One word? When seven would do…

Off to Katy’s house today where we’ve not been before, for 6+ reading group. Before we left home and indeed on the way I did some lecturing and Davies and Scarlett did some acknowledging that life needs to get more harmonious, cooperative and self-directed around here. Probably need to make all sorts of post-illness, pre-Christmas type allowances but am looking forward to new year, new challenges, new ideas type stuff and thinking some re-evaluating would be good.

Katy lives in the same town as Chris and Julie but although I’ve been there loads I don’t know it at all well other than Chris and Julie’s house and the smallholders store where we get the chicken food from. Katy lives in a very cute, fairytale type cottage in the middle of a terrace. It’s adorable, very pretty but also very small and quite cold and due to intolerant neighbours they are about to move out. It’s a very dinky 3 rooms downstairs and 3 upstairs with a small front room, little middle room, one side of which is a kitchen and then a sort of sun lounge room on the back. The 12+ book group had the front room and the 6+ had the back room, with any lurking adults hanging out in the kitchen in the middle. I vaguely know one of them and the others I’d briefly met last time. I sat and chatted to a couple of them but then a rather ‘larger than life’ type woman burst in late and did a bit of ‘commanding the room’ with anecdotes in which she was the heroine with pauses left for people to tell her how great she was. I found this very tedious so quietly got on with some knitting while internally mocking her and entertaining myself with my own cruel thoughts ;). I was then joined by the woman I vaguely know – Clare and had a really nice chat with her about Home Ed generally, wobbles over approaches and what to do with 9 year old boys. She has 3 children – 13 and 15 year old daughters and a 9 year old son -the girls did go to school but her son never has. He is a reluctant attendee of the 6+ book group mostly because his older sister is the 12+ so he’d have to be there anyway but he kept coming out to try and drag Clare in with him. It turned out he has quite a lot in common with Davies – they did meet many years ago when they were about 4 and hit it off then although neither of them would remember. We agreed that maybe we should get them together and planned to arrange something, but actually within the hour when all the kids had gone outside for a run around Davies and Jack found each other anyway :).

The kids did some cave painting – aka a roll of lining paper hung up around the sun room and the kids let loose with paint (well watered down food colouring, much cheaper than paint and with more satisfying colours) to create cave paintings, then they did some collage self portrait stuff and chatted about Littlenose. Katy said to me afterwards that Davies and Scarlett had been very much leaders in the discussion and chatted with her loads which was good as last time they’d been a bit shy of saying much in the group. We were on the cusp of leaving when Katy offered me another cup of tea so a few of us stayed to chat awhile longer and Katy took delivery of a parcel containing some frozen food being kept cool with a couple of bags of dry ice. A handy group of Home Educated children proved too much of a temptation to let the educational value of such a coincidence go by so we called them in, emptied the dry ice into a saucepan and everyone cooed and oohed and ahhed over it. We also added some food colouring, tried to freeze a blade of grass and saw what happened if you huffed warm air over it. Very cool 🙂

We left with promises to meet up soon and headed for home.

I was planning on finishing my reading group book which was Travels with My Aunt but I was on page 58 and it was failing to grab me at all so I decided not to bother and made some mince pies instead. Scarlett made another foodchain cycle picture thing and then spent some time on one of her animal hospital type DS games learning more about animals (she took my chat very seriously about self directed learning ;)). Davies spent some time snuggled up with me, played his DS, watched some TV and made a real effort not to wind Scarlett up.

Ady came home and I headed off to Book Group at the library. We were having a festive time tonight complete with mulled wine and various nibbles people had brought – I was the only one with home made offerings mind you ;). We talked about the book – everyone but me had enjoyed it so I conceded my literary bimbo-ness :lol:, we had a quiz of book titles we have read before at group, which myself and Liz won (we split into pairs) and I impressed even myself by remembering all of the authors of too – got a box of liquers for that triumph. Next we had pass the parcel with a chocolate coin and a ‘how many lords leaping / maids milking / geese laying are in the song?’ challenge in each layer with a box of chocolates as the main prize. Liz won that too although I was the only one who knew all the lyrics to 12 days of Christmas. We had a final prize for the person who could come up with the sum total of gifts given over the whole 12 day period.

Home for dinner and a little light reading in the shape of the Select Commitee report.

It was the monthly Home Ed meet up at PB today and we’d have liked to have gone but with the MOT already run out on my car I decided not to risk driving it. Instead we had a morning at home. Scarlett has really gotten into drawing and making little paper things involving lots of cutting out and colouring in and sticking together. This rather puts Davies at a loose end and he sometimes combats this by baiting and annoying Scarlett. He and I had a chat about not wasting his freedom of childhood and lack of anyone dictating how he should spend his time. I said that all the time I could see autonomy working for him with him being occupied, self driven and interested then it was great but if I could see he was getting bored, restless or unstimulated then I was quite happy to take the decision making power back again and decide for him how he should spent his time.I suspect this is a conversation we will return to but hopefully more in a gentle shove in the right direction than full on timetables ;). He did go off and come back later having made a robot from various bits of recycled junk and tried to read my very stylised writing on some Christmas cards.

Scarlett did a drawing with mountains in the background and a cat chasing a bird, chasing a spider, chasing a flea, chasing a dog which she then glued edge to edge to create a 3d round of perpetual chasing. Liked that lots 🙂 and all her own ideas and work.

We had lunch and then headed off to to drop my car off for it’s MOT. Every year I anticipate being the one that the car finally starts costing us loads of money – an MOT due the week before Christmas is always a bad idea anyway. We dropped it off, were told to come back an hour later and he’d ring me if there were any problems and so we walked into Lancing.

We looked in the bookshop (where I covertly bought them each something they’d been cooing over when they weren’t looking), various charity shops and the post office where I posted all the foreign Christmas cards and bought stamps for all the UK ones. We walked back to the garage and were delighted to learn the car had passed :). He recommended new tyres for the front wheels which I’ll get sorted after Christmas.

While we were out we’d discussed gymnastics as it was the last one tonight but they have missed the previous three sessions. I have been really careful not to impose my view that it is very expensive, highly unlikely to reap the actual goal of backflips any time soon and really not what they are used to in terms of the strict discipline and the way the children are spoken to, whilst still allowing plenty of scope for both children to confide they are not sure about it anymore. Today neither of them wanted to go and when I pressed them as to whether they wanted to go again after Christmas Scarlett straight away said no. Davies was prepared to go again but when I said I’d been looking into acrobatics and tumbling and circus skills instead he agreed that was far more what he was wanting to learn rather than competition level gymnastics. We agreed I would contact the Gymnastics owner and say they wouldn’t be coming back. I am pleased. Pleased we gave them the chance to do something they wanted to do, pleased they gave it a genuine crack and pleased they knew when to call an end to it having decided it wasn’t going to provide what they wanted after all.

Back home again they wanted to play in the bath as Scarlett had bought them both some toys in one of the charity shops so they ran their own bath and got in while I made a start on my roundup of 2009 post. I made their tea and made a couple of phonecalls / sent some emails I’d been meaning to do. Davies and I had another chat and he showed me some video clips on his phone taken while at camp and earlier in the summer with Chloe.

I think they are both on the cusp of another spurt of changing and development which is always a bit unsettling for everyone for a week or more until life gets back on an even keel again. We started talking about things we want to do next year though and both of them were very enthused by that idea so I am hopeful that willl give us some guidance to fall back on.

Ady came home and I read the last couple of chapters of the Littlenose book we’re on. Bedtime was rather protracted and we had an amusing interlude when I was in the bath, Ady was in the kitchen and the children were in their respective bedrooms (Davies upstairs, Scarlett downstairs) and I think Scarlett started singing ‘deck the halls’ until we all joined in from various rooms :).

but not at a hotel in Amsterdam. Just here in Sompting.

Saturday I worked in the morning. I spent most it doing this display:

It’s a large cardboard box (that our green johanna composter came in) that Tarly and I had cut a hole in and painted brown on Friday. I made the fire and grate from coloured paper at work, dragged one of the library armchairs over and found a coffee cup and cushion in the staff room. Another colleague suggested stringing the Christmas cards up and someone else has suggested I make some flying ducks to go on the wall 😆 I think it looks good but would like to have a fireside rug there too to complete it.

While I’m posting photos of library displays here is my 12 Days of Christmas display currently in the junior library. Scarlett helped with this one too – the excessively glittered partridge is hers and she coloured in lots of the dancing ladies and drumming drummers 🙂

I spent some time researching Chatterbooks which I have pushed for and volunteered to run in my own time and finally had approved and signed off. I now need to put together a proper plan of how it will work and set some dates. I’m also hoping to put together some minor training for colleagues on it so that I have support in recruiting members and people talking about it to others and getting some copy ready to go on the West Sussex website. Unfortunately this will also have to be done in my own time really as I can’t see me fitting that into my 11 hours a week ;). Looks like 2010 will be the ‘Year I volunteer!’

Home for lunch and Davies and I made some more baubles from old Christmas cards. He did really well at that as it is pretty fiddly and tasks like that have always been ones he struggles with. He suddenly went really pale and quiet during lunch and said he wasn’t hungry and he was really cold. Scarlett had been the same on Monday when she started going down with whatever it is she has. He ended up taking himself off to bed with his DS.

I wanted to go to the allotment as it’s been totally neglected for the last month or so. To be fair there was very little we could have been doing anyway with such wet weather and we have very little growing at the moment but I should have got up there before just to cast an eye over everything, particularly with the high winds we’ve been having. Our composter which I hadn’t really installed very well had blown over which meant all the half rotted food was just sitting there. Fortunately the weather has meant it was just rotting more rather than stinking. The door seems to have gone altogether though so we need to sort out a replacement for that before we can add any more material to it. Scarlett came with me and we pulled about half the parsnips which have grown quite well and checked the carrots which haven’t. We removed various debris from our wildlife pond and then as we were already pretty muddy just from doing that decided that would do for now and we’d come back up again soon. Our plot looked pretty much like everyone elses and there is very little you can be doing on the allotment at this time of year anyway but I really want to make sure we build on what went well this year.

Then we called into Lancing as we needed some bits for the evening. We were off to the Not Swingers for dinner and it was Mexican night. I’d wanted to get some chili chocolate (but couldn’t find any in Lancing), some Sol beer and lime and either some Mexican wine or some tequilla. Tequilla is very expensive so I changed my mind about that but did get some Mexican beer, limes and some nice chocolates to take. We also called into the library as Scarlett wanted to see the display up and predictably she chose a book to borrow too.

Back home again I had a bath and got ready to go out. Davies had continued to go downhill but said he was fine about us going out. We did say that if it had been Scarlett who was ill we wouldn’t have gone as she wouldn’t have got the level of cosseting and care from my Mum but Davies would be more fussed over by her than if I’d stayed home with him.

Scarlett made us all laugh as the bath was already run that Ady had had waiting for me and as she was muddy from the allotment (and her feet smell from her shoes) he said to her ‘go and jump in the bath quickly before Mummy has it’ so she did

fully dressed! Nutter! 😆

Mum and Dad arrived and we headed off to Mike and Rose’s. Rose’s sister and husband were also joining us and Rose has been very keen for her sister and I to meet. She says we are very alike but her sister is a dog-loving, children-intolerant, social worker whereas I am pretty much the opposite 😆

Mike, as always, had gone all out with his culinary theme of Mexico and we started with Tequilla Sunrise cocktails and chili-infused nibbles. The food was actually all really nice and Mike always does a serve-yourself style with so many dishes and options if I don’t like something I can easily avoid it. This time there was nothing I had to eat at all that I wouldn’t have chosen to :).

