One word? When seven would do…

Waking at Alarm O’clock this morning and I was aware of Scarlett in the bathroom. I hit snooze and staggered out of bed a couple of minutes later and was sure I could ‘feel’ a presence. I checked the stairs and Davies’ room (where he was still asleep) but could see noone so sat down to put my make up on. I could still feel someone near and then realised Scarlett was hiding in the shower 😆

The kids had breakfast and we all got engrossed in the Sarah Jane Adventures then they scrambled to get dressed just before there was a knock on the door and it was my Mum. She had rung last night and been a bit shirty about not having seen us for weeks but quickly realised guilt tripping me is a redundant exercise so settled for nice and arranged to call over this morning. Davies showed her his Harry Potter lego that they’d bought him for his birthday and had arrived since and then her and I had a catch up chat. As usual conversation turned from pretty much every topic to her finding an oportunity to slate my Dad but we glossed over that and had a mostly pleasant catch up.

The BT engineer arrived soon after my Mum and was Very Nice (both to look at and for his phone fixing abilities 😉 ). He quickly deduced it was a problem at the exchange so headed off there to try and fix it. He rang me about 15 minutes later and asked if the phone had just rung. I said it hadn’t and then realised it couldn’t as I’d unplugged it, so plugged it back in again (while commenting that I couldn’t do his rather technical job 😆 ) but it still wasn’t working so he said he’d come back. He arrived back abotu 15 minutes later and said there had been a problem at the exchange but that didn’t seem to be fixing the line and now we had no phone line at all, meaning NO INTERNET! He appreciated the gravity of such a situation and got it fixed for me, including disconnecting several extra phone jacks we’d had put in around the house when we did the loft extension but don’t actually use. He said it would make my broadband quicker too (although I confess to not actually noticing that).

Scarlett offered to make everyone a cup of tea so headed off to do that, including the BT man (we were calling him Mark by then. It was his name, we didn’t just decide to) then Mark left, Mum stayed for a bit longer and tried to make light of the night I had to dash over there to seperate her and my Dad so I gave her a bit of a lecture about Frazer and Davies and Scarlett joined in to say they get scared and worry when Ady and I get cross with each other (which is a very infrequent occurance obviously) so they can’t imagine what it must be like to live with parents who argue all the time.

Mum left and then we headed over to Tasha’s. Davies and Toby disappeared for most of the time we were there, Tarly spent some time with Tasha and I and also helped (as in licked out the bowl) Tasha bake chocolate cake. Really enjoyed the couple of hours there laughing, bitching and cuddling assorted cats (Tasha has seven so plenty of choice). I do miss a cat 🙁

Ady rang to say he was not far from home so we left Tasha’s and went home too. I was really keen to get an extra swim in this week (we are past the halfway point of the swim and I am not yet at the halfway point so will need to do two swims a week now) so Ady had promised to get home as soon as he could so I could dash off and do that as the pool is open later tonight. I got there at 530 and chatted to the receptionist and the swimming teacher who ran the Swimathon and always gives me some little comment about how long I have been swimming for each week so now she knows I am doing the Channel Swim too and will no doubt be encouraging me :). I really wanted to crack the 100 lengths in two hours having gotten closer each time and then realised if I managed 100 I might as well try and do the 106 to bring me to 500 lengths cummulatively which would feel nice and tidy :). I was off to a flying start and after one hour had done 55 lengths. I’d done 77 by 1.5 hours (which was great as it meant I smashed my previous Swimathon record of 75 lengths in 1hr27mins – I did the 75 for Swimathon in 1hr37mins) but slowed up and managed 99 in two hours, completing the 100 lengths in about 90 seconds after the 2 hour mark. I stayed in for the last six and did 106 in just over 2hrs 10 mins. Knees not too bad, upper arms feel exercised but not agony. I suspect if I had 4hrs a week and funds to keep it up I could actually get fairly fit doing this twice a week. Fingers crossed I will be getting fit by other means next year but swimming could actually be a future option for getting all fit and healthy.

I staggered out, got changed, went to Morrisons for pizza toppings and went home. The kids were still up having decided to be worried about me and then proud of me. They poured me wine (having ascertained I wouldn’t rather have tea), put a bowl of nuts next to my bath for me and Davies brought me £2 to sponsor me and made me promise to pay it in and dictated a message to go with it.

I had a bath, the kids eventually went to bed, Ady cooked pizza – not good, he’d used wholemeal flour which really didn’t work for pizza.

I was working all day today and Davies and Scarlett went off with Ady. I managed to get up and ready and leave in time to nip to the post office before work so sent some ebay parcels off. We were short staffed today so morning teabreak and my lunchbreak were spent alone in the staffroom, which if I’m honest I actually prefer as I really like sitting with a cup of tea and one of the glossy magazines that are always in the staffroom :). As we were so short staffed I had a really nice easy rota with most of my day spent on the Enquiry Desk and therefore sitting down :). I helped a woman who wanted to place some online adverts to sell her oven but had zero computer skills and was very demanding. In the end I had to point out that for £1.25 for half an hours internet use she really couldn’t expect me to sit there with her for the whole time too as I had other customers to attend to. We ground to a halt when the ad wasn’t accepted without an email address anyway so I gave her her money back. I helped at least 3 people with the photocopier which I hate and think is nowhere near worth the 5p a copy we charge for all the staff time spent assisting. I joined a few new borrowers, spent some time helping one of the regular borrowers finding information about Abraham’s journey to help her grandson with his half term homework and then spent ages catching up a bit on the ECDL course I am doing. It was quite tedious as it was MS Word first which I sort of know well enough to get it to do everything I ever want it to do and was struggling to learn alternative ways. Plus I’d never used mail merge so clicked through it quickly and didn’t really take it in. The result of this was a fail on the test at the end of the module – I got 64%. It’s fine as I can do it again and I was distracted by various things and interupted lots but actually I’m quite pleased it will actually be challenging and therefore interesting after all. I was thinking it would be something to plough through, most of which I already knew but worth doing for getting a qualification at the end of it that I can add to my CV to demonstrate my computer literacy. It turns out it will be that aswell as something I will actually learn from and feel a sense of achievement at the same time :).

Ady was off to a work colleagues leaving do so needed to be heading over to Chichester by about 5pm and had planned to drop Davies and Scarlett off with my Dad but the library was so quiet and there were only two of us on duty for the last hour so I rang him in my afternoon break to suggest he drop them off with me instead. When I hung up the colleague I was at break with said how amazing it is that they can come to the library for an hour and behave and not cause a problem for me working. She said she had thought that before when we did Chatterbooks; how very well behaved they were and that her children could never have been trusted to do that at Davies and Scarlett’s age. She also said she’d been thinking about how they could never have gone and done something like we’re planning next year when her kids were that age as they would have argued in such close living quarters, spending so much time together and being trusted to stay with so many other people. I said how sibling closeness is often one of the great positives of Home Ed and in pretty much all cases of the HE families I knew the kids get on really well with siblings. It is interesting watching the increasingly obvious differences between schooled kids and HE kids as the group we know well all get older.

Ady dropped Davies and Scarlett off at about 515pm and they were indeed well behaved, looking at books, working out where they would find certain things by author name or dewey decimal reference and getting me to check the catalogue for things for them. Very amusing was when Scarlett was asking me about books to help you draw dragons and I checked to find the Lancing copy was out on loan and Davies appeared to say ‘yes, it’s at home in my bedroom!’ and sure enough it’s on loan to us 😆

We got home and the kids put the chickens away while I chopped some firewood, Davies lit the fire and Scarlett closed all the curtains around the house while I cooked them some tea and then read to them while they were eating. They chose a Roddy Doyle which we read about a year ago but they’d asked to borrow again and I ended up reading the whole book to them as they finished their tea, cleared away and crept over to sit on my lap during the course of the book.

I then stuck some bacon in the oven for my dinner and went for a bath as they went to bed. I finished cooking my dinner (tagliatelle carbonara, one of my favourite dinners but as Ady doesn’t like it I only ever have it when home alone) and ate it watching River Cottage followed by a progamme following up Genuis Children. I’d not seen the original programme but it was still really interesting.

Ady arrived home just before 11 and was still buzzed up from an evening out so had a beer or two (as he’d been driving) but I was pretty tired so for once abandoned blogging and headed off to bed first.

