One word? When seven would do…

I felt quite down this afternoon, which is very not like me and I was listing all the possible reasons for it on a BK post when I realised actually there were sufficient little niggles there to be allowed to feel a bit sad, which cheered me up. Suspect I am like the scarecrow ‘I’d like to be unhappy but I never do have the time’ with a twist of ‘I’d like to be miserable but I never do have the justification!’ . Me and my sodding PMA eh? 😉

I worked this morning, it went quick although I did do a double shift of shelving. I helped a couple of 11 year old girls find books about puberty and periods and couldn’t decide if I admired their maturity for coming and asking at the library and finding books, or if they were winding me up. The whole pre-teen, puberty thing has come up a couple of times lately in various small ways, not specifically to do with Davies and Scarlett but at nearly 10 (eek!) and getting on for 8 that’s the way we’re heading here I guess with it’s whole new set of angst and new stuff to learn about them and me and parenting.

I’m doing a display for some Arts and Crafts books so have created a load of squares on which to do different crafty technique letters to spell out ‘arts and crafts’. I’ve done a pretty mosaic C and a quilled F and am planning on knitting at least one letter and maybe needle felting another, a calligraphy letter, a water colour pretty one, maybe something with plasticine or salt dough, something grafitti style and so on. I did have a go at knitting a T with two pencils and some plastic string but just got lots of pencil lead on my fingers really so gave up.

I got an email with my sign in details for the ECDL the library are paying for me to do. I thought they would change their minds given I have told them I am leaving and they won’t get any benefit out of me qualifying but was told they are viewing it as a thank you for all I’ve done so I can get on with that as I am doing it in my own time accessing it remotely from home. I doubt I’ll actually learn anything new but it’s good to have my computer literacy in a quantifiable measure I guess for potential CVs of the future.

I drove over to Julie’s and had a cup of tea with Chris and Julie while the kids all carried on playing. Maisie and Scarlett had walked home from the allotment on their own so had been lectured about that and when I arrived Davies had a flannel on his eye as Maisie had been flicking nail varnish and it had caught him in the eye 🙁 . I think Wet Play Syndrome had hit over there and five kids, three of whom have all sorts of sibling arguing going on and had infected the others meant it was a bit screechy and rampaging over there. Hurrah for Julie being mostly unfazed by it all though, I know I wouldn’t be!

We left and my poor car went through a puddle too many and died just before we had to cross a railway line. We sat for about five minutes, in a really not very safe place with the hazards on debating whether to call out breakdown cover or give it a few minutes and try and get the engine started. We passed the five minutes by going over my potential action plan if the car had broken down on the crossing which had occured to Scarlett about two minutes after it occured to me so I was able to share my very newly formed ideas. I got the car started again and we then debated the dilemma of it needing petrol (not as desperately as the other day but enough that I wanted to put some in before we got home as I was worried a combination of the steep driveway and more damp would create the same issue next time we try and start it so wanted to discount the petrol element) and deciding whether to stop sooner rather than later so petrol was fine, or get closer to home incase it didn’t start again afterwards. We went for closer to home as the petrol station at Sainsburys is opposite my parents house, only a mile from our house and we’re saving our Nectar points for emergency food rations while we’re WWOOFing so are trying to build them up.

We got there, put petrol in and it started first time to get us home. Suspect my car in damp weather is going to be another ongoing issue for the next couple of months though 🙁

Scarlett was feeling pretty upset because we lost a hen last night. We had 3 hens who had gone broody and would bury themselves into the undergrowth each day and squawk at you when you put them away. Two have been broody for a couple of weeks but a third went broody this week and was very pecky when you grabbed her to put her away. All of the other bantams put themselves away at night, heading into the shed to roost as it starts to get dark, but the broody ones will just stay huddled down where they are. We have at times missed a broody hen when putting them away and have obviously gotten a bit blase about them being pretty safe in their area of the garden.

Last night Ady put them away and despite me having said the night before we now had 3 broody ones and Scarlett saying she’d tried to put that one away and it had pecked her he’d missed her and just put the other two away. This morning when he let them out there was a heap of feathers and a trail of them up past the garage and sure enough she has gone 🙁 . I’m not so upset about the escaped quails flying away as I know they are likely to be okay but having lost 3 hens recently – the speckled one that just disappeared, came back a couple of times but has not been seen for a month now, the broken legged one that died last week and now this one lost to a fox has made me feel most sad 🙁 I’m also worried that the fox will be back and hanging around and Scarlett is just devastated :(. She cried at Julie’s when I confirmed I’d headcounted all the chickens and we’d definitely lost one last night and she cried again at home. I think it’s just too close to the one dying last week for her to be her usual resilient self about it 🙁 Hate seeing my children upset over things I can’t make better for them.

So I wallowed for a bit and then made the kids some tea, Ady came home and the kids and I cuddled up and read the end of The Last Wolf (which nearly made me cry 😉 ) before they went off to bed. I think we all really need a quiet day which is my plan for tomorrow.

Before I dash off to work and start today :).

Yesterday was quail handover day. A friend had originally wanted all three, then wanted the remaining two and when we briefly lost all of them and then only regained one I didn’t tell her about the reduced numbers just in case one came back or we lost the last one again. We’d arranged to visit them yesterday and I just forsaw a stream of quail number updates with different numbers each time and a range of excuses so thought once we’d got however many quails were left in the house for the night on Monday I’d send one last update confirming. Despite a brief dash for freedom on Monday afternoon when it escaped from the cage again but just loafed around outside with an ‘isn’t anyone going to stop me then? expression until Tarly caught him and put him back in again, we still had The Last Quail on Monday night so I emailed Katy and confessed and arranged to bring him over the following day.

We’ve known Katy & co for years, they are good friends of Julie and we have lots of other mutual friends but despite George being about Davies’ age and Poppy being almost exactly Scarlett’s age the kids have never hooked up enough to meet up specifically. We have tried a few times this year but always had too-full diaries to manage a date. Katy is lovely, really interesting to talk to so I was looking forward to some time chatting with her.

I called into Sainbsburys (pay day!!!) to get some lunch supplies to bring and we arrived with the quail. He will be specifically George’s pet and much loved so we are very happy to have rehomed him (and very curious to see how long they manage to hang on to him!). We had a lovely couple of hours there – the kids played in various configurations (they also have a five year old brother Herbie too and the five kids all spent some time putting on shows for each other, then various numbers played with instruments or out in the garden with their hens or on the swing, some of them went across the road to a green to ride scooters and then they all settled down to watch Star Wars and took it in turns to hold the quail). and Katy and I did indeed chat – about Home Ed, WWOOFing, intentional communities and communes, autonomy and all sorts of other interesting stuff.

Nope, not going to manage this before I go to work – will return later to it…

Back 🙂

We came home via another supermarket, this time to get pants for Tarly (she is now totally knickered up) and bits for dinner. We rather ambitiously only took a hand basket and then trailed around with stuff under our arms and balanced precariously. Back home again I made dinner for the kids and got that tidied up, put a curry on and did some processing of laundry.

Ady came home, Davies and Scarlett went upstairs to prepare Davies’ room for evening guests and we waited for said guests to arrive. Helen-who-lives-on-a-boat along with her husband Kelvin and Alex and Abbie (all of whom also live on a boat, obviously). I think Helen is now officially my most popular friend’s name although I do know a whole host of Katy/ Katie / Catie / Cate /Kates I am disqualifying them as they are all spelt differently :).

They arrived, children disappeared upstairs with Maltesers and we sat chatting. I served up the curry which was much enjoyed and thanks to chocolate for children and alcohol for grown ups the noise and silliness levels were raised all over the house 😆 Helen didn’t have any excuse as she was driving but seemed to keep up with the nonsense well for a sober person ;).

Scarlett was really tired and ended up falling asleep in her clothes at about 1130pm but the others carried on with Abbie and Davies making a very impressive Slinky Dog from Toy Story using a Slinky and various stuff found in Davies’ bedroom. We tried to compete with a torn up Malteser box but despite best efforts their attempt was far better :lol:.

They left about midnight after a really enjoyable evening – hoping to repeat again soon :). We pretty much went straight to bed, it felt *really* late even though it was still earlier than I usually go to bed.

I didn’t go to bed til 2am last night. I’ve been going to bed earlier and as a result getting up earlier too but havent’ actually been sleeping all that well, waking around 5am, so I didn’t go to bed until I really felt tired last night which seemed to work and I slept much better.

But it did mean a later start all round 🙂 Scarlett was in a stroppy mood and couldn’t find any clean knickers. I thought it was because she’d either not been putting them in to be washed, or not putting clean ones away in the right place but a quick scout round showed she only seems to have about 5 pairs. I know I have been chucking them out as they come through the wash if they are too small or the elastic is going so I suspect I have culled to critical point. She does have a stash from an older friend but they are still too big so she needs some pants! Today she elected to wear none rather than borrow a pair of Davies’ or wear yesterdays again. Fortunately she made it to the end of the day without being hit by a bus. She was also disappointed with the breakfast cereal selection on offer and the sandwich fillings at lunchtime – end of the month seems to be hitting Scarlett harder than anyone else this week… payday tomrrow though, so it’ll be new pants, honey nut shredded wheat and tuna fish all the way for her! 😆

Davies and Scarlett did some bedroom tidying while I did some drafting a biography of us to approach the first 15 potential WWOOFing hosts with. I went for a personalised intro for each farm mentioning what had drawn us to them and we were most interested in, referencing their website if they have one, saying when we were in their area and then a copy and pasted bit about us as follows:

We are Nic, Ady, Davies and Scarlett. We are hoping to spend a year from March 2010 travelling around the UK WWOOFing. We have been hankering after a more self sufficient, greener, simpler lifestyle for several years and have been moving towards it in small ways in our home on the south coast of England. We have an allotment and grow food in our garden at home. We keep chickens, bantams, ducks and quails, most of which we have hatched in an incubator or bred from our own livestock. Our eventual goal is to become self sufficient and have as small an environmental impact as possible. We want to learn all we can about all the aspects of this lifestyle while getting a realistic idea of what it all entails. We are hardworking, fast learning, friendly and cheerful. Our children are well behaved, responsible and keen to learn alongside us.

Below is a little bit about us, the things we have done before and are doing now and what we’d rather be doing more of:

Ady currently works in retail support and merchandising of bedding plants. He has previously worked in all sorts of careers including Retail Management, game keeping, managing an indoor rollercoaster and a spot of TV presenting. Ady wants to leave the 9-5 behind, learn about rearing animals and butchery, spend more time with his family and live a simpler life.

Nic has also worked in a wide variety of jobs from Retail Management, Recruitment and Marketing but currently works part time at the local library whilst being at home with Davies and Scarlett. Nic had done some volunteer shepherding, overseen the hatching of over 100 birds, loves baking, preserving and is learning about wine and beermaking in an experimental fashion! Nic wants to learn more about beekeeping, dairy farming (including milking a cow, making cheese etc.), lambing, calving and growing fruit and vegetables. Nic can crochet, knit and sew a bit, has done some basket weaving, rag rug making and interested in natural crafts. Nic is a qualified Waste Prevention Advisor volunteer with the local council which involved a course learning about composting, real nappies, waste collection and processing, recycling and landfill and other green issues. Nic loves the idea of off-grid living and would love to learn more about sustainable, renewable and alternative energy and building.

Davies is nearly ten and loves bushcraft, survival and being outside. He’d love to learn to drive a tractor and understand how it works. Davies loves animals, particularly sheep. His other passions are film making, drawing and storytelling.

Scarlett is nearly eight and loves animals. She has hatched and raised ducklings this year and is interested in breeding, rearing and keeping animals.