We started with home made dips and tortilla chips – guacomole, salsa, some chickpea based (clearly I didn’t eat that) and sour cream. This was followed by a taco stuffed with lettuce, salsa and quorn mince cooked with chili. I was quite impressed with the quorn mince. The main course was enchiladas with cheese and tomatoes, a pepper and tomatoes salad and refried beans for those who wanted them. Dessert was a chocolate and almond pudding. Chili chocolates to finish along with tea, coffee and cointreau (departed from the Mexican theme at that point, but we had had Mexican wine with dinner).

It was all very nice but the vast combination of mixed drinks – cocktails, white wine, pink fizz (Rose’s sister was driving so opened a bottle and had one small glass but then noone else seemed to like it so I drank most of that) and finally Cointreau meant we were all pretty inebriated by the end of the evening. We had rousing conversations about education but it all stayed very amicable, if animated ;). Davies had rung me twice during the evening and actually I’d told him at about 930 that we’d only be another hour or so. That hadn’t quite happened as time had done that black hole thing when we moved away from the dining table. We finally got home somewhere after midnight. My memory is a bit patchy but Davies came and slept with me as he was still semi-awake and not feeling well.

Sunday I woke up feeling dreadful – clearly all self inflicted and expecting no sympathy ;). A text conversation with Rose revealed they were feeling equally as rough. A lovely evening but always sure it could have been just as lovely without the alcohol abuse and write off of the following day really… maybe next year I really will make a concerted effort to reduce my drinking.

Davies had woken feeling much better, it clearly is just a cold with one day of feeling rough while going down with it. The kids were supposed to be going to the Badgers Christmas party and Ady and I had some Christmas shopping planned but Davies didn’t feel up to it and Scarlett didn’t want to go alone so I was spared that ordeal with my hangover ;). A quiet morning and then Scarlett and I walked up the hill to Mike and Rose’s to collect Ady’s car. It’s only about a 15 minute walk but very steeply uphill – we sang The Grand Old Duke of York, increasingly breathlessly, to keep us going 😆 Diversion home to my Dad’s to collect a cheque for the kids swimming lessons for next term and then to the swimming pool to pay it in. Tuesdays are going to be crazy next term with sea scouts and brownies afterwards at slightly staggered times.

Back home again I felt able to face some food and then we all got changed and headed out again to Brighton to see Them With Frozen Tails (- neither of the photographed actors were in the one we saw). I’d seen it on the Brighton Theatres website about 6 weeks ago and thought it looked good. We don’t tend to go to pantos as they are just so pricey and never really seem worth the money. None of us watch soaps so never know any of the minor celebrities that star in them so this seemed like a good festive treat alternative. It was excellent, really funny and with loads of audience participation. Lots of fresh, topical humour and the third story (it was three animal stories narrated and acted out with virtually no props) was all improvised with suggestions from the audience on characters and plot. We had a good brave knight, called Sir Bread, who acted like a hamster and saved the world by turning people into kittens, working against an evil crazy yeti called Bob who lived in a microphone and wanted to take over the world by throwing snowballs at people. It was hilarious 😆

We were home by 630pm and Ady cooked the kids some tea while I had a bath, then I cooked our dinner. Loads of the TV chefs seemed to be having Christmas specials on tv yesterday so we watched some nice soothing Nigella making cooking turkey and Rachel Allen baking and decorating a gingerbread house. Then, way earlier than usual, it was bedtime.

I finally got round to digging out my car MOT certificate which I knew was about to run out any day and discovered today was indeed that day. Booked it in for Monday lunchtime and won’t need to drive it before then so that’s fine, now just need to keep fingers firmly crossed it gets through with minimal expense.

I drafted a resignation letter for one of Ady’s colleagues (I seem to be in charge of all the CVs, application forms and covering letters, interview advice etc for most of his colleagues. I guess if I’m helping with resignation letters now too it means there is success happening with the other bits :)) and emailed that across. It reminded me of the careful wording on several of my resignation letters. With B&Q there was none required for my transfers and promotions but my actual leaving the company altogether after 6 years came as a blow and I was offered all sorts of incentives to stay. My recruitment consultant letter had to be handed in to the MD of the whole company who happened to be covering our branch at the time. She was shocked as she’d had no idea how dreadful the job role had become for myself and my colleague (who left at the same time). I didn’t use the opportunity to enlighten her either, maybe I should have done. Leaving Clintons was a blow to my boss but not a shock – he knew that unless he was to leave there was no career path for me as his was the only job above mine and he wasn’t going anywhere. Leaving the next job was by mutual agreement so no resignation letter required – probably my behaviour could be considered an elaborate form of resignation ;). Leaving Bhs was a relief -the manager actually told me I’d made the right decision in leaving – the bitch! Leaving my Sales Office Manager job was no problem – I was moving 250 miles away. I think I almost always had a tone in the ‘it is with some regret…’ line though 😆

Davies and Scarlett were playing upstairs and I was sorting out laundry when Lucy and The Rs arrived. The Rs went up to join D and S and all seemed fairly harmonious allowing Lucy and I the chance to chat and catch up. The children went outside to play for a while and came in when they got hungry at lunchtime. Unfortunately they never quite recovered their equilibrium after lunch. A dvd was put on but Scarlett decided they were not all behaving well enough to watch it (in fairness Ms R hadn’t wanted to, I suspect she was just making her feelings known), then Scarlett got all precious about not letting anyone play with her Noah’s Ark – understandable, it’s only a few days old and she doesn’t even let Davies play with it and then started sobbing about Davies and Rebecca playing Connect 4 as she claimed that had been a birthday present to her too. I put a stop to that as it was getting ridiculous. She had come in from outside all blue lipped and shivery and I think she was feeling rough and a bit delicate, but that’s no excuse for being quite so unreasonable.

The final straw was Scarlett trying to get involved in some sort of sibling spat between Richard and Rebecca and getting walloped, so as we’d spent the final half an hour or so lurching from one wailing interuption to the next Lucy made the executive decision that the visit was over and they headed off. On this occassion I think the boys did fine and both of the girls were being difficult in their own ways. Bless ’em…

Everything calmed down after that and Davies and Scarlett sat very happily side by side with their DSs connecting and assisting each other with various levels.

I got out a large cardboard box I wanted to make into a fireplace for a display at work and cut out a section and then mixed up some brown paint to paint the rest. Scarlett decided to help me so we did that together.

We put CBBC on and watched that, the kids had a late dinner as Ady had picked up some of the things I needed to actually make it and didn’t get home til gone 6pm. We read a couple of chapters of the current Littlenose book we’re on and the kids went off to bed.

I’ve started knitting a hat for myself and I spent some time cutting old Christmas cards from last year into little circles to make baubles for the Christmas Tree which is starting to look pretty. Will do some more of them tomorrow and ice the biscuits I made too.

I was back to work yesterday and after nearly 2 whole weeks off was quite looking forward to it really. The day seemed to whizz by and it was nice to be back catching up with everyone and chatting about our week away. I had an interesting chat with F who tells me she has 61 people to buy for on her Christmas list and spends about £900 just on presents at Christmas. This horrified me but in asking around doesn’t seem terribly unusual. I know we are not overwhelmed with family to have to buy for and maybe we’re mean in not adding loads of friends to Christmas lists. All that said I bet I’ll be feeling smug when we have nothing carried over still to pay for next year ;).

I am now thinking my flat refusal to spend £30 each on lightsabers is a bit cruel though and plotting to get my parents and Frazer to buy them instead so that I won’t resent a whole days wages being spent on plastic tat but the kids still get something they want.

The rest of the day passed very quickly and I arrived home shortly before Ady (Ady had been home with Davies and Scarlett in the morning, Dad had been here in the afternoon). I had an hours catching up with the children before getting ready to go out and then they dropped me off at the pub before going to McDonalds with Ady for their dinner.

I was first to arrive at the pub where 9 of us from work were having a Christmas meal. It’s years since I walked into a pub on my own and I remember my Dad always being horrified that I was up for doing it at all when I was younger as ‘in his day’ women simply didn’t go into pubs unaccompanied. I used to drink in a bar where I knew all the barstaff and various other regulars so often used to just head down there of an evening and either sit at the bar chatting or see who else came in – it was a bit like Cheers. That used to bewilder my Dad and actually going into that pub last night I could see why, I felt very odd walking in alone, ordering a drink and then sitting down by myself. I only had about ten minutes before two others arrived and I was quite happy but had already got a reply ready incase one of the couple of blokes who were giving me curious looks decided to try the ‘what’s a nice girl like you…?’ line 😆

The meal was predictably fairly low quality and tasteless but the company and large amounts of wine more than made up for that. We had a really nice few hours and lots of laughs. One woman was driving so dropped 3 of us home and another two had their own cars as they lived further away. One other woman’s husband came to collect the others. I was home before 11pm so Ady and I watched Gavin and Stacey that he’d recorded earlier.

Off for a Winter Walk this morning with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. We met at the woods in Slindon. Last time we met there Jack and Maisie were really keen to head to the nearby park so we cut the walking in the woods part short. I said to Davies and Scarlett that actually driving for half an hour to sit on a bench while they played on some fairly crappy swings was not something I was prepared to do too often and if we were going to head to parks I thought it was fair we met halfway between them and us rather than us doing all the driving. They both took this on board and Davies, who is wonderful and gets all his very best bits from Ady made sure we had a proper woodland walk today with not a hint of playpark about it :).

We set off and the four older children ran ahead while Julie and I walked at Lorna pace. It’s actually a very small area of woodland that all four of the children know well and have been walking in since they were toddlers so Julie and I had no worries about them running off ahead. At one point we reached a fork in the path that didn’t have an obvious direction they may have gone in so we made an educated guess and when we came across a man walking his dog a few minutes later as we exchanged ‘good morning’ s with him I casually asked if he’d passed four children to ensure we were going in the right direction. He looked horrified and wanted to exchange mobile phone numbers with me incase we saw them and everything. I tried to reassure him we were not worried but just wanted to check we were treading in their footsteps but I’m sure he thought we were dreadfully neglectful. Within moments we heard Maisie calling and they all reappeared and told us we were being rubbish at tracking them as they’d left us marks of arrows on trees. So it turned out it was Julie, Lorna and I who were lost, if anybody was.

We headed back towards the cars and poor Tarly managed to have a real wipeout fall scraping her knee (through her ripped jeans) in several places. She is at least a fairly stoic child so sort of spat on her hand and wiped the blood off, then kept going 😆 Julie and I were talking about the differences apparent in Home Ed kids and she remarked on how very bold and confident Davies and Scarlett are. I guess she’s right but I spend so much time around other Home Ed kids to me they just seem ‘normal’.

Really nice couple of hours tramping around in wellies and putting the world to rights :).

We came home and the breadmaker had just finished baking a loaf I’d stuck in before we left so we had nice fresh bread for lunch. The kids played with Scarlett’s Noah’s Ark for a while, Davies messed around on the Bamzookis website and they watched some CBBC. I read my book and drank lots of tea.

Yesterday at a charity shop we’d picked up a craft set called ‘Party Penguins’ which mostly involved threading beads onto wire in a certain way to create little peguin ornaments which you then decorate with felt and more beads. We did one each of those before Davies and Scarlett got distracted by The Chuckle Brothers! 😆

Tea for them and then off to Badgers. I had to take various ridiculous amounts of ID with me which I must get out of Ady’s car actually as if that envelope gets lost I probably have nothing else left in the world to confirm I am me and really exist! 😆

I caught up with a couple of the other parents, had a glass of mulled wine (Ady arrived after me and came in with ‘blimey it smells like camp in here!’ :lol:), filled out what is now my fourth CRB check form – I almost worry that I will flag something up somewhere for having been checked so many times now! and then rejoined the rest of the room for Presentation Night.

