One word? When seven would do…

Thursday morning after breakfast with J&J, some time for the children to continue a game they’d been playing on the computer and continued chatting we left for Wicksteed. The past two years we’ve arrived late, getting on for dark on the Thursday – infact last year we arrived so late we ended up begging a pod in Chris & Helen’s tent, so it was a real novelty to arrive at a sensible time. With the exception of a caravan we had the entire field to ourselves, which in some ways made it trickier to decide on a pitch. We went for next to the hedge in a slight dip in the hope it would be sheltered from the wind. LovelyEm arrived while we were still pondering and we set up in the newly arrived wind and rain shower 🙁 . Once we were set up I felt happier and we headed off to Tescos for supplies for dinner and some more tent pegs and a hot water bottle which I had decided was needed to keep my ankle / foot from the 5am aching in the cold that had been waking me every night.

Back at the campsite Helen and Chris, Chris and Babs and Kirsty and James arrived, various wind related tent casualties occured and by about 1030pm despite being with much adored friends the wind and rain were getting to me so I took painkillers and retired to bed, falling asleep long before Davies and Scarlett who were still chatting in their pod. I woke when Ady got into bed around 1am having been making tent repairs which he rather annoyingly wanted to share details of with me which roused me fully and I then lay awake in pain for a while 🙁 Just as well I’d had that early night…

Friday was Wicksteed day. We were all up bright and early and wondering whether the rollercoaster would be running due to the wind. It wasn’t 🙁 . I think the wind was better than last year’s very heavy rain though. Babs did some complicated maths and worked out we’d save money by going in as a group but when they wanted us to go to a different ticket office and were not sure if we’d be able to use Tesco vouchers anyway we decided to stick to going in individually.

It was a slightly odd feeling being there as for the first time the kids, particularly Davies would really rather have been going round with his friends instead of his parents. Retrospectively we should have not bothered with wrist bands for Ady and I, left them to it and hung out at the tent instead or maybe even gotten there early enough to do the rides as a family the day before and then sent the kids off with mates on the Friday.

Fortunately the mates they most wanted to hang around with were Marcus and Alex so we were able to hook up with Kirsty and James for much of the time and go around with them. The plusses of bigger kids are definitely tinged with a slight feeling of redundancy …I guess it’s been that much more intense a needing as HEors with needing to physically be around so much more.

Anyway, we all had a good time, I’d dosed up on codine, used my support bandage and worn my DMs so my ankle was numb and supported but I was careful with the rides I did go on to avoid too much bracing with my feet (so the crazy boat slide ride was out) or general stress on it (ditto the cycling helicopter). Did a couple of pirate ship rides and umbrella rides and log flumes though and mourned the rollercoaster remaining closed all day.
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Ady had checked the times of the circus and been told 1pm and 3pm so we had passed that information around and arranged to do the 1pm show then head back to the tents for lunch. When we arrived at the Big Top just before 1pm though it said ‘next show 2pm’ so something had gone wrong. I sent out a group text to try and let everyone else know and we headed back to the tent for lunch first instead.

The circus was pretty good (included in the wristband price) although one girl seemed to be in pretty much every act and there were a rather large amount of costume character fillers. I wasn’t very keen on the horse part of the show either but the kids really enjoyed it, particularly with the additional attraction of candyfloss 🙂
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Unfortunately we’d taken the closing time of 5pm in two previous years as the norm and heading over to the bigger ride area for the last hour just managed one ride before all of them closed 🙁 I had an even bigger gripe in that I’d hobbled to the toilet block to find it locked, hobbled to a second one to find that locked and then hobbled to the others to find them leaving a rapidly locking up park 🙁 . I was very fed up and ready to find someone to shout at but lost my fight when one of the toilet cleaners at the camping field ran after me to give me back my camera that I’d left in the loo 😳 so we headed off to Tesco for dinner and picnic for the next day supplies instead.

Jax had arrived when we got back and with Merry & Max arriving earlier our group had swollen to even bigger numbers (particularly given Babs now had two tents up 😉 ). The campsite was really filling up now, not with particularly desireable people in all cases but moving cars around to create a barricade and lighting a ‘campfire’ (small barbecue filled with charcoal) enabled us to gather round for marshmallow toasting, plenty of laughter, a bit of crying and generally loving being with friends.

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The last few of us stayed up really very late indeed laughing and talking – the evidence of which was still around when I woke up for my 5am wee and painkiller tradition:
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Saturday was Festival of History day one. We managed to leave the campsite at a fairly sensible time and walked in with Helen & Chris, Merry & Max. We’d all arranged a meet up at 1pm near the seaside for lunching together but the complete re-organisation of where each arena and zone was totally threw us. I still think we probably missed some bits despite being there for both days. We all have bits we prefer – I like Peterkin the Fool and wanted to see at least one of his shows, I also like walking round the various camps but am less bothered about the re-enactment stuff in the arenas. Davies and Scarlett would happily do activities and watch Punch & Judy shows for the duration whereas Ady would position himself infront of the loudest battle. We spent some time walking round the various camps, watched some of the lance battles and then spent some time in the Roman area where D&S played some games ” alt=”” />, by then it was time to head to the Fool but a sudden downpour drove us (and many, many other people) into the English Heritage tent. I suspect they had never been so crowded in there 😆 Ady and I had picked up some big yellow ponchos at Tesco the night before reduced to 50 pence each, so wishing we had bought more and could have resold them for profit, we donned those and headed out of the squeeze.
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We had sat down near where Peterkin was setting up on our ponchos as by now the rain had stopped but people all stood infront of us forcing us back onto our feet. The kids managed to get to the front but I was struggling to stand still and there was no where to sit so when the rain started pouring again and he cut his show short I was quite relieved. As an aside I was really fed up several times over the two days with other people’s selfishness in terms of positioning themselves right infront of others, pushing to the front, not caring whether those behind them could see. I was ever conscious of my foot which possibly made me even more aware of people in my personal space but several times we found a good position to sit infront of something to watch only to have others shove infront of us and block our view 🙁 .