All up early today as Davies and Scarlett had a workshop at Making Space this morning. They’ve done several there and we’ve been really impressed with them but the most recent one done in August was billed as ‘Maori Pendant Making’ and I booked that alongside today’s ‘Cuttlefish Carving Keyrings’ and a four day animated film making workshop for Davies which got cancelled. When I collected them from the August one it turned out they had done cuttlefish carving then and if I’d realised the craft was being repeated I probably wouldn’t have booked this one.

Rain was forecast and had indeed been falling all night so we’d arranged to go in with Ady and for him to drop us off before going into work, them collecting us again in his lunchbreak. This meant being up way earlier than any of us enjoy and then arriving 45 minutes early for the session. The studio is near to a pedestrianised shopping area which is very run down with plenty of closed shops and a large selection of cafes, pound shops, cheap clothes store chains and several cash converter type shops. We killed time by looking in the charity shops and picked up a Portsmouth reversible fleece / raincoat for Davies which he liked and was only £3.99 and will be great for next year. We looked in the pound shops and then walked really slowly to the studio, making the very last few yards last ages by doing pigeon steps in a who can walk the slowest competition. I suspect we got some strange looks as we must have looked very odd all walking in slow motion along a pretty busy street 😆

Davies and Scarlett settled in and I went back to wander round the shops again. I managed nearly an hour before choosing the least unappetising looking cafe which was a Greggs the bakers to get a cup of tea and a cake in and sit for half an hour or so with my book. Another 20 minutes or so of roaming around the same shops before walking very slowly back to the studio.

I thought the kids results this time were slightly disappointing, Davies had done a pumpkin and his carving was really good but he’d not appreciated the recessed bits on the carving would be sticking out on the pewter. He said he’d planned it that way but I suspect if the tutor had been more attentive it would have been picked up on and maybe changed. All that said they really enjoyed it again which is all that really counts. They don’t have anything interesting looking for the Christmas holidays though so that will be the last workshop there before we go.

Ady collected us and dropped us off at Julie’s which we’d arranged last minute last night. We’d not seen each other properly for *weeks* so it was just fab to have a few hours together catching up and chatting. The kids had a great time playing together and when Chris arrived home and everyone started to get just a little too rowdy we walked across the fields to their allotment so they could let off some steam. We walked back and Ady arrived shortly after we did to take us home.

Back at home I put the chickens away and chopped some firewood, Davies lit the fire and Ady cooked the kids some tea, then I had a bath and cooked our dinner in time for The Apprentice.

am drinking elderberry cordial with white wine, standing shoulder to shoulder with a fellow up-late twitter mate who was debating more elderberry cordial and rum and as she was the supplier of the elderberry cordial in my fridge I agreed to join her. So I googled for a quote about elderberry cordial as I knew there was one from Monty Python.

Maybe now would be the time to come clean about not thinking Month Python is genius? I have a few sketches I quite like – the dead parrot, the four Yorkshireman is very funny but in the same way as I’ve never seen Star Wars or read Harry Potter I don’t think I’ve sat through a whole MP show let alone one of the films. So I can often identify someone monologue block quoting a load of MP (usually a drunk bloke) and raise a grin it’s not really my idea of top humour.

There. I’ve said it.

And I have a good blogpost title too – Jan, over to you ;).

I had my lie in this morning. It was good :). Up to supervise breakfast and getting dressed and drink plenty of tea. Late last night I had realised our phone was not ringing and we’d missed several answerphone messages as a result. I had a go at getting it to ring this morning and failed despite all sorts of pressing buttons so deduced it had come to the end of it’s life and checked online for cheapest source of replacement. Ady rang and we discussed it and he agreed to find and buy one.

Scarlett was caught up in some RSPCA animal rescue type programme and Davies was doing some Simpsons movie maker stuff so I did some blogging over on Wandering Wonderers and pondered on things that need doing in November but didn’t actually get up and do any of them 😆

We had lunch and then Ady rang to say he was going to be fairly local by 3pm and did we want him to collect us and drop us off at swimming to prevent me having to use the car (heavy rain). So we arranged that and I did some more online stuff. The kids geomagged and we all watched a documentary about animal swarms narrrated by David Tennant which was excellent, beautifully filmed, really interesting and educational. The kids recognised the voice as Dr Who (despite him being Scottish ;)) but for me he is now Dave from Single Dad.

Ady collected us and dropped us at the pool where we had bang on two hours. I got stuck in and tried to use my arms more than my legs this time. I used the same pacing as before with 30 lengths every 40 minutes which worked well and in the third set I was able to step up the pace a little on the back stroke which I am now feeling in my upper arms. Davies can in and did 10 lengths with me while Scarlett was in her lesson – he did really well, loads of stamina and a pretty good style, overtaking one of the slower lane swimmers :). Scarlett then came in and did 8 lengths but she took breaks between them. When she did use her arms her backstroke was faster than mine although her technique is a little random. Swimming with them did slow me down and I would say lost me 2 lengths although I don’t mind at all. So I was very chuffed to do 92 lengths and know I could probably have done 94 in the time. It’s my aim to achieve 100 in 2 hours by Christmas, which will maintain the speed I had built up to in one hour and mean I could theoretically achieve that 5km (150 lengths) in 3 hours if I chose to do the Swimathon again one day. There are 5 weeks left before the Channel Swim ends and we are away for the final week which leaves me with 4 more weeks. I will need to do at least 2 additional sessions to finish before we go away and am hoping to do one this week, maybe Friday.

I slightly turned my bad ankle at the Mohair Centre last week and am getting twinges from that although I suspect the exercise of swimming will do it good rather than harm.

Ady arrived about 15 minutes before the end so caught some of Davies’ lesson, some of Scarlett swimming lengths with me and of course some of my swimming too. Was nice not to have to drive home all wobbly-kneed!

Back at home I set up the new phone Ady had bought while he fed the kids. But I was most dismayed to discover the new phone didn’t ring either 🙁 I rang BT and they have arranged for an engineer to come out on Friday, so in the meantime I will have to get better at checking 1571. I did feel silly ringing to say ‘My phone isn’t ringing. Not like Bridget Jones style nobody is calling me, but it’s not ringing even when someone is trying to call me. I know because I have rung myself’ 😆

I set the alarm last night for this morning as I had a work friend coming round for coffee. She invited us round for lunch a few weeks back and I’d been meaning to reciprocate so when we bought the van we arranged for her to come over and see it but have had to rearrange twice as we work different days and we are generally busy anyway. I was regretting it being this morning though as we could all have done with a non-alarm morning after a fairly hard core weekend and I’d foolishly said I’d bake cake too.

So I was really cross when I was roused from a deep sleep by a tring-a-ling noise from downstairs. It tring-a-linged six times which was sufficient to wake me properly, give me time to identify it as Ady’s phone, curse Ady and stagger downstairs to try and locate it to turn it off / chuck it at the wall. By the time I arrived downstairs it had stopped tring-a-linging, I couldn’t spot it so went back upstairs again.

Seven minutes later it was off tring-a-linging again :(.
I decided it would only do it six times so it wasn’t worth getting up again but of course I was then counting the tring-a-lings and bracing myself for them. I fell bask asleep and was then woken again by the o’clock Big Ben chime I’d been irritated by all weekend from his phone and asked him to turn off.

Then more tring-a-linging. This time Tarly appeared to complain about being woken up so I told her if she could find the phone I could turn it off. She did, I did but by then I was pretty much awake so got up. She also showed me that a wobbly tooth had come out which she was most delighted about :).

I arrived in the kitchen ready to bake to be confronted by last nights washing up so I cursed Ady some more. It’s worth mentioning that Ady does the washing up pretty much every morning and the reason he wasn’t around to turn his own bloody phone off was that he’d been up and out at work for about an hour so I guess he probably didn’t deserve cursing. But I did it anyway.

I quickly made up some cake batter and got some cupcakes in the oven, supervised (ie yelled instructions from the kitchen) breakfast, teeth cleaning, getting dressed, tidying up while doing the washing up, made some icing while the cakes were cooling then iced them and was sitting down in plenty of time for Sarah arriving, even though she had sent a text asking if she could come early as she needed to leave early to take her daughter to the doctors.