They have been doing Healthy Badger this term and it’s been very craft based activities so they paraded baseball caps they’d decorated for ‘staying safe in the sun’, frisbees they’d decorated for ‘staying fit and active’ and various other crafty bits and pieces. They all got their Healthy Badger badge and certificate and then Scarlett got a Silver Paw (for completing 6 badges – they get one every third badge) and Davies was made a Follow Me Badger :). Finally I was asked to stand up so they could tell everyone that I’ll be becomming Assistant Badger Leader from next term. As Ady said to me later – who would have thought when I first started taking a very shy and tiny Davies aged 5 that this would be the result 4 years on.

I am particularly proud of Davies as Julie is very firm about not just giving Follow Me Badger to every Badger who turns nine – they have to really earn it and she is quite happy to not have any if there are no deserving candidates :).

I brought the children home and we read a pile of books as we’ve not had stories for ages. I can’t be bothered to find links now but it was nice to snuggle up and read to them 🙂

Ady and I had a late night, I cooked tagliatelle using some bacon from Tom (Ady’s work mate and our meat dealer) who’s parents had their own pigs this year. It was simply the best bacon I’ve ever tasted and had Ady and I all enthused anew for self sufficiency again.

The suspected luxury of a lie in didn’t get much past 830am really but it was nice to wake to quietly chattering and laughing children rather than the beeping alarm.

Breakfast and dressed for the children while I sorted out the kitchen which was a bit of a bombsite as Ady had got the Christmas tree in this morning before going to work instead of washing up as he usually does first thing. We all went outside for a while to witness the ‘baby’ cockerel who found his voice and started crowing. He did it for about 10 minutes which had the older cockerel echoing and had me wondering if we’d need to find a new home for him but they both then shut up after their little duet so fingers crossed it will be a once a day chorus rather than an ongoing theme tune.

I put the lights on the tree but wasn’t really happy with them. Ady and the kids had bought them at the weekend and got coloured ones although I’d said I prefer white and they were tiny LED ones on a fairly short strand which I thought just didn’t show up enough. Finally they were on a white cable rather than a green one. And they’d cost a tenner which I thought was far too much money. I moaned about them and notice they have now been removed and boxed back up to return to B&Q and one of our perfectly good long sets of white ones has been put on the tree instead and is looking lovely 🙂 It’s still falling into place so isn’t finished being decorating yet but does look lovely and festive already 🙂

I did some emailing and ringing youth hostels and very happily news is good regarding Okehampton so it looks like we’ve got venue sorted for next years Christmas camp :).

We had a couple of cheques to pay into the bank (a cash back offer from my mobile phone and a birthday cheque for Scarlett from my Granny) so we decided to head to Littlehampton which is a bit further away than Worthing but has very easy and free parking so worth the slightly longer drive. It also has a very lovely wool shop that sells ends of balls of luxurious yarns for 50p which is where many of my blanket yarn came from. I want to knit myself a hat and gloves and didnt have any suitable wool for that either. So we paid in the cheques, spent some time in the shop choosing some lovely ends of balls and some reduced yarns for me to play with for other small things and then a new pair of gloves each in the pound shop for wearing now.

Back home for a late lunch and I baked some gingerbread stars to ice and thread with ribbons to decorate the tree. Will get some boiled sweets tomorrow to make some stained glass window ones too.

Then it was swimming. I’d already decided not to go in today, mostly because I didn’t want limp, chlorine scented hair for later and I knew I’d not have time to have a bath or shower at home (for some reason the showers at the pool never quite seem to remove the smell?) and I don’t have a clue where a hairdryer might be anyway. So I watched the lessons instead. Scarlett was first and she was given a letter to say she’s going up into the 430pm group that Davies is in from January. She did well and enjoyed the fun and games that they always do on the last week of term.

Davies was in the pool himself while Scarlett had her lesson and he found some other boys to hook up and play with. He also got a letter to say he is going up to the 5pm group in January and a badge to say he has passed Goldfish 1 – there seems very small incremental steps between levels and I rather cynically suspect this is more to award a badge (costing £2 each time) per term than anything else ;). It means Tuesdays are about to get even crazier with swimming from 4.30-5.30 and Scarlett needing to be back here for Brownies at 6pm I think – just about doable with either very early or very late tea. Then Davies needs to be at Sea Scouts for 7pm. Scarlett to be picked up at 730pm and Davies at 830pm. Oh it will be bedlam! 😉 I might email and check if there are equivalent classes at earlier timeslots actually…

Back home Ady was already here and cooking their tea so I got changed and headed off to a hotel in Horsham (just over half an hours drive) for a Christmas event for Waste Prevention Advisors which is the course I spent the last 9 Tuesday evenings doing. There were people from my course and from the previous courses over the last 3 years along with council people. We had a presentation from the head of waste services (yawningly boring) and talks from five existing WPAs on initiatives they have done which was interesting. We had a chance to chat to each other for a bit and were served very nice food – I had a very small amount as I knew I’d be having dinner at home but sort of wished I didn’t have so I could fill up there as it was lovely food :).

We were all presented with a pair of tumblers (from this company and similar wine bottle bottom style but mine have little lizards etched into them around the top).

Then I drove back home again in the rain!

I’ve watched the MPs presenting the petitions which was entertaining and is already being picked up by the media which makes me very hopeful.

I’m going to trail them round medical facilities instead.

Dentist first thing this morning. Like properly first thing at 830am. Bleugh. Not sure I’ve ever typed that before, probably won’t ever again. Hope you are all appreciating the descriptiveness of it.

Our dentist is across the road and up a bit – about a five minute walk I guess. We arrived and had a ten minute wait which made me a bit cross as last time we went we were tsked at for being a few minutes late, this time it was ten minutes after our appointment time (which was the first of the day) when we were called through.

Ady went first – he is seriously dentist-phobic. He was fine, told to improve his teeth cleaning and sent off. Davies was next and all was well with him too. Scarlett went third. Now she always got a hard time previously about her dummy so was very proud to be able to say she doesn’t have it any more. Unfortunately this was all overshadowed by the discovery that her teeth cleaning isn’t really up to par. That wouldn’t be so bad but she has tiny areas of what the dentist called ‘pre-decay’ on two of her back teeth 🙁 🙁 . She insisted that would be down to diet, and indeed she would know but I am slightly taken aback as (camp weeks aside ;)) I think the kids diet is relatively low in teeth damaging things. They only really drink water with something like coke maybe once a week with a meal, sweets are not a regular thing, neither are biscuits or cake really. They don’t really snack aside from on fruit which I suspect is the cause of the problem. I was mortified and poor Scarlett is upset too :(.

I was last and as I was already aware I have some issues with my gums. My Mum developed bad gum disease while pregnant with me and it never really improved. Although her teeth were healthy the gums receded to such a degree that she lost teeth and now wears false ones. This can be a hereditary condition so I have always been closely watched and indeed show a definite weakness in that area with regular flare ups. I was aware my gums were sore and infected about a month ago but ignored it as I knew we’d be going to the dentist soon. She said they were close to needing antibiotics and to use medicated mouthwash daily to try and sort them out.

So all feeling fairly disheartened we headed for home and Ady went off to work. The kids and I had already decided on a quiet morning so we watched Monsters Vs Aliens including the dvd extras, Davies completed some tricky levels on the MvA DS game and Tarly did some of a fimo kit she got for her birthday. We had lunch and Tarly and I gathered some flowers to put in her flower press.

During the morning Scarlett’s cough and runny nose got progressively worse and she went downhill. I’m sure tiredness has a part to play but she has definitely picked up something from last week and is pretty miserable bless her.

I’ve missed the last 2 opportunities to give blood so was keen to get along to the session today locally so we headed off there after lunch. I was rude to a pedestrian of old people (not necessary a recognised name for a group of them but I felt it was accurate) all standing huddled in the foyer blocking it off so noone could enter the building and was still riled up when we walked in. Despite not having an appointment I was ushered straight through. Whether this was luck, due to Scarlett’s hacking cough or my seething looks from the old people still apparent I don’t know but I was whizzed through the ‘have you had sex for money in the last ten days?’ style questions, passed the drop of blood in the pretty coloured liquid test and was on my back with my sleeve pushed up before you could say Jack Robinson. Quite why you’d feel the need to say Jack Robinson in the middle of a blood donor session I don’t know but that’s your issue, not mine.

Cup of tea and packet of crisps, effusive thanks all round and we were off again. I recently signed up to be an organ donor after watching a tv ad and whilst none of it is pleasant it feels like such a small inconvenience compared to the potential good it could do to give blood. The nurse told me it was my eighth time today which made me feel good :).

On the way out we decided Scarlett wasn’t up to gymnastics tonight and on the basis that Tarly wouldn’t be there Davies decided he wouldn’t go either. That makes three in a row they’ve not been to and twitches me a bit at the price. Privately I hope the novelty has worn off and they won’t want to bother after Christmas but I need them to tell me that rather than me decide for them and try and sway them.

We called into Boots on the way home and got fancy toothbrushes all round, the mouthwash for me, balm tissues for Scarlett. The nurse at the blood donor session commented on her ‘red rudolph nose’ and it is really sore.

Back home Scarlett mostly sat on me while Davies mostly watched CBBC. They had tea during which Tarly really went downhill and sat on my lap crying for a while 🙁 then they got in their pjs. A sleepover had been promised for tonight and it was very cute hearing them chat about it:
S: are you sure you want me in your room with my cough?
D: yes it’s fine, we shared a room all last week so I’ll probably catch it anyway
S: well I expect I’ll be asleep really quickly because I am tired from all the coughing so you’ll have peace and quiet after that.
😆

They went up to bed and started watching Ice Age 3 by which point Ady arrived home, pretty late thanks to calling in to give blood himself and having to wait over half an hour to do so.

I had a bath while Ady moved furniture around in the lounge to make a tree space to bring the Christmas tree in tomorrow. I cooked dinner including garlic bread that the misbehaving oven left with some cold patches – he threatened to blog about it 😉 😆

I rang back Julie the Badger leader to say yes I will be an Assistant Leader after she’d left a message on the answerphone. She was delighted and said she will try and ensure I have limited contact with Davies, particularly when it is a craft that he wants to keep as a surprise for me which is what he said his reservations were. Scarlett will be delighted 🙂 I remain unsure but happy to keep my enemies close if they start coming after HEors through community groups like Badgers, Scouts and Guides aswell as wanting to ensure that Badgers is there for the next three years that I want it to be available for Scarlett.

Off to bed now and utterly luxuriating in the thought I don’t have to set an alarm for the morning…

Everyone was up early again for present opening 🙂

Scarlett hadn’t really asked for anything specific this year other than a penknife and firesteel the same as Davies. We discussed the wisdom of this briefly but decided if we sent the children to Forest School which was all about lighting fires and using knives then it was only fair to give them the tools to continue using those skills. The firesteel hasn’t actually arrived yet but Scarlett can open that parcel when it does. The knife is on the same basis that Davies has his – they always have to check before taking it out of the house that it is appropriate and okay to carry it with them where we’re going, it is only ever to be used as a tool, not a weapon and all of the safety measures that they are ‘trained’ in are to be observed at all times. I had a penknife when I was a child and I wasn’t anywhere near as ‘outdoorsy’ as Davies and Scarlett are. Realistically it will only really be on camping trips or in the garden that they are used.

So Scarlett got her teeny penknife (with scissors, tweezers etc on it), a couple of crafty kits (fimo one, pressed flower one, some new felt pens and a Playmobile Noah’s Ark – chosen specifically for the many (pairs of) animals it came with. She also got Ice Age 3 on dvd which we’d not made to to the cinema for when it was showing for some reason so had earmarked as one to buy when it came out.

