxes, I did various things but mostly played PvZ and Davies X boxed.

We needed to pop to the post office as Eve had left her shoes here, plus I had to send some insurance documents off so we nipped to the library to photocopy stuff and then the post office to post stuff and home via the book shop. I put chickens away and made / took some phone calls to the mechanic about the van and the letting agent about the house. This resulted in various things being agreed with the agent and we have a new provisional date of 23rd to move out. This is fab for us, it means we can finish working while still in the house and then have our Bye Then party, pack up, clean up and move out, with about 10 days before we need to be at our first host, giving us time to have a readjusting period before starting our next life.

There is still paperwork to be completed but in order for timings to work out we have decided Ady will hand his notice in tomorrow so have drafted the letter tonight for him to take in. I suspect he won’t sleep much tonight 😉

Ady and Davies watched the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 while Tarly and I played the Zen garden bit of PvZ and then I read a Ladybird Scott of the Antarctic book to them.

Scarlett:
Bad: Feel sorry for Lorna with her broken arm
Good: had a nice morning with Jack & Maisie
Learnt: Sled dogs are quite wild and more like wolves than domestic dogs (from Scott of the Antarctic Ladybird book)

Davies:
Bad: Missing the lacey chickens a bit (although pleased to see pictures showing they are settled in well)
Good: Got a new x box game and it’s really good
Learnt: About joints and types of arthritis.

Nic:
Bad: Several novels I was looking forward to reading won’t be out until after we’ve gone. Looked at my reserved list this morning and realised none of them will be published before we leave.
Good: Dates for tenants moving in means we will be able to host people to stay for Bye Then Party 🙂
Learnt: Chris Price has got an Apple product!!! 😯

Ady:
Bad: very twitchy about handing my notice in tomorrow
Good: very pleased about handing my notice in tomorrow
Learnt: Worldwide there is more goats milk consumed by humans than cows milk.

Monday I have a job list for each of the remaining three weeks and I’ve already more or less finished this weeks :). Yesterday I spent the morning making phonecalls to notify various places of our moving date. I’ve cancelled Sky, broadband, BT, council tax, water, house insurance, TV licence, got quotes for landlord insurance and found out the procedure for final meter readings and so on.

I’d listed various things on freecycle so did some coordinating that and then dropped off a toy car to someone who wanted it but had no transport til later in the week. We nipped into town to post an ebay parcel – I’d listed a childs’ kilt without thinking about Burns night and someone had asked for a buy it now price over the weekend and if I could get it sent first class on Monday so they’d have it in time.

Back home we had lunch, I stuck several loads of pizza dough on for dinner, the kids got Davies’ bedroom ready for a sleepover and moved stuff out of the way that they didn’t want touched, I did some laundry and then we all did some playing PvZ which we have now completed (some mini games left to play) and the kids played with the Playmobile.

Em & co arrived but the kids were not hugely compatible as D&S had been home most of the day waiting for friends to arrive and were rather over excited, particularly Scarlett, whereas E&R had already come from a 24 hour visit at Alison’s and a late night so were rather less in the mood for full on craziness :(. They watched most of a film together and had dinner, then Davies and Scarlett went off for a sleepover together in Davies’ room, while Em’s 3 all slept in Tarly’s bedroom. Em and I chatted into the night 🙂

Tuesday: not such a late start as my reputation might have one believe ;). D&S woke my chatting in Davies’ room and when I checked the time I decided I might as well get up, it was about 830am. Breakfast and the kids all got dressed and went and spent time adoring chickens, D&S introduced E&R to the three hens they have taken to give a new home to. We had a chicken based hiatus mid morning when a couple of them flew over the fence into the front garden and one made it all the way across the road. They had obviously been spooked by something, I suspect a seagull had landed to eat some of the food that had been rather scattered around the place. I dashed across the road and after some comedy chicken chasing managed to herd it back across the road again, fortunately traffic stopped both ways so the chicken was able to run and I was able to chivvy it without either of us getting run over. So there you go, the chicken crossed the road to get back home again because I was chasing it. 🙂