We had a chat, cup of tea and cake, she got the guided tour of the van and then had to head off. Davies and Scarlett did some Simpsons movie making and then played outside while I checked paperwork for various things; filled out the form for all the childrens ages and sent the deposit cheque off for Pennywell, filled out the booking form and sent a deposit cheque for the hall for our Goodbye party, rang the bank to order a new cashpoint card as mine is very battered and I’m worried about it snapping, checked the paperwork for the courses I’d booked the kids on this week and realised we’d never had a written confirmation for Davies’ film making one so rang to check details and was told it was cancelled :(. She said she’d left a message on our answerphone and checked she had the correct number which she did but I never got a message :(.

I made a list of ingredients for Christmas cake as I decided if we were not spending the week driving to and from the film making course we could make Christmas cake and emailed a couple of friends to arrange to meet up now we are unexpectedly free. I also copied out a recipe I’ve owed Tasha for ages (and been reminded of at least twice) and emailed that to her while I was sat infront of the laptop with my recipe notebook out.

Then it was lunchtime. Sorry, that was completely wrong.

And then we had lunch ;).

Then we drove over to a mid-point between us park to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily. For once we arrived on time and were therefore first (Mel always has a buffer of ten minutes or so when meeting up with me, I have form for being late :oops:) but they were not far behind us. The four kids played well together, I think they were recreating How to train your Dragon, climbing trees, running around and generally enjoying each others company. Mel and I drank two cups of tea / coffee from the coffee shop and caught up with each others news. She’s really excited about our Wandering Wonderers stuff, while she has had a promotion at work and is enjoying new challenges there. We talked about school and learning and literacy for a while. It was very nice in the sunshine but pretty cold in the shade and we were quite chilled when we left just before 5pm.

We were literally round the corner from Tescos so decided it was most sensible to go there on the way home rather than drive miles out of our way. Davies and Scarlett wanted to stay in the car so they did that while I nipped in and grabbed the ingredients for Christmas cake, components for roast dinner for tonight and some bits for other dinners for the next few days. I laughed with the other shopper who was standing next to me in the baking aisle and eyed up my putting loads of dried fruit in my trolley before asking ‘Christmas cake?’ 😆 The checkout operator was cheery and chatty and it was actually quite a pleasant experience, even if I always feel a bit bad about shopping there.

Mel had given the kids some money to buy sweets and they’d carefully shared it out to get a variety of things, finishing with gobstoppers with bubble gum centres. I hate bubble gum and chewing gum and rarely let Davies and Scarlett have it. It just begs being played with and stretched rather than consumed and gone and I think people endlessly chewing just look really gormless. Also I hate listening to it and Davies is a pretty noisy eater anyway. But Davies was really thrilled to master blowing bubbles with bubble gum which must be another of those milestones of childhood.

Sure enough they spent the 20 minutes or so I was in Tescos perfecting bubble blowing and then playing with the gum and stretching it. Back home Davies lit a fire while Scarlett put the chickens away and went all round the house pulling curtains while I got dinner going – roast chicken, roast and mashed potatoes, roasted carrots and parsnips, stuffing, yorkshire puddings, peas, broccolli and sweetcorn. I also weighed out the ingredients for a crumble topping and Scarlett to mix it up while I peeled, cored and chopped some cooking apples we had from Caz and Bid which needed using up.

We had dinner, which was delicious if rather on the late side for Davies and Scarlett and after a ‘letting your dinner go down’ interlude they went off to bed. I’ve sold some more stuff on ebay today and come up with the idea of an Open House Books Sale and invited loads of local Home Ed folk to come over next Monday over the course of the day and buy our books – 50p each or 3 for a £1 which I’m very hopeful will clear the books, raise some cash and see them all go to good homes. Fingers crossed that works well.

Friday was my all day at work day. I got up early enough to chuck some stuff in a bag to bring away, issue Ady with a list of things to do / chuck in the bag too and told the kids to bring 2 sets of clothes and 1 set of pjs each. Then they dropped me off at work.

Work was okay – it felt like a long day and actually due to a rather crappy timetable involving no time on sitting down tasks it was quite tedious. The library is very quiet at the moment which always makes time drag even more and I’d had far too many late nights last week even by my own standards. I did Baby Rhyme Time but we only had two families attending – one has two daughters and always sings along with everything although her older daughter is a bit over-friendly to me and often tries to clamber on my lap / hold my lap / etc. The other attendee was a clearly autistic little girl who has been coming to Rhyme Time for the last 2 years since she was teeny tiny but has never yet talked to me or even really made eye contact despite me welcoming her by name every time and trying with her. She tends to make a beeline for her specific favourite instruments, have a huge tantrum if she doesn’t get them and then select a book and sit with that completely ignoring the singing and not playing the instruments but snarling at anyone else who tries to pick them up. Her mum is lovely, she used to be a hairdresser in the salon around the corner from our house and she did cut my hair a couple of times years ago and I can never quite decide whether I admire her for bringing the little girl every time when she appears to get nothing out of it but probably is, or whether it annoys me when she kicks off and she doesn’t remove her from Rhyme Time as she frequently drowns out the singing of everyone else. So a very intimate Rhyme Time with 3 adults and 3 children and me having to stop singing at least twice each song to cough, which left the other two women to try and carry on with varying levels of enthusiasm and ability. I did lots of shaking my tambourine to keep things going even when my voice failed me though 😆

I really enjoyed talking to one of my colleagues, Sarah (there are 4 Sarahs who all work at the library at various times) who will be 50 next year and has 2 teenagers about what it’s like to have teenage children, to be getting to an age where you are classed as a proper grown up and indeed what it’s like to rediscover (or not) the relationship with your partner again now you are less co-parents through the intensive years of parenting smaller children. It’s entirely appropriate that your relationship does change with your partner when you have children I think but it’s interesting talking to someone who is almost out of the other side about what that’s like, and indeed what it is like having teenage children as whilst Davies and Scarlett aren’t even really on the cusp just yet I am aware it will be the next big culture shock in parenting.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett collected me at 6pm and we started straight out for Sheffield so I arrived in my work clothes. They must be very different to my Nic clothes as everyone commented on my appearance 😆 The drive was not too bad, considering it was over rush hour, took in M25 and M1 on the Friday night before half term, but whichever way you look at it, it’s still five hours sat in the car at the end of a long day at the end of a long week :(. We arrived just after 11pm and having primed Davies and Scarlett for any / all children in residence having been asleep for hours so they would have to creep in and go straight to sleep they were most delighted to discover not just Ben and Rachael but Jonathan, Kit, Libby and Anna aswell as Lije and Lulah all still up and awake 🙂 🙂 So they went and joined in and I suspect were then guilty of prolonging those childrens’ awake-ness for even longer 😳

We had a very lovely fondue meal (with baked cheese for Katy who was not so likely to enjoy cubed meat dunked in sizzling oil) before retiring to the lounge. Ady peeled off first, followed some time later by Chris the Wife Whisperer, several hours later by Alison and I (who have form for staying up late before parties but were trumped this time) and finally Katy and Barbara. I was definitely upstairs and in bed and asleep before 6am, just not much before 6am. 😆

Saturday Of course didn’t officially begin until after some sleep, despite having dawned several hours before we actually went to bed 😆 The children were awake stupidly early – I admit Davies and Scarlett are rubbish at going to bed but at least they then sleep in in the mornings, I forget that real children (ie other peoples’) still get up at proper times in the morning. I listened to them all chattering in that semi dozing, half dreaming state and laughed when I heard Scarlett tell some of the others when playing Sardines ‘you can’t go in there, my Mumma’s asleep!’ well hardly! Nice to have her thinking of me but participating in shrieking right outside the door meant I wasn’t asleep at all. Unless she was thinking of her friends and warning them off me rather than being considerate on my behalf? 😆

The children had all eaten and were off playing in various combinations; I think the boys were mostly together DSing and the girls were mostly together pretending to be animals :). A very complementary and compatible group of children :). Chris went off to get supermarket supplies, Ady did some pretending to be an animal and Barbara, Katy, Alison and I did party preparation. Unusually this involved throwing bags of bicarb and vinegar out of patio doors, making sugar solutions and adding food colouring, experimenting with water bombs and putting safety goggles in crates along with the more traditional cutting of sandwiches. Ady rejoined us to find all four of us, stinking of vinegar, noses pressed against the patio doors cheering as a bag exploded outside 😆 😆

Chris returned and the rest of the party guests arrived and the party commenced. Babs had done a fantastic job of planning loads of cool science experiment and led the 14 children in all sorts of stuff including mentos and diet coke in bottles, marshmallow and malteser molecule and atom construction, rainbow sugar water solutions, sugar and yeast balloon inflation, load of food followed by the grand finale of the party, a Van De Graaff generator which was just superb. We did standing with hair on end, making chains of children with hair on end, touching fingers, ear lobes (and rather painfully for me, from Davies, my front tooth!) to create static shocks, sparks and generally enjoy the access to such a cool piece of kit :).