Both Davies and Scarlett enjoy baking, breadmaking, growing fruit and vegetables and learning about where our food comes from. They are interested in nature and wildlife, the world around them and how everything works. Davies and Scarlett have always been Home Educated.

We’d love to come and meet you and work with you and look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Nic, Ady, Davies and Scarlett

I wanted to strike a balance between making us sound interesting and useful and the sort of people you would want to meet and have in your home, not too know-it-all but genuinely interested and up for learning not just slogging on hard labour tasks, clear we are a foursome and want to work that way but also getting over enough of who we are that if we are likely to be incompatible then it will be clear to potential hosts from the outset. I sent the first 15 and was gratified to have one almost instant reply:

To you all, thank you for you email, that sounds quite a possible idea: the only thing is I think you will have far more to teach us than
the other way around!! We have done many of the things you mention: poultry incubation, home butchery etc, but have rather streamlined our
life lately to fit in other things we want to do: D photography, J counselling, but we could fill a very happy week with work
together I’m sure. I can not at the moment organise that far in advance as I am now a student & it depends when my essay deadlines are (
no one would want to be around as they approach!)But March is usually a good month for wwoofing for us, so shall we keep in touch & see
what the new brings?
Best wishes from J.

which sounds very promising 🙂 A second reply came a bit later which is also pretty promising too:

Thank you for your enquiry. You have a very interesting lifestyle. We are not organic but a farm that uses little fertilisers etc… We run about 200 cattle and a small flock of sheep. We also have a few chickens and share your interest in hatching eggs etc…Previously we have also had pigs and goats.
I did a butchery course and we are interested in maximising profits from our cattle. I have lots of ideas but they all cost money to get started and running a farm, caring for my elderly parents does not give us much time to set something new up. Especially after a cold spell and then a drought in the first part of the year, alot of my time has been taken up in sourcing feed.
We also run a Certificated Caravan site for 5 units and last year put in electric hook ups and a water tap to each pitch. The jobs ongoing for this project are grass cutting and bin emptying etc.. The current wwoofers have helped us with making steps and a water tap for the chemical disposal point and dry stonewalling amongst many other jobs. They are involved in the routine work which includes feeding calves and cattle and cleaning out the sheds which house the cattle.
Wwoofers generally take a part in the household chores as well, preparing meals and general cleaning, laying and clearing the meal
table etc….
The other side of our farm is where my Mum & Dad live, this is an old georgian house with nine bedrooms and very overgrown gardens and orchards. We are trying to reinstate them, to produce vegetables and fruit trees to include apples etc… It may be that the work might be between the two sites.
Does this sound like what you are looking for?
I would need your membership No, if you want to book in
Regards D

We got our first knockback – a disappointing one as these people had sounded potentially very suitable:

Hi,

Sounds like we have many similar interests. However……..we will be building our roundwood timber-framed house in 2011 and life will be somewhat hectic to say the least and all volunteer spots are taken. If you would like to go on our house-build mailing list you will be kept up-to-date with progress and any possible opportunities to get involved.

Happy WWOOFing,

and we will indeed get ourselves on their mailing list. And finally an outright no:

Thank you very much for enquiring about WWOOFing at Darracott Farm.
Unfortunately we have already placed some WWOOFers over that time.
Best of luck in finding a host.

With best wishes,

which if it is a rejection rather than the truth is a nicely put one at least :).

I can’t share these emails with the world at large on the wonderingwanderers blog and I don’t really intend to copy and paste them all here either but it’s been exciting making the first real moves towards this part of the plan today so I wanted to mark it here, also I thought people might want to see what I’ve written and the response we’re getting. I may think about tweaking our email for the next batch if it proves unpopular.

We had lunch and then were supposed to be going to a localish (driving distance) park to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily. It had been grey and cloudy all morning so I was expecting it to be quite miserable in the park anyway but we never actually got there. My car had very little petrol in it so the petrol station with my last fiver was first port of call anyway but thanks to all the rain and quite possibly the lack of petrol it didn’t want to start. I spent ages turning it over and finally got it going but it kept spluttering and dying which had me thinking it was petrol related too so I emptied a can we had in the garage into it and it did then start. It juddered and took ages to be happy (quite possibly proving what all Dad’s insist about dragging the crap up from the bottom of the tank and clogging up the carburettor or something) but finally was ticking over just fine so we set off. Unfortunately just as we were about to hit the dual carriageway off a roundabout it died again and I just managed to pull into a bus stop before the engine stopped.

I tried texting and ringing Mel but got no reply so as we were right next to a different park I left a message to say where we were and that if they wanted to meet us there instead we’d hang on and hope to hear from them for 10 minutes or so before trying to get home. The car eventually started again and was fine driving round in a big circle to get to the park car park where I finally got hold of Mel and invited them to our house instead. The car restarted fine there and again at the petrol station so fingers crossed no damage has been done and it was a one off.

Davies and Scarlett had been on Park Mode so felt the need to run round the garden while I was on Sofa Mode so gave in to that and then Mel, Liam and Lily arrived. It’s been an unlikely friendship really, we met online on netmums or some other such forum that I think I only visited the once when Scarlett and Lily were about 2 and the boys were 4 and 5 (Liam is 9 months older than Davies). The kids have been to each others birthday parties and always play okay together although I doubt any of them ask about the others when we don’t meet up. Mel is a VAT inspector and really active in the kids’ schools but somehow we have always got on really well and she really champions Home Education and seems to get it in a way that so few school-using parents do. Liam has a statement whilst Lily is on the G&T register and the two of them couldn’t be more different with their approaches and biases and Mel does a fab job of supporting them both really well in their different strengths.

The kids all played really well today, some of the time all four of them and then the girls spent some time with the birds while Davies and Liam X boxed. Mel and I chatted and drank tea and coffee. I caught up on all her news and she heard all about our planned adventure and was really enthusiastic telling me ‘this just feels like the logical conclusion to everything I know about you and how you have lived for the last five years’. She was very positive and made some interesting observations. She also went into the playroom for a browse and came out with some books, a globe and a toy bin and put some money in the campervan fund pot :).

They left and I sorted out some tea for the kids (leftovers from last night, no complaints from either of them on that count 🙂 ) and checked the status of some ebay auctions I had ending today to find we’d sold another £25 worth of stuff. That brings our sold total to over £150 and we have saved £300 this month too. We have another huge pile ready for carboot selling next weekend and more things listed on ebay ending over the next week and I’m thinking about doing some job lots of books and videos Buy It Now for local collection to see if that sells as a friend has recommended that as a way of clearing things quick.

Ady came home and cooked a ‘random selection of items from the freezer’ dinner for us. I read about half of ‘The Last Wolf’ to Davies and Scarlett. Scarlett fell asleep quite early, Davies has been sending me picture texts from his bed :rolls: I’ve also been knitting today, I have a plan to use up lots of my wool stash by making another patchworky blanket as it will be warm and useful on the journey but I can also unpick it again later if I want to use the wool for something else :).

We had plans this weekend, only plans between the four of us but plans nonetheless. But the weather put paid to them.

Saturday morning I worked. Ady was planning to take Davies and Scarlett to the alllotment. We’ll be giving it up pretty soon so we wanted to dig up the potatoes, harvest the onions and garlic and carefully dig up the apple tree to bring home and replant in the garden here. It also happens to be a perfect location to watch the Shoreham Air Show with a panoramic view over the airfield and the skies surrounding it. I was going to walk up and meet them at lunchtime and help finish getting the allotment ready to hand back.

Ady dropped me into work but the skies were cloudy and grey and although it only drizzled with rain it was far too misty for planes to be flying – both from a seeing them from the ground point of view and a visibility for the pilots perspective. I heard no planes all morning at work (which is even closer to the airfield than home) and people coming in were all commenting on it being so quiet. We’d heard the jets fly in on Friday afternoon, I suspect we’ll hear them leave again on Monday.

I started preparing a display and chatted to the two Saturday assistants who both got excellent A level results on Friday and will be heading off to their respective first choice of universities. One wants to be a teacher, the other Prime Minister. It’s exciting listening to them with all their future plans laid out about to spread their wings and go off into making their own way in the world – both of them are full of questions about our planned adventure too, similar in many ways.

I wasn’t surprised to see Ady pull up outside just before my shift finished having not gone to the air show or the allotment thanks to the rain. Back at home we had lunch and I spent a couple of hours listing bits on ebay while Ady looked at campervans and the kids spent the dry intervals in the garden and the wet ones playing indoors.

Eventually we decided to tackle the loft space. We have a narrow strip of loft void running alongside our and Davies’ bedrooms with access doors in both rooms. There are pipes running along too so we have never stashed too much stuff in there but we knew there were things in there to come out, not least because we’re planning on using the space to store some bits while we’re away – things like Christmas decorations, cuddly toys that can’t be parted with yet, a papier mache dalek, that sort of thing ;). There is also a second space in each bedroom accessed from another door which are both covered by heavy furniture and may be stuffed with all sorts of forgotten stuff or may be empty, they also need checking.

We started with the space in Davies’ bedroom end and had to clear stuff infront of the door first. As before things were piled into ‘keeping’, ‘selling’ and ‘binning / recycling’ with the keeping stuff put away neatly into the now-looking-quite-tidy bedrooms, the selling stuff finding it’s way into the playroom which is now chock-full again of stuff ready for another carboot sale next weekend and the binning/ recycling stuff going into Ady’s car to be taken to the tip.

We cleared loads, had one last read of things like ‘congratulations on the birth of your baby girl’ cards and smiled at the deflated helium balloons people had brought to hospital when I had Davies and then binned them.

Ady cooked tea for the kids while I sorted the playroom out and pulled anything worth ebaying out of the piles.

Then the kids and I watched X Factor before they went to bed.

Sunday was another cloudy, wet day so still no planes (although yesterdays rain would have prohibited digging potatoes up at the alllotment, it will be a mud bath up there).

Ady spent some time outside titivating with the ducks and chickens area to put their food undercover and spread some sawdust in the muddiest areas – we need some more chipped bark to see us through the winter round there. I spent ages going back through the 30plus hosts we’d written down in what we’re calling Zone One – Dorset, Devon, Cornwall regions where we are planning on starting and being March, April and May. We needed a maximum of 15 to make first enquires to so I’ve been looking at their websites (most seem to have one), reading their listings and trying to get a good balance of farming, smallholding, eco-friendly, communities etc. The next stage is contacting them so I have been drafting an email which they others will need to read and approve before I personalise it for each of the 15 hosts. Then the same process for Zone Two begins. Hopefully it will be this level of planning which gives us the best possible experience and takes in the biggest variety of environments and hosts. Hopefully… 🙂

Ady and Davies played some chess and then we all went to the tip, calling in at the supermarket on the way home. I cooked roast beef while the others messed about watching bits of various films including Jaws and Chicken Run.

We watched some Attenborough while eating, then some Simpsons and then Ady and I watched Countryfile. Davies and Scarlett were upstairs playing with lego. They asked for a sleepover and we relented as it’s not been a very interesting weekend but unfortunately they blew it by being asked several times over a couple of hours to quieten down and eventually I got Scarlett to come back down to her own bed at 1100 when the noise still wasn’t abating. They were both asleep within about 5 minutes of me doing that, just a shame I had to get cross 🙁

We’ve had a weather warning for huge rainfall in this area and for once it appears to be very accurate. It’s been pouring for a couple of hours now and the road is quite flooded outside. I’m enjoying it while being grateful we’re not camping this weekend :).

