One word? When seven would do…

I rang the garage first thing this morning as my car was theoretically going to be ready on Friday, or Saturday at the latest and I’d not heard anything. We had a half arranged plan to see Caz and Bid today but weather and transport issues on both sides had us rearranging that for later in the week.

I got called back by the garage and was given a saga type story of when I dropped my car off on Friday to the current time. To begin with the bonnet catch had not worked so they’d spent two hours trying to get the bonnet open. They struggled to do the work agreed to as the strut for one of components was all rusty so really hard to get off, then on a final test drive round the block the car died and something else had blown. They got it back to the garage and left it for the day. On Saturday they had fixed that (which he said he’ll pay for) and then it was misfiring (which is what it does to me) so they fixed that and left it ticking over for ten minutes while they were looking for my phone number to update me.

Then the radiator blew up!

At which point they gave up on it again and went home.

So this morning when I rang he had sourced a replacement radiator which he was waiting for before fitting that and finishing with it. Clearly in light of all this the cost of £300 which we could barely afford and had agonised over had gone up. He said he’d do it cheap and split the cost with me bringing it in at £420. Eek.

Arranged that he’d ring me once it was sorted and sat wallowing for a while in financial angst.

I went and chopped some logs and then came in and decided I would NOT have a bad day. So I rang the letting agent I’d most liked last week, had a chat with him about various queries I had and agreed to put the house up for rent through him. The next stage was for him to come and take photos and get it up on the website so we agreed he would come and do that this afternoon. Felt better 🙂

I rang my Dad as I wanted him to come and meet the letting agent as they will be dealing with each other while we’re away and also get a lift to the garage when my car was ready. The kids and I had lunch and watched all of the dvd extras on Toy Story 3 then had a mad dash around the house doing a quick tidy up for the letting agent.

In the middle of all this I had a text reminding me I was supposed to be going to dinner at a work friends’ this evening. Hastily informed Ady of this fact, arranged a lift and confirmed I would be going.

The agent arrived first, we had a chat, went through the paperwork and then he went off round the house with his camera then Dad turned up so they had a brief chat before the agent left. Dad and I chatted and drank tea / coffee before I rang the garage for an update. The bloke said he hoped to have it finished today but it might go over to tomorrow.

Ady arrived home and Dad left. We’d got a couple of things to return to Tescos and wanted to do some festive food shopping – we’re at Mum’s for Christmas Day but home here for Boxing Day so wanted to get in a few nice bits and pieces. So we headed to Tesco and all went round together selecting our favourite things like crisps, nuts, cheeses etc.

We got home with enough time to put it away and for me to get changed before my lift arrived. The others apparently had a nice evening eating tea together, having baths and early nights for the children.

I had a very pleasant evening with two work colleagues, the food was nice, the company good and the conversation fun. I have made some good friends at the library who I will miss next year and hope to stay in touch with :). There was talk of my leaving do, at which I imagine I will cry lots :).

I got home at about 1130pm, Ady had just gone to bed so we had a quick chat before I came back downstairs for a bath and the kids were both fast asleep, allegedly since fairly early.

stuffed duck links… guess what I’ll be spending next couple of nights doing….
This one here and this one here

slackness of blogging abounds, need to catch up.

Friday I was supposed to be at work all day and the kids were supposed to be on the road with Ady for the day, including heading to Costco for the turkey. Scarlett woke covered head to toe in a pretty impressive rash though. After discussion we decided I should take the day off work rather than Ady, mostly because he was planning to do something for us aswell as working but also because actually when either of the children is not well it is really me they want to be sitting on top of.

But first my car had to be got to the garage as it was having all that expensive work done on it highlighted when it was MOTd last week. So having briefed the kids to stay put Ady followed me down to the garage and then dropped me back home again (all of about 10 minutes). I rang in to work and found someone actually there to report my not coming in status to – felt very guilty but she was lovely about it. I don’t know if I will get paid sick pay for it as it’s not actually me who was sick or whether I will be asked to take a days leave for it. I don’t actually have a days leave to take so it will end up either unpaid now or claimed back from me when I leave if so but I content myself that if my kids were in school Scarlett would definitely have had to have the day off so I would have had to ring in sick.

I looked back on my blog and flickr at Rashes Of The Past and Davies, Scarlett and I were all quite entertained that todays rash almost mirrored a rash from 2004 on her face:
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She was slightly itchy but otherwise in pretty good spirits and actually the brightest she’s been in about 2 weeks. So I have her some piriton and she went off to play. We needed a few bits so I walked round to the shop to get them and got some stamps and posted Christmas cards too (a job I’d intended doing in my lunchbreak). Ady rang to say ‘put the kettle on, I’m, popping in for coffee’ but actually beat me back home so he put the kettle on while I chopped some wood and got a fire lit.

I texted our weekend guests to update them on our health bulletin which I’d been doing anyway and got a text back regarding their health. We agreed to give up on protecting each other from germs and have a germ fest type gathering but sadly as we were on the up they were on the down and I later had a phone call to say they wouldn’t be coming after all 🙁

Ady went to Costco, the other side of the tunnel on the A27 there was heaps of snow and the M23 was practically at a standstill so while he was sending me picture texts of crazy white out landscapes of Crawley, Davies was fretting Daddy would be stranded and Scarlett was enjoying a resurgence of energy.

The rest of the day gets a little lost. I know I had plans for being all efficient and doing baking but I didn’t. I know I did lots of eating as I was feeling starving for some reason. The kids were both also hungry and ate lots which was good as they have both been off food with whatever lurgy they have had.

In the evening I peaked rather early with my wine, enjoyed a lovely curry and toasted absent weekend guests and fed up friends from afar and then fell asleep on the sofa rather early infront of Armstrong and Miller on dvd.

Saturday I decided that if I didn’t have my friends to play with then I would do some festive stuff. All of our Christmas shopping has been spread out over the last few months or will be home made but the kids have been making noises about stockings and I have been feeling slightly like Christmas has already been and gone (the downside of such a lovely camp) so I decided to have a couple of hours in town getting bits and pieces. Ady and the kids dropped me off at 11ish with arrangements for me to ring when I was ready to be collected. Ady very sweetly told me not to rush, to maybe go for a cup of tea somewhere and just enjoy having a few hours to myself. Within about 2 minutes of them driving off I realised I had left my phone at home. Not a huge cause for concern but enough for me to feel slightly edgy as Tarly was still rash-y, my car was still awaiting collection from the garage and I was now uncontactable.

So I had a nice couple of hours in a surprisingly almost quiet town centre. I am torn between feeling glad people are not out needlessly buying and knowing that the reason for that is they are all not leaving the house for fear of missing an amazon.com delivery as they have all done their Christmas shopping online. I patronised Poundland and Hawkins for budget stocking fillers – all either edible, use-up-able before we go or small enough to come with us and be useful. I also picked up a new top for myself as I quite like having something ‘nice’ to wear on Christmas day, spent most of the time searching for pyjamas for Scarlett – the kids always get a Christmas Eve present of a new pair of pjs to wear to bed. We got Davies’ ages ago but have both been looking out for a pair for Scarlett. She doesn’t want pink, cupcakes, Disney princesses, tinkerbell, Hello Kitty, ‘cute’ captions about who she is going to bed with, Hannah Montanna, High School Musical. Argh. I finally found some which are pink but have monkeys on which is something she quite likes on her clothes, she has at least two tops with monkeys on. Very annoying too – the same difficulty exists in finding her clothes. I wanted to get her a new outfit for Christmas too, she doesn’t wear dresses or skirts and hates leggings so that pretty much restricts you to jeans and the only ones about at the moment are skinny fit which she doesn’t like. It’s really annoying as she is not fussy or senstive about what she wears but it’s just impossible to find comfortable, suitable clothing for an 8 year old girl. She is now the wrong shape to wear boys clothes which was my previous solution – tops are fine but trousers need to be the right fit.

I rang home from a call box, 60p for a minimum call 😯 and took the ribbing from the other three about leaving my phone behind. I notoriously don’t lose stuff or forget to pick it up while the rest of them always forget to charge their phones, lose their keys, can’t find their DSs etc and I always give them all sorts of grief so they had apparently very much enjoyed finding my phone on the sofa and doing their best impressions of what I would be saying if they had done that 😆 😆

Ady had brought along the poinsettias he’d got for my work colleagues and I’d meant to take in on Friday so we called into the library for me to drop them off and give a Scarlett update. I also nipped to the jewellers to get a new watch strap as mine had died – I go through about one a year, I’m not at all sure what I do to them that wears them out but it had had it so I now have a new and shiny but rather stiff ope. I also picked up a tub of plasticine from the toy shop as I’d looked everywhere in town for one but not found it.

Then home :). Everyone else had had lunch but I was conscious of the time so decided to get dinner on before eating. We’d gone with cooking the stew we’d intended for weekend guests with the intention of freezing the excess so I got peeling and chopping. Ady brought in his selection of Christmas music so I was singing along to carols and got all festive and decided to do the mince pie baking too. I completely forgot about eating and Ady distracted me with mulled wine too and then suggested we invite my parents over to stew as we’d not seen them since creeping out of the house last Sunday evening after they’d babysat for us.

Clearly the mulled wine on an empty stomach and carols had gone to my head because I agreed and carried on baking. I made 96 mince pies, several got eaten and the rest will last the week with another stash already in the freezer from my last bake off. The remainder of my mincemeat is reserved for mincemeat muffins as I love them.

Ady and Scarlett did some clearing of the path and putting salt down so it doesn’t freeze over again straight away. Davies used his Lego Harry Potter figures to create an animation which we all went up to see when he’d finished – very impressive :).

My parents arrived, Mum was on good form but Dad was combative and belligerant and spoiling for a fight. So we had one 🙁 He accused me of being a lazy, selfish parent, giving Davies and Scarlett a poor education and narrowing their choices in life and failing to provide them with basic skills. He had a go about our plans for next year saying we were taking stupid risks and again being selfish in dragging the kids along with us on our whim. I took most of it on the chin, accepting as I always do that our way is rather unconventional, does challenge all that my parents did for me, goes against all they hold dear and accepting that it is him speaking with love and concern for me and his grandchildren but I could not accept the lazy, selfish and neglectful parent jibe so I got upset and told him in no uncertain terms how out of order he was for that one.

I talked about the amount of effort I do put into parenting, that my choices with regard to the childrens’ education is as result of informed, researched, educated, conscious, philosophical decisions rather than some can’t be arsed attitude towards it. I said that I was prepared to take informed criticism or discussion but not cheap, ignorant accusations and asked him to explain just what opportunities I had taken away from my children with my choices, which I hastened to add were actually now their choices too.

He did back down and an even keel was restored to the evening but it was an unpleasant half hour or so. Made slightly worse from my perspective for being witnessed by Davies who was listening intently. Or was that bad? Because at bedtime Davies politely asked ‘Grandad, can I show you my survival kit I’m looking forward to taking WWOOFing with me?’ and proceeded to bring down his rucksack and kit including his tent, cookset, stool and mallet he made himself at his green woodworking course and unloaded the whole rucksack talking my Dad through all the contents: first aid kit – he explained the use of every bit and how he’d learnt to use them in Badgers, tent which he said he can put up by himself or knows how to create a shelter built from things in the woods, explained the different ways he knows how to light a fire and brought out his firesteel and tinder box to demonstrate using cotton wool soaked in vaseline then talked about how he would have gathered his fire materials first, his shovel useful for digging a hole to use as a toilet or covering a fire to ensure he left no tracks, his foil blanket used for shelter or warmth, his wristband which can be unravelled to be cordage, his cutlery set, his canteen, his chocolate which he explained is the perfect fuel as it raises your blood sugar level and is good for energy. He talked about what he could eat in the wild and refered to Forest School, Green Woodworking and Campcraft Sleepout courses explaining ‘all of which Mummy arranged for me to go on because she knew I would love it and learn lots from experts, because that is how she makes our Home Education work.’ He finished up by talking about the stone age courses in flint knapping and harpoon making, bringing out examples of his work, describing in great detail the process, talking knowledgably about cavemen, their lifestyle, hunting and toolmaking.