Davies, as ever, got a present too – Monsters Vs Aliens on dvd and a little mechanno style kit. They both got stuck straight in to building the ark and when Scarlett realised it was designed to float Ady ran a bath so they could get in and play with it proper flood recreation style 🙂

I made a birthday cake for Scarlett, she’d asked for a victoria sponge with cream and jam which was probably the most straightforward cake request either of my children has ever made! 😆 Scarlett and I were talking at camp about some of her more complicated asks over the years including the princess castle when she was four and the teddy bear when she was five. I still think my personal favourite was Davies’ oversized chocolate eclair :). I made two sponges and left them to cool for dealing with later.

Everyone got dressed, I sat and brushed Scarlett’s hair and we watched Ice Age 3. Then my parents arrived.

Scarlett got her usual premium bonds from them and a very Scarlett outfit of a long top with a leopard on the front, a pair of leggings and a leopard print scarf. It is white, which isn’t a colour she wears very often and she’s not a big fan of leggings so I can see the top getting the most wear but it was a – for once – very good present choice. She also got a ‘camp rock’ puzzle which was rather more inkeeping with usual presents (she has no idea what Camp Rock is, infact actually neither do I!) and there was some lego to add to the lego stash and some magnetix to add to the geomags for both Davies and Scarlett. My Mum does spend a whole afternoon with the kids every week so I think it wouldn’t be too tricky to talk to them, listen to them and get a handle on what they might like but she’s always been more about chucking money at presents and ensuring they are big, showy and overpackaged than actually thinking about what the recipient might like to own!

Presents opened and suitably cooed over we headed off out. Scarlett had asked to go to the Sea Life Centre this year. I do feel for her as most of the things she’d love to do are outside – zoos, safari etc. so pretty much ruled out in December. On her first birthday we went to Stockley Farm which is a Farm visit place in the Manchester area with tractor rides, baby animals to bottle feed etc and my parents still moan about how cold it was that day, six years later! 😆 Drusillas for her Keeper for the Day last year was pretty bleak I have to admit. So, Sealife Centre it was.

First though we went to Frankie and Benny’s for early lunch. We were conscious of going out for dinner again later so noone wanted to eat too much so we all went for breakfasts. Mum, Dad and Ady had proper full breakfasts, the kids and I went for pancakes and syrup. Unfortunately Scarlett didn’t like the pancakes but she made do with one of Ady’s fried eggs. I was really proud of her actually, it was her birthday, she didn’t like the food and she could have kicked off about it but she just sat happily picking at the egg and chatting. She told the waiter it was her birthday and at the end he appeared with an ice cream sundae with a candle in and they played ‘Happy Birthday’ on the speakers and the whole place joined in :).

Then to the Sealife Centre. We went for Scarlett’s fifth birthday and haven’t been since and a few new bits have been added in the last two years. It is pretty pricey – £40 for the four of us and another £30 for my parents and you could walk quickly round the place in under an hour so my Mum was a bit gripey about the price but I think you need to view it as a donation to the conservation and education work Sea Life centres provide and Scarlett and I particularly were very happy to stand and gaze at various fish for ages and ages. I’ve also realised, belatedly that there are lots of advance booking offers online which I should have researched and taken advantage of.

We had a great few hours, enjoyed the turtle feeding and talk session and were disappointed that the advertised shark feeding and talk didn’t happen (it turns out they only feed the sharks three times a week, I’d have thought their leaflet could have said that really) but got to ask some questions (Scarlett: why don’t the sharks eat all the other fish then?) and the guide did turn off the air bubbles for 15 minutes so we could go back into the underwater tunnel and get a far clearer look at the fish in the stiller waters. Scarlett was very excited to learn they do a Junior Aquarist day although you need to be 10 to do that so I suspect we’ll be back there again for that in 3 years. I like the rays and Davies spent ages with a catfish. I bought Scarlett a book about oceans on the way out and for some reason, although if we’d thought about it we’d have realised, we were all surprised to come out and find it was dark!

Brighton Pier was all lit up and sparkly looking so we decided to have a quick walk along it before heading for home. It was incredibly windy and earlier when it had been high tide the whole pier was being soaked with high waves breaking and splashing up over it but it was low tide now so just blowy rather than wet. Dad still complained but we reminded him it was traditional to get cold on Tarly’s birthday 😆 He stayed in the amusement arcade while the rest of us walked to the end and back again.

Back to the car and over to my parents via a quick stop at our house to put the chickens away and collect Tarly’s cake and decorating bits. At my parents I decorated the cake and we waited for my Granny to arrive as she was meeting us there. We’d decided to go to the carvery restuarant across the road from my parents house. There was friction between my parents and my grandmother (all three ways :rolls:) but the rest of us managed to ignore them all and had a drink in the bar before we were called through to our table. It’s a flat plate price and you choose which meats you want (pork, beef, turkey and gammon were on offer that day) along with a huge yorkshire pudding, then serve yourself with vegetables and condiments / sauces. You can go back up for more veg but the meat is single serving. I thought it was pretty good for £8.50 (although Ady and the kids both said the Christmas dinner at camp was better ;)) but my parents were moaning about it (are you getting a theme of the day yet? ;)). Ady, the kids and I had a great time though and took lots of pictures to entertain ourselves. I might have also topped up my wine reserves in order to keep spirits high. It was most amusing to hear my parents, Granny and Frazer all ribbing me about cooking and preparing food when I peeled the skin off Tarly’s new potatoes and mashed them for her (she is a mash addict and they didn’t have mash, only new or roast potatoes) given how everyone last week was telling me I spent too much time in the kitchen. Does anyone else have family who genuinely think they are crap, even at things they are probably pretty good at? Maybe I should have invited them to Truleigh Hill when we were so close so they could get to know me a bit better? 😉

We didn’t have dessert but went back to Mum and Dad’s for birthday cake. We did sparklers on the cake again and all enjoyed coffee / tea and cake.

We ended up staying later than I’d planned and finally got home just before 10pm. Davies and Scarlett went straight off to bed although Scarlett was awake quite late coughing. She had a great birthday, lovely to have it extended from earlier in the week with friends. I think seven is going to suit her!

I think we could all have done without the early start and busy day today but it wasn’t to be so everyone was up and ready to go by 9am.

Ady had a busy day herding his little flock of two around: First Scarlett had Wildlife Explorers over at Pulborough Brooks. It was the Christmas Party today so she enjoyed being with her friends there for the hour. I’m not sure if Davies and Ady managed a walk round or just hung out in the cafe while she was in there. At 11am they swapped and Davies went in for his Wildlife Explorers session Christmas Party which is way longer at 2.5 hours. Ady whizzed Scarlett back over this way where she went to a Rainbows / Brownies Christmas crafts day. There were four sessions although she missed the first one which was making Christmas cards she still got to make sweets, an advent calendar, a very heavily decorated snowman and have a fab few hours with her friends.

Ady collected Davies at 130pm and they found a McDonalds for their lunch as Davies is collecting the current range of Happy Meal Star Wars toys. They picked Scarlett up and 330pm and came home. They had an early tea, followed by some rowdy playing and another early, trying-to-catch- up on the sleep deficit night. This didn’t have much effect as Tarly was very excited about her birthday tomorrow and found it very hard to get to sleep mind you.

Meanwhile I headed off in the opposite direction to Stanmer Park, where we go for Springwatch, Apple Day and the kids’ had Forest School. This time it was for a Lookerers course.I heard about this when we were at Stanmer for the Apple Day event and thought it sounded really interesting so signed up for it. I quite like sheep and they have always been Davies’ favourite animal. I thought it wuuld be a great way to integrate a tiny bit more of my wannabe smallholders lifestyle into my life, a great way of learning more about something, more free training and CV adding experiences and frankly a very cool thing to drop into conversations ;).

I arrived and introduced myself to the rest of the group – we were 12 in all and a rather interesting mix. Two were men who work in office jobs and had found details of the lookerer initiative on the Brighton and Hove website when they went to pay their council tax, thought it sounded like an interesting antidote to the Monday- Friday desk bound work life so signed up, two more were planning to be smallholders one day and keen to gain experience and knowledge, another was a newly passionate volunteer for anything and everything he could find to volunteer for, several more were outdoorsy types who had heard about it and thought it sounded good, one was the son of a shepherd who had long since left country ways behind but found himself hankering for a touch of it and finally we had a journalist from The Times there to write a story about being a shepherd! Myself excluded the only Crazy seemed to be the woman who had also seen the sheep at Apple Day, fallen in love with them as they were so beautiful and felt she had been called to take care of them. Interestingly she later was not at all inclined to actually touch them 😆

The morning was classroom based and took in why they are grazing sheep (conservation, protecting wildlife and chalk grass downland, environmentally friendly rather than fossil-fuel driven mowing, creating no waste product (other than sheep poo which alllotment holders come and collect and sheep which go back into the food chain) and sustainable), the law regarding sheep and DEFRA regulations, a shepherds year (both conservation and commercial shepherds), what to look for while lookering in terms of sheep health and wellbeing and some common ailments sheep suffer from. We learnt about the history of the South Downs geologically and looked at old maps of the area and then saw pictures and heard graphic descriptions of fly strike, scald, footrot, scab and other sheep related mishaps. The session was led by the main ranger for Brighton and Hove and the farmer who works for Sussex Wildlife Trust and owns the sheep that graze on their land over the winter.

It was all fascinating. I learnt loads and in the same way as I’ve found the WPA course to be full of content and am interested in and therefore soak up like a sponge I realised again how much this sort of stuff appeals to me. Weird huh?! 🙂

We had lunch and chatted which was good, always nice to learn more about new people. The farmer was probably the most interesting, I really enjoyed listening to him :). After lunch we jumped into 3 landrovers and headed over to his farm. We were split into two groups and I was in the group that went off to the field first to learn about electric fencing.

We erected an electric fence, connected up the power and then tested it at various points to ensure the current was flowing. We were shown how to break the circuit so we can perform basic maintenance and checks. All very hands on and practical.

Next we went bacl to the barn and were shown a flock of sheep and how to handle sheep including how to roll them so you can inspect their feet and under their belly. I was very surprised that not everyone wanted to have a go at this when we were offered the chance as it is possibly one of those not to be missed experiences in life! I can’t wait to have a slot to go and look at sheep and impress Ady and the kids with my sheep rolling skills 🙂

We were taken back to Stanmer Park and left as trained lookerers. Quite the most quirky day I’ve spent in a while :).

I came home via Tesco for various bits and while gazing into the mirrored window while in the queue I spotted my Mum’s reflection. It took me ages to work out precisely where she really was with all the mirror effects 😆 We had a brief chat and made arrangements for tomorrow which saved me a later phonecall.

Finally home where Ady greeted me with a cup of tea and a lovely warm bath. X Factor, the end of last night’s half written post, everything flickr’d and when she eventually did go to sleep Scarlett’s presents wrapped.

I’m very tired and suspect it will be another Not Lie In tomorrow so am going to bed, just a few minutes before life changed forever this time seven years ago.

I knew we’d always struggle to match the magic of last years pretty near perfect Christmas Camp at Helmsley. The snow, the prettiness of the venue, the slightly smaller and therefore more initimate group of friends feel to the gathering all contributed to a holiday that leaves all four of us misty eyed when we think of it. We also got to extend our holiday by staying with friends in Leeds on the way up and of course having the best part of daylight hours travelling home on the last day.

But this year way more people wanted to come – and very pleased I was to have all of them there – but it meant Helmsley simply wasn’t big enough for us, and actually maybe you should never go back and try to recreate anyway. Truleigh Hill was tried and tested from 2 years ago, cheap, available and large enough (with some creative of theoretical bodies). There are benefits – Ady and I had a ten minute journey there on Monday and the same back home again today, we were able to justify taking both our cars so brought up a Christmas tree and did an online food shop which arrived at our house on Monday morning and was put straight from the ASDA lorry into the back of Ady’s car – wish someone else had done the walking up all the stairs with food for 50 people for four days mind you, that was a bit of a killer!