We let them all calm down a bit and the kids played some game to do with oragutangs which they nearly fell out over as they decided the group needed a leader and I could hear Scarlett insisting it should be Davies as they would have a male leader and the others disagreeing. In the end D, S and E all wanted to be leader and one of them came up with the suggestion of a vote. E won the vote but they came down to ask us to vote too. As none of them had any sort of political manifesto or could tell us what great things they would accomplish as leaders we refused to vote 😆

The kids went back out to the chickens again and as Em wanted to get home before dark to settle chickens in we boxed them up and waved goodbye. A very nice, if very brief visit :).

We had some lunch, dropped a bike off to Tasha’s that I’d put on freecycle and she’d responded to, the kids put the bedrooms back together again and Davies did the washing up. He’s being super helpful at the moment and said he had observed how much work there is involved in having friends to stay when we had guests over new year and as he enjoys having the guests company as much as we do he feels he should pull his weight in the extra work too. Such his fathers son that boy, wish I could claim he gets his thoughtfulness and kindness from me but sadly he does not. 😉

We looked at the beach picture website Zoe had linked to and talked about doing it and a link some people had put on facebook about turning a flight of stairs into a giant piano and then they got back to their plasticine and playmobile game. Davies had gotten very upset when a plasticine model he’d made was discovered broken into five pieces in his bedroom. We can only assume it was not put up out of reach for Os and he’d gotten hold of it 🙁 A real shame as it was one he was proud of but he definitely learnt the lesson about putting stuff up high I’d been trying to get across to them yesterday afternoon.

I made the kids tea, put the chickens away who seem to have adjusted to their reduced numbers and then Ady came home. We did bad, good, learnt (since Sunday as we missed yesterday):

Davies:
Bad: Plasticine figure broken
Good: chickens have gone to a good new home
Learnt: There is a level on PvZ where you can play as Zombies

Scarlett:
Bad: Feel a bit sad about saying goodbye to chickens
Good: Mumma completed PvZ
Learnt:there is a Worldwide pebble display exhibition

Ady:
Bad: Government selling off forestry commisssion to people
Good: Good day at work
Learnt: HMS Victory is still a commissioned warship owned by the Royal Navy.

Nic:
Bad: So many cancellation charges for stopping things – phone, internet etc.
Good: Several steps closer to heading off – services cancelled, chickens rehomed, stuff freecycled etc
Learnt: Why the chicken crossed the road! 😆

We read a Ladybird version of Robinson Crusoe before bed which they enjoyed.

I put dough on for cinnamon rolls last night so this morning I made a huge batch and we all had a late breakfast. I’d had a night full of very strange dreams including having a huge fall out with my Mum on the phone as she only wanted to look after Davies and not Scarlett and then Scarlett and I had been watching out of the window while a new car was delivered (some sort of Smart car or similar to be hitched to the back of the campervan) and in the style of a squash plant from PvZ the delivery truck dumped it on top of our garage as the campervan was in the drive, it smashed straight through the garage and squashed the other vehicle inside the garage and they both crashed into the campervan. I don’t often have bad dreams I can actually recall but when I do they are always with a foot firmly in fact, something I am already bothered about and usually to do with something I have been doing or thinking about just before going to bed.

Usually other people’s dreams are very boring but I’m guessing if you read this you think my life is interesting enough so I thought I’d take a chance on my dreams being so as well ;).

So today’s schedule was yet more clearing of the garage and garden. Ady didn’t think we’d do it all in one weekend, I knew we would :). So the garage is now empty aside from two chest freezers which the tenants might want to borrow anyway, a washing machine that needs selling for spares / repairs (or sticking on freecycle if no one wants to buy it) and some tools and bits all tidily stacked at the far end and covered with a tarp that we’ve already agreed we will be leaving there. The back patio is clear, the chickens coop is very tidy, all raked over and ready to be handed over with two bins filled with food and bedding. The whole of the side and front gardens are clear of toys, rubbish and gardening things. The kids filled one sack each with toys they want to keep and they have been stowed along the side of the garage. Their sandpit, slide and playhouse are all on freecycle.