The whole ‘talk’ lasted about half an hour and had all of us spellbound. He was articulate, passionate, clearly very knowledgable and determined to prove himself. It was like watching a really good job interview or verbal CV being delivered. I was so very proud of him.

I suspect most of it went over my Dad’s head and even if it didn’t he would still dismiss it as ‘well he could do that and have literacy and numeracy skills and it’s not like he needs to survive in a forest anyway’ but my Mum had tears in her eyes at the end of it and so did I.

My Dad had finished his earlier rant with ‘time will tell who is right and I hope I am proved wrong and the children do well’. For me Davies did a bloody good job of proving him wrong. Love that boy.

For light relief we opened a box of Christmas crackers, all wore the hats, laughed at the jokes and had a race with the two different sized plastic frogs along the table (Me: look Dad, we’re doing physics!). The kids went to bed and we stayed up a while longer talking about renting the house out.

Stupidly late to bed.

Sunday a much needed lay in for me. We’ve had bugger all in the way of snow despite much of the rest of the country being in chaos. This morning we had a very brief flurry but the world outside our window is far from white and still in glorious technicolour.

Today we’d decided to deliver local Christmas cards so we headed off to do that including Ady knocking on the doors of a couple of old ladies he used to do gardening work for way back about 15 years ago. They are both customers of my Dad’s and one of them today told Ady she is 89 and has known David since she was 53 – wow, that’s when I was born!

We ended up quite near to Tesco with our last card so we popped in for some bits before coming home for Ady to get roast dinner on. The kids and I cuddled up and watched a couple of Christmassy dvds infront of the fire. They have been really squabbly today, a sign of Scarlett getting better but pretty unusual for them and very wearing. I threatened them with a competition to see which of them should be sold on ebay and they got on better after that ;).

Dinner was lovely, afterwards we all watched 100 Greatest Toys, which went on for hours so Ady and I both nipped off for baths. Scarlett took herself off to bed and Davies took ages to go to sleep as he was creating a storyboard for Toy Story 4 complete with colour illustrations – love his creativity and imagination, hate how it only works after dark!

Apprentice final for us and I did the huge amount of washing up created by a roast dinner. I should probably have done some wrapping up but Davies was still around at about 1130 so didn’t really have the opportunity. Scarlett’s rash has all but completely gone and hopefully a good nights sleep or two will have her back to normal.

Crap nights sleep – again. S in bed coughing in my face and sharing my pillow from the early hours. We then totally overslept and I misunderstood Ady asking what time we’d be ready for him to pick us up with what time I wanted him to wake me up so he woke me with about 15 minutes to spare before us being out of the house.

But we did it 🙂 Complete with warm clothes, most of a picnic and a cup of tea to drink on the way 🙂 We even ended up arriving early.

We were at a Traditional Victorian Christmas workshop at Weald & Downland museum. I probably should have learnt really from the breadmaking…

I think the W&D museum is an amazing, unique place. I think they bring history alive, are a fabulous venue for events and are staffed with a wealth of informed, passionate volunteer staff who want to share their knowledge and enthusiasm. Unfortunately I think it all goes rather to pot on their educational workshops. By virtue of being ‘class sized’ Home Ed groups can book them but I think they struggle to accomodate the mixed age and ability if the group and fail to take the oppportunity to create something really special. I have been at educational trips and workshops where it really works – Butser, the flint knapping one recently and others where they rise so well to the challenge of dealing with an out of the ordinary group. The W&D don’t pull this off in my opinion.

So we were split into two groups – by virtue of pissing off the organiser woman I was in the opposite group to her and sadly two of the families I’d have quite liked to be with 🙁 The kids were fine as was I as we did know most of the families in our group anyway, would just have been nice to be with specific mates.

There were two workshops so we did one each and then after lunch swapped over and did the other one. We started with Christmas card making. After a very nervous introduction speech (Scarlett afterwards: she spoke to us like babies at the beginning!) about how the Victorians introduced Christmas cards, decorations, presents, trees etc. and how the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ originated directly from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol when Scrooge says it at the end , some rather poor photocopies, of insufficient number were passed around to show the elaborate colour Christmas cards. Then they got to make their own using a large amount of coloured card, paper, glue etc. I felt a trick was missed here as having talked about how fancy, papercraft and fiddly keepsakes those early examples were they left us to it. Some examples of 3d, pop up or moving parts would have been good, as would some actual guidance during the session where the two girls leading it just stood back smiling rather vacantly as everyone just got on with it.

Scarlett wasn’t really into it and did do some slapping glue on stuff and made a half hearted attempt to create a cut out snowflake before deciding she’d rather drink Lucozade but Davies made two fab cards – one each for Ady and I complete with pop up bits, humour and stacks of Davies-ness. MUSt do that post about where the kids are at.

Then it was lunchtime. I wandered over to get a cup of tea and the kids came with me. I sat and chatted to Lucy and Scarlett begged 50p for duck food from the shop, returning to people’s amusement carrying a bloody great big Aylesbury duck in her arms. She’s like a Duck Whisperer.
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An hour was far too long for lunch really given the weather was horrid so no one was up for wandering around outside. I got Scarlett a hot chocolate to warm her up from duck whispering and then we started our second workshop – Christmas decorations. This was the one I was most looking forward to thinking we’d learn something and get to bring something home too. It turned out we were making a collaborative thing to leave there though. The woodsman had built a tree shaped frame and gathered some ivy, we walked up to the woods where he had already cut down some holly and brought it back down then threaded it in to the frame to create a Christmas tree from holly and ivy. D&S both joined in and both said they enjoyed it butreally it was quite an expensive workshop for very little in the way of learning, experience or something new and different.

But we all got something from it – Davies made some fab cards, Scarlett cuddled a duck, I got to catch up with a couple of friends and we were all reminded that actually the reason we rarely do these workshops which I eye up on local lists and facebook groups and wonder if we are massively missing out on stuff by not attending is that they generally have little to offer us. Smugness for under £20 😉

Ady collected us and dropped us home. I chopped wood, made pancakes for tea, refereed a dispute about what to watch on TV – Scarlett was allowed the documentary on a man who played surrogate parent to an orphaned polar bear in exchange for an episode of Simpsons later for Davies, followed by several chapters of Mr Stink read by me before bed.

Scarlett shocked us by being asleep pre- 9 pm, Davies was still awake creating caricatures of Ady and I in his sketch book.

Ady and I watched Good Life Christmas special and I had a rant about What Christmas Is Really About (special non religious version not sponsored by Tescos either!).

Work for me this morning. I had coughed lots last night so was suffering a sore throat and coughed more at work which developed into a headache but a couple of painkillers saw it off in the afternoon.

Work was fine, all of the people I care about there have secured new job roles in the restructuring and infact I think most of them have actually been promoted so I am pleased and relieved for them. The knock on changes at branch level clearly won’t affect me as I’ll be gone anyway but actually I think the changes are all positive ones.

Back at home Ady and the kids had been out and done some store visits then spent some time tidying up ready for the letting agent visits. When I got in Ady headed off, I had some lunch and inbetween and around letting agent visits I snuggled on the sofa with the kids. I’ve blogged about the letting agents in the relevant place but they were promising and heartening visits so hopefully the last hurdle will be a not too big and scary one.

I made some dried orange slices to finish decorating the tree, fed the kids and spent some time planning a design and cutting out material for a bag for Maisie for Christmas and making about half of it. Ady arrived home and I read the kids a couple of chapters of Mr Stink by David Walliams before bed.

Ady did dinner, I had a nice long bath and we watched The Apprentice and then I got engrossed in Falling Down which I think Ady and I saw at the cinema years and years ago. All of which means I am far later to bed than I planned.

which is handy really, self marinading and quite possibly why it’s getting fat, it’s all bloated with too much chardonnay.

Missed blogging last night so here’s a special bonus two day catch up edition 🙂

Monday we all had a bit of a lay in and then headed over to Tasha’s. The twin obstacles of the car and illness had meant we’d cancelled seeing them twice last week. We had a lovely few hours round there laughing, chatting, playing and bitching – none of us did all of those things, I’ll let you work out who did which ;).

I wanted to get home before dark to put the chickens away and chop some firewood but Ady was already home and had the fire lit. Davies and Scarlett put the chickens away and I made them some tea. Ady was feeling rough – I’m hoping that is all four of us having now had the same bug rather than different ones circling between us.

I nipped out to get some bits for our dinner and came back to usher childrent to bed. They have had so many late nights in the last few weeks I have had them in bed by about 7 for the last two nights. They are not necessarily asleep much before about 10 but it’s better than bed at 9 and still awake at midnight.

All of this meant I had dinner on the table by about 8pm and therefore peaked rather early with my wine. Ady and I watched River Cottage and then he went off to bed, leaving me free to be silly on the internet before going to bed fairly early myself.

Tuesday Should have been last swimming lesson for the kids but we ascertained fairly early in the day that neither was really up for it. I decided to bite the bullet with a few things and had a productive morning; I made pizza dough as that was Davies’ request for dinner, dealt with several loads of laundry, chopped enough firewood for today and tomorrow, made a huge batch of mincemeat – I’m now trying to use up stuff in cupboards. I chatted to the kids about getting rid of the chickens and made some enquiries about that in various places – it’s our plan for 3 hens to go permanently to LovelyEm’s and the rest to be rehomed somewhere that we can potentially get them back from if we come home. I have been wondering about seeing if our tennant would like to keep them on as they are pretty low maintenance but that will need looking into nearer the time and I’d like to have a plan b in place already.

So then I made a couple of phonecalls to letting agents and have two different ones coming round tomorrow afternoon. This is the last big hurdle of the whole plan for next year and the one we have least control over. It is time sensitive as Ady can’t really hand his notice in until we have a tenant lined up and he needs to hand his notice in at the end of January if he wants to leave at the end of February so we can go at the beginning of March. Eek, it’s all very close now.

We watched various TV including lots of Deadly 60 stuff. Davies played with geomags and Scarlett did some of the crafty things she was given for her birthday at camp. I decided they both needed a bath so Scarlett had one before dinner and Davies had one after dinner. To persuade Scarlett I ran her a really bubbly bath and lit some candles in there – not at all sure I should be encouraging such diva-like tastes in my eight year old but she won’t be getting the chance for many such experiences next year so she may as well enjoy it now.

Ady arrived home, still feeling and looking pretty rough 🙁 I brushed Tarly’s hair, the kids ate and then Davies had a bath while Tarly and I looked at Playmobil online then the kids went off to bed early again.

I cooked dinner which Ady just about ate before heading off to bed himself. I’ve watched a documentary following an American couple and their children in Las Vegas for four years which was very sad and quite compelling watching. It sort of ended happily but suspect they are the sort of people there simply are no happy ever after endings for. Made me feel very priviledged to be born where and when I was and have the choices I do available to me.