Children not staying all left and it then was blatantly wine o’clock. Except a couple of the grown ups don’t drink and one was leaving (despite best efforts to prevent her from doing so ;)) which just left Babs and I. And Babs doesn’t quite have my capacity… 😉

The rest can be seen on brightkite really :). Suffice to say it was a fun and frivilous evening which I really enjoyed. I love my friends very much :).

We were less late-to-bed than the night before, poor Ady was feeling rough so he headed off first, Babs, Chris, Katy and I stayed up a little later and Chris mulled some wine which felt all festive and autumnal and I guess it was about 130am when we called it a night.

Sunday I noticed even the children were not quite so early to rise (certainly mine were not, I overheard other children commenting on Davies’ lateness to wake :)). We had tea, coffee, breakfast, chats, yet more groups of adults standing and gazing out of the window (this time at a stream we can’t actually see from the kitchen window anyway) before we decided to brave the M1 and M25 due south at about midday.

We had a really clear run home and arrived back about 430pm. The kids had baths and food, Davies did some Simpsons movie making stuff, Scarlett watched a progamme about finding tigers on mountains, they had some dinner and a very early night (not that Davies was asleep still, he appeared back downstairs at 1030 and I’m still not sure he’s asleep now) and I’ve done some googling to find out whether Davies’ latest request of things he might want to learn about is feasible before we go – he likes the idea of falconry (HP inspired obviously but he’s seen several displays and would like to learn more about it and how you train birds).

Baths and dinner for us and now as we have yet another busy week ahead kicking off with me needing to bake a cake in the morning I really should try and make up some of my sleep deficit!

Today’s blog post title is brought to you by the following random generated method:
First word : seventh word of the seventh brightkite post down on the current front page
Second word: seventh word of the seventh facebook news feed item on my personal feed
Third word: seventh word on the seventh post down on my own blog.
Fourth word: seventh word on the seventh tweet down on my friends twitter feed
Fifth word: seventh word on the seventh feed on my sage
Sixth word: seventh word on the seventh listing I currently have on ebay
Seventh word: the seventh word on the seventh piece of paper down on the table beside me.

One random word? When seven would do…

Kind of glad it didn’t make sense, would have been rather freaked out it it had! And prefered Jan’s Badger title really. And this took about 7 minutes so probably a one of method of title-ness too.

Up and out this morning as we were off to our only film week screening this year – How to train your dragon. A couple of friends were already at the cinema but were sitting in the back row and Davies and Scarlett insist on sitting in the front row so we said hello and made our way to the front. We all enjoyed the film lots, thought it was really good. We’ve never topped our best film week experience of having a tour of the projection room in a little independant cinema and I read about Kirsty getting a talk about film classification with envy. I do think they miss a trick in not doing more around the films that are screened really, even it was just showing some of the sorts of things that make it to the dvd extras about ‘making of the film’ type stuff.

We left and hung around to have a quick catch up chat with Tasha and Toby before checking the change in my purse to see if we had enough to add to the luncheon vouchers I had found this morning to have lunch at McDonalds. We did so we headed there and the kids had a happymeal each.

We then had a slight limbo of being about 45 minutes too early for Ali’s, not worth going home and no one really being up for walking round shops. So we drove to Ali’s, parked up and sat in the car and I read a book to the kids. We read the Roddy Doyle kids books (Giggler Treatment, Rover Saves Christmas, Meanwhile Adventures) a while back but had been trying to remember some of the details from them the other day so I’d got them out of the library again. We’d brought The Giggler Treatment along with a Morpurgo with us as examples of books we have enjoyed, so we read that.

Writing Group at Ali’s was ace. There was us, Ali and F, C and her two girls E and M and another boy T. We did several creative exercises, the kids had some break out time and everyone shared something they had come up with which varied in style and delivery but were all excellent. We had some really beautifully written descriptive word, some lovely illustrations, some great performance based stories and some really imaginative work. Davies struggled rather with the unwanted attention from one of the group but Ali laid down some ground rules which should prevent that from reoccuring and we spent the drive home practising being assertive about asking people to stop doing something. Something Scarlett and I seem to be pretty good at but Davies lags behind in skill in ;).

Some supermarket hokey cokey with me dropping the kids off at Tesco and Ady and then going back out again to Sainsburys before eventually everyone was home and fed. We all watched Autumnwatch and Scarlett fell asleep on my lap meaning I had to carry her to bed, quite tricky with a nearly 8 year old…

Am now very tired from staying up til nearly 3am (I did watch the QT thing in the end) and anticipating a couple of late nights ahead, so off to bed while it’s still today.

Just liked Jan’s title so nicked it 😆

I worked this morning. Ady took Davies and Scarlett in with him and they did some store visits. We are just a few weeks away from me working at the library for four years – I know, four years how did that happen?! Childcare remains an issue but we are now on the home straight so will muddle through to the end. I forgot to mention in yesterdays post that when I was telling the Book Group about the WW adventure I had to come clean about Home Ed to those who didn’t already know and the usual questions about that came up. I was really touched and proud when Rose piped up with ‘I think Davies and Scarlett are delightful. They are really lovely children and a real credit to Nicola. And I say that in my official capacity as a teacher’ and then Brenda, the Big Boss added ‘and they have spent lots of time here at the library and are helpful, polite and generally lovely. I certainly think what Nicola is doing is working really well for them’. Which reassures me that if they do need to come along with me for the odd shift here and then in my remaining weeks they will be quite welcomed :).

I coughed my way through work and arrived home shortly after Ady and the kids. We all had lunch together and then Ady headed off to work. They’d been looking in charity shops for Collins Gem books – we have a small collection; mushrooms, trees, herbs, birds, farms, food for free, but I want to gather more as they are excellent little books and will be both relevant to us next year and perfectly sized for bringing in the van with space at a premium. They didn’t find any but the kids had both taken some of their own money and Davies had found a Simpsons cd rom he’d seen advertised on one of the Simpsons videos we had and been hankering after. He picked it up for a pound and spent the afternoon playing with it. It’s an animation, cartoon creator thing with lots of scenery, characters, sound effects and so on to put together little cartoons.

We’ve been talking about Christmas (and indeed Scarlett’s birthday) and suitable presents given our downsizing and planned lifestyle. Davies has been agonising over a DSi or a PSP and finally decided on a PSP, second hand so he can get some games and films to go with it. We’d said he could have a new DSi as he could trade in his DSlite towards it as there would be no need to have both types as games could be played in the DSi, or a secondhand PSP with some games to have aswell as his DSlite. The PSP was the better choice for us as we’d already sourced a second hand one from one of Ady’s workmates so once he’d made the decision we bought that and now just need to get a couple more games and films. Davies also wants a journal to bring along for the year and a sheath knife. Scarlett isn’t sure yet about Christmas but wants a penknife and fishing rod for her birthday (Davies had a fishing rod for his birthday, fishing is on both their lists of things to learn next year) along with some small books about animals and art materials to bring along with her.

Scarlett had found a newly hatched chick in the henhouse last night when she put them away. It was being picked on by some of the hens so Scarlett popped it under one of the broody hens and we kept our fingers crossed it would all get sorted out overnight. This morning she took the chick out as it was getting really picked on and rejected and she was worried it would be pecked to death (a very real fear, they are brutal and will kill any chick they deem not strong or developed properly). So she brought it in the house and persuaded Ady to make up a box for it. We have got rid of the brooder lamp so they put a hot water bottle in. Scarlett thought the chick had splayed legs so I got the tape out to do some splinting but on inspection it’s legs were actually okay, it was just a bit dazed by what had been a fairly crappy start in life.