We did another 4 runs to the tip and I spent nearly two hours chopping up a full 3 week supply of firewood and then stacking all the rest up that is too big to chop and needs splitting with a sledgehammer and wedge. Back is very protest-y about such efforts now but I’m thinking it will be good practise for inevitable physical graft coming up this year.

In between we had tea / coffeee /hot chocolate and further helpings of cinnamon rolls to keep us going. Once home and finished Ady got dinner going while Davies had a bath, then I had a bath which Scarlett came and joined me in while Ady and Davies started watching the second Pirates of the Carribean film. I was reading How to be Off Grid and wanted to carry on so just read it aloud to Scarlett. I’ve been telling the rest of the family about the book anyway so she enjoyed actually being read some of it :).

We had dinner – roast turkey, bought at a quarter of the price just after Christmas and stuck in the freezer and watched Ray Mears and then Countryfile before doing Bad, Good, Learnt today:

Davies:
Bad: Didn’t watch whole film (it’s 2.5 hours long and neither Tarly nor I want to watch it)
Good: Looking forward to Eve & Rei coming tomorrow
Learnt: About national grid and pylons (me talking about the book and what on and off grid means)

Scarlett:
Bad: Got rid of ornaments from garden
Good: Got rid of lots of crap (she was shocked when I said I would actually type that she said this 😆 )
Learnt: how easy it is to grow watercress (Countryfile)

Ady:
Bad: Only done a few hours work and I’m aching
Good: Achieved our aims for the weekend of clearing garden & garage
Learnt: You need to set a barometer to altitude (height above or below sea level) before it works.

Nic:
Bad: How many things we’ve put into landfill
Good: Lasted very tough month financially (pay day tomorrow!)
Learnt: Little pop up cooking check on our turkey that tells you when it’s done. (very clever little gizmo that came stuck into the turkey and popped out when it was cooked).

Ady had a bath, I’ve caught up on blogging and replied to some emails. I had a Bob in the bath and I think such early indulgence has wussed me out (along with all that wood chopping).

Work for me this morning. Lots of squeeeeing from work colleagues as they learnt we have tenants lined up and I have handed my notice in. I put a poster in the staff room for a leaving meal so we’ll see just how genuine their affection is 😉

I had a nice morning, with 2.5 hours on the enquiry desk which is pretty much my favourite place to be as you get to sit down and have internet access and people come and ask you interesting questions. Today I was asked 6 times whether our library was at risk of closure. I am so pleased to see that the various coverage of library closures around the country have sunk in, particularly the very clever taking all the books out protests in various places. I was very proud to be part of and to demonstrate to Davies and Scarlett the thought out, peaceful, non violent forms of protest we took part in during the months following the Badman report as Home Educators. Being a part of the mass lobby, the mass petition of parliament, banner wearing, bubble blowing, mass picnics etc were all in line with how I think our voices should be heard, in rather stark contrast to some other protests I’ve seen recently… Hopefully some of the very clever initiatives to protest about library closures will have an impact and raise awareness, they certainly seem to have done so locally.

Home for lunch and I found Ady doing sterling work clearing the garage having done one dump run and brought everything out of the garage. Davies and Scarlett were playing in the garden. We all came in for lunch, I listed a couple of things on freecycle and then we did 3 runs to the tip. We all felt bad about taking things there that if we’d not stored in our very leaky garage for years might have been useful for someone else – water damaged tables and chairs and some other furniture.

We came home on the final run via the hospital so I could finally return my crutches from my broken ankle last summer, Halfords to return the spark plugs as my car seems to be running okay so it makes sense to have the money back for now and maybe replace them when we come home and Sainsburys for some veg for dinner.