And I’ve failed to mention the stuff I wanted to about the kids but that will have to wait for another day.

Scarlett woke much brighter yesterday morning and had pancakes for breakfast which was promising as she’d only eaten a carrot on Saturday and then coughed until she vomited that back up anyway 🙁

I had a bit of a tantrum about the house being a tip – this week coming we *really* need to get the house on the rental market one way or another and it just feels like the walls are closing in in every room with clutter reappearing on every surface that’s been cleared. I think Christmas decorations make rooms seems smaller anyway and despite having gone for a very minimalist look this year of just the tree and some lights around the house advent calendars and general ‘stuff’ was really pissing me off. So having been ranted at about it the other three scattered into different corners and did some getting rid of stuff and putting it in proper places, the cheapo advent calendars we bought the kids at camp got opened and chucked out, the bookcase shelves got cleared and it all feels more like people live here rather than just come in to strew stuff about the place.

Ady cooked a small roast lunch which we all ate at about 2pm, meals seem to have been all over the place last week with lots of late nights, illness and birthdays so it was nice to be sitting down together chatting and eating, even if most people were coughing and sniffling 😉

Ady and Davies played a game of chess, I spent some time working on Zone 3 hosts ready to send a speculative email to them after Christmas. We all got sucked into watching some Kirstie’s Home Made Christmas – I love shows like that, makes me feel all inspired to make stuff although it usually ends in just buying stuff and then putting it on a shelf 😆

My parents were having Davies and Scarlett at their house for the evening. Ady does this thing with them where he always suggests they go there rather than them coming here when they (rarely) babysit and my Mum always looks horrified as though this might be the chance we’ve been waiting for ten years for to ring from an airport and say ‘we’re off to Rio, back in 2 weeks or so!’. This time she called his bluff, although she had an ulterior motive of wanting us to come and see their new wood burner which doesn’t seem to be working properly.

So we headed over there, kids with a huge bag of stuff each to keep them busy and admired the wood burner while agreeing that no, it doesn’t seem to be working. Dad has an air rifle they are loaning us for next year so Ady looked at that and the kids were all in awe of it. We’d gone over early and decided to leave early so we stood a better chance of finding a parking space or giving ourselves time to park in a slightly further away carpark that is hugely cheaper.

We arrived in Brighton a full hour before the show started and after one drive around the block found a parking space a couple of roads away from the theatre with just 90 minutes before you didn’t have to pay anymore it was just £3.00 for a ticket til Monday morning. A result 🙂 the NCP 24 hour carpark directly opposite cost £20 for over 4 hours! 😯

We had a cup of tea and coffee in the theatre bar – that was fairly priced although actually the alcohol wasn’t too pricey but I’d got a water bottle filled with wine from home, I get really arsey about paying more for a glass than I do for a bottle! We took our seats and amused ourselves by choosing random people far enough away to not see clearly and waving madly at them to see if they would wave back. No one did but several people looked really uncomfortable about not doing so just in case they were the person we were waving at and hadn’t recognised us 😆 We don’t get out much 😉

The show was really good. Robin Ince was excellent, Richard Herring was slightly disappointing as the first act – I normally love him and have seen him live twice before and found him excellent but he did a bit of a routine I have heard before and then finished with ‘now I have to rush off to London’. He’s done so much TV work this year I fear he is heading more in that direction and his live act suffered as a result (get me with the comic crit ;)). Simon Singh was very good although I was laughing at bits no one else seemed to be. He finished by cutting off his own powerpoint slightly early – Ady and I were entertained by both turning to each other and whispering ‘God did that’ at the same time 😆

There were several singer songwriters which is a type of comedy I really enjoy if done well – think Victoria Wood 😉 including Gavin Osborne, Frisky & Mannish (really liked them, would love to see their whole show), various stand ups and several science-types who did their educatin’ in an entertaining manner. Particularly loved the rapper – Baba Brinkman, could actually feel a crush developing on him as he did his act, particularly when he started talking with a very sexy accent 😳

The show closed with Dara O’Briain who is excellent, would love to see him do a whole live show too and over-ran hugely, from ten minutes behind at the interval to over half an hour behind by the end. Really enjoyed it though, loved the ecclectic mix of acts.

We drove back to my parents marvelling at the moon which was hanging very low and orange in the sky, Scarlett had fallen asleep on their sofa and took a bit of rousing but we were back home again with them in bed just after 11pm. They said this morning they had had a good evening there.

Ady and I had cheese toasties and then I stayed up far too late catching up online and skim-watching X Factor on itvplayer.

I have that early parenting feeling of broken nights and too much time sat on a sofa under a child.

After a crap night the night before last Scarlett appeared in our room not long after I’d gone to bed and spent the night with me while Ady disappeared downstairs with his pilllow. I feel he got the better deal – I had a talkative delirious child who was using my pillow. At around 5am she roused with a plaintive ‘Mumma? MUMMA?’ which jolted me awak again, only to ask ‘can you marry your mummy?’ presumably following on from a conversation on Wednesday about inbreeding and why people shouldn’t mate with close blood relatives. My responses was a very definite NO, particularly if said Mummy had been woken at 5am having had pretty much no sleep, as marriage proposals go it was a fairly poor one, pretty much doomed to failure…

She woke again at what I thought was 7am – Ady’s on-the-hour phone alarm had gone off. I stood with her as she sobbed over coughing up more flem and Ady appeared saying ‘come downstairs with me now Scarlett…’ which had me thinking ‘ah, an hour of sleep before my alarm goes off at 8am’ and then my alarm went off because it was infact 8am. Crap 🙁

So off to work for me woolly headed and foggy. Ady dropped me off at work and then went to collect my car later. It is now roadworthy and MOT’d (and we are £120 the poorer) and is booked back in for the end of next week when we’ve been paid to have the rest of the work done on it.

Scarlett has spent the day under a blanket on the sofa, dozing lots, eating virtually nothing but drinking plenty of water. Davies is better and Ady is somewhere in the throes of it with a cough which will probably last til 2011.

Work was fine – I was in a bit of a daze anyway. A very funny moment when James crept up behind me and tickled me and then realised what he’d done and blushed and was utterly horrified apologising over and over again about inappropriate behaviour. It was so funny. I tried to get Ady to go back into the library later and ask him ‘you then one that tickled my wife?’ but he said he wouldn’t have been able to do it straight-faced.

Ady and the kids picked me up and dropped me off outside the garage to bring my car home. We had a quiet afternoon with me mostly under a sleeping Scarlett on the sofa – we may not be betrothed but we’re still close ;). We watched Monsters Vs Aliens as Ady has never seen it, I checked my emails and we’ve already had our first yes from my second round of emails for Zone 2 WWOOF hosts :).

Davies and I went along to Tesco for some food supplies and then came back and the kids went to bed. S is very restless and I’ve been in to her several times – suspect we’re in for another broken night – just as well sleep is for wusses 😉

Don’t phone, it’s just for fun.

After a late and boozy night last night I had a really crappy nights sleep but had to be up earlyish to get my car to it’s MOT for 9am. Ady had stayed home to follow me there and bring me home again – it’s about a half hour walk from here. The kids were barely up and out of bed so we left them here and went to drop my car off. We also called into the council office which is on the same industrial estate to hand back our alllotment key and get our £10 deposit back.

Back at home I rang my parents hoping to get my Dad and ask him to take me back to collect my car later but got my Mum instead who was day off from work today. She offered to drop me at the garage and arranged to come over an hour later. In the meantime the garage rang to say the car had failed it’s MOT and needed new brake pads to get through that at just over £100 (including test charge) but rather urgently needs various other work totally over £400. Mum arrived in the middle of this.

Muy opinion is that we don’t really have £400 right now to spend on a car which is about to be declared SORN, have it’s insurance cancelled and be stored off road for a year but Sensible People have overruled me with talk of retaining vehicular security and other such stuff and they are very likely right so we’ve authorised the go ahead on the MOT necessary work and will book it in for the rest after pay day.

So the car is there til tomorrow and Mum ended up staying for lunch, which she went to the shop to get bread for and Ady appeared home to join us for. We discussed Christmas plans and had a very nice few hours with the children coughing and blowing their noses by way of punctuation marks throughout.

The kids played with Playmobile and after Mum had gone Davies did some Xboxing. We had lots of cuddling on the sofa and having kept the fire burning all day it was cosy and Scarlett did several rounds of cooking chestnuts and sharing them out :). I ♥ winter 🙂

Ady was lateish home having joined work colleagues for their seasonal festive drinks so it was nearly 8pm when he got back. Kids went to bed , I made dinner and ate around playing with friendfeed.

Really must blog about cavity wall insulation tomorrow but I have to be up in the morning for work. I know, wuss 😉

may well come and flesh it out later but today involved work, meal out with work colleages, long talks about whether life is all over by the time you are 40 (with someone who wasn’t even born when I bought the scarf I was wearing this evening). Kids and Ady went to panto. Both children have very sore noses and patches on a cheek where they wipe snot, everyone including me has very annoying coughs. I need to go to bed as my car is being MOTd at 9am. Remember when all my blogopsts looked like this?

I was woken to the sound of squabbling offspring and a sobbing, stomping up the stairs loser in the battle. Davies. Who is pretty much always the loser in a head to head battle between them as she uses the illegal force of violence whereas he practically never does. He got the half an hour snuggled in bed with me chatting though which despite his advancing years is still an attractive option – oh how I feel those time slipping away. Those of you with children tiddly enough to still giggle when you do that hand right up in the air whooshing towards them with a tickle enjoy it please and give your little darling a tickle from me next time too. Might have to persuade Ady to enjoy such things – we had a conversation in bed last night with both of us being astonished at how old we are and how old our children are and how we *still* don’t feel at all like proper grown ups!

Davies and I had a chat about friends, about feelings for friends and then a very indulgent and gossipy session about what he thought of all the adults and children at camp last week 😉 The kids perspective on everyone is very interesting…

Chickens out, firewood split, breakfast sorted and tea made. Today I wanted to get Christmas cards written so I did that, Davies watched films – today we had Nightmare Before Christmas, Indiana Jones and at least one other, along with some documentaries – Davies caught some of the ‘after the humans’ one I’d watched a while back and thought was excellent.

Scarlett played with her playmobile – she has a large amount of birthday cash which I think she will spend on bolstering her stash of Playmobile – animal related only of course ;).

Scarlett wanted to do her duck moulds – it was her suggestion to get some plaster of paris moulds in the shape of ducks for her birthday and I couple of goes on ebay at getting some ending up with a very small and a very large version of latex moulds for cement garden ornaments. Ady had got some plaster from B&Q so we mixed it up and filled the moulds only to discover the frame we thought would work (built up from giant jengo pieces) didn’t work at all. So there we were, in sub zero temperatures, with a very heavy plaster filled duck mould trying to hatch a plan. We went for wedging it in the log box and calling it a trial run!

Back inside for warmth, lunch and getting some stewing steak cooking and some rough puff pastry made and in the fridge chilling ready for our dinner later.

The afternoon passed pretty quick with the moulds being unveiled to show that yes, they will work really well once we sort out a support (the instructions recommend sand so we need to get a bucket to fill with it) and a mad dash to gather Badger uniforms.