Scarlett spent some time getting it to eat and drink this afternoon, gave it lots of attention and it perked right up, then she took it outside and introduced it back to the broody hens and got them to accept it. Time will tell whether she’s succeeded but I was really impressed and proud of her knowledge and understanding of the whole situation and dealing with it all accordingly :).

Ady went off to work and we had a quiet couple of hours, Davies playing with the Simpsons cartoon maker software, Scarlett drawing / painting and dealing with the chick and me blogging before it was time to go to Badgers.

Today was painting the air drying clay diva pots we made a couple of weeks ago. We did that and then I got really cross with a couple of the girls who were messing about again and told them off. Scarlett said I was scary and I guess I must have been because the rest of them were suddenly super helpful. I’m glad it’s half term next week, I’m really not cut out for making kids do things they don’t to do and I’ve no real interest in getting them to do either.

Davies and I had a chat on the way home as he told me that he is feeling anxious about the parent he’s not with when he’s not with one of us. I think we may have overdone the Morpurgo parents dying stories along with a couple of rather too close to home examples of real life ‘other childrens’ parents’ dying this year and mortality is suddenly an issue for him. I recall having similar moments of grown-up type worrying at a similar age but don’t remember sharing them so am pleased he is able to both recognise and articulate them along with sharing them so we can talk stuff through. His specific concerns at the moment are tsnunamis, tornados and car accidents. We discussed the geographical unlikeliness of most natural disasters living in the UK along with the real possibility but highly unlikely probability of car accidents. I agreed that terrible things do happen and I can’t lie and make promises that nothing bad will ever happen to Ady or I but the chances are incredibly small and spending energy fretting about such things gets in the way of life and these fears need to be thought through before being put away. More tough parenting 🙁

Back home for dinner, Apprentice and now I’m debating staying up to watch a friend who was in the audience for Young Voters Question Time which is being repeated on BBC3.

One of the key reasons I Home Educate is that most of the time I honestly believe I am the very best person to be around my kids most of the time. I really do think that in the main I am pretty bloody excellent at being Davies and Scarlett’s mother. I know them really well, I adore them, I cheerlead them, big up their good bits, guide them through improving the less good bits, smooth their path and aid their passage. I really do think that the environment we humans thrive in is a supportive, loving one where people around us want us to succeed and do our best and will go all out to help us do so. That is the environment I strive to create around my children.

All that said I know I have my faults. I often said it was Ady who gave me a conscience. Prior to knowing and loving Ady it never occured to me that in the wake of me telling someone exactly what I thought of them and then stropping off I would leave them with pieces to pick up. I never realised my words and actions had an impact after they’d left me and I’d walked away. I used to pride myself on being a bitch, on putting people straight, holding their faults up to a big x ray machine and making them visible to themselves and the world around them. I used to get a buzz out of showing people the error of their ways and then rubbing their noses in it. At job interviews when I was asked what my negative points might be I would always talk about how I didn’t suffer fools gladly, how I could be impatient and intolerant of weakness.

But Ady changed a lot of that. Seeing him crushed by some clever put down or offering him a verbal list of all his shortcomings and then watching him use that very list to beat himself up with made me realise there is nothing to be proud of in making other people feel crap about themselves. It isn’t big or clever to be a bitch. There are consequences to our actions and even if we have walked away from them you have still left a trail behind you. Having children hammered that home even more to me and seeing how they sometimes use that intimacy and closeness to each other to know just where the chink in armour might be and sneak the sword in to cut deep is hard to witness and often has me sitting them down and talking to them about how the way to make yourself feel good isn’t in making others feel bad.

But I still have it in me. I still get really wound up with people and lose my temper. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have lost my rag in the last ten years or so. These days I am left feeling bad afterwards. I don’t feel proud of having told someone how it is, put them straight and wiped the floor with them. I feel ashamed, guilty and repentant. I regret it and wish I had managed to keep my temper in check. These days I tend to recognise the signs of building rage and try really hard to walk away, to bite my tongue, to get it off my chest somewhere else rather than to someone’s shocked face. I tend to have a slower burn and a higher ignition temperature now and whilst I don’t think I have mellowed much with age I have at least matured and am able to control myself rather better.

Rather ironically Davies does not cope well with my flaring up. Scarlett has enough of me in her to get similarly enraged at slight provocation and will need to temper her temper as she goes through life, or learn to deal with the consequences. Davies has no temper as such and is very much on an even keel. He is far more likely to get upset than angry and despite having had me for a mother with my shouting and stomping he is not immune to it and still gets hurt when I point out his shortcommings to him. I have tried really hard to ensure I put things to him in a constructive and supportive way (not at all easy for me, my default response to acts of stupidity remains ‘are you an IDIOT?!’) but sometimes I don’t have the patience reserves, snap and he gets upset and then I have to do lots of positive stroking and talking it all through with him to restore equilibrium.

Today was that sort of day.

I had a really rubbish nights sleep, I kept jolting awake and thinking ‘oh, I haven’t done *that* yet!’ about all sorts of random things I don’t need to have done yet. I’m guessing this is what insomnia would be like or having a proper genuine thing to worry about. This was clearly cold based delirium brought about by too much ebaying yesterday.

Predictably when we did all have to be up nobody was and I had to wake both children. We were off to an Educational Visit at The Mohair Centre. It was planned for 10am-1230pm so rather than make sandwiches with just out of the breadmaker bread which would then go soggy as it was still warm I decided to not bother and just come home for a slightly later lunch, which would fit in well with a slightly later than usual tea as it was swimming lessons today. Scarlett had a carrot she half munched and Davies chucked a packet of Wotsits in my bag.

The Mohair Centre was way further down the road than I had thought but we arrived on time and greeted many of the same people from last weeks Raystede trip, plus quite a few more. It was a well turned out trip. We started in a classroom where the main messages seemed to be ‘wash your hands after you have touched animals’ and ‘don’t run in the farmyard’. We then all walked round the animals before being split into groups. The woman running it had asked for some adults to volunteer to be in charge of feeding the animals with children to then split into teams to come and feed them. I volunteered to feed the pigs on the basis they are the animals in the choices I found most interesting (pigs, guinea pigs, rabbits or goats) and I sneakily suspected least children would want to feed them. And I was right 🙂 And my children both chose pigs too as I also sneakily suspected they might :). So I stood and watched my two and the very occassional other small child chuck pig nuts at the very old and decrepid sows. We could then look at the other animals (that would be the guinea pigs, rabbits and goats then). I don’t have a lot of time for guinea pigs or rabbits I have to confess. I quite like goats but even they have limited standing and watching appeal.

So I sidled up to the leader and asked her what was happening next. It was about 1130am. She replied that it could be lunchtime now and then she’d come and find us and do some spinning if any of the children were interested. Lunchtime. At 1130am. Lunchtime. In a 2.5 hour session. Lunchtime. With me with no lunch. Ah.

So I retrieved the half munched carrot and the packet of wotsits from the car, along with a very squashed Mars bar mini roll from the bottom of my bag. I debated getting my penknife and taking a slice or two off of one of the pigs, or borrowing Scarletts firesteel and knocking up a quick guinea pig kebab. Davies and Scarlett who would not have been hungry at 1130am had we been at home declared themselves ‘staaaaarving’ in the midst of all the proper parents with lunchboxes and Ali took pity on Davies with some hulahoops (to go with the Wotsits), a kind other mother shared a bagel with Scarlett and I ate the two discarded dried fruit sticks that someone else kindly donated but both my children took a sniff of and refused. They were not actually that nice – I tried to pretend they were pepperami as they looked a bit like very small skinny pepperami but there was no denying they were flattened dried fruit.

The woman came back to us and brought a spinning wheel so the kids all queued up and had a go at that – Davies adding to his wristband collection and having the woman say to him he was doing really well and had he used a spinning wheel before. Then it was home time.

We dropped Ali and Freya off on our way home and when Scarlett pulled me up on why Davies and her had to swim when they were just as ill as me and I wasn’t swimming I agreed they didn’t have to either if they’d rather not and they both voted not to.