The kids had some more time in the garden, Ady lit the smoker to burn a load of confidential paperwork while I lit the fire and checked emails. The others came in and Davies & Ady watched Pirates of the Carribean while Tarly and I cooked dinner for her and Davies, played a couple of rounds of PvZ and then I had a bath while they ate tea which she got in with me having finished eating with Ady and Davies watched the end of the film.

We forgot Bad, Good, Learnt today so I had to get them both back out of bed to do that 🙂

Ady:
Bad: Threw stuff into landfill which could have been useful if we’d thought about it before
Good: Garage cleared
Learnt: HSBC stands for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation

Davies:
Bad: Took stuff to the tip & the tip makes me feel sad
Good: Finally got to watch Pirates of the Carribean with Daddy
Learnt: If being chased by a bear your last resort would be to make yourself look as big as possible & make lots of noise

Scarlett:
Bad: Saw a bit of Pirates of the Carribean which was scary and I might have a nightmare tonight
Good: Bath with Mumma
Learnt: People throw things like soft toys away with care at the tip

Nic:
Bad: choice in Sainsburys for on offer vegetables made me take ones in plastic bags
Good: My car started and is running really well
Learnt: Peaceful, well thought out protests do work.

I cooked dinner, we tried and failed to watch The Comedy Awards and I’m now wussing and falling asleep over my laptop.

Up with the alarm today as Richard the mechanic was coming at 830am. I was most surprised to find Davies already downstairs when I came down. He’d got up so early he’d even seen Ady :).

I’d made dough for cinnamon rolls last night knowing I’d be up early enough to make them so I made them and set them to prove and then Richard arrived. I spent some time outside chatting to him while he got the van up on his recovery van. He’s taken it off to try and work out what’s going on with the batteries as it seems to charge up but not have enough power for the couple of times it takes to turn it over and get it started, also the sockets in the van are not working off the leisure battery but the lights are so something has gone adrift with the wiring somewhere.

I rang Mike, the letting agent and we’ve provisionally agreed for us to come out of the house on 14th Feb. 1st Feb marks the 17th anniversary of us first moving into the house and our first Valentines Day together two weeks later on the 14th Feb 1994 was a hilarious affair with me attempting a romantic meal in a kitchen less well equipt than our campervan, we ate on an occassional table and it snowed heavily. I hope our 17th Valentines day together is marked with just such atypical fanfare 🙂

So, cinnamon rolls, a round of two of PvZ with D & S each getting to choose all the weapons and then I dashed off a resignation letter and we went to the library. I had to print it off there but had taken in envelopes for it so introduced myself to the new boss who I’d not actually met yet and handed her my notice at the same time 🙂 I showed Tarly where the adult books on wildlife and animals are which was like an epiphany to her 🙂 She took out four glossy, filled with colour photographs books with glee :).

There is a big display of photographs of birds from the local ornithological society up at the library and Scarlett went through pretty much the whole display and named all the birds which is far more than I could do, Davies also read them all and when we got home they went through a load of posters we’d got from RSPB for the Big Garden Birdwatch and Scarlett identified them all while Davies read them all. I also forgot to mention yesterday that Davies had asked about BC and AD while we were reading about the Romans so I’d explained it. He’d grasped it straightaway and drawn a timeline to demonstrate his understanding so he could confirm it was right. I then explained about negative numbers because it was relevant and asked him what -3 +4 was which he answered 1 without even thinking about it. We talked a bit more about negative numbers and then about temperature too with minus temperatures. I can remember really struggling to get my head round negative numbers when taught them at school so I’m always chuffed when things seem to come easily when they just crop up like that :).

Back home again I’d intended a head start on trips to the tip but when I got the garage door open I was confronted with so much stuff I bottled out and decided Ady and I could do it together at the weekend. Wuss! 😉

We came in for lunch and the kids played with the lego and toy animals and watched Over The Hedge on dvd – in a bid to enjoy as many home comforts as possible :). Davies also did some psping and Tarly some bouncy ball making while I photographed some stuff and half heartedly listed some on ebay.