Tea for children and then Ady arrived home, we all got changed and headed out to Badgers. I got a small Christmas present from Julie and a card thanking me for everything this year and headed off to gather various bits and pieces of Badgers work to put on display. I over heard a boy and his Dad talking with the Dad trying to persuade the boy to join in and came out to see S and his Dad. S and his sister (also S) have had a really rough year as their Mum is an alcoholic and has split up from their Dad, things have gotten quite messy and she currently has very limited access to the children which has had (understandably) a massive impact on them. I have had both S & S in my group this term and despite the odd burst of challenging behaviour found them really lovely kids who are struggling and needing love and support – which is why I am not the right person to do this role as I am crap at distancing myself and remaining professional.

So I had a chat with S and whilst I didn’t quite persuade him to take part in presentation night I did get him feeling better about it all and suspect I could have got him to be in it had we not had a crisis of misplacing all our written prompts for our part of presentation night. A quick ‘Hungry Badger huddle’ and we shot upstairs to quickly write down notes and run through what we were saying before going and presenting it.

I was hugely touched to have lots of well wishes from adults and children and realised I had made an impact on even the most tricky children. Julie gave a bit of a speech about how I was a breath of fresh air, had come along with a very different approach and perspective and taught them all something and the Badgers seemed genuinely sorry to see me go. It was not really my thing but I think I made the best of it.

Davies was presented with his SuperBadger award – I went and looked out the post from his very first Badger meeting back in March 2006. It’s been a really good organisation for Davies – he has learnt loads, experienced lots of different people, attended camp (shudder!) and whilst not particularly made special friends at least been exposed to a different set of people. I’m really proud of him 🙂

Scarlett got her Gold Badger paw, meaning she has achiveved 9 badges and been there for 3 full years. She still has time to get her Super Badger if she goes back if we come home again. She has taken slightly less from the whole thing I would say, particularly as one of the 3 years has been spent with me there but I suspect she has taught Julie a few things ;). Lots of hugs and well wishes all round, my Mum had come along to see the presentation and I hope was pleased to see us all in action. I promised to stay in touch with Julie so she can feed back to the Badgers how we are all doing.

Back at home I read some Mr Gum and then went for a bath while the kids watched the Wallace and Gromit inventions thing and then Jimmy’s food factory.

The kids went to bed, I finished cooking our dinner and we ate watching The Apprentice. Tomorrow I am back to work.

Nothing to get up for this morning – bliss 🙂

Ady’s friend Tom had given us a real Christmas tree (via his job, he works for the company who supply Homebase so we got a sample one, it’s a bit bottom heavy and could probably do with a trim but it’s free and smells gorgeous) so Ady had brought it in and stuck it in a bucket of water. It was still all closed up from the cold outside and being in a net so needed to relax into the warmth of the room before decorating.

Both Davies and Scarlett are still suffering Camp Cold – Scarlett is at coughing and looking a bit peaky stage, Davies is still in full on feeling crap and needing to lie about on the sofa so we’d decided very early on we wouldn’t bother with swimming today meaning there was no need to leave the house.

I spent some time finishing off some online stuff with the intention of clearing my email inbox, almost there :).

Davies was having a dvd day – he watched Toy Story 3, Flushed Away, How to train your dragon and various dvd extras. Scarlett played with her playmobile stuff and I went off to do some festive baking. I started with gingerbread mix and then stuck some shortbread mix in. I’d not been thinking though as I’d put the shortbread mix on to make some basic biscuits and picked the recipe I use to add stuff like lavender to which makes a lovely pressed into the tin shortbread but is no good for rolling out for biscuits.

Both the children wandered in whilst I was doing it and both stopped to help for a while, cutting out stuff or brushing with glaze before wandering back out again. Every year I use the same gingerbread recipe and am surprised by how many biscuits it makes! This year it did all the biscuits for a nativity cookie cutter set I had and several trays of hearts, stars and plenty of cut out biscuits to stick boiled sweets in the middle of to make stained glass window biscuits.

I used the mistake shortbread to make a shortbread round and then made several batches of pastry to make 5 dozen mincepies which used up all of my home made mincemeat reserves. I have ingredients for more and want to make some mincemeat muffins though so might try and do that tomorrow. I made some icing and gave Davies and Scarlett the biscuits, a bowl of icing and another of sprinkles and set them to task on decorating them while I did the nativity – it needs some writing icing to finish it of nicely though.

While the mince pies were cooking I split loads of firewood, made some late lunch for the kids and then came and sat down with them infront of the fire.

We’ve had lots of cuddling up, lots of just enjoying being in a house, with a fire and a sofa and a TV set :). Storing up comfort points for next year when we’ll be exchanging them for adventure points instead ;).

I spent some time creating a ‘best of 2010’ set on flickr in preparation for my round up of the year post and then got all soppy about what a fab life we have and how wonderful our friend are, what a great path we’ve chosen, how lucky our children are to be chasing so many of their dreams and being taken so seriously. I know this has been a really testing year for many of our friends and I have certainly shed many, many tears for their troubles but despite that I look back over a year filled with many happy times too.

Ady came home and we sorted through a loft space that has our Christmas decorations. This year we’ve decided on a very old fashioned look with the tree containing edible decorations (home made biscuits and candy canes) and baubles made from old recycled Christmas cards. We’re leaving the tinsel in the box and have just strung up various Christmas lights around the house and will have lots of candles. In small part this fits with our minimalistic look and the hope of having some prospective tennants come and look at the house but mostly it fits well with the Christmas we will have this year – lower impact, made by us with little waste – a far cry for us from Christmasses past.

Am in the middle of the usual slushy birthday post which will appear in the side bar at some point. But to the actual day…

Ady heard Davies get up in the night and go downstairs, he listened out assuming he had gone to get a drink but when he didn’t come back up Ady got up and went to check he was okay. He found him in Scarlett’s bedroom, gently shaking her awake saying ‘Scarlett, it’s your birthday, wake up!’. He stopped him and guided him back to bed as it was 3am!!!! 😯

I was woken by both Davies and Scarlett at the rather more sociable hour of 730am. Along with the trip yesterday and money in the gift shop we had got her a digital photoframe with a couple of cards – one I had already put photos on for her, the other one we sat and filled together this afternoon. She loves the frame and has gone to sleep tonight watching it flick through all her favourite pets, friends, day trips and holidays – perfect gift for her really and nice and small to bring along containing her favourite photos with us next year :). We also gave her a fishing rod, two different sized latex duck shaped moulds so she can make models of her beloved Sploosh and Lucky and a couple of Playmobile sets from Davies – a chicken coop and a cat scratching post with several cats. Davies got Toy Story 3 on dvd.

She was really pleased with all of this and spent time after opening each thing to fully explore it before moving onto the next gift. I’d promised whatever she wanted for all meals today and her breakfast choice was pancakes so I needed to walk round to the shop for eggs. Scarlett came with me and as we walked up the glittering pavements hand in hand with dragon breath in the cold air I marvelled at where those eight years had gone. Later the same day I had her I felt the urge to get out of the house all alone so had nipped along to Sainsburys while she slept, leaving both the children with Ady. I was gone less than half an hour and I remember standing in the queue thinking ‘I gave birth to a baby this morning!’. Being in a queue with her eight years later all big and chatty and lovely is just amazing really.

Back at home I made pancakes, lit a fire and had a quick phonecall with Julie to arrange for them to come over to us for a couple of hours. We watched TS3 and the kids played with playmobil while I made a cake. Scarlett wanted a victoria sponge with Sploosh and Lucky on the top. Except my car won’t start and I had no blue food colouring, no black food colouring and no icing to make such things with. Instead I made a double layer sponge, put it together with green buttercream, smeared more over the top and created a duck shaped stencil with a piece of paper then sprinkled icing sugar through to make Lucky and cocoa powder to make Sploosh. It passed muster later 🙂

Julie & co arrived and we had a nice catch up with each other – it’s a couple of years since they were last here. I showed Julie the van and we did candle blowing and cake eating.

They left and Davies started to feel rough so he curled up to watch more TS3 while Tarly and I looked at photos and she had a pile of cinnamon french toast – her late lunch food request. Ady arrived home bringing a Christmas tree and plaster so we can cast some ducks tomorrow.

We all got ready and drove to the Harvester to meet Mum, Dad and Frazer who pulled up at the same time as us. Scarlett got yet more cash (she now has over £100 which she says she wants to bring WOOFing with us rather than spend – I have a horrible feeling she intends buying an animal with it… 😉

The meal was the usual Harvester fayre, acceptable and OK. Davies and I played boxes on his kids activity sheet thing and Dad showed Tarly how to play it too, then I got bored and set up 10 pencil bowling standing pencils up on their ends and knocking them down with an empty butter pat container. Dad was the best scoring several strikes and scores.

Scarlett told the waitress it was her birthday earning her a sparkler in her jelly and ice cream 🙂 Davies did really well to last the night I think as he was looking pretty ropey but adamant he didn’t want to spoil her birthday. We came home for coffee and cake and Davies went up to bed and was asleep really quickly. Scarlett showed Mum and Dad her photo frame before they left and then I sat with Tarly in her room for a bit looking at her pictures with her.

Love that girl, love being her Mumma, having her as my crazy daughter, celebrating her eight circles of the sun with love, laugher, animal related stuff and many cuddles.
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Saturday started slowly as we were all still in post camp recovery. Scarlett and I are suffering from Camp Cough, Davies seems to be going down with it and Ady has thus far escaped but will probably be next.

Heavy rain overnight had washed away pretty much all the snow much to the kids disappointment. Our original plan for the day had been Wildlife Explorers in the morning folllowed by a visit to an armoury in Chichester in the afternoon to look at guns and knives as weapons seem to be the gift of choice for all of us this Christmas.

Wildlife Explorers had been cancelled though so we had a lazing about morning and were slack to get going really. We’d realised Christmas shopping would be starting in earnest everywhere so actually fighting our way into Chi would be silly.

The other three had a game of Monopoly and then Scarlett had a wobbly moment. Not at all sure what brought it on, well aside from being very tired and not 100% well and feeling that she is hurtling further away from having once been my little tiny baby. So she required some serious cuddling and reassurance and her and I looked through some very early photo albums and her baby books.

Scarlett loves looking at photos from times gone by which means Ady has been saying for a while that a digital photo frame would be a good gift for her. Yesterday we put it to her and she adored the idea.

So after a quick look at a garden centre which might have had knives but didn’t we went to Sainsburys and then Asda to get a few bits including a digital photoframe for her.

Back at home I was adamant they would have an early night so they had early dinner, bedtime story (we’re reading the latest Mr Gum) and then they were in bed and sure enough asleep at a very respectable hour.

I was on track to blog the week when the phone rang and it was my friend Heather from NZ. I worked with her some 13 years ago and we really hit it off, met her husband when I used to drop her home on a Friday after work and pop in for a glass of wine and then Ady met them too and we all became firm friends. They have a daughter 4 years older than Davies and were really good friends to us in the early days of having a baby. Within a year of us moving to Manchester they moved to NZ (for Heather it was moving home) and aside from a brief visit from Derek when he came home for his dad’s funeral we’ve not seen them in the 8 years since they left. We were really good at staying in touch but it slipped to an annual Christmas phonecall and in the last 2 or 3 years has slipped to nothing. I think of them often, they crossed my mind for several reasons last week while we were away so I was thrilled to hear from them.

Derek is on facebook and had been searching for me as well as googling me – quite reassured they didn’t find me til about page 4 and that was an old TV interview Davies and I did for Miranda. So we had a very happy hour catching up on all sorts of news and have since exchanged a flurry of emailed pictures. Made me feel most warm and fuzzy but did prevent me from blogging and then I realised just how late it was and just how early I needed to be up today so I went to bed.