When we got home I wanted to nip to the shop for some crisps and both kids came with me. Scarlett had grabbed a pound coin from her purse with the intention of getting some sweets each for her and Davies and we talked about kindereggs and how they are a waste of money for the small amount of chocolate you get. Davies said he’d like some milk and white chocolate and I told them about how on Sunday mornings at my parents restaurant one of us used to go to the local newsagent and get a selection of chocolates, cut them into bite sized pieces and we’d all share a mixed bowl of chocolates as a Sunday morning treat. They loved this idea so I bought a variety of chocolate bars and packets of things like maltesers and smarties and we cut them up and shared them out.

We had lunch, followed by our bowls of chocolate, tea made by them and plenty of CBBC tv. Davies did some geomagging and Scarlett did some drawing. Ady arrived home nice and early and all was well. Until no one listened to me asking them to tidy up, a glass of Lucozade that Davies had asked for and then not drunk got left on the hearth and in a tussle to be the first to light the fire ‘to help Daddy’ it got knocked over. I got cross, pointed out that if I’d been listened to in tidying up it wouldn’t have been there and therefore not gotten spilt and Davies got upset. He then got even more upset when he went to try and get the Ady machine out and knocked over something else in a ‘nothing I do ever goes right and I’m only trying to help, oh woe is me’ manner. So I mopped him up while Ady mopped the lucozade up and then it was time for me to go out to Book Group.

That was good, an interesting book to discuss, I talked about our WW adventure next year, stayed behind to chat to Brenda the boss about the big decisions made about the library announced today, then stood talking to her for another 20 minutes outside in the carpark about us and the WW adventure. My phone rang on the drive home but as it is about a 3 minute drive I ignored it as I was about to arrive home anyway. The front door was answered by a sobbing Davies as he had been worried about me as I was slightly late 🙁

He took ages to calm down and it turned out Ady had told him I’d be home at 830, which I often am from Book Group, but it was actually about 915pm. He’d been in bed getting increasingly worried and calling down to Ady to check whether I was home yet, Ady had not realised he was getting upset and just been calling back up that no, I was not until Davies had finally appeared, utterly distraught and convinced something dreadful had happened to me.

He took quite a bit of calming down and I suspect he is a little delicate from his cold, coupled with me being grumpy and impatient and giving him a hard time for odd little things over the last couple of days has knocked him enough that suddenly being old enough to have valid fears about bad stuff happening, along with the very real evidence that bad stuff does indeed happen to people you love, very sadly exampled by several bouts of bad and sad news this year was enough to have him in bits.

I think I’ve put him back together again for now and I can’t really hope he toughens up as it is his senstivity which makes him Davies who I adore, but I do sometimes fret that me and my impatience is not always the very best combination for a child who takes so much to heart what I might blurt out in the heat of a cross moment.

Davies has: tidied his bedroom including clearing out the void underneath his bed. He created three piles; one for landfill, one for recycling and one for sale. I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the contents and suspect the worst is not yet over in terms of the kids bedrooms but he made a huge effort, took some tough decisions about getting rid of things and I was in no fit state to check or be mean.

Davies also did some drawing, made me a lovely cup of tea 🙂 , played with the geomags and made an animation with some plasticine ducks and speech bubbles saying ‘quack’.

Scarlett has: painted several pictures, watched various wildlife and nature documentaries, tidied her room up, coughed, drunk the cup of tea Davies made her when he made mine and then made her and I a second cup. Loving having tea-making babies :). Scarlett also played with the geomags and helped with the animation.

I have blogged, read a chunk of my current book which I’m really enjoying and learning lots from. I’ve knitted (I’m making a bag, done the front and back, now knitting the gusset. Suspect that is the first time in my life I have ever used the word gusset ;)), drunk plenty of tea, hung a wash out and put another one on, chopped some firewood and lit a fire, photographed and listed 14 items on ebay, listed some videoes that didn’t sell on ebay or in the local free ad paper on freecycle and put them outside for someone to collect (which they did), confirmed a couple of WOOFing bookings bringing us to complete for zone one. Oh and coughed.

I’ve felt pretty rough today, we were supposed to be at the first of two film week screening – Astrobot. But the kids tell me they have seen it on dvd already and although we were all up in time I just didn’t feel up to the driving or sitting through it. Saved on petrol money too :). We do have another booked on Thursday which we’ve not seen and are looking forward to seeing. Tomorrow is a pretty busy day with a Home Ed trip in the morning, swimming in the afternoon and Book Group in the evening. I might have to dip out of swimming if I’m still rough as climbing upstairs has done me in today so I think swimming 90 lengths might be a bit ambitious…

Scarlett woke in the night and came into bed with me. Ady got up and tried to sleep in her bed but didn’t get much sleep, I lay beside her and tried to sleep but didn’t get much sleep either. Scarlett isn’t a great bed partner at the best of times; wriggly, noisy and prone to flinging herself across you in the middle of the night. When she has a cold she is even noisier, wrigglier and tougher to get any sleep lying next to.

This morning Scarlett was desperate to make arrangements to visit Tom’s parents to see Sploosh and Lucky. Ady hadn’t managed to arrange anything and she had been holding out all week to see them so was starting to get upset. I really felt for her actually as she has been so brave about it all week but had been counting down the days so to have that suddenly snatched away was really hard. Fortunately Ady managed to get hold of Tom and we arranged to meet him at his parents at 2pm.

I wanted to get some stuff listed on ebay this afternoon so we had lunch and then headed off with plans to come back and get stuff done. As we got in the car I realised I was feeling a bit scratchy of throat and started sneezing though 🙁

We had a nice hour at Tom’s – the ducks have been fine, stayed safe and gotten increasingly wary of people and the dogs and been swimming away from everyone. Sploosh has only laid one egg they have found all week but as they are now being fed corn rather than duck layers pellets and the weather is colder it is feasible she only has laid one egg rather than they have simply not found them. They have certainly lost some weight and I suspect they may even lose enough to be capable of flight. They were very heavy here from an excellent diet and lack of proper duck exercise – perfect for the table but not so much for a life in the wild.

Once Scarlett called out to them they swam towards her though and after a fair bit of cooing and talking to them they both came out of the water and scrambled onto her lap. They were definitely more cautious and wary and I suspect they will get less and less likely to come to her as time goes by but it was lovely that they did. And they look really happy and right there on the pond. Scarlett got a little upset when it was time to leave but pulled herself together and recovered quickly enough. We won’t be able to visit again for a couple of weeks, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I suspect coming too regularly will just keep it too fresh for her that she has said goodbye to them.

Back home again where I was feeling increasingly crappy and Lovely Ady took over cooking dinner while I made hot chocolates for the kids and a hot toddy for me and we sat and watched Tooth Fairy on dvd. Dinner was really nice, we ate watching Countryfile then Davies and I watched X Factor while Scarlett helped Ady wash up and made me a cup of tea all by herself :). She is already feeling better so I am hoping it is a day one feeling rough only cold.

I worked this morning. It felt a bit like winding down as I was preparing the Reading Group folder for next year and realised I only have two meetings before we go next year.

Davies was supposed to have YACs today but came to me quite upset to say he didn’t want to go. He said it was because it was a session similar to the one this time last year and also that last time he’d gone Ady and Scarlett had been a bit late collecting him and he’d really disliked the waiting for them. Not at all sure what that was all about but he was sufficiently tearful for me to not question it too much and agree of course he didn’t have to go. I have a feeling Ady has been slightly too enthusiastic about YACs and what may have been a passing interest for Davies has proven something with a bit of pressure for him. There is only one more this year and it won’t be worth signing up for next year so it will come to a natural break for the year with Davies being able to decide what he wants to do when we get back with regard to signing back up again or not.

Dad had arrived at home just before I left for work so he had breakfast with Ady and the kids while I was at work. Then they came to collect me in the campervan at 1pm when I finished. We needed to put petrol in and Ady had filled the kettle up and brought teabags and milk and mugs. We drove up to Sainsburys and put petrol in then Ady nipped in to get some soup for Scarlett’s first meal in the van.

We can’t get the leisure battery to work so can’t seem to get any power in the van when the hook up is not connected. I gave up on trying and boiled the water in a pan on the hob instead which is gas and is working perfectly. So we had our cups of tea and Scarlett had her soup in Sainsburys car park :). Felt like we christened the van properly 😆

After some debate we drove round to the people we had bought the van from to ask them just how the battery switches over. They were really pleased to see us and tried to work it out but couldn’t either. They didn’t actually have her that long but did remember using the leisure battery at least once to boil a kettle so we know it did work within the last year. They took our phone number and rang us later with the phone number of the people they bought the van from, also pretty local, who had said they were happy to be contacted to answer any questions :).