Thursdaywas my all day at work day this week. Ady had Davies and Scarlett with him and they went off doing store visits, stopped at a beach and had lunch and beat me home. They all seemed to have had a nice day together although I don’t really know what they got up to. They were all very cagey about whether they’d been in charity shops and bought any tat so were quite resistant to my cross examination about their day 😆

I had a good day at work, unremarkable but not too tedious. I did some time on the desk and chatted to a couple of regular borrowers, made my colleague GI Sarah laugh with the tale of the quail and the incestuous Thank You Neighbours, had a bitch with Wendy who is leaving and made a Roald Dahl display and ordered in a load of books for a Green Reads display I’m doing next month.

Back home the others were already here and Davies and Scarlett were gratifyingly pleased to see me. I started reading them ‘This morning I met a whale’ before bed and enjoyed cuddling up to them. I really miss them when I work all day.

Having left it a full 24 hours before blogging I don’t recall anything else of note other than the first crop of ebay auctions ending and once postage has been taken out we made another £50 for the campervan fund – woohoo 🙂 It currently stands at £125 from stuff cleared from the house :).

Friday I’d kept today free as Julie had asked me if I’d go over and help her set up a new internet connnection / email address etc but having checked with her on Wednesday she didn’t need me after all so I decided to save the day for being at home and do some more crap clearing. I was hanging on to see if the buyer of two motorbike jackets was going to pay so I could only do one post office visit and also fretting that the postage of £30 that I’d quoted was too steep. I decided to wait until after lunch and so was upstairs with Davies going through his bookcase when my Dad arrived.

Dad had come over with a fairly flimsy excuse for calling and it was lovely to see him. He stayed for several coffees and lunch and we had a really good chat about all sorts of things not least our whole planned adventure next year. I *think* we both talked over enough for him to feel reassured and me to feel we have his blessing if not necessarily his comprehension of the whole thing.

Dad left, I checked online and found the motorbike jackets had now been paid for so parcelled everything up and nipped along to the post office – Davies and Scarlett elected to stay home. I took all the cash we had in the house (robbed from the campervan fund) which proved not sufficient for the jackets to get to Spain so I brought them home again, conscience truly absolved :). Some online research has found me a courier charging exactly what I charged them so the parcel will be collected on Monday :).

After a couple of hours off thanks to Grandad Davies and Scarlett resumed room tidying – their brief is to create piles of ‘rubbish to be binned / recycled’, ‘stuff to bed sold – Mummy to decide whether ebay or car boot sale’ and ‘things we simply can’t bear to part with’. Hopefully their bedrooms will simply have ‘can’t bear to part with’ by the end of the tidying which will either be coming with us or going into storage for the year.

I went through the piles of books and checked prices on Amazon marketplace, listing any worth more than £2 on there and sorting the rest into ‘worth trying on ebay’ and ‘only good for car boot sale’. I’ve gotten quite a way through listing the Marketplace and ebay ones and am considering sticking the others on ebay as a job lot (I’ll do a kids fiction, kids non-fiction, adult fiction and adult non-fiction lot for buy it now, collection only price and if they don’t sell then they can come to the next car boot sale with us but will have been on there trying to sell in the meantime).

I did manage to put pizza dough on, sort out a couple of loads of washing and chat to the kids inbetween. Then Ady came home so he took over dinner for the children while they had an hour out in the garden and I carried on photographing and listing books. They ate, we finished reading ‘This morning I met a whale’, they went to bed, Davies came back to show me a stop animation he’d made on his phone with cotton wool balls and went to bed again.

Bath, dinner, some Friday night TV, some more of my homebrewed wine which is both quite palatable and seems not to be poisonous or have ghastly side effects and as I have work again in the morning I am off to bed.

About 2 months ago when I was feeling flush and on a frenzy of booking stuff (Firework Makers Daughter, dressing up movie premiere gala nights, that sort of thing ;)) I also tried to book an event at Chichester Harbour Conservancy – a Stream Walk. It was fully booked even a couple of months in advance so I asked to be added to their cancellation list which seemed like a quaint idea to them but about 3 weeks ago I got a phone call to say someone had indeed dropped out so there were 3 spaces if we wanted them, which we did. They then rang me again last week to say that due to the reeds in the stream growing so thick and high the walk along the stream was simply not possible but the event would run as a stream dipping event if we were still interested. I was quite disappointed and having done pond dipping several times in various places and frankly having gotten a bit bored personally by it I was in half a mind to cancel and get a refund but decided on a whim to go along anyway.

So we had to up with an alarm this morning as depending on traffic that drive can be 25 minutes or 2 hours 25 minutes. I decided to err on the side of caution and allow 1 hour 25 minutes which meant being out of the house before 9am. We managed it and it was a smooth run in about 45 minutes meaning we had time for me to nip into a supermarket nearby for some supplies for later. We’ve been listening to Eliza Doolittle’s album and really enjoying it although some of the topics are proving to be ones I’d really rather not be explaining (think Lily Allen if you’ve not heard her before although not nearly so foul mouthed).

I’d not been sure if nets would be provided for the stream dipping and if so how many so we’d brought Davies and Scarlett’s nets along with us incase. When we arrived everyone was being issued with a net, a tray, a spotter sheet and a magnifying container per family so Scarlett grabbed her net out of the car so they would have one each.

We began with the obligatory H&S talk – five families, most with one adult and two children although there was one with two adults and one child and then another late arrival of two adults and three children. We walked to the stream and had a chat about the differences between ponds and streams (regular shape versus narrowing and widening, pretty consistent vegetation surrounding verus changing, flow of water versus still water) and were shown the difference between pond dipping (stick your net in and swish it around a bit) and stream dipping (flat sided net, lay it on the stream bed, do the stream dipping shuffle to kick up sediment and stuff from the bottom and hold the net in the river flow). I bent Tarly’s net to modify it into a stream dipping net by giving it a flat edge and into the stream we went :).

It was very much an open session with everyone left to their own devices and the rangers on hand to ooh and ahh over what you’d caught if you wanted or leave you to it. Davies and Scarlett caught a good selection of waterboatman, freshwater shrimps, various fly larvae and we used the very good spotter sheets supplied to identify them.

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Then came the cry that someone had caught a baby eel. We all gathered round to marvel and look at it and that upped the ante rather as everyone was then after outdoing that as the ‘catch of the day’. Davies rather splendidly managed it with a far bigger eel 🙂

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We all looked at that for a while and then as we tried to release it it escaped and was slithering down the bank. Scarlett caught it again in her net
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and then Davies released it
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We then walked down the stream a bit further to a space between two bridges where the water was rather deeper and the banks rather steeper. It was rich in fish – flounders and flat fish and the whole group used one tray and pooled findings. We ended up with loads of fish :). I managed to slowly and almost gracefully lose my balance to sit on the bank, getting mud all up my legs 😆

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Davies got water in both wellies so clambered out and did some photography and cheering on instead 🙂
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It was very rich in creatures and I loved the feeling of them all wriggling about when you cupped your hand under the net to view your findings, all tickly and teeming with life 🙂
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Finally we released all the caught wildlife back into the stream and climbed out. Scarlett spotted a frog and was determined to catch it, which of course she did, so the group gathered round to look 🙂
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Then it was time to put nets over our shoulders and trudge back to the carpark.
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The kids declared it ‘excellent’ although both thought it would have been even better with the stream walk included. It’s an annual event so I can’t say ‘maybe next year’ but I guess I can say ‘maybe the year after’ or even console ourselves with the amazing amount of wildlife we’ll see next year :).

The drive home was more trafficky but we had plenty of time for lunch and then some popcorn making before heading into Lancing to meet Rose at the video hire store. We enjoyed watching the corn pop and talking about what happens to it, it’s actually an experiment I recall doing at school over a bunsen burner when I was 13 :).

In the video store the plan was for Rose and I to choose one dvd and the kids to choose another, for us to watch downstairs and them to watch upstairs. Depsite forewarning them of the need to compromise Davies and Scarlett didn’t really manage it, Rose was doing her best teacher-ing and I was getting increasingly hacked off with them so eventually Davies who was being most rational ended up with his choice and Scarlett who was being a mare ended up being told she could go and play with the chickens instead of watching a film. A lecture on the way back from the video shop to home with Rose in her car behind us restored Scarlett’s sense of humour and behaviour and the rest of the afternoon they spent taking the opportunity I had made clear was on offer for them to redeem themselves :).

So they took their popcorn off upstairs and watched 9 their review was that it was short and a bit sad but very good. While we ate our popcorn and drank tea and watched The Changeling with our verdict being very good, powerful film if rather disturbing. I’ve since been learning all about the true story it was based on and feeling even more sorry for Christine Collins.

We managed some chatting, I updated Rose on the whole plan for next year idea and the kids came and joined us, bringing geomags to play with while we had one last cup of tea before Rose needed to head off to collect Mike from the station. I made the modest requests from the kids for their dinner (considering all the popcorn they didn’t have much room) and we looked at some images of narwhals online. Ady arrived home and I dug out ‘think of an eel’ a book I was sure we had but was frustrated by not having an online catalogue of what books we do have and where they are like we do at the library. I was right and even found it on the exact shelf of the precise bookcase in the room I thought it was in, so yay me :).

I read Think of an eel and we talked about eels and then I read ‘The Best of Times’ from the heap of Morpurgo books we seem to have gathered.

Davies and Scarlett went to bed, I made a start on dinner, had a bath, chatted to Julie on the phone for about 3/4 hour, served dinner and talked to Ady about campervans and watched an episode of Outnumbered and one of The Good Life with him, which is what I rather imagine our life will be a cross of 😆

Woke with no tea and no missing animals this morning (although that didn’t remain the case sadly). Our plan had been to visit Caz and Bid at their new home (on a farm) this afternoon but an email from them with a change to their plans for the day meant we were able to go over earlier.

I went out to feed the birds (as in our birds, not birds generally) some leftovers from dinner last night and found the hen with the bad leg looking rather dead. Infact I thought she was dead so went to feed the others before coming back to deal with her. I realised she was still hanging on but was close to dying but she didn’t seem in any pain so I left her to it. I’m not remotely emotionally attached to any of the birds, except perhaps the cockerel but I’ve never really viewed them as pets.

Back inside we watched some Horrible Histories and then Scarlett went out to the birds and came in with the hen to say she was looking really bad now. I agreed she was close to death and said that if Scarlett wanted to she could bring her in the house for the end so she did. She took her in her bedroom and sat with her. Suddenly all of the other birds; chickens and ducks went a bit mad, in a slightly freaky premonition way and Scarlett announced she was dead. I went out to check on the other birds and Scarlett appeared with the hen who wasn’t quite dead after all but doing that gasping for last breathe thing. She finally did die and we put her into the cat carrier she’s been staying in to bury later.

Back inside Scarlett had a little cry and we talked about lifetimes, losing animals and whether it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. We decided loving people and animals is worth the risk of getting hurt and talked a bit about Candle and Malice and how we still miss them but now remember the happy times rather than the sad ends. That had all of us crying a bit.

We galvanised ourselves to action at that point and headed off to see Caz and Bid, stopping at a shop to grab some food to bring. They are in their first week settling in at a land / living space sharing type venture on an organic farm which has plenty of work to do and a long way to go before it’s ideal but is very exciting and has stacks of potential. The kids went off to explore with A & E and declare it ‘amazing’ and ‘awesome’ while I went off to drink tea and chat with Caz and Bid and exchange ‘where we’re at in changing life’ stories. Fully up to date with all each others news I got the grand tour and was able to visualise all the potential ideas – very exciting stuff :).

I then rather lazily sat and chatted to Caz while she planted up tons of seeds ready for the first crop of winter greens. Another friend and her two boys arrived so the boys joined the other children while O joined us (and shamed me by joining in with seed planting rather than sitting like I had done :oops:). We needed to leave as I had to be back for Reading Group.