Sunday Today was the day for Scarlett’s birthday treat. Both children have had a couple of big hiring a hall birthday parties (Davies 6 Wallace & Gromit, 7 Doctor Who. Scarlett 4 Princess Party, 5 disco) and the last 3 years have had a celebration at camp – for Davies this has been in a field at the Sustainability Centre, for Scarlett at Christmas Camp. I like the idea of an experience as a present, both to cement memories of a special day and because it’s less stuff in the house – even more important this year while we are shedding stuff. Davies’ Campcraft Sleepout was a really good gift for him and I wanted to find something equally as good for Scarlett. We spent ages researching, emailing and ringing places to try and get something suitable organised along her favourite theme – animals. Eventually after much deliberation she decided she’d like to just have a day trip to the zoo, the day before her birthday so Ady could come along too.

The zoo was one I’d heard about last summer from a friend of a friend and earmarked as somewhere to think about taking Tarly and it turns out is featured on one of her most favourite TV shows – Roar. Further research showed a simple day trip with an upgrade to the safari would be ideal for her so we traded in some Tesco vouchers and planned to go today to Port Lympne – chosen the day before her birthday so Ady could come along too.

I’d checked their website and it said they were open every day except Christmas Day and had some very up to date information about the gorillas being given advent day themed enrichment activities so it wasn’t until we pulled into the car park that it occured to me they might not actually be open… It had been a longer drive than I’d expected and we’d driven through some really heavy snow with the M25 the quietest I have ever seen it.

We walked in and I asked the very friendly women in the shop if we were the only people at the zoo, they answered no, we were numbers 5,6,7 and 8! 😆 We booked onto the 11am safari (which they radioed ahead and had not quite left so waited for us) and dashed down to join the other 4 people on board the jeep.

Port Lympne is very much about the conservation and protection of animals. They go to great lengths to remind you they are ‘not a zoo’ but are a ‘wild animal park’, with animals given as close to their natural environment as possible to live and roam in. This means they are not on show as such and there is no guarantee you will actually see everything, more than you are being invited for a peek into the animals homes and if you are lucky you may catch a glimpse of them. I really like this, it removes the aspect of zoos that I am always rather uncomfortable with that these animals have been put on show for my entertainment.

So first the safari – an open sided jeep on very steep landscapes going through heavy clunky gates and fences felt really quite authentic. The recorded commentary was a bit patchy – not sure if that was how it’s supposed to be, a result of the weather or just in line with the slightly tatty feel of the place generally. The guy driving the jeep did the odd bit of pointing stuff out but he had this really raspy voice and a dodgy London accent that made him sound like he was trying to sell us the animals at knock down prices rather than telling us about them 😆

We went ‘across the plains of Africa’ and saw various grazing animals; rhinos, all sorts of antelope and deer, zebras, ostrich and then had to stop for giraffes to cross infront of us.
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We stopped at a gift shop to look at meerkats, a few reptiles and spiders in a warm room and presumably to spend some cash ;). We obliged by buying tea, coffee and hot chocolate (which Ady cunningly topped up with some brandy he’d sneaked into the rucksack for him and I )which warmed us up for the second leg of the safari. The landscape is beautiful with panoramic views over the channel and the sweeping grass with animals roaming. It was bitterly cold and none of us could feel our toes or fingers despite gloves, socks and hats but worth it as we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

We stopped then for lunch and were the only people in the restuarant – it was pretty pricey but we’d bought some stuff to supplement it and just needed some warm food to top up our reserves. Once we could feel our fingers and toes again we set back off, keen to see as much as possible. This time we were on foot so saw a different perspective to being on the jeep, walked round different parts and of course kept that bit warmer for being on the move.

We started at ‘Palace of the Apes’ where we were delighted with the gorilla that came rushing over to clap and snap his fingers at us. We did it back and he looked qiute chuffed back :). We stopped at Scarlett’s request to take pictures using the face cut outs – oh so flattering 😉

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We moved on to the small cats – many I’d never heard of but most Scarlett seemed to know – she’d really impressed me earlier with knowing about various endangered animals and being really excited to see przewalskis horses and telling me about how they are in her endangered animals dictionary. She was right too, she showed me this morning :).

We arrived in time to see a keeper feeding some lynx and fishing cats their dead rabbits so watched as they very efficiently broke all the bones and ripped out the insides. Then we moved on to the big cats, past an asiatic dog which looked like a giant alsatian sized fox, very pretty. The lions were barbary lions, extinct in the wild for nearly 100 years but doing really well there. They are HUGE! The pride were very active doing lots of pacing and then suddenly all on the alert as though they had collectively spotted some prey. We spent ages trying to figure out what they had seen and then several minutes later a jeep arrived with their food. We watched the keepers close them into a smaller area and then clean out their enclosure before hiding food in footballs and around the area for their enrichment / feeding time. A bengal tiger was in the next area and was very beautiful – tigers are my favourite animal (closely followed by penguins). The pictures are a bit rubbish as they have the fence so prominently in them but that shows how very close we were, just about four feet away from the animals for much of the time.

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We then started to walk back up to the top, passing elephants, rhinos, some bush dogs (very cute), red river hogs, cheetahs, snow leopards – their eyes looked amazing when we took pictures with flash on

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We finished at a pair of lions who had two cubs. The cubs were away as it was starting to get dark but the lion and lioness did some prowling around and some roaring which is always very impressive – I remember the first time I heard a tiger roar at a zoo, it felt like an earthquake!

Finally to the gift shop 🙂 I’d said Scarlett could have £20 to spend in the shop as part of her birthday present so she could remember the day. I was so very proud of her for not choosing the biggest soft toy she could get for the money and for being really logical in her choices. She spent quite a while looking at the books but she already has a pretty comprehensive library of wild animal books so discounted them, she looked at ornaments but said they wouldn’t be great for next year. I showed her the adopt an animal packages – they had two different ones, one for £10 and one for £25. Ady was a bit horrified but I was really proud of her for going for a much smaller token for herself and donating her money to animals. She went for a £10 one for a tiger and has a very cute small soft toy tiger and a certificate to print off online. She also bought a tiger notepad and a tiger pen and has saved the rest of her £20.

It was her dream day really – loads of animals, in a place she felt really happy seeing them, she spent her money on helping them 🙂
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We sang Christmas songs all the way home, food and bed for very tired children for Scarlett as the last time as a seven year old.

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Sunday we were all up, car packed, rooms rearranged for Dad to come in and decorate and in the car before 10am :). The journey was smooth and straightforward all the way with no stops at all until we reached Okehampton other than a quick dash into the Sainsburys at Bournmouth for tissues as no one seemed to have brought any and Scarlett – one of several people who seemed to bring a Camp Cold with them – had failed to bring any with her. I also picked up sugar, a forgotten essential for mulled wine and a Christmas cd as we didn’t have any Christmas music in the car and I felt like we should be listening to some. The Christmas cd was one of those ‘sounds like’ types though where the original artist was not the one singing the song so Ady took it back and despite my suggestion he buy a different one he just got a refund.

We wildlife spotted all the way, hoping for deer but not seeing any other than the five legged stone one along the way. We did see buzzards, kestrels, loads of other birds and a fox slinking along the side of a field of sheep.

Once at Okehampton we had nearly an hour to kill before we were allowed in the hostel. We’d driven through all sorts of weather conditions from no snow at all at home to the odd pocket of loads of snow in places. Okehampton had a dusting that had frozen so it looked very pretty and festive but was more ice than snow. We parked at the Co Op and I dashed in for some sandwiches which we ate in the car before heading to the hostel.

The manager greeted us with the news that the previous group had not actually exited the building yet. They were a religious gathering who wanted to have one last shared prayer before they left. So he made us a tea and a coffee and we sat and had a chat in the dining room with him while the cleaners finished tidying and the group said their prayers. He showed us round, explained the various bits of kitchen kit and then showed us the rooms which have been quite substantially upgraded since we were there back in 2005 and many are now en suite (the 2 and 4 bed at least, none of the 6 bed are). New flooring has been laid and new lighting in the lounge – we didn’t really like the new lighting actually as it made it too light of an evening so we took some lightbulbs out in the end to reduce the glare a bit. The disco lights were cool :).

Paul the hostel manager left us to it and we went round armed with white tac from the pound shop and our door signs to allocate rooms. I thought that took a lot of doing but actually removing the bloody white tac at the end of the week was probably harder work ;).

We got jacket potatoes in the oven, mulled wine in the soup tureen and first arrivers were with us – Kirsty & James, swiftly followed by Helen & Chris. I’ve lost track of who else arrived in which order other than of course Stella came very last over half way through the week.

Everyone else gradually arrived, rooms got filled with people, the jacket potatoes actually cooked and we sorted out toppings of cheese, beans, tuna and set up the servery.

We ate, we cleared up, we had cake, we drank tea, we drank wine, we played games, we knitted, we chatted, we stayed up far too late. I’m guessing you can guess who did which from that list ;).

Monday I got up far earlier than I’d have liked given the lateness of the night before as the big food shop for the week was being delivered between 9 and 11am. The only supermarket which would deliver to a business address was Tesco so I’d gone with that as we’d have not fitted a whole weeks worth of food shopping for 60 people in our car, I didn’t really fancy doing it in real life anyway – it would have been many, many trolleyfulls! We’d debated getting it delivered on Sunday but the window was 2-4pm on Sunday so too early, also we knew there would be more people around to help on Monday morning!

I was getting twitchy as the time moved towards 11am but it arrived just after. I later got a text message to tell me the shopping would be late (several hours after it had actually arrived) and when we got home yesterday there was a message on our landline answerphone to apologise for it being late – I’m guessing they did everything to avoid talking to an actual person! 😆

It was lots and lots of shopping, but people swung into action, we opened the fire exit direct into the kitchen and it was unloaded and put away in minutes :).

I realised we were missing a couple of necessary items and also wanted to get something else for my secret santa and gloves for all four of us. We *never* manage to keep gloves from winter to winter so I always end up buying pound shop pairs each year. Ali kindly agreed to be nominated adult for Davies and Scarlett should they need one as neither of them wanted to come with Ady and I so we headed down into Okehampton for gloves, the bits we needed and a couple of things for Ali. We also realised as we walked past a shop window that we’d forgotten crackers for Christmas dinner so bought ten boxes of those too. Felt very festive running about for last minute bits and very nice not to be doing it in the usual just-before-Christmas crowds – a definite plus to having Christmas early ;).

Back at the hostel Scarlett had been searching for ketchup and Davies had sprained his ankle – just as well we don’t leave them often ;). The ketchup had been found on a table, Scarlett made me laugh by accusingly saying ‘so it wasn’t on the shelf where you said it was!’ as if it had some sort of gps allowing me to know at all times where it was located, I’d simply said I had put it on the shelf! Davies had been attended by Dr Helen and prescribed rest which his little posse of mates were ensuring he took to the letter and waiting on him 😆

I think a group went out for a walk or a geocache but I stayed behind and along with various others got curry prepared and cooking for dinner.

Sarah and Abbie came along in time for dinner, which was lovely. I so wish Sarah still Home Educated, camps always feel like she is missing so it was great to have not one but two guest appearances from her, even if we couldn’t persuade her to stay over :).