We left there and decided to collect the hook up cable and go over to my parents to plug in on their nice level driveway (unlike our very sloping driveway) to see if the fridge would work. I went up to the window and Dad was just sitting down. He sort of glanced at me and then away and then did a double take at me when I moved closer to the window. He said he thought he’d just caught his own reflection and thought how much alike he and I were looking in a ‘I looked just like Nicola then’ way and then realised it was Nicola! 😆 Ady says he can’t see it at all but I often look at photos of myself and see my Dad in them, infact a quick look at my flickrstream shows at least three pictures with ‘looking like my dad’ as the title. Not sure who should be more flattered / offended really – the 36 year old woman or the 72 year old man 😆 Or indeed if it’s only the two of us who can see it anyway….

Frazer was home so he had the guided tour of the van and then Dad and I sat in it and chatted while we tested the fridge – it works 🙂 yay! Dad did call on their next door neighbour who is a gas / electrician as he could probably work out the whole leisure battery thing and also look at the non working shower heater for us but he was in bed ill. Will have to take the van over there again to catch him.

Dad said he didn’t think we should sell the Sharan as it will mean we come back to no vehicle. Agreed that would be good but we can’t afford to have it taxed and insured and have no off road place to put it, also the money we’ll get from that will be paying Dad back what he lent us for the van. He said he will sort an off road space for it and not to worry about the money for the van until we sell the van :). He also made me promise that if we get into trouble while we’re on the road to let him know and he will rescue us with food / money / petrol / whatever. I knew he would of course but Dad is a man of few words and no grand gestures at all. This is the closest to a great big speech infront of hundreds of people giving us his blessing we’ll ever get so I was very touched :).

Both the kids are sniffly and croaky and clearly coming down with colds with Davies getting more fragile and emotional throughout the day so we came home for them to have dinner, hot bath and bed. I know we’re still quite a way away from it all happening but it is all starting to feel incredibly real and imminent. It was ace to be out in the van today :).

Caz and Bid have been doing Friday Volunteer Days at Willow Organics, operating on the same basis as WWOOFing with people coming along to work for the day in exchange for lunch, cake, maybe a bag or two of salad leaves and a hefty slice of getting in touch with the land. And that.

We’d planned to go over and join in today and Ady was able to go into the office a bit late and take us over /come over to collect us later so we had an earlyish start for us. I had previously told Caz we don’t get anywhere for 930am, often not even downstairs in our own house but we were there with wellies on for 930am today :).

The kids disappeared and we barely saw them all day. They joined us for lunch, at one point Davies rang me because he’d not seen me for a couple of hours and wanted to check ‘you are ok?’ 😆 but other than that were off playing with walkie-talkies and having a ball.

I was put to work with a dibber 🙂 Planting on onions and then fennel before doing some weeding. That took us to lunchtime and several other people had arrived to help out so I chatted to them :). Lunch was delicious; pasta, sweet chestnut, squash and coconut stew with lovely bread followed by apple pie. All very lovely :).

After lunch Caz, Jo and I headed to a nearby neighbour to pick some apples via the opposite neighbour where all the kids were and Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna had arrived as they now keep Honey the pony there. Had a very brief catch up with Julie and then went to gather apples. When we got back the husband and wife team who do willow planting and willow structures and were clearing a large area ready to plant willow in were ready for some assistance so Caz and I armed ourselves with gloves and went to do some clearing of nettles, brambles, wood and ivy. My arms look like I self-harm and my legs got scratched through my jeans to the point that blood seeped through but I got to have a go with a petrol hedgetrimmer and came home tired from proper physical work :).

Ady came to collect us and stayed for a drink and catch up with the people still around before we needed to get going in time to put chickens away before dark. We arrived home to discover the van back on the drive (hurrah!). We’d got the kids fish and chips on the way home so everyone got cleaned up, I read some Running Wild and the kids went to bed, Ady and I had baths and dinner. Baths definitely very high up my list of things I will miss next year.

It was my working all day today. The manager of Shoreham library, Nick, has been sent to work at Lancing on Thursdays so he was in charge. He is very jaded by working for the library service man and boy, very sarcastic and most amusing. As his age and his length of service combined total over 100 years he is eligible for retirement but he keeps going, partially I am sure to wreak revenge on all the borrowers who have irritated him over the years 😆

It was a fairly run of the mill day with no real things to note. One of my colleagues and I always have a Word of the Day when working together, sometimes we attempt to actually use it in conversation with a borrower, other times it is just a new word we have heard somewhere and liked the sound of. Today neither of us had one so I scoured various websites that offer WotD emails. Dictionary.com had ‘hopscotch’ which we were very uninspired by so I searched further and found ‘boustrophedon’ which we both liked lots.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett had a nice day apparently. They were visiting stores in the Dover area so had a bit of a walk round Dover and Ady did some war history chatting to them. They also looked at Hastings Pier which has been burnt down.

Back at home everyone was tired, it feels like it’s been a long week for some reason. I read a book to Scarlett as Davies was watching something on TV and then the kids went to bed, I had a bath and Ady sorted dinner.

A backdrop to our day, as I suspect has been for many others has been live and replay footage from the mine rescue. Tear jerking stuff. Utterly loved the second man up who brought stones up as gifts for his rescuers. 🙂

We waited in this morning as some dvds I’d sold on ebay were being collected by a local buyer. She arrived on time and gave me twice what she’d won them for as she felt they had not sold for enough. Bless :). I made some bread dough for Badgers later.

Once that had been done we headed into Lancing for a few small tasks – we had a big bag of ebay parcels to post, some stuff to take back to the library and we needed some cream for butter making. All that done we headed home for lunch.

Davies and Scarlett had been a bit squabbly today but disappeared off this afternoon to play something together. I did some online stuff, read some of a book I’m enjoying about living on wild food for a year and sewed loads of Badger badges onto uniform.

Ady arrived home early which meant we could use his car for Badger (saving petrol, hurrah), the kids had tea and then we left for Badgers. Today I did bread roll shaping and baking and butter making. We started by talking about our favourite sandwiches, which food groups bread and butter are from and then moved to the kitchen to wash hands. I had 8 in the group this week including two pairs of siblings and one girl I find incredibly trying. She does a lot of fussing, shrieking and generally being attention seeking.

We shaped bread rolls and put them in the oven, talking about the ingredients in bread and the process of rising and what each ingredient does. Once that was in we split a tub of cream between two tubs and became two groups of four sharing the shaking between the group. The tubs were transparent and we kept checking inside to observe the changing of the cream to butter, tasting and describing the changes. We then drained off the buttermilk and tasted that before splitting the butter between the children and shaping it into pats to wrap in greaseproof paper and put in the fridge.

I had to do way too much reining in of the children who seem to struggle when they are not being directed every single second. I got so fed up with it this week that I mentioned it to the leader and got her to lecture them all. I have no interest in trying to instil discipline as I frankly couldn’t give a monkeys if they want to engage or not. It’s interesting to watch Scarlett’s frustration with them.

Back home again Ady had got the fire lit and dinner on so I had a bath while the kids ate some toast spread with Scarlett’s portion of the butter.

About 6 weeks ago there was the usual rash of Educational Visits being planned on the local lists to coincide with the Back To School rush. I have not been organising anything other than Camp and WOOFing so decided to join in with some of the other people’s clipboardiness instead this year. So along with a couple of film week bookings, some course during half term and the green woodworking Davies did I also booked a couple of animal-y workshops locally. One at Raystede animal shelter where we go fairly regularly was today.

Scarlett loves Raystede, it was on her very short shortlist of places she considered rehoming Sploosh and Lucky. We’ve been there many times but only ever as a family, independant wander round, never to an organised event. We’ve also chatted to the Educational Officer, Lucy, at the South of England Show the last two years running.

The event today was really good, held in their purpose built ‘education yurt’ and with a ‘science theme’ it was at a fairly basic level and I don’t know that Davies and Scarlett particularly learnt anything new but they enjoyed the day and the activities.