Thankfully the traffic was kind to us and we’d already rung ahead to get Ady to run a bath for the children, who were so filthy they ended up having a bath to soak the grime off and a shower to wash the dirty bathwater off. I left them in the bath to go to Reading Group. We had an interesting discussion about the book which had very mixed reviews from the group with some really liking it, some really hating it and some inbetween including a couple who had not finished it. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for a ‘different’ type of read (Scarlett Thomas, The end of Mr Y).

Back home I caught up with Ady, saw now clean and fed children who were in bed but not asleep and then Ady and I had dinner while watching Heston do disgusting macabre things with food. And now to bed.

I was woken this morning by Ady telling me the last two quails had escaped and flown away. They have been nothing but trouble really and the friend who wants to buy them has been tricky to pin down to a date and time to hand them over as their numbers have gone down rapidly from 3 to 2, to zero as of this morning. Apparently a gust of wind had caught their pen and opened it enough for them to escape. Ady had spotted one in the garden as he went to leave for work and thought it was the original escapee back, went to check and realised none were here and then watched that one fly off over the rooftops. He came to tell me and left for work.

Davies, who has in the last two days come close to mastering tea making brought me a cup of tea in bed. This was both lovely (Tea. In bed 🙂 ) and not so lovely (way too milky) but hurrah for not just big kids but big thoughtful lovely ones 🙂 Even if they are still on the small side and put too much milk in.

I broke the news to the kids about the quails, sorted their breakfast and we debated what to do with the day. I needed to go to the post office to send the book I’d sold on Amazon and Scarlett had wanted to visit the library to order the next HP audio book so we decided to walk into Lancing and do those things. I wanted to blog the weekend first so we watched some CBBC while I blogged, Scarlett did some drawing and I got impatient about being interupted. I’ve been quite intolerant today, wonder if it’s hormonal?

Finally at about 11am we left the house armed with some books to go back and the parcelled up book to send. We walked along the alleyways we’d done the litter collecting in last year and were disappointed to see them filled with rubbish 🙁

I struggled a lot with the walk, which is not far at all (infact less than a mile each way) and realised just how unfit I am at the moment. I guess a combination of no swimming, staying off my ankle for 6 weeks and generally avoiding exercise has taken it’s toll. I’ve never been fit but I would have at least classed myself as reasonably active. I’d planned to do Swimathon next year and aim for the 5km but as we won’t be here next April I’ve been toying with the Aspire Channel Swim instead from September – December which would be 22 miles, or 1073 lengths over 12 weeks. It will be over twice my usual swim while the kids have their lessons and I appreciate it is a big ask of people not that long after badgering them to sponsor me for the Swimathon but every penny I do raise will be great and it will hopefully kick start my fitness again ready for the likely more physically demanding lifestyle I’ll be living next year. To make it real I’ve set up a Just Giving page this evening and will put it ‘out there’ nearer the time once I’ve actually started – so apologies in advance for the likely over-mentioning of it once I get going.

My walking was not helped by getting about 5 phonecalls along the way – one from Caz and about 4 from Ady (who won’t know what to do with himself once I am actually with him all the time next year :lol:). The line was dreadful both ways with Caz but we managed to communicate enough to arrange to get together tomorrow, so hopefully she will send me her new address and we can visit them.

Finally in town we visited the post office first. It was mad busy in there and they even had a ‘queue manager’ there talking to people. We spent the queuing time guessing which cashier we’d be seen by (cashier number five please), what the prize would be (they voted for a cuddle from me, then I offered a consolation prize of a cuddle to anyone not winning and said a cuddle from them would have to be my prize if I won) and discussing wishes (Davies suggested ‘infinity wishes’ would be his first one and the woman infront asked for a wish for her if he got his then 🙂 ). They were the only children in there but I’m always really proud to be with D&S in situations like that where they are certainly bored by the length of the queue but able to stand and chat with me rather than play up like many children do.

We left there and nipped to the Co Op for some food supplies, frowning at the fact the onions all the way from NZ were loose but the ‘British Produce’ ones were packaged. We walked past Yvonne from work on the way back to the library on her lunchbreak so she walked back with us. We returned books, Davies joined the reading game (grr, now they both have and I suspect neither of them will actually finish it), Scarlett chose a couple of books with cds and ordered the next HP and I popped my head round the door of the office and introduced myself to a new girl who started today. Our paths will not actually cross as our rotas mean we never work together but as I was there I thought I’d say hello.

We walked home again, me talking to Ady several times and Davies and I having an interesting conversation about employeeing road sweepers versus installing bins and emptying them. He has a good grasp of the ‘investment purchase’ concept but possibly too much faith in human nature…

Back home I made lunch while the kids collapsed, which seemed quite the wrong way round given I was worn out and they weren’t. They spent time outside with chickens and ducks, drawing, watching TV and X boxing aswell as rather noisily playing and then Thank You Neighbour David and whoever-his-sister-was-being-today knocked at the door to ask if we’d lost a chicken. The short answer is yes, the long answer is yes, but weeks ago now so unlikely she’s still around but for speed and knowing they possibly meant a quail I said yes and they said they’d spotted it and could show me where.

Feeling slightly like someone who’d been offered the chance to look at puppies and lured away I went with them about 10 houses down the main road and stood feeling embarrassed as they both got down on hands and knees and peered in bushes in someone’s garden (thankfully there was no one home, they’d already knocked to see). Then I spotted a quail, dived at it and managed to catch it and we all walked back home again, me carrying a squirming little body and giving an impromptu promenade road side lesson in identifying captive birds, waterfowl and poultry. So back up to one quail again.

I listed some stuff on ebay and then decided to list Scarlett’s Barbie stuff and went to start sorting it to photograph. I realised none of the clothes were there so went to Tarly’s room to find them and got involved in sorting out some of the boxes under her bed with her as a reluctant helper. She is so funny – all of the stuff which once cost money, is branded and theoretically what ‘every little girl wants’ she chucked into the car boot sale without a second glance. But she hugged to her chest stones collected from various beaches, some cut out snowflakes from Helmsley Christmas Camp when it snowed, pictures Davies has drawn for her ‘when I was four and poorly’, McDonalds Happy Meal toys she can’t identify the character of but can tell me what the day out was that the visit to McDs was part of. I guess her treasures really are what treasures should be – about memories, people and places rather than marketing, money and branding.

We cleared two out of four boxes we went through, some to the bin, some to the car boot sale pile and a little for ebaying. She declared herself exhausted and retired to the lounge to do more drawing while I quickly photographed some more bits and then made their tea. While they ate I listed on ebay and now have 11 items up with 10 already being watched a couple bid on :).

Ady arrived home, the kids went out to play in the garden after tea and then came in and we finished reading Why the whales came – oh we how love Morpurgo :). Bed for them, dinner and some crappy tv watching for us. Hoping for full strength tea and no news about wildlife to wake me in the morning.

Ady had to do a bit of work on Saturday morning. He had needed to do a photo shoot of some plants all week and as the consequence of managing to take Davies and Scarlett along with him on Wednesday morning and all day Friday so I could work meant it hadn’t gotten done. So he popped along Saturday morning and did it then, which only took a couple of hours so he was back for lunch. Which actually he made ;).

I had a lie in, in preparation for Sunday morning :).

Ady was in a productive mood and spent lots of time in the garden where he edged the earth borders around the patio with some roof tiles. We have a big stack of roof tiles in our garden from when we had the loft converted. We initally kept them as we anticipated using them when we had further building work done on the house, but planning permission was turned down for that and the tiles have just sat around, being moved about three times from one location to another. They are currently in the driveway infront of the garage where they at least have a low nusiance value in terms of being in the way, but a rather high scruffiness count whenever my car is not in the drive hiding them. We did have a bloke who was going to have them as he was doing building work on his bungalow along the road but despite us saying he could help himself for nothing he never took them. I guess they are another thing to add to the list for getting rid of (and potentially raising funds from). Anyway, Ady used a few up creating path edgings which look really good and should prevent the chickens from their habit of dust bathing in the soil and flicking it all over the patio, creating a mud bath whenever it rains.

Davies and Scarlett did lots of Harry Pottering in various guises, watching, creating, drawing, running around with sticks carved into wands, that sort of thing. I am very reluctantly getting dragged into this by osmosis from being in the room when the dvds are played so often :(. It has merely served to convince me that my initial idea that it is Not For Me is accurate. I really don’t like fantasy, witches, wizards, dark underworlds and magic spells, it just doesn’t do it for me at all.

I wasn’t feling great so spent much of the day on the sofa drinking tea and reading the book for book club next week. It was a book that hardly any of the group seemed to want to read (a recommendation from one of the group that we had enough copies of an no waiting list for so was selected on that basis) but I have actually really enjoyed reading it and the two other members of the group I’ve heard from in the last week or so have enjoyed it lots too. It was Scarlett Thomas’ ‘The End of Mr Y’. I tend to have an irrational feeling of not liking anyone called Scarlett (it was supposed to be an unusual name, now everyone’s using it! :lol:) apart from my own of course. Quite looking forward to discussing the book at group.

I rang my Dad to ask if we could borrow some paste tables for the car boot sale and popped over to collect those, stopping to have a bit of a chat with him. I’m getting quite conflicting stories from my parents about their feelings over the whole WOOFing plan, I know my Dad doesn’t approve but he usually wishes us well and will try and help even when he thinks we’re being foolish (most of the time then!) whereas my Mum talks a good talk while whispering in the ear of all four of us at seperate times and trying to do that divide and conquer thing by finding out the bits each of us might be worried about and then saying to the others ‘well X is not happy about it are they?’. So far though she is maintaining she will miss us lots, doesn’t want us to go but ‘won’t tell you you are making a terrible mistake because it’s your life and you have to do what you want to do’. The best I think we can hope for is a blessing, regular contact and a warm welcome at Christmas and them not feeling the need to report us to social services really! Mum suggested that it has been the cause of many rows between them so they are just not talking about it any more. My private feeling is that any fodder for rows which isn’t actually about them is probably a positive thing ;).

Back at home I sorted out the freezers to see if we have enough food to keep us going until payday (just about), cooked an eclectic mix of things from the freezer for the kids dinner and then read them some more Why the whales came before packing them off for an earlyish night.

Ady and I packed up my car having removed all but the front two seats which leaves a HUGE space to fill. We just about had room for the paste tables and a chair each and then we were also in bed before midnight too.

Sunday morning started far, far too early with the alarm going off at 530am. I’d had a restless night anyway, not helped by Scarlett’s HP audiobook getting stuck and the sound of Stephen Fry repeating the same syllable drifting up the stairs from her room. It didn’t rouse me quite enough to wake up and go and switch it off but it was there drilling into my dreams. Everyone got up, no one wanted breakfast, I made a flask each of tea and coffee and chucked a couple of chocolate bars into a bag (next time need to bring proper food supplies) and we were off. We took both cars so we could leave Davies and Scarlett (and Ady’s car) at my parents. Dad had said he should be up but to just let them in and he’d be up shortly afterwards so I went in with them and got them settled with the TV on, curtains opened, some lights on etc and Dad appeared.

Ady and I were at the car boot sale by 615am, it officially starting at 630am. We were told we could park anywhere between certain markers so we chose a pitch at the top of the second aisle. It was a perfect choice and we’d definitely aim for a top end of an aisle pitch again. I guess there were about 50 cars there at that point, although we reckon there were about 400 cars there by the peak (which at £8 per car and £10 per van is a pretty good revenue for the field owner every Sunday!). We set up, a duvet and two plastic sheets for books, clothing, shoes and bags laid out on the ground, the two paste tables for stuff worth highlighting and a load of plasic crates for things all along the front of the stall. It did rain briefly at about 7am which was a bit of a nightmare as we’d not anticipated it and didn’t really deal with it quick enough but nothing got spoilt, it just stopped us from setting up and meant we had to wipe things dry again afterwards. Next time we’ll have some more plastic sheets to chuck over stuff quickly if needed.