Monday was deemed Birthday Night so out came the cakes spelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY, along with specially made cakes each for Scarlett, Alys, Jax and Alison. Gifts were given – thankyou to all who gave to Scarlett, I have no idea what was from whom but she loved everything she was given, the edible things lasted about an hour! 😆 and Alison and Jax were presented with their canvasses which were both gorgeous 🙂 I think they were as pleased with them as we all had been when we first saw them.
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Queue for cakes and then seconds of cakes and then wired children were released to continue rioting round the hostel while we did our own more peaceful version 🙂

Tuesday Stew Day 🙂

I didn’t leave the hostel but there was another walk that Ady and the kids joined in with. I love the mixing and mingling of groups, adults, children, pairs, trios and bloody great packs of people that morph and merge over the week. I’m rather getting ahead of myself, I intended the soppy sentimental bit to be at the end (and don’t think for a moment this brief foray into it excuses you from the round up dripping with love) but the walks were a great example of this with some kids and some adults going and some kids and some adults left behind with everyone in each venue assuming responsibility for those around them regardless.

The Latin etc. gang had brought along loads of crafting stuff so lots of us joined in with that. I made a fimo charm thing and helped my two with their dyed squares. Later Scarlett and I made Latin etc more Goddard etc with added craziness as we tried to dye a purple streak each in our hair. It didn’t really take but I enjoyed wearing a bit of tin foil and Scarlett loved sitting with her head dipped in a bucket! 😆
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People appeared to peel and chop veg, make dumplings and get stuff happening. I made a pile of mince pies on the basis if I was in the kitchen anyway keeping an eye on stew I might as well be doing something else useful.

Stew of course means the usual ceremonial Dumpling Tossing, by now a proper NicCamps tradition. So Scarlett and Alison were summonded, Rachel came along too and after the vegetarians frankly poor beginning we carnivores showed them how it’s done. Loved the hermatic sealing of the veggie stew and creation of splashback for this. For the record we lost fewer dumplings than they did ;).

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Far too much morphing of days into each other to provide more details than that…

Wednesday was Pennywell day. We’d loved this five year ago and at last Christmas camp several of us had watched the video of it with teary eyed nostalgia so it was fairly instrumental in us booking Okehampton hostel again. It was further away than I remembered. We all left on time having given everyone more than sufficient leeway for working on Home Ed time after us being rather tardy for the Planetarium last year. I’m so sneaky 😉 of course it would only work this once as next time everyone will assume I have added time and not bother leaving when I say. D’oh!

So we arrived, were held in the foyer next to a sign welcomming us as ‘Goddard Home Educators’ very laughable given I barely Home Educate any Goddards let alone anyone else 😆 Eventually I was ushered in to pay while the rest of the group were taken away by Mark The Elf. And a very enthusiastic elf he was too. I suspect given some of his play narrating (he was also a narrator, guide to the cafe and a waiter) he is a Believer and I wonder how much of his vim was due to it being only day two of the nativity experience but he gave me a run for my money in perkiness and optimism ;).

The barn we were herded to for eating lunch was freezing. It had a single heat source which we gathered around and ate lunch while the kids admired the animals and the bouncy castle. There were goats, sheep, pigs, piglets, ducks and various birds. The animal enclosures were rather hilariously entitled with different animals (pigs had DONKEYS, sheep had GOATS and so on) but once you’d got past that – and we as WWOOFers of the future were able to clarify for anyone unsure 😉 it was great to be able to get up close to them. Scarlett cuddled ducks, I had a quick cuddle of a pig and lots of the children bounced on the bouncy castle.
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Next to the Nativity Barn where we were slightly dismayed to realise we would be sharing the experience with another group 🙁 This meant we didn’t get to have a Joseph or one of the innkeepers or wise men from our group. To be honest I suspect this wasn’t actually an issue. Scarlett wanted to be Mary for the sole reason she wanted to ride on the donkey, Davies wanted to be a shepherd for the sole reason he wanted to carry a lamb and judging by the whispers between the children and the hands shooting up those were the main desired parts all round.

Fran was nominated to be Mary – a shame that she was deemed too big to ride on the donkey so I saw lots of the girls who ended up being shepherds or angels muttering about her not getting to ride the donkey anyway but she did a beautiful job complete with many facial expressions and other dramatic effects. The angel Gabriel was Elinor who did a fab job in the same sort of garment Em and co ended up wearing on the M5 later in the week, Catie did a splendid job of singing like a proper angel, Tilda won everyone’s hearts as an angel in DMs, Mary directed Joseph who was half her size, the massive posse of shepherds with Claudia as my favourite grabbing handfuls of strawbale out of the ‘shepherds hill’ did their trooping round after the cuddly toy sheep and Ben (who always wins my vote for comedy value after his Centerparcs escapades in January) stole the show for me by responding to Mark the Elf’s question of how Mary might feel waking to find an angel in her bedroom with a loud ‘ARGH!!!!’ 😆 It was classic kids nativity play stuff, how fab we HE parents don’t miss out on it after all :).
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We outsung everyone, with particular mention to the descant singers on the carols and then went to see Santa. The kids got the usual tat – Scarlett swapped her Secret Diary with Libby for the younger girls cuddly toy monkey, Davies got a truck which I suspect is already lost. I got a picture with Santa 🙂
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After some milling about near the reindeer Mark the Elf came over and asked if we wanted to see the Christmas film. I confessed what we really wanted was a hot drink so we went through to the cafe for tea, coffee, mulled wine and mince pie for adults and squash and biscuits for children. Scarlett became an honorory grown up for a cup of tea, I suspect a few other children did too. Mark the Elf came to chat to some of us about how great Home Ed is. Not sure if he thinks everything is great or if he was sincere but he was enthusiastic nonetheless.

I think most of us decided to go to House of Marbles and ended up in a convoy there. We were responsible for a wrong turn and an all the way round the roundabout waving at the people behind us turning and Chris did a wrong lane at the roundabout move too but we all got there. Its a fab place and they dealt well with the onslaught of about 35 children into their breakable environment. We pressed buttons, cooed at amazing marble runs, watched the making marbles demo and succumbed to buying a few.
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We headed back with me realising we would be among the last back and probably people would be waiting on me for dinner prep commencement. Was really chuffed to see a start had been made on onion chopping :).

We launched straight into pasta meals with rather more options than had previously been planned being made but everyone seemed to have something to eat :).

As is traditional on ‘Christmas Eve’ we started prepping veg for the following day so potatoes, carrots, parsnips were peeled and chopped and crosses were put in sprouts. We had a crack team of kitchen crew who got it all going on and included Scarlett. I love that she had a hand in making that massive dinner for the masses :).
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Veg all done we headed upstairs and it ended up being the night the gamers were up til about 3am and the rest of us were up pondering all sorts of deep stuff (we had Jonathan with us for quite a while) before getting all tangled up with the wool puzzle Jax had brought along. The final handful went to bed just before the rest of the hostel woke for the morning. I insist it is not morning until it is daylight… but it’s fair to say we’d have put Santa off of stopping….

Thursday Christmas!!!! We woke to a snowfall proclaiming the real deal for the day. I’d had all of 2.5 hrs sleep so was not on top form but had a shower and got dressed intending heading to the kitchen to get cracking on dinner. The lure of the snow proved far too tempting though and after a cup of tea I put on coat, gloves and boots and went outside instead having stuck the ovens on to pre-heat.

A fantastic snowball fight ensued between James, Wayne, Zoe, Chris and I with Ady on camera duty. Some of the kids were doing stuff with icicles and snowmen while some (Poppy, Skye, Davies, Maddy, Marcus, Eve) joined in. The snow was powdery and hard to clump together to form balls but we had a bloody good go and a really good laugh.
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Back inside we buckled down and the Kitchen Krew did basting, dealing with the Crazy Oven (I have a nasty burn on my thumb and a lesser one on my wrist, Zoe got an injury too but we eventually showed that oven who was the boss), writing motivational notes on the clippy thing and generally getting everything happening. Alison and I made pastry, Zoe made stuffing balls and peas aside we were on track for our 2.15pm prediction.

After dashing off to get dressed for dinner and getting James on carving duty we decided to do crackers first and the noise of so many of our wonderful friends singing and toasting each other with Christmas wishes was quite overwhelming. The memory of standing behind the hot plate singing along with Rudolph will stay with me forever :).

The peas finally boiled, everything came together and armed with a crack team behind the hot plate and another the other side we got everyone served with Christmas dinner. The servers were seated and eating by 3pm and toasting ourselves :).

Another, quite un-primed team swung into action on plate clearing and washing up duty before we all retired upstairs to get ready for secret santa. As we were waiting for a few people we did some singing including a very rousing chorus of the 12 days of Christmas :). Eventually everyone was with us so we doled out Secret Santa gifts. I think all of ours were well recieved and we all loved ours – I suspect we are all the harder to make for knowing we know in advance who we are recieving from… Scarlett got a couple of books – one with dolphins and one with Wondering Wombles, along with some home made biscuits. Davies got a home made box containing a notepad and pen all fimoed up, a fimo note / photo holder, some chocolate and a necklace and wrist band made with fimo beads. Ady got a slab of chocolate in a lard wrapper and I got a glass box with emergency supplies of meat in it. We loved them all 🙂 Thanks lovely friends :).

Lots of the children headed off to do a dress rehearsal of their play and we sat around. Sarah arrived and finally we all headed down to the dining room for the play. I decided to miss the play and instead cook the mince pies I’d made earlier, Ady helped me cook the Christmas puddings, warm up custard and clear down the hot plate so we could use it for that.

We adjourned upstairs after the play for carols and orchestra which was just lovely, particularly the chimes. Jan and Catie sang us a Christmas Pudding song and we all went back downstairs for our final dinner lady turn at the servery ‘pudding or pie?’ ‘custard or cream?’ and did a fine job of slopping custard about and pretending to be in a Carry On Film.

Back upstairs we put a film on and sitting down in near darkness without the stimulation of actually chatting did me in. I dozed through the film and then decided the only sensible place to be was bed. I did slightly regret it the next day and half wished I could have found a last little reserve of stamina to share the last few hours with friends but I was asleep almost instantly so it was the right thing to do.

Friday The usual chaos that is trying to put a hostel back together, return belongings to the correct owners and tidy up quicker than the children can untidy again! The kids are mostly old enough to help now and they did a fab job of tidying up with Ben earning a special mention for emptying the bins in everyones bedrooms – yay Ben :). I did some fridge and kitchen clearing – I was really pleased with how the food lasted out, we didn’t have stacks left over, we only had to dash out for two containers of milk and 4 loaves of bread which I thought was excellent and I think we fed everyone well at bargain prices 🙂 We were over on rice, pasta and baked beans but I knew I’d got extra portions of all of those on the basis they are cheap, even the pickier kids tend to eat them and they can be used for lunch, dinner or other hungry moments. There is no real science to my food calculations so I’m always pretty proud of myself when it comes together :).

As ever there is a critical number of people who just need to leave so numbers are sufficiently reduced to actually tidy. People with little children, longer journeys or pressing reasons to be away earlier left leaving behind what seems to end up as the ‘usual suspects’ for the final push and last cup of tea together. Sadly the very last hour was a tense and sad one as poor Elinor had a nasty accident leaving us all dashing about trying to find calpol, milk, bits of teeth, postcodes for the hostel so Chris and Helen could sort out an emergency appointment at the nearest dentists so it was with tear stained cheeks most of us bid each other a final goodbye.