Whenever I talk to people about our Christmas camps (at work, friends etc.) they always think it sounds like such a wonderful thing to do. I love that alongside Davies and Scarlett’s memories of Christmas with Ady and I, their grandparents, uncles, cousins etc they will also have memories of sitting at great long tables filled with all their very best friends pulling Christmas crackers, singing Christmas songs, exchanging presents and just spending that time with the people who we now consider as much our family as those we are related to.

Monday Was really very laid back for a holiday start. We got up, leisurely packed up clothes, cameras, various chargers and other such essentials including a Christmas tree and lights. We wrapped the secret santa presents, took delivery of a huge online food shop and I nipped up to Sainburys for the last couple of bits I’d forgotten to add or had been missing off the order. We were a bit on the random side about eating lunch, I think the kids did but I didn’t manage to – not sure about Ady, and we were off!

We arrived at the hostel, were greeted by the hostel manager and his sidekick (Bearded and Non-bearded) and set about bringing all the food upstairs and getting the kitchen organised. Davies and Scarlett chatted to Bearded about Star Wars videos and we borrowed some bluetac so Ady and I could whizz round and allocate rooms with names on doors. While still doing this Layla and Si arrived :). Others arrived in a steady stream – memorable were Chris and Helen for the vast quantities of crispage and cake they came bearing (in the style of gold, frankincense and myrrh). We’d just about started to fret on the whereabout of Jan and Jonathan when they too arrived, which just left The Babs who was supposed to be late and ended up not as late as she’d expected. It was all a bit alternate reality with the order of arrivals to be honest!

Alys’ birthday was celebrated with games, pass the parcel, gifts given, Happy Birthday sung and cake candles blown out.

Wine was mulled 🙂

We had pasta for first night meal, which we did plain, pesto, tomato, bolognaise with or without cheese, all served with garlic bread. I have to concede to first in a series of Things I Learnt In The Kitchen This Week # 1
Ady was right, it would have been to cook the pasta in several small pans rather than one large vat.

As ever evenings begin to merge but it’s safe to say it was 3am ish.

Tuesday Scarlett was still very hopeful (as were we all) that Alex would be arriving at some point so kept badgering me for updates. She was very upset when it eventually became obvious she wouldn’t be making it :(. There was some crafting – thanks to all who brought the various lovely things for the children to do. I reached sitting around doing not a lot saturation point so went off to do some baking and was joined by Katy doing more of the same. I really enjoyed the interludes with various people in the kitchen – Bob, Katy, Jan, Babs, Michelle and of course Alison who was in the kitchen for about every minute I was too (thankyou darling x) – we covered all sorts of things from religion, careers, callings, philosophy and more of the life story stuff that I love hearing about people. 🙂

Dinner was stew so we had the customary dumpling tossing event by Scarlett, Alison and I (oh how I have missed Alison for that!) and Tilda came and had a few shots too. Scarlett accidentally discovered a new move for 2009 of the ‘bounceback’ which involved hitting the wall above and splashing back into the pan. I think only 3 dumplings were lost (down the back of the cooker) to the cause 😆

The stew didn’t manage to be properly traditional in that it failed to stick to the pan but I don’t think anything was lost by that 😆

Another evening, more crisps, more cake, more alcohol, I laughed until my sides hurt at various things but specifically remember Ady tellling the testicle story which gets embellished slightly more every time I hear it but never fails to be very entertaining.

Wednesday We had our visit to the South Downs Planetarium. The man I’d been booking it through by email rang me in the morning to ask which way we were coming so I passed my phone to Ady, who has lived and worked in Chichester for about 450 years so knows it really well and they had a nice chat about how it was in the grounds of Ady’s old school and he’d get to drive past the bike sheds he used to smoke behind and the fields he played football on as a lad. It all seemed very amicable and they agreed the right way in would be the route we’ve taken the last twice we’ve gone. At no point, unfortunately did either of them mention satnavs, which is a shame as it turns out their postcode doesn’t actually lead you there:(.

We’d debated a convoy but actually 6 or 7 cars is pretty tricky to convoy and as everyone either had a satnav in their car or was following just one other car with one and I was getting stressed about us not leaving at 1030 like I’d wanted to we headed off thinking we’d arrive at most five minutes before everyone else and be able to introduce ourselves, work out prices and so on. So we drove straight there, pulled up, were greeted by the very grumpy man who asked ‘where’s all the rest then?’ and was horrified when I assured him they were but a few minutes behind us and all had satnav disclosing that that wouldn’t actually get them there!

I’d already talked to Fran / Merry once so between us Ady and I rang everyone else and talked them in from the incorrect postcode sat nav (street name was fine, so some people arrived just fine anyway) but the man had a very strange manner about him and was utterly intolerant of us being even slightly behind schedule. The other men there were very relaxed and assured us not to worry, took us into a hall where we could leave our coats etc and then took us through in groups to the planetarium.

This was our third visit there (we saw an ‘in the sky this month’ show and a ‘whistlestop tour of the planets’ show, both by the same, older presenter who was excellent so I was a bit worried that the far younger man who was doing our presentation wouldn’t be as good. It was an utterly groundless fear as he was fab. 🙂 The show was a little bit of everything – taking in the sky tonight at four different times going from sunset through to the early hours. He talked about light pollution, pointed out various constellations and stars, all planets visible in the sky currently, the moon and it’s phases. Then he talked about the solar system and did a show of all the planets (and dwarf planet), asteroid belt, sun, moon, stars etc. We took in the Northern Lights before finally seeing sunrise and the sky lightening. He then did a very lengthy Q&A session with the kids and did a fab job of answering the amazing array of questions he was asked. Most were very sensible, very well framed questions on everything from why we don’t have east and west poles, to what do we think caused the big bang and whether two stars crashing together would form one bigger star. I was really proud of the all the children for sitting still, clearly being interested, asking questions that showed they’d taken in what was said and wanting to know more. It was ace 🙂

Back to the hostel, via home where I picked up Scarlett’s birthday cake and some towels. Most people had already arrived back and were tucking into a late lunch. We had one of my favourite conversations of the week which involved the signs in swimming pools telling you what you aren’t allowed to do. Some people claimed to have never seen one 😯

The children who had wanted to put on a caberet show for us. This included a few instruments, plenty of singing, a couple of jokes and a play. It was, as ever, entertaining and charming :).

We got curry going for dinner, I assembled Scarlett’s rainbow cake which had, as I feared, lost it’s layers but gained a very bright marbled effect, made all the more lurid with green coloured cream and smarties! We sang Happy Birthday, she blew out the candles and was presented with some very lovely presents – thanks all. She did one of the kits that evening, has done several more since we’ve been home today and has gone to bed wearing her buff and fingerless mittens every night 🙂 She is clearly very well known by you all as you got it spot on 🙂

Curry was good, it smelt even better when some people had seconds at about 11pm and then again the next morning for breakfast / lunch :). As is traditional on ‘Christmas Eve’ several of us were in the kitchen til nearly 11pm peeling, chopping and prepping veg. I was not one of the last to bed but when I was droopy of eyelid at 130am ish I thought bed was a sensible place to go.

Thursday Was Christmas Day :). Ady got the turkey in nice and early so it could cook slowly and it was delicious :). We put the first shifts of roast potatoes in the oven and I had Things I Learn In The Kitchen #2 when I discovered, fortunately in time, that lard is not as I had always thought a vegetable oil product but a pork one!!!! 😯 I’d always thought it was dripping that was meaty and lard that was not and clearly as I’ve never had to check before it’s never been a false assumption I’ve had corrected. Barbara’s horrified facial expression is one that will stay with me forever though 😆 Luckily I’d only basted the first two trays of potatoes so we were able to clearly mark those as not for veggies and ensure everything else was suitable for veggies.

A fair few of us had planned to head out, lead by Marcus, for a geocache walk that morning so we set off, with miles of sky above streaked with all sorts of potential weather. The first clue was based on the sign outside the hostel itself so the children worked that out and we headed off using the coordinates from that. I have to say I’ve never known such a successful geocache as we found both the little cache with the next set of coordinates and the big main cache too.

The walk was nice, very up and down hill and included some muddy and rough terrain aswell as finishing with a short walk through some very large shrubby trees which meant the whole thing felt very much like we were walking through the pages of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. This feeling was compounded by hurting, chilling hail on the very last leg of the walk. Scarlett and I fell out over her refusal to stay still and be in the self timer photo we took although we made up pretty quickly. I walked the last bit with Michelle and we ended up first back at the hostel by quite a margin aside from Elijah who whizzed past us on his bike right at the end, closely followed by Kit and Johnathan, hare and tortoise stylee who ran past us at the very end to claim their positions! 😆

I put a vat of mulled wine on and we got stuck into getting Christmas dinner happening. Alison and I made mince pies on the basis we were in the kitchen anyway and then went out to watch the Christmas carols that Helen, Em and a couple of others had worked really hard with instrument playing children to pull together. We had a lovely sing-song. I learnt that many notes in descant versions of carols are now beyond my reach, but I had a go anyway.

Tables were laid, some people got changed and a very efficient human chain of platers, servers and eaters was set up which meant I think we had first to last person served within about 10 minutes. Given our incredibly limited kitchen space, oven facilities, workspace and other handicaps I think we pulled off a remarkable feat once again :). Ady and I were very well thanked by infact Chris and Alison had easily as much of a part in it as we did and there were several others who were equally heroic in making it happen. Along with the people who cleared it all away again afterwards.

Marcus and Michelle – do they wash up? Yes they wash up!

Mince pies went in the now empty ovens and we did secret santa. I think every single person was really pleased with what they unwrapped :).Again, I love how well people know each other and how the gifts reflected in-jokes, known interests, skills of the giver and how much thought, love and inspiration had gone into the gifts :).

The children had watched a film during the afternoon and the original plan was for the adults to do the same in the evening but once we’d all had Christmas pudding, mince pies, custard and cream noone felt inclined to do too much. Ady and I were very slack and decided to let Davies and Scarlett stay up, aslong as they were out of the way as long as they liked. Elinor, Chloe and Freya joined in and the five of them had a lovely last night playing together. I’m not at all sure they managed to not disturb anyone else which was our other condition of the late night but they had a ball.

We made the most of the very last night and for the last three of us – Helen, Alison and I, it was our latest night of the week. Lovely to sit and chat with lovely friends though.

Friday Came around all too quick and morning was even more unwelcome on about four hours sleep. We put the hostel back as we found it and people gradually drifted off. Last to leave were Chris and Helen, us, Michelle and Babs who left in that order down the windy lane. Scarlett loved having friends sandwiching us for part of the way home. Ady ran Ali and Freya to the station and we arrived back at home at almost the same time. Let the chickens out, cleared up protests from Candle and were eating turkey sandwiches within the hour!

We had a very quiet afternoon with baths all round, Davies did the dragon puppet he’d brought home from camp to do and Tarly did the fimo-alike stuff she was given as a present. I began flickring. Early dinner followed by early bed for Davies and Scarlett and a relatively early dinner and very early night for us.

It was a fab week, already missing having all my friends around. Thanks to all who came, here’s to next year!

Saturday morning I worked. It didn’t feel much like work to be honest, I was very much in holiday-mode and as there were plenty of staff in I was given the whole four hour shift to mess about with various displays. I put up my 12 days of Christmas display, which I’m pleased with, it looks nice and colourful. Then I did a display with some new book bags that had come in in various colours. There is some prize to be won for the best display of them in any library so I did a display making a christmas tree shape with the green ones, photocopying and reducing the pink ones to make baubles and putting various other coloured ones underneath as presents. It looked pretty good :).