We’d heard all sorts of horror stories of people rummaging through your car while you try and set up, but we didn’t have any of that. Possibly because we were there so early there were very few buyers there yet, possibly we looked like we’d not have anything of value anyway and possibly the rain stopped it but aside from one bloke in a mac coming over with a furtive ‘you haven’t seen me, alright?’ type manner asking ‘got any lego?’ we didn’t get any hassle at all.
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Ady and I spent the whole morning moving stuff around the stall, keeping it tidy, rotating things as the morning went on and different sorts of people were around – first thing we sold things like adult shoes and householdy things to people who didn’t have English as their first language. There are a lot of people over here at this time of year working at fruit and veg picking, plant growing etc and living in caravans / mass housing on farmland. Next came the collector types – we didn’t really have much to interest them but we did sell all our electrical stuff then, some headphones, a computer printer, several travel / multi-use plugs (I think we got them when we did the Terminal Five trials), some wireless router type bits.

The next wave of people all seemed to have dogs, I guess if you are up early walking your dog you might as well peruse a car boot sale as you do it. We started selling books, toys and games then, lots of my handbags went along with more shoes and a few clothes. There were a few people who were clearly looking for specific things – a woman with several bags of jigsaws came and bought a couple of ours, presumably to resell, and a boxed pair of champagne flutes went to a woman with a collection of glassware already nestling in her basket.

We now started to move stuff around a bit more, we worked out IT / electrical stuff was selling well so we created an ‘IT corner’ which seemed to have one particular spot that every single thing we put on it sold, I laid out all the clothes for sale and spread out the books, we displayed pc games nicely and opened up a few things so you could actually see what was in the boxes. We also began a little challenge to see who could sell certain things – I won hands down, selling that hideous knitted skirt doll that my granny gave Scarlett for Christmas, a hotwheels style car set Davies has had for years and years by running it off the edge of the paste table, and that tall doll Scarlett got for her second birthday and has ‘experimented’ on with make up and nail varnish. Ady and I both gasped when a rather seedy looking bloke on his own picked her up with a leering grin and agreed we’d have felt really weird selling it to him but thankfully he put it back down again. I dressed her up and finally someone bought her for using in an art display she is doing on the effects of war on children using dolls to give war injuries to. Sounds slightly creepy but a good home for that doll to go to having been abused here all these years – Scarlett thought it very fitting when we told her 😆

We did plenty of active selling – a woman (who Ady said afterwards is destined to HE her little daughter even if she doesn’t know it yet) bought several crafty things and nearly bought our marble run when I drew her attention to it, a man who showed lots of interest in my educational books so I asked if he was a teacher and then showed him various other things suitable when he said he taught adults with learning difficulties bought loads from us, a man with a small daughter on his shoulders took away loads of stuff we pointed him in the direction of including a pair of sparkly pink baseball boots similar to the shoes she was wearing but in a larger size.

We made people laugh ’50p and it could save your life!’ to the person looking at a high-vis top and just chatted to people if they looked like they were in the mood for it, or smiled and moved away so they could browse without us standing over them if they looked like they’d prefer that.

At about 11am the families and children came round so we moved stuff around again, created a box of ‘girlie crafts’ with knitting, weaving, beads, mosaic kits etc all in pink and purple boxes, set up a Thomas kit so you could see what it did, made a little science and experiments area on the table, piled up board games together and laid out all the dressing up stuff.

The final phase at midday was people looking for stuff going at real bargain prices so we moved the crap to the front, offered it for 20p and affected the air of ‘we don’t want to take anything home!’ while quietly debating the things worth packing up to have another try at selling next time, the things worth maybe ebaying, the stuff we’d give straight to my mum for her charity shop. Having moved stuff around into areas with that in mind when we called it a day and started packing up at 1pm it took just half an hour. We put the stuff to bring home again in first then packed all the things to give to Mum in boxes and bags ready to drop straight off at her charity shop. It’s a project which helps homeless people back into housing and employment so is an excellent cause we are only too happy to support with our stuff that didn’t sell.

We had a count up and after the £8 pitch fee we had cleared nearly £70 which is an excellent start for our first time and makes that big empty space in our house feel even better :). We very much had the attitude that we didn’t want anyone to show interest in something and walk away without buying it because we priced it too high so there is every chance we priced too low but that’s fine, I’d apply the same idea again next time. We need to bring suncream, more food and things to chuck over stuff if it rains but other than that I think we did really well for our first time and we actually really enjoyed it too :).

Back to Mum and Dad’s for lunch – Mum had rung at midday to see how we were doing and been really upbeat and nice on the phone saying the kids were having a good time, had already had two breakfasts and so would be fine to hang on for us to get home about 130pm for lunch and she would go and get some bits from Sainsburys.

Mum and Scarlett had gone to get lunch and when we arrived everyone was in good spirits and very happy having had a nice morning together. Mum was very up for having the children again in a couple of weeks when we do another boot sale so that is good :). She was a bit like this last time before we went away, suddenly keen to spend lots of time with us and being lovely – hurrah :).

Frazer and his girlfriend Cat had been around in the morning so the kids had got to properly meet her and they came back while we were eating lunch so we were properly introduced too. She seems very nice and had been quite taken with D&S apparently and had returned with a little present each for them of a little bird on a clip which they were quite delighted with. 🙂

Mum and I dropped all the stuff from the car boot sale down to her shop and then we came home. Everyone was pretty tired and we’d had a late lunch but I decided to do a roast dinner as we had the meat defrosted ready, so Davies and Scarlett walked round the shop for me and got some stuffing mix, Ady emptied the car of the few bits we’d brought home and the kids had a bath. We enjoyed dinner and I was glad I’d bothered as it meant Ady and I had eaten early and we’d had some time together the four of us.

Davies and Scarlett went to bed and were asleep in record time, Ady and I had baths and watched Vexed which we both thought was pretty good and then also went to bed and were asleep in record time. A very productive day and another step along the road to becoming Wondering Wanderers :).

Ady had a Special Assignment for B&Q today which was covertly going round Homebase and Focus and checking whether they have equivalent lines to B&Q on about 100 products, noting down the price and barcode and trying not to get caught, entering all the info in a spreadsheet and then emailing it back to B&Q. It will then be used as part of an ad campaign, presumably to show how much cheaper they are on comparable lines.

He was hampered by this in several ways a) having Davies and Scarlett with him, although in many ways they help his cover by making him look less suspicious b) getting Davies to read out barcodes to him, he likes Davies to help but is not 100% confident of him reading out the right numbers 😆 c) across the array of laptops (3) in our house all have different versions of spreadsheet programs, he didn’t want to send it from our email address so wanted to forward it to his phone first and send it from that which would show up at B&Q as his work email – a trial run with various laptops last night proved tricky in this manouvere (that doesn’t look like it’s how you spell manouvere).

But I was off being Nicola and wearing a skirt to work (I also wore a top and leggings, not just a skirt although perhaps a topless library service is the way forward to drum up issues?). I got them to drop me off on their way to Homebase and Focus and was rather launched into the fray.

Now I really, really don’t believe in the whole Friday 13th thing, infact I don’t hold with any superstitions and will deliberately walk under ladders to prove it but several of my colleagues do and for once it would have been nice to have an explanation for all the stuff going wrong today. We started with the banking, once we’d found the safe key and that was all pretty straightforward. Except C, the childrens librarian was the senior on duty this morning and she can be a bit Famous Five and need to Deal With A Crisis in an efficient way, although I saw a rather different side to her today.

As I was about to go to the bank with the cash the doors were opened to the public and it became clear things ‘out the front’ had not happened, such as the papers being taken out of the letterbox and stamped with the PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY stamp. C was all for giving them straight out but I insisted, much to the amusement of the two old boys who read them every morning on stamping them as I am sure that is the only thing preventing them from doing a runner with them. They agreed :lol:. Then there was an issue with the photocopier so I also dealt with that, all with the last two days takings in a bag on my shoulder.

I finally escaped to the bank, paid in the cash, had a brief chat with someone I used to work with at ScoutShops 10 years ago (10 years! Really?! She assured me I don’t look any older at all 🙂 ) and got back to work to find the systems had all crashed and gone down. Some phonecalls to other branches ascertained this was a county-wide issue and with some faffing we got the system into fallback mode which means we can issue and discharge book and that’s about it. While we were struggling with that the gardener (older woman, has very attractive Sarah Connor from Terminator arms which always have me drifting off slightly into lesbian tendacy fantasies) managed to flick up a stone with her strimmer (see, she even has power tools) and shatter one of the main foyer windows. Cue almost mass hysteria from C, childrens librarian, while nice T who works on relief was still struggling with the very concept of the whole Fallback mode. GI Sarah and I went for tea and decided as we were there all day til the bitter end and had an early 12o’clock lunch we’d go to the pub to compose ourselves for the afternoon :).

Which we did. And it was most pleasant. GI Sarah had a half a bitter shandy, I had a white wine spritzer and I strongly suspect that fortification saw us through the rest of the day with glaziers, further system disruptions and general stressiness.

I had a chat with Big Boss Brenda who told me there was no possibility of a career break as I’d simply not been there long enough but that I was a really valued member of staff they would be very sorry to lose, if there is even a library service when we come back a year later I would walk straight back into any vacancy and she hopes I have gotten something out of my time there as to her it has felt very one sided with them getting a really good deal out of me with all my extra commitment, ideas, Chatterbooks, Reading Groups etc. I felt quite cherished :).

Finally 6pm rolled round and Ady was outside to collect me. D&S were pleased to have me home and I sat and read several chapters of Why The Whales Came to them once they’d finished the HP game they were playing and I’d showed them the OCD way of putting the geomags away (seperating into different coloured rods 😳 ).

Once home and sitting down I felt my cold making an re-emergence so in the interests of Not Giving In to it I drank lots of wine instead :lol:. Ady and I were chucking a plastic claw (I think it is from a Ben 10 figure) at each other with impressions of the aliens from Toy Story who worship the claw so when he fell asleep on the sofa I sellotaped it to his head. This made me laugh so much I almost woke him up and when he did wake up I laughed until my tummy hurt and tears were rolling down my face as he in his sleep addled way was saying ‘you’ve done something haven’t you? have you drawn a moustache on me?’ until he finally reached up to his head and found the claw 😆 😆 And fun like that won’t be hampered by living in a small space next year 😆

And now bed is calling.

We could have met up with friends today but I have no petrol in my car and am trying to preserve funds this month having transferred all extra cash into the Campervan fund. I was also aware of tonight being a planned late night and had things I wanted to crack on with at home. So we stayed home.

Davies and Scarlett are still on a HP kick so much of their day involved watching the dvd, playing in the garden with sticks carved into wands, playing upstairs pretending to be characters, sitting on the stairs connecting DSs on HP games and in Davies’ case completing the big marauders map he’d been working on last night. He showed it to me and I asked whether he was going to colour it in. He patiently explained it wasn’t coloured but would be yellow and aged so I suggested they use my teabags still waiting to cool down and go into the compost to age it. Which they did, with great glee 🙂

I listed some items on ebay – higher value things that we reckon we’ll get more from selling that way than at a car boot sale. Already have people watching most of them so fingers crossed for more funds raised for the Campervan account :). I then went through the book case and declared 4 out of 6 shelves books to go. A quick check on Amazon Marketplace showed most of them would be worth a penny so they are back on the bookshelf with hopes of raising slightly more for them. I did list about 5 books including 100 easy lessons which had a saga attached to getting in the first place many years ago, was used for about 12 lessons with Davies and has sat on the shelf ever since untouched. For some reason I had a slight pang about that and sure enough it’s been the thing to sell instantly. No idea why I would think about keeping it really and infact now it’s sold I won’t be.