Our drive home was very straightforward although bitterly cold outside the car with the temperature going to minus 7.5 at it’s lowest point. For rush hour on a Friday it was very quiet on the roads, I assume many people had not been at work. We arrived home at about 5pm. We’d thought we were already tidied out but we realised we needed further tidying reserves as every single room in the house was upside down having been decorated by Dad while we were away. The hall needed shoes, boots and coats putting back in their rightful places, the lounge needed pictures hanging back up, curtains rehanging, sofas pushing back to place, TV and unit putting back where it belonged. The bedrooms all had beds in the middle of the room with all the other contents of the room stacked up on the beds and the kitchen and bathrooms were in disarray too. We also had the contents of the car to bring in and put away. We all helped and then the kids had a bath while Ady and I did the heavy stuff.

The kids ate dinner and went off to bed, we had baths, had dinner at a far more usual to us time and were in bed at a not too ridiculous hour ourselves.

To start naming people who made the week so wonderful would be doing a disservice to everyone else. Every single person – adult and child played their part in making it the wonderful week it was – by chopping, cooking, washing up, by sweeping, making tea, bringing a craft, leading a walk, taking photos, making someone laugh, offering a cuddle, put thought into a secret santa, said thank you when handed a plate of food, throwing a snowball, singing, playing an instrument, watching someone’s baby for five minutes. I feel so very priviledged to be part of this amazing circle of friends, to love and be loved by such wonderful people, to have you all in my photos, helping to make my childrens childhood memories, sharing all that magic. I love you all and hope we share many more Christmasses together in years to come. xxx

and all through the house… clothes were drying on radiators and many cakes were nestling in tupperware…

Poor Tarly had a rough night last night, it was 11 before either of the kids were in bed and then she was in our bed by about 2am. She said she’d had a bad dream but during the night she was burning hot and I woke at one point to find her clamped around me like a limpet. She’s been fine all day today though so I’m assuming it is too many cold days and late nights this week – camp is sure to sort that out 😉

I was off to work this morning and arrived to learn there was a storytelling event happening. Apparently a bid was made way back last year for funding for specific events, resources and materials to provide a better service for disabled and special needs children. The bid was successful but when the election happened a freeze was put on the cash. It was since lifted but as it needed to be spent by the end of March 2011 and we had missed a large chunk of the time planned to spend it in they took half the money instead.

One of the events was a tailored storytime and activity event today at Lancing library but they had fallen down rather on their promotion of the event – not least because people like me didn’t know about it and have therefore not been promoting it and they were unsure how many children would come along.

So much so that when Russell – who has just been promoted and is now properly important 🙂 – was fretting I offered to bring in Davies and Scarlett for numbers which he very gratefully agreed to so I rang Ady and he dropped them off.

The storytelling was being done by Orange Apples who are awesome 🙂 They told some very high impact interactive stories and then did some crafts around them. Ady came back to collect the kids but it was all still going on. Scarlett elected to go back home with Ady but Davies stayed for the second part as he was loving it. The second half seemed even better as they handed out sheets of paper and talked all the kids through folding it as part of the story which included a hat, a kite, various other things with every fold, a highly interactive story about pirates and a boat that got trashed with them all tearing off the relevant bits of their boat – very impressed with them :).

I had a fairly frantic morning generally trying to get stuff ready to go on holiday and catch up with James who I only see once a fortnight and Russell who I don’t see that often at all aswell as do work. We were supposed to be going round to see friends this afternoon but they cancelled as their kids were ill. It was sort of a relief as we really had far too much to be doing to be off socialising but a shame not to see them just the same. C text me but I’d not managed to text her back so M rang me. M was the first person I thought I loved back when I was 16 and I cherished a crush on him for several years on and off and we did share a kiss or two back 20 years ago. We’re both happily married with two children now but I still had a brief thrill when my boss said to me ‘phone call for you – M someone?’ 😆 Quick phone catch up and a promise to get together before we head off.

Davies and I came home and we all had lunch. Ady went to fill up all the chicken feeders and waterers. Dad will come in to let them in and out and will be over here for much of next week decorating but we thought it would be good to be prepared. I needed to go to the supermarket to get stuff for camp dinner tomorrow and breakfast on Monday as the big food shop isn’t arriving until Monday morning. Not totally straightforward as some attendees seem to be wavering about coming tomorrow. Both Davies and Scarlett wanted to come with me so we headed off with our list and got everything we needed.

Back home Ady finished off putting things into the middle of rooms so Dad can come in and paint walls and I got cracking on baking – three cakes baked, decorated and packed up. I directed the kids to gather clothing for the week before finally gathering my own and hanging out the last load of washing to dry, hopefully in time to be packed tomorrow morning.

The kids went to bed, Ady and I had baths and ate dinner, there is a large pile of stuff by the front door ready to load in the car. And so go bed/

In love with my friend Tasha who checked on the start time for today’s Stone Age workshop and realised it was 10am, not 1030am as I had thought, text me to let me know so we could arrange to pick them up half an hour earlier. And she made soup and cheese scones and brought enough to share with me :). ♥

Less in love with trying to put my new spare wheel back in the special hanging under the car place. I failed and got black hands in the process. Serves me right for being impatient about just sitting in the car waiting for the windscreen to defrost and thinking I’d use the time to do something efficient instead. ♥

In love with my fab local Home Ed friends. M who ‘found’ the flint knapper guy and set up the workshops, Caz & Bid who provided the venue, D, K, O and various others who have been at the workshops, all the kids mates who have also been there and made their learning a fun, group experience. ♥

Slightly in love with flint knapper guy. Partially due to his Ray Mears-ness, I do love a man with strong arms and thighs who knows enough to hunt meat for me and show me how to make nettle cordage but mostly for his passion about his craft and his excellent gentle, patient teaching methods both to our children and to the interested adults in the group. ♥

In love with Ady who drove to Croydon to get stuff for camp for me, got a fire going when I was freezing cold and has changed the bedcovers ♥

Deeply in love with my children who have had the exact same long day at the end of a long week as me but still ended it happy, lovely and gorgeous with Scarlett skipping off to bed declaring it ‘one day til camp, eight days til the zoo and nine days til my birthday!’.

The workshop today was Stone Age harpoon making. It wasn’t cheap at £25 each for the kids but worth every penny I thought. First Karl talked about what harpoons were used for and how hunting and gathering worked in prehistoric times. They discussed the types of animals hunted and what tools and methods would have been used. Next which materials and techniques used to make the tools to make the weapons.

Karl had some deer antlers and showed us how they would have removed strips of antler to create the harpoon and then handed out an antler ‘blank’ each. Next step was to create a saw from flint which he did by making thin slices of flint then nicking out a series of teeth
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which was then used to saw a series of parallel lines along the length of one side. This was hard work and required patience but gave a really clear idea of just how labour intensive tool making was. We finished the morning session with everyone having a harpoon with lines sawn. The kids went off to run around for an hour while the grown ups sat and chatted. Really enjoyed talking to everyone about the meaning of life and simpler versus richer.

After lunch we brought out the metal and used little hacksaws to finish off demonstrating how much easier tool making was once created materials and tools had been discovered and invented.

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Next the in between bits were snipped out, again using modern tools for speed, then back to a knapped bit of flint to be used as a polisher to take off some of the outer brown layer of antler. Karl talked about how archaeological finds from this era show they had started to apply decoration to tools by this time.

The final stage was to drill a hole through the harpoon so cordage could be attached. The harpoon would then be thrown by hand or attached to a stick. The drilling was done with another piece of knapped flint, this time into a tiny sharp point turned and turned in the same place on one side of the harpoon.

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This was hard work, not least because the flint sharp bit kept breaking off. Tasha and I grabbed hammerstones so we could re-knap to put new sharp bits on them and many of the group joined in with our re-doing of ‘U can’t touch this’ by MC Hammer, using instead of Hammertime, Hammerstone. Very catchy :).

Once you were nearly through the antler if you held it up you could see light through it and knew you were nearly there. I encouraged Davies and Scarlett to ‘drill for Jesus’ as we had ‘seen the light’

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Then they were done 🙂

The kids all went off for half an hours more playing while we had another cup of tea and some cake and chatted a bit more.

Then we came home, dropping Tasha and Toby off on the way. I put the chickens away and Ady got home shortly after us. We then had a dilemma about eating as our initial plan had been fish and chips for dinner before going back out but noone was really hungry enough for dinner so we all had a piece of toast and voted to get KFC on the way home for late dinner instead.

We were off to see an adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Worthing theatre. I’d booked in as part of my drive to do lots of theatres and cinema visits and thought it would be perfect a couple of days before Christmas camp to get us in a festive mood. Really it was a but much at the end of a long week, on an evening that could have been better spent preparing for camp / getting the house ready to be decorated, at the end of a day already spent doing lots of sitting down concentrating but it was really good and worth all of the above minor quibbles.

We all really enjoyed it and although tired and very cold were glad we went. We got a bucket of chicken on the way home, ate and snuggled and the kids went to bed just before 11 and were asleep very soon afterwards – they don’t need to be up in the morning anyway.

I do need to be up in the morning as I’m working and still have stacks to do for camp but it’ll all come together, or it won’t and that won’t matter either. Friends, mulled wine, high possibility of snow and plenty of Christmas cheer, what more could one possibly need and how little could anything else matter?

The blog title is inspired by Scarlett who asked ‘what day is it today?’ and when answered ‘Friday’ replied with ‘Friday, I’m in love?’ 🙂 but it’s not sponsored by The Cure and no money has changed hands 😉

to the tune of ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’.

Ady had meetings today so couldn’t take Davies and Scarlett which meant I had to beg childcare off my Dad. I know he doesn’t mind and one of the many things I adore about my Dad is he will either say yes or no to a request and then stand by his decision. If my Mum had rearranged things to accomodate helping me I’d never hear the end of it, Dad had clearly fiddled with his day but once he was here he was here and had no plans to be anywhere else. There is much about my Dad that is far from perfect but if I hope to emulate anyone in life it is often him.

We had no bread for lunch so while Davies and Scarlett were eating breakfast I dashed round the shop to get some. I got caught by David the Thank you Neighbour on the way back who insisted on kissing me on the cheek and then engaged me in a ‘resident of Osborne Drive’ moan about parking. It felt like ages before I escaped.

Dad arrived and I made him a coffee before heading off to work. I’ve no real idea what they all did all day, I know Scarlett did some wallpaper stripping but by the time I got home after 6pm Ady had been home for a couple of hours, fed them and was wallpaper stripping.

I unpacked my bag of a few interesting things from work – the latest adaptation of A Christmas Carol (very Polar Express), another Cressida Cowell audiobook and some plasticine for the kids as promised when we chucked out some manky old plasticine last weekend.

Work was fine, a few laughs, some good news for a couple of higher up the food chain colleagues who have got promotion in the latest round of ‘I’m a Librarian, get me to those books’ but I confess to a real lack of interest any more. It’s so very quiet, there is no point in trying to drum up enthusiasm for new initiatives, I’m ready to move on.

I joined in with the wallpaper stripping and felt all of my nearly 37 years stretching and bending after being on my feet all day. Being active is one thing but standing on the spot is quite another. All done though, just pushing furntiture to the centre of each room on Saturday morning in some rooms while I’m at work and Sunday morning before we go for the bedrooms and Dad can come in and do magnolia-ising while we’re away.