I talked to Dad on the phone, chopped up some firewood and got the fire lit and the kids did some PSPing and DSing while I did some more ebaying and then Ady got home.

Bad, Good, Learnt today sparked loads of conversation as we looked at stuff about animals sleep patterns, talked about why animals mate with the male on top of the females back, checked out something Ady had heard about golf balls on the moon
Hurrah for sharing facts and being able to ‘proper google’ 🙂

Davies
Bad: Didn’t get time to finish creating a Total Wipeout level on Little Big Planet
Good: I woke up so early this morning I got to see Daddy
Learnt: Cows sleep with their eyes open

Scarlett
Bad: Used up most of my bouncy ball kit granules
Good: Mummy relented on my getting books out of the library and I got four!
Learnt: Twit-twoo is two owls, not one.

Ady
Bad:Feel guilty about our neighbours who are sad we are going away
Good: It’s Friday! And Willow is being sorted
Learnt: The skeleton from the whale from the Thames is now on display

Nic
Bad: Slightly poignant moment handing my notice in
Good: Really impressed with Davies’ reading and Scarlett’s ornithological knowledge
Learnt: There is golf balls on the moon, maybe three, probably two!

The kids went to bed (although Scarlett did get back up and come and do singing with my in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner later) and Ady and I had a very enjoyable conversation about proudest moments, memories we’ll treasure for ever and our most precious and treasured experiences. Very uplifting 🙂

I had work today. Ady took Davies & Scarlett with him on a big circuitous drive along the coast and back into Kent taking in Dover, Ramsgate and other such places. They seemed to have a nice day and managed to fit in some educational stuff along the way.

Work for me was fine, I have been rather stripped of duties which makes for a slightly boring full day really. But I talked to borrowers including my old History teacher from secondary school – not sure who was most ‘eeek’ about the fact that was nearly 25 years ago! I’ve spotted her coming into the library before and been fairly sure it was her but today I served her so was able to check on her ticket to see her name. I said ‘you used to teach me History’ and she peered at me and said yes, my face did look familiar but she couldn’t name me. I told her my (maiden) name and she said she remembered it, which given she taught there for over 20 years so would have had thousands of girls on her registers was pretty impressive I thought. She said if she’d not been a teacher she’d have liked to have been a librarian so I said I was only part time and Home Ed my own children the rest of the time which she was very interested in. She was a good teacher, one of the ones I think was there for all the right reasons although she said today that if she went back and did it all over again she probably wouldn’t have stayed in teaching so long (she is now retired). Which I guess probably backs up my theory that she went into it for the right reasons I suppose…

I did get a phone call from Mike at the Letting Agents to say our tenants have been in to collect paperwork and pay a security holding deposit of £300. We talked about potential dates and I’ll ring him tomorrow with our proposed date to be out of 15th February which gives us 3 weeks and would only mean a week staying at parents (or in van – still not heard from parents…). I’m planning to hand my notice in on Saturday, giving four weeks notice and Ady will hand his in as soon as the paperwork is all completed, hopefully mid to end of next week.

I got home and Tarly had me a cup of tea ready :), we all caught up with each others days and did bad, good, learnt today:

Davies:
Bad: Felt sorry for Scarlett that she couldn’t get up the sea defences at Dover
Good: I could climb up!
Learnt: About how pilots used white cliffs of Dover as a marker when flying in the war.

Scarlett
Bad: Hurt my knee trying to get up
Good: Found lots of pretty shells
Learnt: About red flags to show high winds and tides

Ady
Bad: Crazy mileage today for nothing really worthwhile
Good: I fixed the oven 🙂
Learnt: The actor from Robinson Crusoe still lives on an island

Nic
Bad: Really long afternoon at work
Good: Tenants collected paperwork from agents & paid security deposit
Learnt: Interesting local history photos from colleage of a large vault in Shoreham

I read a bit from the Romans in the book we started last night and the kids went to bed. Tomorrow we have a busy day starting with the mechanic coming to look at Willow at 830am.