I cooked a quiche Ady had brought home cheap yesterday, rummaged in the freezer and took out some lasagne for Ady and I for later and packed up waterproof jackets and a picnic rug and waited for Ady to get home. He was running late but thankfully traffic was light and we arrived not too late to meet some friends for a pre-show picnic in the grounds of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum before heading off to the main event of the event which was a promenade production of The Firework Makers Daughter, adapted from Philip Pulman’s novel, performed by the local Chichester Festival Theatre Youth Group. We knew at least five of the children appearing in it, all HEd and it being the last night of the run of shows a Home Ed trip had been organised to see it. We’d not got discount on the tickets which were not cheap (£15 each for adults, £7.50 for children) but I’d been feeling flush at the time the event was first talked about months ago so bought tickets. There were at least eight families there we knew and we kept bumping into people which was lovely.

I did start taking photos but got told off and asked to delete them all so I can’t share them 🙁 I’d not realised it wasn’t allowed and still think it’s slightly mad when in an open air location and it’s on the grounds of child protection when all the kids involved are performing infront of an audience, but still…

The first scene was inside, in a room lit with hundreds of red paper lanterns. The story starts with Lila, daughter of a firework maker experimenting and creating. Her father comes along, praises her skill but tells her she will never be a firework maker as she needs to find a husband and marry instead. The story follows Lila after she runs off to prove him wrong – followed and accompanied by her best friend Tulac and Hamlet, a white talking elephant. Incase you have not read it and intend to (and I do recommend it, it’s very good) I won’t tell any more of the story, but as Lila ran off so the whole audience followed her, down the hill to the market square section at the museum.

There folllowed about 12 different scenes with us folllowing the actors and musicians around the place, marvelling at the fabulous effects, props and costumes. There was an interval during which us HE folk gathered as it was the 9th birthday of one of our number so cake had been brought to sing and light candles on for her.

The show ended, in the dark by now as it was gone 9pm with a firework display. As it was their last night plenty of the cast were emotional and it was a truly excellent production and performance. Really enjoyed it :). Davies and Scarlett stayed together but were mostly apart from Ady and I as children were urged forward at each scene. We caught up with them at the end and they were both full of how fab it had been and how much they’d loved it, how glad they were to have had the book read to them beforehand and which were their favourite characters and scenes.

We headed for home, watching out for Percy-wotsits but seeing none. The kids went to bed, Ady and I had a very late dinner and now I am feeling a bit rough and hoping it is tiredness rather than anything else lingering so I’m off to bed.

I worked in the morning – Ady took Davies and Scarlett off with him so I was home alone for an hour or so, always a slightly strange situation given how infrequently it happens. Ady had picked me up an ipod shuffle (*tiny* little thing) for £15 in one of the supermarket staff shops so I was battling with installing itunes and then battling with getting all the songs off an external hard drive back onto the laptop via itunes which needed to convert them all. It has worked but it seemed to be taking real time of each song to do :rolls: And I can’t work out how to get songs back off it again so it now has every piece of music from the hard drive including a load of sci-fi sound effects (used for Doctor Who party) and a load of classical music. Which is likely to prove quite annoying when listening to it and getting Daleks saying ‘EXTERMINATE!’ in the middle of my Amy Winehouse songs 😆

I enjoyed my morning at work – saw F, who I’ve not seen for ages as I was on holiday and then she was, so we had plenty to catch up on. And the Lucy came in so I had a chat with her while R&R chose books and joined the summer reading game. It was a busy morning too with a big delivery, storytime and loads of borrowers coming in so the time just flew – the days I get fed up there are the slow ones.

Back home at 1pm the others had already got home and eaten lunch. They’d had a good morning visiting stores and also popped into a charity shop. They had bought a HP dvd which was one they’d not already got and had a second disc full of extras so that was the afternoon taken care of for D&S. I let the fact we’re supposed to be not spending and getting rid of stuff rather than acquiring more go – it was only 2 quid and we will be taking some dvds with us.

All of which left me free to finish going through all the hosts that will accept children – there are 198, narrow down all who sound suitable for us and plot them all on a big map. The narrowing down process clearly hasn’t been strict enough though as we have 114 plotted on our map. We discounted hosts only when one of us vetoed them – usually for something like ‘we like to celebrate the turning of the earth and her moon phases and seasons by dancing around the fire’ – Ady. ‘We value all life and live on raw food only, a fully vegan diet with no caffeine, alcohol or cigarettes’ – Nic. Basically anyone we deemed potential weirdos 😆 😆 We’ve tried to get a good mix of large and small operations, some fruit and veg, lots of animals, some organic. We have got remote crofters on Scottish isles, people who are being self sufficient, people who sell their produce, people who are living off grid, several intentional communities, a handful of Home Educators, some who are all but city dwellers, vineyards, beekeepers, cattle, dairy, sheep farmers, those who grow herbs to make medicines, those who keep sheep for their wool and spin and dye and knit woollen garments for a living.

We will clearly need to hone the list now as we have three times as many hosts as we need for our year. I’m sure there will be a sort of natural selection process whereby we won’t suit what they are looking for or they won’t be open for WOOFers at the time of year we will be in their location. But I suspect we will do an initial cull as our next step to bring the numbers down a little to maybe double what we need.

Our next step therefore is writing out the months of our year away and picking 3-5 for each month working our way around the country. We have some things we want to do at certain times including my own personal wish list of seeing the northern lights. I’ve been looking at various websites talking about sightseeing in the UK too and trying to find other things we’d like to make a point of doing as we go round. I’d quite like to see dolphins again so that might be a target for JUly / August next year, we’d like to see as many friends as possible on the way round, attend as many of the regular get togethers as we can so if we can be in the vicinity for parties in roughly the right time that would be good. I’d still like to do a Christmas camp in 2011 so if we could be near a right-sized youth hostel in early December that would make sense and I guess we’ll probably come home to my parents for Christmas. It looks like the sensible route would therefore be off to the left into Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, round and up to South Wales and North Wales, across to the east of Scotland, up into the highlands and islands, down via a hostel, back to the south for Christmas and then off to the east and midlands early 2012 in a sort of spiralling fashion. The biggest concentration of hosts is in that first chunk of the south west and Wales so I think we’ll need to go back through all the ones we’ve marked in that area and be more choosey with our selection.

We also need to write a biography type email about ourselves and get it sent to try and convince hosts to have us. Then start sending them off and coordinating responses.

So that was my afternoon 🙂 I also managed to write my first blogpost over on http://wondering-wanderers.blogspot.com/ which will be the public face record of the journey, complete with back story, planning the whole thing and what happened next. Still not entirely sure what I’m going to do with that but enough people have told me it’s a story worth telling and might even bring in some money but I need to work out how exactly. Tasha suggested listing all the various kit we’ll need for the year starting with the campervan and working downwards to gas, solar panel, working boots, good outdoor gear and a good supply of tinned goods and contacting companies to see if they want to sponsor us and supply them in exchange for plugs on the blog. Which seems reasonable but I’m conscious of making it relevant and not spamming readers :). I think I need to write a fair bit more and have a blog with a bit of proper content before I do anything else with it. I’ll also be getting some advice from Jax about ways of making money from your blog.

The kids had tea, while watching more HP and Ady got home. I read some ‘Why the whales came’ and the kids went to bed. Davies didn’t actually make it to bed as such as he is creating a huge marauders map but they were in bedrooms at least.

My mate Tasha has taught me new words today 🙂

Everyone was up really early this morning – I woke with Ady’s alarm at 6am, Davies got up too, then Tarly did and I never got back to sleep so Ady brought me a cup of tea and I got up. The weather was crappy so our planned foraging day up on the downs with Tasha, Toby and Vinnie had to be postponed and I sent Tasha a text asking if she had a Plan B in mind. Her reply of ‘come to your house if you’re happy to have us? and what the hell are you doing up at this hour?!’ made me quite literally lol 🙂 😆

Ady went to work, the kids and I watched some ‘How it’s made’, I stuck some bread dough in the breadmaker and made some flapjacks and my mate Jay’s rather fabulous recipe for Chinese Chews (which are neither chinese or chewy) and used a chopped up mars bar for the ‘cup of something nice’ in the recipe then nipped out to collect Tasha, Toby and Vinnie.

Back at ours the older three played – inside and out, Vinnie joined them every so often between yabbering away at us in the the way only a two year old can. His current favourite phrase is ‘cool dudes do that’ which I love and may just make my own new catchphrase 😆 I heart Vinnie – toddler boys are ace :). Tasha had brought some crochet to do so I took the opportunity to gather a large amount of my wool stash together and go through it. I seperated it into two large bags to sell – one nasty acrylic, one nicer stuff and one bag to keep and knit into something to take with us. I decided on another blanket like my patchwork one on the basis it takes no skill, looks ace, is super warm, everyone I know wants one so it will be great to take with us, easy to unpick if I want to use the wool for something else and be both decorative and useful on The Adventure :).

So we chatted and knitted and crocheted, learnt about what cool dudes do and listened to the ducks quacking, the cockerels crowing and the quails doing their new sound which sounds rather like a Leslie Phillips ‘twit twoo’ type wolf whistle 😆 And ate, breadmaker bread, flapjacks and chinese chews :).

I ran them home, Davies and Scarlett did some room tidying and then spent ages connected on some DS game until Ady came home. They had tea while I finished going through all the potential hosts on the WWOOFing website. I now have about 30 to plot on our UK map before we can start contacting them with requests to come and WWOOF.

Ady continues to peruse campervans on ebay, I’m battling with itunes on one of the old laptops and we’re watching Heston do something mad with liquid nitrogen.

says Ady perusing ebay 😆

Off to visit Helen, Alex and Abbie today on board their boat. I didn’t allow enough time to take the horrid school summer holiday traffic into account, particularly through hotspots such as Arundel, Chichester and the Witterings so what could be a half hour drive in light traffic or an hour in normal traffic turned into 90 minutes 🙁

The kettle was on when we got there though and while the kids fished off the side of the boat with nets, Helen (who is rapidly becomming my existing in a small living space consultant 😉 ) and I caught up and chatted.

We had lunch and then after a tour of their campervan – very cool, all now even more excited about living in one next year 🙂 – we walked down to the beach. Scarlett and Abbie crab hunted while Alex and Davies did ‘extreme coastal climbing’ as designed by Alex which involved working their way along the coast wall face through trees and undergrowth without touching the ground. It had eight levels and they made it to level six apparently. Much scratches and exhaustion later they assured us it was fun and worth it :).

Back to the boat for a cup of tea and some on board hide and seek for the kids (not at all sure it is the right location for that game) before realising it was nearly 5pm and time for us to be going. The drive home was not so bad and I made dinner for the kids before Ady got home.

A faffing about half hour between me asking the kids to get into pjs and clean hands, faces and teeth and then actually doing it led to a lecture from me about bedtime behaviour and then I read a chapter of Why the whales came before they went to bed.

We’ve spent the evening browsing ebay for camper vans, hence the title 🙂

Scarlett ended up sleeping in our bed last night. Solely because she wasn’t asleep when we went up to bed, infact neither was Davies, and she doesn’t like being left downstairs on her own. This meant it was only a matter of time before someone gave up trying to sleep three in a bed and went downstairs – it was Ady around 3am :).