I came home and the others were watching Christmas songs on TV and doing some Christmas activity books Ady had found kicking around. As me finishing work meant we were all officially on holiday now we decided to call ‘Christmas’ and as Ady and Scarlett were off shopping for a few bits I added advocaat to their shopping list. They were gone for ages getting some plumbing bit as something had gone wrong with the vanity basin in the en suite upstairs. They came back with that bit, Ady fixed it and they went back out again for the food bits.

Meanwhile Davies was busy with some new DS game (Drawn to life, next chapter or something, you get to design your own characters, both the kids love it) and I made a start on baking for camp. I had a false start on Scarlett’s birthday cake (which is now chicken food!) and did the now legendary rice crispie cakes.

Ady and Scarlett came home and I got kicked out of the kitchen so Ady could do the kids tea so Scarlett I and retired with snowballs and it all felt very festive 🙂 I sat and wrote out some Christmas carol lyrics on big poster sheets and then went off for a bath before watching X Factor. Ady cooked steak which was lovely. I was persuaded to go to bed very early ;).

Sunday I’d ordered our Christmas cards online at Costco yesterday so we needed to go and collect them. We also wanted to get a few bits for camp too and thought the hours drive would be worth it. Thanks to very heavy traffic it was more like 2 hours but we had Christmas music in the car to singalong to so all was well. Costco was very successful and we got a turkey crown and a massive box of Christmas crackers at bargain prices. The journey home was without hold-ups and we got in and I started roast dinner and baking. My Mum rang to ask if we were home as they were passing so they called in for an hour or so which put paid to any further baking but I had got Scarlett’s cake done.

Mum and Dad left and we sat down to roast chicken dinner which was very nice if I do say so myself ;). The kids were being really well behaved and cooperatively playing their DSs so we let them stay up longer while we had baths and I disappeared back into the kitchen for further baking. Managed to cook flapjacks (very nice but a bit gooey, hoping they will firm up overnight) a secret santa gift which I’ve never made before but seems to have turned out well and flapjacks to go with the rice crispie cakes. Am also planning on baking some mince pies but I’ll do them up at the hostel as they are far nicer fresh from the oven.

We’re all really looking forward to the week 🙂

weigh a pie.

We had a nice leisurely start to the day and while Davies and Scarlett played / DS’d / watched TV I pottered around doing various unexciting things like laundry, washing up, putting a loaf of bread on ready for lunch and then got totally distracted by tidying and ended up clearing out what had been stashed underneath the sofa (lots) and my bag and my previous bag (which I’d got fed up of the accumulated crap in so transfered what I wanted to a new bag and left the rest in there :oops:). Recycling bin is now rather full of paper and I have a lovely tidy and organised bag :).

I managed to get hold of someone in my MP’s constituency office, explained about the petition and arranged to go and hand it over to her so she could hand it to him so we drove down to the town to do that. The kids wanted to stay in the car but I insisted on dragging them with me on the basis that ‘you are not hidden!’ 😆 The secretary was very friendly and said he was due to the office at 4pm and she’d hand it to him then. I have enclosed a covering letter and emailed him too asking him to confirm he will be happy to present it but as I am still feeling slightly at odds with the whole thing I confess to mostly feeling pleased it is no longer in my hands – literally and metaphorically.

Home again via Sainburys, this time allowing the kids to be ‘hidden’ and leaving them in the car playing their DSs and listening to Mika while I dashed round getting various bits. Home for lunch and then another dash out to buy some felttips for me. I now have my own two packets of felt tips for the odd occassion when I need to colour something in 😆 Am tempted to label them. My Dad used to shave off a tiny bit of the paint on the reverse end of pencils and write my initials on them for school, wonder if I could do something similar with felt tips?

We watched while doing colouring and it was all very peaceful and harmonious with the odd bit of tiddly-pomming along and chuckling at Bill.

The kids had tea and I carried on colouring, Ady came home and then we all went round the corner to Rainbows. It was Scarlett’s last Rainbows as she starts Brownies after Christmas. She does have a Rainbows Christmas Crafts Day to go to next Saturday but tonight was the last one of the term so they enrolled newcommers, said goodbye to the ones leaving and had a little Christmas Presentation Evening to boot. This involved the Rainbows singing four Christmas songs up on the stage and the parents being served tea, coffee and mince pies :).

Scarlett was just so Scarlett for the whole thing. While others were having last minute hairbrushings to look tidy, gathering up song sheets and being all very X Factor about the whole business she was thre with her tangledy hair, refused a songsheet on the basis ‘I can’t read – duh!’ and sang her heart out anyway :).She got amazingly enthusiastic hugs from all the leaders, she has been very popular with the adults, handed out lollies to all the rainbows and was sorry she didn’t have enough for all the siblings there today and was sad to be going although she is very delighted to be about to be seven. She’s certainly got a lot out of her 2 years at Rainbows, I’m not at all sure what but there has been a lot of it anyway!

Back home I read a pile of books to them, cooked pizza for dinner and Ady and I read Lord Lucas’ speech from yesterday which we found very heartening. Clearly I don’t have any dilemma about how I’ll be voting but I’m very pleased to know that people other than radical loons get what we do and why we want to protect it so much.

I was working a 12 hour shift today and thanks to my Mum being akward generally about childcare at the moment Ady made a decision to take Davies and Scarlett to work with him for the day. She’d really upset him yesterday on the phone (which is actually quite a feat, I might be easily riled but I think everyone knows Ady is a masterclass in patience, easy-going-ness and general good humour). We’d had a very long Serious Chat about the whole thing on Tuesday night anyway and discussions about what lifestyle we actually want and measures to take to make it happen. Lots of building blocks for the future have been laid in 2009, I reckon 2010 could well see some changes happening for us.

So, they dropped me off at work just before 9am and went off to visit various Garden Centres around Kent, Sussex and Surrey. They had a really good day by all accounts, got a McDonalds for a very late lunch and the highlight was Ady having one of his meetings while they got a first peek at the about-to-be-opened Santa’s Grotto which has live animals including reindeer and turkeys. Scarlett clearly in heaven! I have photos but have not flickr’d them yet so will drop them in later.

I had a LONG day. I can’t believe I used to work 10 hours shifts as a matter of course, let alone the crazy long days at this time of year getting ready for Christmas. Urgh, definite retail flashbacks today. The reason for my long shift was tacking an extra 4 hours onto my usual 9-5 to stay til 9pm for the Lancing Christmas Lights Switch on evening. The library stays open til 9pm (we usually shut at 7pm) and we offer children’s craft activties, hot drinks and mince pies under the banner ‘Festive Fun’. I’ve done it every year so far but this year it was a very deliberate act as I want my birthday off and I didn’t have any annual leave left so I wanted the time off in lieu from working tonight.

So my normal day which entailed working on the counter, on the enquiry desk, shelving and sending overdue letters out along with drawing, photocopying and cutting out figures for all of the 12 days of Christmas (which I now know all the words to and suspect I will never forget ;)) for a display I’m doing in the junior library.

Then I drew a snowflake on my cheek with glittery eyeliner, was asked to draw them on various other staff members cheeks and Festive Fun had begun! I did some craft activities – card making including glitter, sticky mini pom-poms, drawing with chalk on black card to make snowflakes and three very hastily drawn and photocopied festive pictures of santa, a reindeer and a robin!

At which point our days collided again as Ady and the kids came to the library to partake of Festive Fun too. Ady nipped off to look round Lancing but the kids chose to stay with me and the glitter. He managed to get the last bit of a Secret Santa gift from one of the charity shops, so aside from a home made bit by me which I’ll do at the weekend we’re all sorted there :).

He then nipped home to put the chickens away and the kids carried on staying with me and the glitter, along with about 30 other kids who also arrived to do stuff with glitter. Ady returned to take Davies and Scarlett home for hot chocolate and Indiana Jones watching. I worked on the desk and joined a new borrower and did a couple of reservations.

Then we had a Christmas miracle as one of the two grumpy old men who visit the library every single morning to moan and read the papers turned up. He must be well into his 70s if not 80s, has a really fierce demeanour and is often rude or brash with us, he rarely cracks a smile. He strolled into the library dressed as Father Christmas!!!!!

I ran to get my camera, he had his photo taken with various children – and staff members, even posed reading the paper in his usual spot 😆 He tried to resist that but I told him now he’d come in dressed like that he couldn’t ever be expected to be taken seriously by us again! 😆 I even rang Yvonne who wasn’t working to tell her – it made her evening! 😆

We cleared up and Ady and the kids came back to pick me up – all in their pjs including Ady in his shorts much to Sian’s amusment as I’d offered her a lift home! 😆

I read the kids a chapter of Littlenose as despite it being 930pm and me being wiped out it felt very odd not having seen them *all* day long. Ady thought he’d taped Gavin and Stacey but hadn’t banked on the autoview reminder we’d set up for River Cottage so we watched that on tape instead and then found G&S on iplayer.

Tomorrow the kids and I have very little happening which is just as well as I can’t see any of us being up very early ;).

When I went to bed last night – at 2am -it was with the knowledge that I didn’t have to be up too early this morning. The kids were awake just after 8am though and being noisy. I yelled at them twice to be quieter and then gave in and got up. I then had an OMG moment and realised the arrangement I’d made to see Lucy and The Rs was clashing with the arrangement I’d made to meet up with Julie and co some 15 miles away. As I had a swear word thought so the phone rang and it was Julie ringing to see what I was planning to do about lunch. We agreed it was cold and likely to be muddy / wet so we’d just meet for a walk and then call it a day before lunch. This was good as it meant I could contact Lucy and change our arrangement back to them coming over after lunch (rather than before) and all would be well and dandy.

Ady then rang me about 4 times in 10 minutes to check various Christmas present purchases while I put our new breadmaker on a speedy 10 min cycle to season it before first use. I then weighed out ingredients for a loaf and battled to get the breadmaker to accept it, while trying to wash up and chivvy the kids to get dressed.

Eventually Ady appeared home on his way past for a coffee so I left him with the definant breadmaker and the kids and I dashed off, about 15 minutes late. I ‘rah rah rah’d at them for a few minutes about squabbling and being nice to people who you love and have to live with. That shut them up 😆 Then I turned the cd up and sang along for two songs by which point my mood had dramatically improved and I was ready to be cheery again.

We got to Slindon at about the same time as Julie, wellied up (oh how I greater than three my wellies) and went for a nice muddy, sloshing through puddles and soggy leaves Nearly Winter Walk. We tried to feed some completely disinterested ducks, spotted a heron, had some time in the playpark and generally talked ten to the dozen to catch up. The sun shone for the whole hour and life was good :).

We were then late heading back again so Davies rang Lucy and left a message to that effect as well as sending her a text. I did the dictating from the front seat and he did the execution from the backseat. I made a speedy lunch (most of which the chickens ate in the end), baked some cookies and then Lucy and The Rs arrived. We had a nice couple of hours chatting while they played with very minimal intervention, then they left.

I made the kids some tea, chatted to Scarlett about a world map wildlife puzzle she was doing (she asked me where she’d find a kiwi and I said NZ so she looked for a small island at the bottom and then she spotted lemurs and decided that must be Madagascar).

Davies had made a PSP from a cardboard box including the screen, disc player and controllers, must get a picture actually, it’s fab :). I went to look at that. Then I encouraged the chickens to go in their shed as some of them were looking fairly traumatised by the hailstones and the kids had tea.

Off to Badgers where I was rather taken aback to be asked if I’d consider becomming an Assistant Badger Leader. I have lots of reasons for saying yes and lots for saying no, need to think about it further really, along with talking to Davies and Scarlett about it more as one of them wants me to and the other doesn’t!