We stuck on the film while Ady and I finished wallpaper stripping so that everyone has the storyline fresh in their mind tomorrow. Davies and Scarlett had said hearing the story of Midsummer Nights Dream the night before had really helped them focus on the minute by minute enjoyment of the live production without worrying so much about following the plot and whilst I doubt a production of Christmas Carol will have much in the way of complicated plot it will be good to be more familiar with the story.

The kids went to bed, I had a bath and then cooked a curry while Ady did the last of the clearing up in the lounge resulting in a very late dinner. No surprise there then 😉

Really looking forward to camp and really wishing I had an extra day with nothing happening between now and then…

I love out and about days the most :). I love seeingf rriends, learning from passionate experts, being with people, drinking tea and coming home to deconstruct it all with the 3 most important people in my world afterwards. Today had all of the above and more :).

I allowed more time for the car start and de-mist / defrost than it needed so headed to a tyre place my Dad had recommended and happened to be on the way to Tasha’s and got a new spare tyre for my car. They only took cash so while the guy was fitting a new tyre onto the wheel we dashed off to a cashpoint and then collected it. We were only five minutes late at Tasha’s which is probably earlier than we’d normally be :).

We had a quick play for the kids upstairs and cooing over the rearrangement of furniture downstairs for me as Tasha has been doing ‘home-makin’ ‘ ;). Then all in the car and off to Barnham to meet Julie. She was having Honey’s teeth looked at by the Horse Dentist and thought we might be interested in coming to watch. I was very interested, as was Tasha and Scarlett came over to watch some of it and ask a few questions of Suzanne the equine dentist. We learnt about how many teeth horses have, what they are for, that they have milk teeth, that they can have ‘wolf teeth’ (like wisdom teeth), that they have a set which don’t stop growing and need filing down if they don’t wear them down and watch Suzanne with her rachet contraption in Honey’s mouth to hold open her jaw so Suzanne could both stick her hand down Honey’s throat to pull out some unswallowed due to not chewing properly grass and to examine Honey’s teeth. She filed a couple down that are no longer being ground down by natural methods all while answering all sorts of questions by Scarlett – quite intelligent and me – less so and more along the lines of ‘do did you always want to be a horse dentist when you grew up?’. Not a job I’d like to do at all but inspirational to meet someone who so clearly has found what makes her happy, earns her a living and she finds rewarding and worthwhile :).

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The kids all did plenty of bouncing on the trampoline and Scarlett did some chatting to Suzanne and some catching the chickens free ranging about 🙂

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The kids all decided to walk back to Julies with Julie’s Mum (who they all call ‘Oma’ – sounds like ‘ooomi’ – German for Granny, accurate in Jack, Maisie and Lorna’s case, honorary in Davies and Scarletts – funny that the actual grandmother they do share with J, M and L isn’t the one they all have a relationship and shared name with :)) across the fields while Julie, Tasha and I drove back to Julie’s to get the kettle on. Julie wanted me to look at her laptop which was doing funny things with email accounts so I fixed that and then Gerda (I don’t call her Oma) and the kids arrived back with a hedgehog. Scarlett (who else!?) had found it snuffling around and known it should be hibernating but was clearly too small so they’d brought it back in a welly boot. There was some concern it was hurt but when it was tipped onto the grass and left for a while it uncurled and seemed fine. We let it scuttle about for a while but Scarlett was really worried it would find somewhere to hide but not be able to last the winter so we caught it and put it in the guinea pig run while we debated what to do with it. Scarlett found worms to bring it to eat. It was decided it would be bedded in a crate in straw in the polytunnel and fed cat food so Scarlett prepared the crate for it and her and I moved it down there.

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All of this meant we were a few minutes late getting to Willow (where Caz and Bid live, not our campervan) to do the flint knapping course Davies, Scarlett and Toby were doing this afternoon. It was first in two Home Ed workshops about Stone Age tools led by Karl Lee of Primative Technology and was excellent :). I’m a bit of a flint knapping fan having had a go at River Cottage so was thrilled to be given a hammerstone and piece of flint again to have a bash (ha ha) at. Karl did a brief introductory chat about flint knapping, early tools, hunting and other uses, what sort of stone flint is and how it is made and some historical facts and dates. All done in a very interactive and interesting way that had the children – aged 8-10ish and accompanying adults all captivated. He then made a hand axe, we had a tea /run around break and then he showed us how to make a hide scraper, handed out hammerstones and flints and came round helping us as everyone had a go.

I loved it, the kids loved it, it was excellent 🙂

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We had head straight off when the session was over as we needed to get back for Badgers. I had anticipated us being late and had let Julie know it was a possibility but in the end we were on time. I was freezing – too much time stood in a field then sitting in a greenhouse with a through draught today – so a welcome cup of tea warmed me up a bit. We were running through what the Badgers will be doing for presentation night so there was lots of standing up at the front recounting things we have done for Hungry Badger. I’d tried to let them use their own words as far as possible and offer ideas but let it very much be about them and how they’d seen the badge so was unbelieveably touched to hear one of the girls had written at the end of her bit ‘I have really enjoyed doing the Hungry Badger badge and will really miss Nic when she goes’ 🙂 awwwww. Maybe it has been worth it after all ;).

We only have presentation night left to attend which I imagine will be something of a tear jerker actually with Davies getting his SuperBadger award and all three of us leaving. Might even invite my parents down to watch 😆

Back home Ady had got dinner on for Davies and Scarlett and the fire lit. He and I got straight into stripping the second wall of wallpaper in the lounge. The kids helped too after their tea – I’ve told them they can do the third wall tomorrow while I’m at work and Dad is here with them if they like :).

The kids went to bed, we had baths I was the Apprentice, paused for half an hour and then slightly ruined by reading a tweet from Richard Herring disclosing the winning team leader – d’oh! Am now wondering just when I’ll manage to do baking to bring to camp…

Done :). I can’t deny it’s been a slog at times. 1073 lengths is bloody loads, it’s been 12 sessions which would have meant the 12 weeks in which I had to do it in was perfect but for the fact the first week we were away camping at Sustainability and the last week we’ll be away at Christmas camp. I quite like the fact the offficial dates are the day before Davies’ birthday to the day before Scarlett’s birthday :). That along with a missed week due to illness meant I had three catch up sessions to fit in too. I’ve thrashed my personal record for the 75 lengths I did for the Swimathon in April where I did 75 in 1 hr 37 minutes and have now done that in 1hr 27 minutes, I have achieved over 100 lengths in 2 hours more than once and I have also given myself a new record for most lengths in one session of 110.

There have been several points along the way when I would have happily climbed out of the pool and never gotten back in, I am pleased to not be swimming next week and I will sit and watch the kids lessons the week after, not least because it will be their last swimming lessons for a year or more…

But I am glad I have done it. I am pleased to have achieved something challenging, I’ve swum the bloody channel! 🙂 I am proud of myself both for sheer stubborness and bloodymindedness, for doing something I would have laughed at someone telling me I could do a year ago, for facing dislikes of parading around in a swimsuit, of getting my make up splashed, of knowing I don’t have the perfect stroke or the best technique, I am not the fastest but I do have stamina and determination. I feel I have beaten something from way back when I had my swimming lessons at that very pool as a child of 8 or 9 or 10. I really struggled learning to swim, I was not a physically able child and didn’t have the inbuilt flotation devices I do today 😉 I used to loathe the smell of the pool, the rather grubby changing rooms, the sight of the ceiling as we were told to look up while doing backstroke. Once I had mastered basic swimming I stopped lessons. I never made it to the Big Pool, so I am thrilled to have conquered that big pool big time.

I was cheered by Davies and Scarlett and congratulated by several instructors and lifeguards who have been aware of my challenge, Ady greeted me with a bottle of fizz and I’ve had a personal invitation to attend the sessions starting in January for adult swimmers to improve their stroke technique from the instructor running it.

Donations for the actual charity have been quite slow but I got a hefty amount for the swimathon after I’d actually finished it so I am hoping completing this will trigger a flurry of people sending cash, it would be good if my personal achievement could be matched in a decent amount of cash for a very worthy charity. Not really being able to give to charity from a salary by monthly direct debit is something I have missed doing since such practises were clamped down on my the CCCS. I have spent about £30 on swimming sessions, hopefully that ‘investment’ pays off in making several times that amount for the charity rather than me just giving it to them and not bothering with the swimming :).

And the rest of the day? Davies did some room tidying while Scarlett watched something with sharks (think it was Deadly 60) and had her Sharks top trumps cards out to keep matching them up with what was on TV, for a child who can’t read she’s had to make a great leap towards other methods of recognition, I almost think it has helped in making her more aware of stuff :). Both kids want journals for next year and had in their heads the sort of thing they wanted – I think we have found them at an ebay shop very gorgeous, might have to get myself one too :).

I wanted to nip over to my Dad’s to borrow some wallpaper scrapers so we decided to do that before lunch – I was also thinking about Christmas cards. We won’t be doing them next year but we have now done photocards every year since Scarlett was born so it would be nice to do them one last time. I do have moral dilemmas with Christmas cards but I know several people keep ours and we only give them rather that buying other ones for family too. I’d found some from previous years while sorting stuff out so have about 20 blanks and envelopes so we decided to go for one box plus some extra photos to put in the blanks. So armed with santa hats and a camera we headed out to the garden to take some pictures.

Cue much silliness and lots of ‘smile for Baby Jesus’ and ‘Look out for the giant polar bear’ 😆

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Actually some of them are very lovely just for capturing Davies and Scarlett and who they are right now so I will treasure some of the ‘misses’ but we settled on one that is sufficiently them whilst still being a ‘nice’ picture.

Dad wasn’t home so we called into the supermarket for some bread and I got us a cake each as they were on 3 for 2 and Boots for something for my hair. I don’t know if it is the swimming pool, the central heating or something else but it is in a right state at the moment – greasy in some places, dry and frizzy in others and perpetually tangled. It feels like it should either be dreadlocked or shaved off! I found some specific swimming pool treatment shampoo and will hope that not going swimming for a while sorts it out. Either that or my next sponsored trick will be shaving my head! 😆

Back at home we had lunch and all ate rather too much so had an hour of sitting round cuddled up on the sofa while our bodies digested our lunch. We ordered the Christmas cards online and then decided to call in on Dad one last time before swimming so packed everything up and went via my parents house. Dad still wasn’t home but as we were about to pull out of the end of his road so he pulled in so we went round the block. He lent us a couple of wallpaper scrapers and we had a quick catch up chat before heading off to the swimming pool.

Today was the most important session really as I certainly didn’t want to have any lengths left to do so it was all a bit of a mad scramble and I got into the water with barely two hours. I managed it by the skin of my teeth really with the 99th length being started after the whistle had blown for everyone to get out of the pool as it was closed. Davies stood at the end and cheered me on and both the kids were so proud of me 🙂

At home Ady had dinner on for the kids and a bottle of fizz chilling for me :). We made a start on the wallpaper stripping – just the thing for arms tired from all that swimming ;). The kids finished their tea and were very keen to help out so while Ady had a bath the three of us stripped and soaked. I love their ability to turn anything into a game, their scrapers became characters, the wallpaper being taken from the wall suddenly had a voice (complete with American accent) and they were full immersed in the task and their imaginations. Very efficicent they were too – I love it when we occassionally do get to engage them in domestic servitude ;).

One wall complete 🙂 Ady finished it off with them and tidied up while I had a bath with a glass of fizz. They went to bed, we watched the High street history programme and I spoke to Julie on the phone and sent some emails and texts making final plans for tomorrow.