We bimbled about a bit this morning, Davies had a bath, we all watched TV before galvanising ourselves to go and tackle the cupboard under the stairs. Davies and Scarlett would not have been at all helpful, infact would possibly not have fitted in the room so they kept themselves busy and out of the way while Ady and I got on with it.

It was fairly boring but we now have an empty cupboard under the stairs with the exception of camping stuff which has gone back in there ready for Sustainability Centre camping next month and will face a cull before being put away. We now have way more than one car full of stuff so will be doing at least two car boot sales if not more and a heap of stuff deemed worth more than we’d get a car boot sale and therefore needing to be listed on ebay. It feels good to be doing it all though – a step closer to the plan and theraputic to be shedding stuff we don’t need. I still have about 4 bags full of wool and fabric to make decisions on so will either have to get busy making stuff to give / sell /use or get shot of that too.

We finally reached the back of the cupboard, sorted through everything into piles of keep, sell and dump and then Ady did a run to the tip. I got dinner on and stood and peeled the whole of this years garlic crop into individual cloves. Last year I stupidly let loads of them go rotten so this year I have peeled them all and put them into jam jars with olive oil which will keep for ages and ages – tedious thing to do but worth it to look at them all ready to use and preserved til I want them :).

A lovely roast dinner, followed by raspberries and cream from PYO the other day while watching Countryfile before the kids went off to bed. I had a very frustrating phone conversation with my Mum who I am sure if being particularly stupid about the whole thing and was asking questions like ‘what will you sell clothes for – I can get £5 a bag for rags for the charity shop’ and ‘what about books – I can get £1 each for books, don’t sell them for less than that!’ and still didn’t seem to get it when I pointed out this is not just about clearing the house but is also a fairly serious fund raising operation for *us* for our camper van :rolls: Did do a rather canny telling her the kids would love to spend the morning with them next Sunday while we’re doing the carboot selling rather than asking her though which I was proud of :).

And that was the weekend :).

Thursday was my all day at work day. I’ve been struggling with work since we got back from holiday for various reasons. I think one is that it is just hard being on my ankle all day really. It is far, far better at nearly 5 weeks in and although it is stiff first thing in the morning and gets slightly swollen throughout the course of a day if I am on it too much I am no longer needing painkillers or the support bandage. I’m not really limping any more and whilst it is still puffy you wouldn’t really know without looking closely that there was anything wrong. But I am very cagey about doing something to it, still struggle a bit with steps and stairs and can’t see me wearing anything other than very flat shoes for quite some time to come.

Partially I am already no longer working for the library in my head. I have been there nearly four years now which is about the longest I’ve ever held any job and nothing is new or exciting any more. I am highly thought of and I like my colleagues but I feel bored and restless really. Knowing that we’re off next year so I’ll be leaving anyway has meant I am no longer trying to find new challenges and things to get involved in, just biding my time.

I actually had quite a good day in the end, despite having three hour long sessions of shelving which is my least favourite task. I learnt the not particularly surprising news that one of the supervisors is leaving and despite everyone else being a bit doom and gloom I actually felt quite relieved that I have my escape route already planned.

Ady had been home with the kids in the morning and then Dad had come along for the afternoon. Davies had rung me during the afternoon to say they’d lost one of the quails so I’d told him to get my Dad to help him – not sure whether to feel pleased they thought I’d be able to sort it out remotely or frustrated that they don’t think anyone else can deal with it. Frustrated would have been the right response though because I was really fed up when I got home and found the house in utter disarray, loads of toys out strewn across the floor, a chicken sitting on the sofa (on a blanket!), the quail still missing, cups, plates, empty crisp and biscuit wrappers all over the place and TV and radios blaring 🙁 .

I waved Dad off and then had a bit of a rant at the kids about the state of the house, livestock remaining in the garden, not eating junk all day just because I wasn’t around to stop them and clearing up after themselves. They sorted the house out while I cooked them some dinner and then Ady arrived home with the news that his boss had handed his resignation in that day too!

I read some story (why the whales came) and enjoyed the last hour or so of the kids day with them. I hate being ranty and lecture-y with them, particularly when I’ve not actually seen them all day.

Friday We were seeing Tasha, Toby and Vinnie for the day :). We had a slow start with Scarlett and I starting the slow process of going through our en suite bathroom and digging out things to go into a car boot sale box. I have stacks of lotions, potions, lipsticks, powders and paints which Scarlett not being a girlie girl isn’t really interested in having them so they need to go and hopefully raise some funds. While we were doing that Ady appeared home, in a state because he thought he’d lost his camera and had been ringing me and getting no reply (because I was upstairs).

Ady found his camera at home, Davies got up, Scarlett and I came downstairs and then we all left the house together – Ady back to work and off present hunting for my Dad. Davies, Scarlett and I nipped into town to get birthday cards for my Dad and then to Tasha’s. We also got him a mug, a helium balloon and some birthday banners because he absolutely hates a fuss so I love to make one 😉 😆

We had a lovely few hours at Tasha’s admiring the kittens, cooing over the wedding plans, the kids played and we chatted. It was good :). We caught up on each others’ news and have planned to get together again next week – we keep leaving it far too long inbetween meeting up.

Ady had beaten us home and we all got ready to go out with Mum, Dad and Frazer to a local steakhouse which they have visited before but we’d never been to. The food was excellent although the service was a little slow and we probably had at least one round of drinks less than we’d have liked. Mum monopolised Ady and Dad chatted to Frazer so I ended up talking mostly to Davies and Scarlett across the table which is fine but always seems an odd thing to do when out for a meal with people they don’t spend all day every day with.

Meal over we all came back here for coffees. The kids were a bit hyper so after a while they went up to Davies’ room to watch a video and ended up having a sleepover while we chatted. We had a slightly morbid conversation about what happens to them when they are too old to look after themselves, triggered by talking about my Grandma (Dad’s mum) who they put into a home. Frazer is of the opinion that Mum and Dad are wealthy enough to pay for the best of care if the time comes, I am of the belief that aslong as possible they should be cared for by us as I think even the most expensive care is shoddy in most cases. I think Dad was touched by what I was saying but I’m fairly sure all three of them think I am some sort of cuckoo child and really don’t belong to them 😆 None of them really believe we are off WOOFing either I don’t think with Mum and Frazer sharing smirks while looking at our plotted map of the UK and Dad repeating again that ‘there’s no money in farming’ as though we are on some sort of get rich quick scheme with the whole idea…

It was nonetheless a very nice evening talking about birthdays of the past and remembering times gone by.

Saturday Another work session for me, just for the morning. I spent some time on the desk, some on the counter and some working through a training website for the nhs website as the intention is for all council workers to be able to assist on various things (probably so half of us can be made redundant, I think the idea is that if libraries continue to exist they will be combined with council offices and probably doctors surgeries and schools aswell :lol:) which looks quite impressive.

Before I went to work Ady ran me a bath and put a cup of tea ready for me, when I got home from work he had made me tea and a cheese toastie for lunch, he is such a good wife – can’t wait to have him around full time :).

This afternoon we had agreed to commence Operation Crap Clear – part of phase one of getting ready for WOOFing – reducing the amount of stuff we have both for storage reasons and to raise some funds. The playroom was first port of call and Davies and Scarlett were really good at being ruthless about stuff. We are keeping some things and are hoping to stuff our loft space with as much as possible to reduce the amount of stuff we have to have at my parents but large amounts of the things we have need to go on the basis we simply don’t need them anymore. So board games, puzzles, art and craft stuff that can be replaced if needs be when we get back are all in the pile of things to be got shot of.

We now have 3 out of 4 shelving units in the playroom stacked up with stuff to go. Tomorrow we tackle the cupboard under the stairs :). I’m hoping to clear the two bathrooms of anything to go too ready for next weekend when Ady and I are hoping to leave D&S with my parents and do a car boot sale on Sunday, weather permitting.

Ady took D&S off to Sainsburys with him while I finished off the playroom and that about brings me up to date.

We’d arranged to meet up with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna at PYO today although Julie and I had failed to speak since to actually arrange a time but we managed it this morning and as Julie has a cold and I was worried about doing too much on my ankle today we planned a short meet up from 11ish with picnic lunch afterwards.

The weather was looking potentially nasty but I’ve started to wonder if we’ll ever have proper rain again (yes I know I will regret saying such a thing 😉 ).

We arrived a good five minutes early and then Julie arrived dead on time which rather shocked all of us – we are so rarely ever on time for anything so to both be there promptly was amazing.

We only really wanted raspberries so we walked slowly there, picked loads and then walked slowly back. This took a good hour mind you as the kids were off playing and we were chatting. We paid for our raspberries and then sat in the field outside on the picnic benches eating lunch and then chatting while the kids played. The rain did put in a half hearted appearance but not enough to drive us away.

We came home and I got some beef curry in the slow cooker for Ady and I for dinner later and we watched Princess and the Frog on dvd a couple of times (the second accidentally, Davies pressed the wrong button but we left it running anyway) which had some good songs but was otherwise unremarkable.

I did the kids’ tea and Ady came home then we headed back out to Pulborough Brooks as we had booked for the ‘Night time wings and other things’ event this evening. We went to it last year and enjoyed it and this year was just as good. We looked at moths they had trapped and caught last night from small to huge, common to rare and then released them, watched some owl chicks in the nest box cam and then walked round the reserve. We watched deer, a fox, various birds, saw evidence of badgers (faked, obviously 😉 ), saw green woodpecker poo and rook pellets (they make pellets just the same as owls, although with different content, these were mostly beetles). We lifted corrugated metal sections to reveal any reptiles but saw no snakes this time, just one small slow worm. They got the bat detectors out and we listened for and saw plenty of bats, shone our torches into the ponds to spot newts and waterboatmen and finally saw the fledgling barn owls out learning to fly (from a distance and more flashes of white than anything clear enough to photograph but exciting nonetheless).

As happened last year they over ran and despite it supposedly finishing at 915pm it was gone 10pm when we left and there were still people there. We were conscious of getting home to close up the chickens and ducks and I should probably have arranged for Dad to nip over and do so but the kids were tired anyway and we were hungry too. It was a really good event though, very impressed with how much of the information about various animals the kids had retained.

Back home I made toast for the kids as they were hungry again having gone so many hours past teatime, put the rice on for our dinner and had a quick bath. The kids were asleep pretty quickly, we had a very nice curry and watched the last episode and all the dvd extras on Outnumbered.

Today Davies and Scarlett were signed up for a workshop at the most excellent Making Space. It’s not that nearby, a good hours drive but is reasonably priced with enthusiastic, friendly staff who really put on a good event so is worth the travelling for occassional events. We would have had to leave well before 9am for the 10am start time so when Ady was able to plan his day to take us with him we decided the slightly earlier start was worth it and were all up at 7am and out of the house by about 730am.

We passed Frazer on his way to work and all got a glimpse of Cat, his new girlfriend. We were all very sensible while talking to them through opened car windows but as soon as we’d driven off we all burst into a chorus of ‘Frazer’s got a girlfriend!’ – reminded me of that bit in Notting Hill when the door closes behind Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and everyone screams 😆

We visited a couple of stores on the way and then dropped the kids off at 10am for their workshop. It was NZ Maori inspired pendant making using carved cuttlefish moulds to cast pewter. They were greeted with recognition from last time and didn’t bat an eyelid at me saying goodbye and heading off 🙂 .

I did a couple more store visits with Ady before it was time to collect Davies and Scarlett. They had had a great time planning their designs, carving them and then pouring liquid pewter in and waiting for it to set. Davies had made a dragon standing on a rock and Scarlett had made a dolphin. Both are excellent and I’ll get some pictures of them tomorrow in daylight.