I sat with five other parents and Ady joined us too chatting in the coffee lounge there which was nice and then Ady took Davies and Scarlett home while I headed off to a local Home Educators’ for a Adults Only Home Ed support meeting. These have been happening locally for about a year but prior to the October meeting I’d never been invited. Not sure what has changed but it was nice to be included and the other people there were all nice. I had the oldest children which is happening more and more and is an odd feeling really. We chatted about approaches and I talked a bit about our autonomous approach and how it works for us. Hopefully I’ll get invited back next time ;).

It was yet another late return home and as I sat down to my dinner so Ady went up to bed. I’m out again late tomorrow working til 9pm so actually I’ll probably be looking forward as much to having some time with Ady next week as the rest of you ;). I’ve now spent more time trying to chase around and find out who is coordinating the various petitions I gathered signatures for tonight and am really looking forward to life not being quite so busy soon.

A necessary late start this morning for the children and I. We’d already decided on the way home last night to have a day at home today to recover but as Tuesdays are mad enough with nothing other than our regular ‘after school’ things that still doesn’t make for laziness ;).

Breakfast, dressed and things like laundry dealt with we nipped down to the industrial estate (where Gymnastics is) to visit Scout Shops for a Sea Scouts Cub sweatshirt for Davies. It is where I worked for the 9 months I was pregnant with Davies back in 2000. I got the job there as Sales Office Manager and found out 10 days later I was pregnant! I really enjoyed that job and infact stayed on for another 15 months after I had Davies on a one day a week in the office and further day a week from home sort of consultancy-style doing some paperwork and offering back up to the woman who took over my job. I’m still in touch with several people who worked there while I did but noone who is still there and I’ve not been back there since we moved home. It’s all changed and from being a mail order head office with 19 shops around the UK they are now mail order only and sold all the shops to Blacks. They do now have a small showroom open to the public at Lancing though so that was where we went for the sweatshirt. The door was opened by Dawn, who worked in Buying when I was there and was pregnant too so has a nine year old daughter. She filled me in on all the gossip, the odd few people still there (hard to believe that was nearly 10 years ago, it really doesn’t feel like it!) and sold me the sweatshirt.

We came back home and Davies tried on the trousers they’d given him at Sea Scouts a couple of weeks ago and he and Ady had told me didn’t fit him. It turns out they fit him fine so that was him kitted out.

We had a fairly lazy few hours watching various stuff on cbbc, the kids both did some DSing, both came and cuddled up with me at various points and Scarlett and I did a couple of jigsaws together. I also caught up a bit on blogging and did some reserving stuff online for Christmas and birthday presents ready for Ady to collect tomorrow.

Then it was off to swimming. I’d already decided not to swim today and I was glad as the chief instructor was observing today for grading them for next term so I got to watch that and also see the kids’ progress over the last few weeks. Davies went and had a bit of a swim while Scarlett had her lesson but then he came and sat with me for a bit before his lesson. Scarlett was sad not to play with her little swimming friend (they waved sadly to each other for a bit, S sat beside me and her friend, A from the pool) but played her DS beside me anyway. No idea if either of them will go up next term to the next classes but I am really pleased with their progress generally this term. They are both looking like proper swimmers, have loads of water confidence, clearly enjoy it and developing style and technique on the variuous strokes. Scarlett got her ‘Octopus 3’ certificate and badge and she found 50p in one of the lockers so she bought a packet of Opal Fruits to share with Davies to celebrate :).

I got them fish and chips as promised last week for their tea and when we got home Ady had just arrived before us. I got changed, bid everyone goodbye and headed off for my course. Last one tonight. The nine weeks has flown by and while it’s been fairly chaotic dashing around on a Tuesday and part of me is relieved it is over I have really enjoyed it and learnt loads. It’s not quite over yet as I have a test to complete, two assignments to finish, an interview to attend (which I need to reappoint as it was for next Thursday which is now Christmas so I have cancelled it) and a Health and Safety training day to go to before I am formally a Waste Prevention Advisor but all of the formal learning is now complete at least. I do intend blogging in more detail about the whole thing at some point, just not sure when exactly.

Meanwhile Davies went to Sea Scouts and was invested. Really sorry to have missed that and if it hadn’t been the very last one of my course I would have gone to watch Davies instead. Infact if he’d shown any signs of upset that I wasn’t going to be there I would have gone anyway but he was totally fine about it all and I got to see pictures 🙂

And see his certificate and of course I will get all of the honour of sewing on the big clutch of badges he brought home to be fixed to his new top :rolls:

And that, finally, pretty much brings me back up to date. Phew!

or ‘black bogies r us’. 😆

Back up to London again on Monday, train this time. Ady was with us again as he has a few odd days holiday to use up before the end of the year so he’d booked some days off here and there where we already had plans he could come along to. We were off to the RI in the morning and we’d booked tickets to The Cocoon at NHM too so he could come and see it and the kids and I could have another look and revisit some of the bits we’d not spent much time on last time.

Davies had ended up in our bed at some point in the night, Ady was in Davies’ bed and noone really wanetd to wake up. I got up first and roused everyone else, we left about five minutes later than I’d wanted but thanks to some sensible planning Ady dropped the kids and I off at the station to buy tickets and nip into Asda for further food supplies while he went on to the library and parked the car in the carpark there. He did misunderstand my instructions of ‘if there are no other spaces park in the staff bays’ though and parked straight in the staff bays despite the rest of the car park being empty. Not a huge problem but clearly noone had recognised his car as belonging to me so he had a note stuck to the windscreen about it being ‘STAFF ONLY PARKING’ when we finally collected it 11 hours later 😳

The kids and I did our customary running before 9am when it’s a day trip to London routine although this time it was because we knew the train was about 2 minutes away and wanted to avoid crossing the bridge rather than the tracks. And you know, it’s tradition and that ;).

Davies and Scarlett got seats as a youngish lad kindly leapt up as soon as we got on and offered his to them :). Ady swapped with Davies who was having a moment about travelling backwards but had managed to contain that until the lad moved on, so Davies and I stood together for a while, then he got a seat opposite Ady and Scarlett and the three of them sat with a nice woman and chatted about albino animals. I finally got a seat seperate to the rest of them and quite enjoyed watching Ady pretending to be me ;).

We’re getting pretty good at the route across to Green Park now (well it is only 2 stops, but knowing which line and stuff) and by 1030am we were happily installed in the RI cafe with tea and coffee. Alison and children (as opposed to teens) arrived shortly after us and joined us before we ambled upstairs just before 11am.

The lecture was ‘A visitors guide to life on earth’
Join author, lecturer, television presenter and explorer George McGavin on an incredible journey through the planets biodiversity. What would aliens think if they landed on planet earth?

‘A deep space exploration ship has discovered an unexpectedly large number of life forms in an obscure galaxy approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter and containing at least 200 billion stars. Remote sensing and initial surveys indicate that life may have already persisted on this tiny planet for a few billion years.’

This talk will examine the topic of biodiversity, the variation of life on Earth. Each nook and cranny of our world contains living things, from tiny bacteria to huge sea mammals, and this talk will take a unique view of the richness of life here on earth.

He was made up with green face and body paint and refered to earth as a planet number and asked us to pretend we were all from his planet attending a lecture about this new planet they’d found and investigated. I have to confess I had shades of school lessons that went on slightly too long before lunch and stifled a few yawns. Looking around the theatre I saw plenty of the school children doing much the same and there was a fair bit of yawning, stretching, fidgeting and so on. However all five of the kids with us and indeed pretty much all of the other Home Ed kids around us appeared to be held all the way through and indeed the feedback from Davies and Scarlett was really positive. I personally felt he was more engaging and entertaining when he took a few questions at the end and had a more animated feel to him them than when he was working from the slide show. But it wasn’t me he was there to educate and the two KS2 children I have were definitely happy to be there.

We said goodbye to Alison and co and decided to head straight to the Natural History Museum for a look round part of that before our Cocoon tickets at 2pm. There is currently an ice rink outside NHM along with various food and drink stalls and a carousel so we looked at that for a while and watched several people do full body splats in the couple of inches of icy water on top of the rink. Most funny 😆 Inside the NHM I queued for ages to get our tickets from the booking email form and was told slightly snottily that ‘you could have just gone straight there!’ which made me apologise and then feel grudging about both being spoken to like that and accidentally taking responsibility for it at all! Grr.

We decided lunch was in order before anything else so went to the picnic area downstairs and ate while discussing religion, philosophy and who we think is the most intelligent person coming to Christmas Camp! Then we talked about how you’d define that all anyway and what criteria we had for it personally. Decided intelligent wasn’t the right term after all and moved on to enlightened, educated, trained, interesting and academic. And no, none of that is for a wider audience ;). I’m jst blogging it to be mischevious ;).

We put ‘what to see’ to the vote and the kids voted for mammals so we headed to the whale. We walked around the dolphins and whales area and learnt about shading patterns on them before heading off to the Darwin Centre area.

I’m really glad we went a second time, I feel the kids and I got loads more out of it this visit. We spent time really using the interactive displays on stuff we’d not managed last time and were able to walk past bits we’d focussed on last time in more detail. Also having Ady there meant we were able to split up and go at different paces / have adult attention per child on stuff with lots of reading or explaining needed. Both the kids got to have a long go on the ‘planning a field trip’ bit which we’d not managed to do last time. Scarlett and I spent about 20 minutes on it and ‘went’ on two trips – Scotland for flies and Rio for plant samples. You had to plan the whole trip including keeping your baggage weight down, deciding which tools and equipment to take, what clothing to pack, ensuring you dealt with any paperwork and had all the right visa and passport etc. It was great. Scarlett was really rational and reasoned with her choices and made sure she had all the information before making decisions. She didn’t get them all right (I don’t think you are supposed to really, it’s far from easy and she made pretty much the same choices I would have done) and learnt from the feedback she got. Really impressed with that display 🙂

Not sure how Davies got on as he did it with Ady and didn’t seem to spend as long on it.

We watched various scientists in their various labs through the windows and listened to one talking about how he was mounting a plant sample ready to be archived. The kids and I did an activity about mosquitoes and malaria which was good and then crossed to watch real scientists carrying out very similar work for real

We came out of there and spent some time playing with the Climate Change wall which we’d completely missed last time and I’d regretted when I saw it on the website. Really liked that 🙂

(they get that presenting gene from their father ;))

Then we went into the Attenborough Studio for two short films. David Attenborough, Life on camera and Wildscapes. The former made me all misty eyed as it charts DA’s career, his passion and some of the highlights of his documentaries. The latter was amazing as it used five screens, no commentary, just amazing cinematography of nature. Really glad we did that. There were various other interesting looking things happening but either the times clashed with each other or in the case of one event children had to be over 12. On Sunday we’d bemoaned not forward planning our two days and booking a travellodge for Sunday night and staying over rather than going up two days running. I definitely think we’ll book one or even two nights early next year and spent some time at the museums doing all the various things we always run out of time for.

We ended up in the Body section of the museum, which I’ve not been in for several years and must be one of the older sections. Ady and Davies looked at all the optical illusions while Scarlett and I looked at changes in our bodies between children and adults and males and females, an illustration of the menstrual cycle and some memory games. It was then past 5pm and we were all starting to flag so we decided to call it a day.

Outside the ice rink was being skimmed over, the lights were all on and looking pretty in the trees and the carousel was lit up. It was £2 per ride and looked so old fashioned and magical I agreed the kids could have a ride on it. It felt all Victorian Christmassy 🙂

Back to Victoria where thanks to having to wait about 15 minutes for a train we managed to be among the first on it and therefore got our pick of the seats. The journey home felt really slow and we were all really wiped out by the time we actually walked in the front door at about 8pm. Very long day.

The kids had a quick bath to wash London off and then a speedy tea before a very late bedtime. Ady and I also had baths, a less speedy tea and an even later bedtime.

Oops, getting really behind here. I’m out late three nights this week too so need to catch up now otherwise I never will.