We started with some talking about what they do at Raystede, then what sort of wild animals we have in the UK and what the differences between wild and domesticated animals are. The children then ran around outside collecting pictures of wild animals from the UK. Next they talked about hibernation and had to match the pictures of animals they had found to some statements around the outside of the yurt regarding what they do over winter. They all hid an acorn outside in the garden area (like squirrels) and then went outside to do a walk around the geese and ducks area following a trail with an interactive story about a hedgehog.

Davies and Scarlett had already teamed up with 3 brothers so we were in a team with them reading the story and collecting worms (not real ones) as we went. Back to the yurt to count up worms and then outside to make some bird feeders using apples, bird seed and string, then it was lunchtime.

We ate in the picnic area and I was rather reminded of everything I hate about Home Ed group educational trips as the pack mentality kicked in and there was way too much rowdiness and silly behaviour in the group for my liking. I am always hyper aware of being so obvious to the rest of the world as a group of kids Not In School and I hate the way as a group we so often live up to the prejudices of untamed, feral children. I am always so proud to be with the group of children that come along to camps as they conduct themselves so well, respectfully listening to people, asking considered questions and just behaving like the nice kids they are rather than running amok, being wilfully violent and vandalistic like some Home ed kids can be. Nothing dreadful did happen today but there were enough examples of ‘unparenting’ to remind me just why we don’t attend that many of these types of excursions. I was further reminded when one of the other parents came to chat to me later and I found myself wanting to shout at her for being an idiot ‘that’s the trouble with Home Ed, it gives them minds of their own…’ she said having identified me as ‘Scarlett’s Mum’ (yes, among other things… ;)) and told me how Scarlett was ‘quite the little eco-warrior’ for telling her child off for damaging a tree 😆 There are many aspects of my parenting and deviations from the norm that I would happily be taken to task on and can explain rationally, articulately and with passion and reason as to why we have made conscious decisions to do things a certain way. Allowing my children to behave in an unsociable fashion and be gits would not be one because I would not countenance that and would be dealing with my children accordingly.

Ooh that was a rant from nowhere wasn’t it! 😆

The afternoon was a chat about food chains and food webs and some practical demonstrations with a ball of wool and children being various plants and animals and passing the energy between themselves folllowed by heading outside for some parachute games. Finally they all made a tiny habitat in the garden and had to identify shelter, food, water etc within in.

I enjoyed chatting to Cintha and Ali and Davies and Scarlett said they had had a fab day. I think it was really good value for money at £3 each and an unusual enough experience for D&S to make it enjoyable. I talked to Lucy the Ed.Officer about a Keeper for the Day type thing for Scarlett for her birthday and she is going to see if she can put something together and let me know.

We left there and headed straight to the swimming pool. Finally we arrived in time for me to have two full hours swimming. Davies and Scarlett spent the first hour playing in the pool, on the diving boards and slide and finding other children to play with. I decided to aim for 90 lengths in my 2 hours as I am worried about my knees getting properly injured so wanted to slow my pace slightly but up my actual lengths. I split it into 3 40 minute chunks and aimed for 30 lengths every 40 minutes which I know I can achieve at a steady pace. I could possibly have done a few more as Scarlett got in with me at the end and did a couple of lengths which slows me up and I was happy to achieve 90 so instead of a last minute burst I did the last few lengths slowly to warm down having read some advice online about the first and last couple of lengths being slow ones. My knees were nowhere near as painful as last week and while they are still slightly stiff now there is no pain this week.

I do think 100 lengths is achievable in one go but that still means I have about 7 trips to the pool to do so I definitely need to get one or two extra sessions in on top of the usual once a week. Maybe this weekend some time…

Back home Ady had already got home and started the kids tea so I had a cup of tea and soaked in the bath for a while – my poor fingers and toes had only just stopped being wrinkly from the pool! 😆 I cooked a very autumnal dinner of roasted roots and Tasha’s wedding sausages and now I am utterly worn out.

Your support greatly appreciated 🙂
http://www.justgiving.com/Nic-Goddard

The word efficiency always reminds me of that advert from years ago.

Up with the alarm this morning as Lance the mechanic was coming to collect the van for a service. I couldn’t remember if he’d said 10 or 1030 so at 1010 I decided it must have been 1030. At 1130 I decided he was just late!

I had quite a list of things I wanted to get done today but was stuck in waiting for Lance really. I did hang some washing out and go and coo over the new chick though – 3 days old and now out foraging and learning from it’s mother(s) about eating, drinking and so on. I love watching mother hens with chicks, they are so clever and fascinating they way they teach and communicate.

Davies and Scarlett played with the geomags, including making coloured shadows with the sun through the panels and blending colours to make stained glass window effects. Lance rang at about 1145 to say he was running late but would be round after lunch to collect the van.

We had lunch and then he arrived with a mate. They took a couple of attempts but did get the van started, chatted with me for a while about our plans for next year and then drove her off. We are just having a service but specifically want to get her running reliably , hopefully she’ll be back tomorrow and we can actually take her for our much longed for overnight somewhere soon.

I’d collected together 4 rings, a pair of earrings and a necklace that held no sentimental value (not much stuff does hold sentimental value to me to be honest, as slushy as I can be) to carry on raising funds for next year, I had the insurance documents to post and a book to drop off to someone at reading group so we dashed off to get all that done. I tried both jewellers in Lancing and the first doesn’t buy gold and the second one offered me £50 for it which was exactly the price I’d had in mind as what I’d be pleased with. I suspect I could have gotten more and wonder if handing over one ring at a time might have gotten me more but I was keen to turn it into cash and that along with the few bits that we sold on ebay has raised the £120 for servicing the van which we’d have struggled with this month so I took the money!

We came home and I decided to take advantage of the dry weather, the empty drive and Ady not being around to keep squirrelling stuff back away in the garage so did a very ruthless carload of stuff to the tip. I also grabbed all the half pots of paint and we took them round to my Dad and stayed for a cup of tea with him. The garage already looks like someone has been in there with a mind to clearing it, I reckon three or four more runs and I’d have it all but empty.

Back home I sorted the kids some dinner out and then Ady arrived home. Tom rang to talk to Scarlett to tell her the ducks are doing well and his Dad has been out on the boat and can’t get near them as they are scared of him. I had huge reservations that they would survive the first night so am hugely heartened by this news :). I think we’re going to visit them next weekend.

We read a chunk of Running Wild before bedtime and I have started reading Wild Food which I think will be an interesting and hopefully inspiring read.

I had a really bad nights sleep, I think it was too warm in the bedroom which threw me into a really heavy sleep that I then kept surfacing from and feeling really groggy. I had some very vivid dreams, mostly about the ducks including one where they had flown back to our house. I then laid awake for a while before falling back asleep and then really struggled to wake up this morning, sleeping right past the big deal of today that was 10:10:10:10:10:10. I’ll have to try harder next year for 11:11:11:11:11:11 😉

Ady and Scarlett had a productive morning washing Ady’s car and the campervan, Davies watched some of the Ben 10 extravaganza he’s been looking forward to (Cartoon Network making full use of the 10:10:10 thing to launch a new Ben 10 series today) and I went through the downstairs bathroom clearing all the cupboards, throwing stuff out and adding to the pile of stuff to try and sell.

We had lunch and all sat for an hour or so watching TV, we ended up getting drawn into a Sarah-Jane Adventures episode. We needed to go to the tip with a couple of bags of rubbish and some outgrown bikes which were just too old, rusty and tired to be worth passing on and to get some petrol for the van which is being serviced tomorrow and was on red. We’ve charged the battery but we still can’t get it started so I am hoping the mechanic will work his magic on it tomorrow but wanted to at least present him with a vehicle with charge in the battery and fuel in the tank.

On the way back home Scarlett bemoaned not having been to the beach for ages. I offered to take them tomorrow but she wanted to go with ‘all of the family’ so we nipped home to collect fleeces and headed to the beach for an hour or so. It was high tide and just gorgeously sunny. We clambered rocks, played chicken with the waves (the waves won!), collected some sea glass, skimmed stones and reminded ourselves how lucky we are to live so close to the beach :). Just lovely.

We came home and Ady got dinner on while I packed up a load of stuff we’d sold on ebay. We’d not sold any of the loads of videos we’d listed so I have put them in the local free ad listings for a week and then we’ll freecycle them / give to a charity shop.

We had dinner, watched X Factor and I saw the beginning of The Apprentice having only caught the end on Wednesday.