Ady had to meet up with his boss so he dropped us off in Havant while he went off to do that. We walked through the town and looked in some charity shops but it was crazily busy and lunchtime so we took a vote and McDonalds was decided on. I was reluctant but went with it and they found seats while I queued up and got lunch for us. It was really packed in there and filled with people looking quite terrified at the prospect of another five weeks with their kids. We sat and ate and chatted and I was really grateful that this isn’t my life normally – getting up early and dropping them off somewhere else, sitting in a packed fast food joint and trying to think of how to kill the next hour. Roll on September 😉 .

We left there and had another roam through the town before deciding to brave the nearby park. Davies and Scarlett ignored the playgroundy bit heading for the skate park instead. This was filled with boys, probably of their own age or a bit older all running up the ramps and slopes. I stood a way away to observe and watched as Davies failed totally to clamber up and got pushed down by a littler boy while Scarlett managed to get cheered on by some of the other lads and pulled up while being offered advise and then managed to do it herself. One boy was nice to Davies although I did hear him ask ‘so are you a boy or a girl then?’ and showed him a different way to clamber up which Scarlett had a go at and couldn’t manage. She was full of ‘Davies could do it one way I couldn’t do and I could do it one way Davies couldn’t’. Scarlett hates it when Davies doesn’t manage to do something she can, it really upsets her for him to fail, almost more than if she fails herself. Davies did fall and bravado meant he didn’t show he was hurt until later but I think he was quite dented by the whole thing. I was really proud of both of them for sticking together and sticking it out though.

We left when Ady rang to say he was on his way and I asked Davies if the other kids had been nice. He said sort of sadly ‘no, but they never are, are they?’ and expanded on this when I asked by saying that most schooled children were mean straightaway as a default. he did cite some exceptions but said that most Home Ed kids are friendly to strangers and most schooled kids are the opposite. I’m not sure if he has a skewed view or if this is true but it has to be said he certainly is pretty popular in HE circles we mix in and yet never quite manages to break through in schooled ones so it is definitely accurate of his own experiences. I think 10ish is the age of most not wanting to be different for most kids whereas he is at the age where he is most proud of being different so I suppose this was always likely to be a tricky time. I understand why a lot of HE kids choose this period to think about school though, the stepping away from your family and wanting to belong elsewhere must be some sort of natural urge. I think both Davies and Scarlett are secure enough in who they are, coupled with a fairly strong genetic ‘sod you!’ attitude to anyone who takes against them and plenty of friends locally and nationally, for that not to happen here, but of course you never know.

Ady picked us up and he had to visit a Morrisons and the nearest one was the Mythical one on the A3. Scarlett actually recognised it when we pulled up and said ‘this is Mythical Morrisons!’ which meant she had to explain the whole story to Davies who seemed not to have registered it last year. Being so close to the Sustainability Centre by then we thought we’d call in so drove there and had a very lovely hour walking round the campsite, down to Sue’s bench and through the first part of the woods, back to the pond and past the centre. We found a toad and saw a huge dragonfly along with Sean who runs the Campcraft stuff and hailed us as we walked by. Looking forward to being there for a whole week next month :).

Away again via just one more store, to my parents where we had to drop off some paperwork and arrange some childcare help for later in the week and how to celebrate Dad’s birthday with him on Friday. All done, along with a cup of tea and a chat and then home.

I read a couple more chapters of Why the Whales came while D&S ate dinner before a not particularly early to bed but certainly earlier to sleep night for them.

I decided to let everyone sleep til they woke naturally this morning – Ady aside of course. So I woke at 9am, Scarlett at 10am and Davies at 1030am. They had breakfast and got dressed, I did lots of laundry.

Davies finished off the last bit on an xbox game which means he’s completed it while Scarlett spent time with the ducks and chickens and quails. I forgot to mention in yesterdays blogpost that when we got home yesterday afternoon one of the bantam chicks was missing. I searched for quite a while before finding it, on it’s side, trapped and looking dead behind a bit of mesh in the garden. All the hens had abandoned it and left it for dead and I thought it probably was. We brought it inside, forced some water into it’s beak and put it under a heat lamp. It went from probably minutes from death to alert and chirping within the hour and against all odds we stuck it back outside with the others where it rejoined the gaggle of hens who all think they are it’s mother and is now totally fine. It is a cockerel so won’t actually be one we want to keep but is a very pretty bird and it would have been a horrid way to die.

Ady appeared home at lunchtime having been passing so he joined us for half an hour or so and when he left the rest of us decided pancakes were in order for lunch – partially as we’d got the taste for them thanks to SB’s petition yesterday and partially because they are an excellent way of dealing with egg gluts. Also Scarlett had specifically requested a ‘family night’ as she calls them when we all eat together so we’d planned dinner late for them, early for us which meant a decent lunch was in order for the kids to tide them over.

In the afternoon I spent ages plotting WOOFing hosts we’ve decided to approach on a map of the UK and then the kids and I read out some more and gave them yes and marked them on the map or no votes – we have 198 to get through and plot before we can even start contacting them to see if they would accept us as WOOFers on the dates we are hoping for. Will blog the whole process in greater detail in the relevant place soon.

Scarlett and I did her lipbalm making kit which involved melting some vaseline type stuff in a bain marie, adding colour and flavour and putting it into little pots. Quite fiddly but quite pleasing results :). She then did some drawings of dolphins and spent loads of time colouring them in and adding detail such as underwater fish and seagulls getting up to stuff in the sky.

Davies got out a maths set with protractor, set squares and compass etc in it and I showed him how to make a flower picture with the compass and talked about angles and degrees. We cut a circle into various fractions and tested them with the protractor until I felt a bit uncomfortable and he looked a bit bored so we stopped 😆 He then created a marble run style assault course for some Wallace and Gromit figures similar to the Xbox game he’d been playing and I went back to uploading photos to flickr.

Ady came home and we all did some more adding potential hosts to our long list until it was time to head out to a localish venue for Ady and I to give blood. It was my tenth donation and I got given a ‘bronze award’ of a certificate and a little pin badge. It was Ady’s 9th donation so he’ll get one next time. They were running late despite us having appointments and we realised it was going to be far too late to get home and start cooking dinner for the kids so we called into the chippie for fish and chips for them instead.

Davies and Scarlett ate while I read the first couple of chapters of Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Why the Whales Came“>’ which had both kids entranced. I think we’re in the Morpurgo Zone at the moment :). Meanwhile Ady had a bath and then cooked our dinner. I had a bath and finished reading my latest book which I’ve really enjoyed – What Alice Forgot

Dinner while watching a couple of episodes of Outnumbered. My diary has filled back up again nicely after our few weeks of hanging about the house so I’m looking forward to lots happening again in the next couple of weeks :).

Friday was a bit of a wash out really. Davies had been suffering on and off all week with some sort of cold / cough and having been quiet on Thursday for most of the day suddenly announced he felt sick when we left the cinema in the evening. He went straight to bed when we got home but was awake still at midnight and coughed himself sick :(. I had to get Ady up to deal with that (hurrah for the Ady machine) while I dealt with Davies. He wasn’t sick again and it was clearly a mix of his own coughing, too many sweets at the cinema and maybe not enough sleep but he was very off colour on Friday morning and was up from about 6am wrapped in his duvet.

I’d not slept at all well and spent much of the night agonising on whether I also felt sick, whether I should take the day off work and if we should be going to the Bean’s party or not. In the end we decided that Ady would stay home with the kids in the morning and I’d come home in the afternoon so he could go off and do some store visits. I felt increasingly crapper through the morning at work and was actually very thankful to have had a reason to have already arranged to leave at lunchtime. My previously perfect attendance record has been shot recently with my allergic face reaction followed by being sent home early on my first day back from holiday when my ankle swelled up and now having to work half a day due to an ill child 🙁 .

I did Baby Rhyme Time (the last for a while as we’ve decided to have a break of it through the summer holidays – hurrah!) and sat on the desk for a bit then came home. By the time I got home Davies was feeling better, was dressed and had eaten lunch which was a relief. But I was feeling really ropey so all my intentions to bake stuff to take to Chris and Helen’s were shelved and I curled up on the sofa with my blanket in Davies’ place. I’d not intended to go to sleep but I was woken an hour later by the phone ringing and no one else around! I tracked the children down to Davies’ room where they were playing having not wanted to disturb me when I fell asleep.

I had some lunch and read a book feeling slightly better from the sleep but still not 100% and the kids went out into the garden. I think that the stress and lack of sleep from the past month of my ankle had all just caught up with me at once and I just felt utterly exhausted and wrung out :(. Ady rang me at 5pm to say he’d be home in an hour or so and I told him I was going to bed and to wake me when he came home. The kids were settled playing something and promised to be quiet (they lied ;)) so off upstairs I went.

I finally woke at 830pm when the kids came to say goodnight having been fed and bathed by Ady when he got home. Ady had run me a bath and was about to start cooking dinner if I wanted it. I felt much better having slept and we decided to make a decision about Chris and Helen’s in the morning depending on how everyone was feeling. Unfortunately when Ady put dinner infront of me I simply couldn’t eat it and within a couple of hours of being up I was ready to go back to bed again.

Saturday morning though I was awake at 7am feeling much, much better. I had a cup of tea, got dressed and headed up to Sainsburys for food to bring in lieu of what I was planning to bake. I gathered french bread, cheese, grapes, olives and pink fizz – much more expensive buying than baking! Back at home everyone else was now up and feeling fine too so we gathered together clothes, bedding etc and headed off.

The drive wasn’t too bad – it is feasible to do it in 2.5 hours but it was closer to 4 on the way up although we were still quite early arrivers. We met Marcus and Michelle’s French family, admired the new conservatory and just enjoyed being with all our friends.

The day passed in it’s usual haze of children playing on the swings and the climbing frame (which was an elephant this time) and in the paddling pools, adults eating, drinking and chatting and plenty of people taking photos :).

We presented Jan and Jonathan with the photobook of their party – nice to hand it over with lots of the people around who it was from, and for everyone else to get a look at it too :).

The afternoon turned into evening, some of us moved indoors, we got the children into pjs and set up bedding but I’m not even going to pretend we got them to bed because I think most of them were awake after most of us. Scarlett was particularly troublesome which I guess is fair payback on me after all those times I used to feel smug / annoyed about other people’s toddlers still around after my kids were in bed in youth hostel camps over the years 😉 .

We sat round the fire which was just lovely and laughed about dragonboat racing and lard mostly as I recall. Having been up since stupid o’clock I was pretty tired though so didn’t live up to my usual reputation of last-to-bed, although it had already become August by the time I did turn in!

Sunday At last the children are getting better at sleeping in themselves in the mornings so it was after 8am when I woke to the sound of children rollerskating round the hall, plink-plonking on the piano and discussing DS games. More waterplay – largely started by Bob and a bucket in response to the ‘it’s a flying cat’ song, which sounded like it was being sung by cats but was infact Scarlett, Alex and Rachael. Threatening a soaking is actually never an effective way of taming Scarlett (infact I’ve yet to find anything that is really) and she was only too delighted to be drenched and took it as her cue to go back into the pools again 😆

Breakfast merged into lunch, the church bell chiming midday was deemed alcohol o’clock (for once not by me first although I did join in 😉 ) and people started to drift away slowly. We left at 3pm and for once the journey was so smooth we did arrive home 2.5 hours later.

Bath and food for Davies and Scarlett and we spent some time perusing potential hosts on the WOOFing website and began marking some on a map to plan a route and start plotting our year. More on all that later.

Flickr is uploading pictures of the weekend, so will drop some into this post later when it’s done. Thanks to Chris and Helen for a fab weekend and thanks to everyone else there for being such great company :).