So Sunday then. Someone had posted to our local list a while back about Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior being docked at London for the weekend and boarding passes to have a tour being issued if you emailed to register. I’d failed to read the website properly about confirmation being emailed on the Friday before and had assumed as we’d not heard we hadn’t got places, but sure enough on Friday I got an email with our four boarding passes to be printed out. We don’t have a printer so I had to go to the library and print them off on Saturday.

So Sunday came, pouring with rain and very windy again. Ady was keen to just stay home and have a quiet day but I was adamant this was something we’d be pleased we’d done so I insisted. I was starting to think I may have been wrong when the rain got heavier the further into London we drove mind you.

We drove as it’s £35 for the 4 of us to get into London by train and Greenpeace had already warned us that the nearest tube station to where the Rainbow Warrior was docked was closed on Sunday so we reasoned even London carpark prices would be cheaper than train tickets. I’d found what looked to be the closest carpark to the docks online and we used that postcode in the sat nav. As always getting into London it shows as just over an hour but ends up as nearly double that once you hit the traffic. This time we didn’t hit traffic at all until the Blackwall tunnel ( which always disappoints me as the walls are actually white), then utterly lost our bearings on a one way system and ended up in a different car park altogether.

It was attached to a mini shopping mall and there were posters saying if you spent £10 in any of the shops you could get 3 hours free parking so we bought some bits from Tesco for lunch and got our free parking token too. We then got utterly lost and wandered around the docks in a huge circle for nearly an hour. It didn’t really matter as the rain had stopped and there was plenty to look at but eventually we decided we were edging far too close to our free parking limit so we asked one of the many Canary Wharf security officers who were around. He was really friendly and offered to take us part way there so we walked along with him and also gathered another two people heading the same way. The kids and I were disappointed we didn’t attract more of a crowd really, we liked the idea of the security man as a sort of Pied Piper leading us to the ship :lol:.

Finally we rounded a corner and there was the big Greenpeace banner – hurrah!

I swapped our passes for stickers with our tour letter on and we had a quick look at the Greenpeace stuff for sale. The kids and I got badges each and we put three books in the box for the crew. Attached to the boarding passes had been an email asking if we could bring books for the crew’s onboard library as they were bored of all the books they had already so I’d raided our shelves for a few of our unwanted books to donate.

Scarlett then got hijacked to have her photo taken, and Davies joined in, when she was spotted by a photographer. She had them holding a banner and against various backdrops and wanted to use it on the website. Not sure if it was for Greenpeace or The Wave, will have to keep an eye on both sites and see if I can spot them.

Ady and I had very welcome hot drinks and then it was time for our tour. I think we were really lucky as most of the tours were being conducted by volunteers but we were led round by one of the actual crew. She was Spanish, a deckhand and both passionate and very knowledgable – obviously 😉 We all got onboard (I think there were 22 of us in the group) and had an introductory chat to Greenpeace’s history and a brief overview of their campaigns and current issues. We had various pieces of equipment on the ship pointed out to us and were told this was the second Rainbow Warrior as the first is currently continuing helping wildlife from her position sunk off the coast of New Zealand. A few items remain from the first boat including a pair of binoculars and the original bell:

Inside we looked at the equipment used to chart routes, the captains log, how the ship is controlled, both hi-tech and old fashioned.

We came out and had a go at the ship’s wheel (no longer actually in use) and the compass, while peering through some portholes into the living quarters below:

Scarlett asked about seeing dolphins as was told it is such a regular occurance that a wooden dolphin called Dave now lives at the very front of the Rainbow Warrior, and told the story about how he got there:
“Dave the dolphin loved to come with his pod and play in the waves caused by the Rainbow Warrior but he loved the crew and the work that Greenpeace did so much he wanted to leave the seas and join the crew. He went to see Neptune, God of the Oceans and when Neptune heard about the good work that Greenpeace do and saw how much Dave loved them he gave his permission. Neptune remembered the story of Pinnochio and used the same magic to turn Dave from a real dolphin into a wooden one. Now he is part of the Rainbow Warrior crew and has the most important position on board, at the very front of the ship. He still sees his pod when they come to play around the ship”.

Sailing with Greenpeace has now been added to the list of things she wants to do when she grows up ;).

Tour over we all hung over the side of the ship to be videoed performing a wave (suspect that will also be on the website at some point) and then our guide gave us all a hug, thanked us for coming and sneakily showed Davies, Scarlett and I down one of the portholes to where a actual Greenpeace flag was draped underneath.

We had a quick sit in the dinghy and met the polar bear who had arrived

Then decided the sky was looking grey and grim again and we’d definitely have gone over our 3 hours free parking so we should try and find the car park.

We found a way, way shorter route back and were only about 15 minutes over the 3 hours. It would have been £9 for parking but putting the token down brought it back to £3.50 so that was a nice surprise :). And it started raining again almost as soon as we left the carpark.

Coming home was long and tedious, we took a very diverted diversion to find a McDonalds for the kids tea. I think we got home about 630pm. Everyone agreed it had been a really good day and we were all really glad we’d gone.

I started reading to the kids. I’d been reading some of it myself the day before and been really impressed with it, highly recommend it. Perfectly level for Davies and Scarlett :). We read the intro and then I read out the various ‘files’ or chapters within it and let them choose which we read first. They both chose ‘does God exist?’ so we read that.They wanted another chapter and I would have obliged but Total Wipeout was on so they chose to watch that instead!

I watched X Factor, the kids went to bed and we had a late dinner of curry. There, only 48 hours behind now!

Saturday
A fairly slobbing about start to the day. High wind and heavy rain overnight had trashed the garden so Ady spent some time outside righting things, Davies spent some time on the pc playing online Wallace and Gromit games, Scarlett made potions with a perfume kit I’d picked up earlier in the week at Emmaus intending to give as a present for her birthday but then realised it was not complete and had been used a fair bit so gave her to play with now.

I nipped out to the library to print off tickets for London trips on Sunday and Monday which should have been simple but wasn’t, as all 5 of the staff on duty swarmed over to chat and catch up with me when I went in, which was nice but I’d intended being ‘in and out’. I did some photocopying of forms for a Badger Christmas party Davies and Scarlett want to go to but there had only been one set of forms left on Wednesday and then faffed about on one of the computers trying to log into my email account to print stuff off and fighting with a memory stick in different formats. I finally did it and collected all my printing, then came home via a further battle in Asda, both for parking, walking round the store and queuing up to pay. I hate town on Saturdays!

Back at home I had several repeated run ins with Scarlett who was being annoying while I was being intolerant. I really should learn to step away from the small person when I’m in that frame of mind rather than carrying on going head to head with her. The trouble is Ady and Davies know when to keep a low profile and Scarlett either hasn’t or more likely flatly refusing to. It wasn’t the most harmonious of afternoons but I took myself off to do some baking and at 330pm we headed off to E’s for T’s sixth birthday party which had a teddy bear theme.

I was expecting this to be gentle and charming, actually it was rather more of a free-for-all with teddies used as ammunition. We stayed and were very much the exception which as the only other remaining in situ parent commented marks us (and her) out as Home Educators ;), everyone else is either glad of the opportunity to drop and run or their kids get invited to so many birthday parties each year they simply couldn’t be staying at each and every one, and their siblings are probably invited to a different party somewhere else anyway!

We stayed out of the general party proceedings though and I pondered again the difference of this group of 12 children who were (mostly) expecting constant direction and entertainment with the parties of HE friends where we don’t give a second thought to ‘what the children will do’. The instant they were unsupervised chaos reigned and violence broke out. I was glad we’d stayed…

We left promptly at 6pm as we had a very quick turnaround happening. We got home at 6.20pm and my parents were due to arrive at 6.30pm. We were off to K’s for a meal with Mike and Rose, our Not-Swingers friends and were expected there at 7pm. The plan was for Dad to drive us there in my car, picking up Mike and Rose on the way and then come and collect us all again in my car later so we could all drink. K was cooking Japanese food so we were taking a bottle of wine and a bottle of sake which we’d never tried before.

Things started to go wrong when Dad arrived at the front door without Mum, he said she was just coming and they’d clearly been rowing. After a few minutes of her not appearing he finally went back out to the car to discover he’d got out and locked her in! When she was released it had to be said she was less than impressed! Dad, Ady and I got in my car to go and collect Mike and Rose but my car is very sensitive to damp (one of the variety of reasons I wanted to get under the bonnet two weeks ago) and decided to die just as we were passing a petrol station. Ady pulled onto the forecourt and 15 minutes of chaos ensued in the pouring rain. I rang Mike and Rose a couple of times to keep them updated, they rang K to keep her updated, Dad grabbed a taxi driver who had just come off duty and happened to be filling up with petrol on his way home to get a lift back to our house, Dad bought some dampstart from the garage (which didn’t work) and in the end the taxi driver, Ady, Dad and I managed to push the car alongside the garage, Dad jumped in the taxi and whizzed off and Ady and I were left standing in the rain, halfway between our house and Mike and Rose’s, already late for dinner and wondering what to do. Ady decided he’d drive so he set off for home to get his car (I am the only other person insured on it, Dad is too old to be covered on the company insurance), while I carried on walking up the hill to Mike and Rose’s. Rose rang me and said she’d send Mike out so he came and collected me and we tracked down Ady. Ady and I nipped in the house (taking everyone here by surprise), Ady changed his very wet jeans and we headed back out again in his car to pick Mike and Rose back up again. In the end we were only about 40 minutes late.

K is very sweet but not someone I have very much in common with at all. She is recently split up from a fairly long term partner and although she seems happy enough to have finished the relationship she still talks about him as though they are a couple. She is a vegetarian, and has a dog. So I spent my evening with Ady sober, a dog sitting in the same room as me, while Rose and I got progressively more drunk on sake (everyone had brought a bottle!) and then wine, and talked to K about Hitler and the war (she is German) and we ate a dreadful selection of Japanese themed Vegetarian food. The starter was soup – not too bad, the main was rice, lentils and tofu. I took the smallest possible amount to be polite and washed every mouthful down with copious volumes of sake, the dessert was rice pudding (which is probably the single thing Ady hates more than any other foodstuff).

We all left at 1130. 😆

We dropped Mike and Rose home and were home ourselves before midnight. We’d called at the garage as we passed and tried to start my car which did start first time so we left Ady’s car there and brought mine home. When my parents left later they took Ady and he brought his car home too.

We arrived home to find Scarlett not long asleep and Davies still awake with my mum in his bedroom. Ady made coffees while I chatted to Davies and my Mum about the evening including the most interesting topic of conversation which had been Rose telling us about the headteacher at one of the schools she teaches at (she is a primary school teacher in Maths, RE and PE and covers 2 schools, 2 days at each per week) who has brought in a new technique of rewarding children who sit really still and quiet infront of the interactive whiteboard. She has brought in a large cardboard box and the ‘winner’ gets to sit in the box.

GETS TO SIT INSIDE A BOX!!!!!!

I told Davies and he thought this was hilarious and outrageous in equal measures which was my opinion also. Rose is desperate for someone to take the story to the tabloids as sticker charts gone mad!

A late night to bed, bad dreams induced by sake and wine and an empty stomach about pushing cars in the rain, eating lentils and being watched by a dog made for a fairly disturbed nights sleep!

will be the title of todays blog post, I just won’t be getting round to writing it til tomorrow. Which might actually be later today given it’s already 2am, but then again, given my history it may well be properly tomorrow after all.

It will however include shouting, rain, cars breaking down, me eating lentils (but only in teeny tiny amounts) drinking sake (which would have an e accent to make it Japanese rather than drinking sake in the style of ‘for heaven’s sake / Christ’s sake / God’s sake) and extrinsic rewards gone utterly crazy.

I know some of you (Sarah!) prefer my briefer blog posts but frankly when there is this much material the length is out of my hands ;).