Scarlett was hungry so we headed towards the seaside once we’d tracked down where it was, found some deckchairs and sat down. Scarlett forgot she was hungry and dashed off to play in the sand, Davies went off to watch Punch and Judy and Chris and Helen appeared and joined us. We realised the rest of the group was sitting on the other side to us but having claimed chairs satisfied ourselves with waving at them rather than moving. Ady went off to get tea and I heard what Helen had seen and done which gave us a couple of things to head for in the afternoon.

Suitably refreshed and with no further rain we had a good afternoon. We found the reindeer antler man Helen had mentioned (and has linked to I think, him with the fab beard). He was fab, really engaging, full of anecdotes and facts and very keen to let Davies and Scarlett do as much of the tool handling as possible. They each chose a piece of antler, drilled a hole in it and then etched a spiral pattern in it with some of his tools. He was perfectly happy to then use them to sell on his stall but of course we bought them – at £2 each I was quite happy we’d not been had 🙂

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We did some tussy mussy making in the YACs tent (very proud that both kids managed to id 5 out of the 6 herbs there), some wax seals and visited the pub for free lemonade for the kids before settling down at the main arena for the WW2 display. Scarlett was not super keen so I gave her a bit of a pep-talk (I’m sure you can imagine how that went 😉 ) and we got ice creams to eat on the way out. We missed the final parade which I do really enjoy but we were all tired, my foot hurt and we decided to call it a day.

We managed to make the same error of entering the motorway in the wrong direction that we’d done last year :rolls: and decided fish and chips for dinner was the way forward meaning no cooking or washing up, an early dinner leaving plenty of time for playing / socialising. Winning idea 🙂 .

Back at the campsite Stella and Rich had arrived and Katy and the little fishes (all four of them 🙂 ) came along too so we were a pretty big crowd (although missing LovelyEm who we’d said good bye to that morning). Which was just as well as there were pretty big crowds all round and the campsite was packed to capacity. There were more rain showers but they passed over and we had another dry evening in the end.

More marshmalllow toasting over the barbecue, more kids running wild, more drinking, laughing and chatting, another lovely evening, this time with added sky lantern spotting – a letting off one Jax had brought along decorated by them recently.

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Another late night surrounded by lovely friends, it finished off our very wonderful break camping in a perfect fashion 🙂 .

Sunday packing up went smoothly – having been critical of Ady’s packing the car technique for ages I finally got involved and told him where to stick things 😉 – he admitted it had gone in far better than he’s ever managed so I suspect I have just given myself a new responsibility 😆 Although I don’t know when we’ll next, if ever, be loading up that particular car for a camping trip as we’ll be at September camp in two cars.

We called in at Tesco for some bits for lunch (and some bits to take home for dinner later) and arrived at FoH at the same time as The Raines. We hooked up with them several times during the course of the day, meeting up to watch Peterkin, who picked Chris to be one of his victims which was hilarious
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We chatted to a US nurse who told us why the nurses wore bright red lipstick and how they had officer status and then Davies uttered the hilarious request ‘Mumma, is it okay if Ben and me go to the pub?’ 😆 He had cause to project me into his future several times this weekend 😉 . We folllowed behind the kids and they sat outside toasting ‘everyone who died in wars’ together while we looked on
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We split up again, having arranged to meet up for BZents later. We carried on and did most of the bits we’d not managed before including the Historical Marketplace. We did miss the woodland open air plays and I’d liked the idea of one of the talks about a relationship played out in letters (My Dear Howie). We looked for but could not find the skinner we’d enjoyed talking to last year but did find a stall with fox, squirrel and bear skins which was interesting. I also missed the allotment talks.

We bumped into Jax at the Antartic Explorers tent and had seen Kirsty and James at the Artisan bit so had told them of the plan for BZents at 415pm and we all were there for that. Most of the children who wanted to (with the sad exception of Ben 🙁 ) were included in the Horatio’s Last Hurrah play which was to the usual high standard and we decided that was a great high point to end on. We left at the same time as Babs and Kirsty, pleased to have a firm date to call ‘see you in X weeks’ to each other as we parted.

Satnav said the drive home should have been 2.5 hours but thanks to M25isms it was closer to 3.5hrs. Bath and food for Davies and Scarlett, I sorted dinner for Ady and I while Ady emptied his car, Scarlett was delighted to see her ducks (now most definitely no longer ducklings) and Davies was pleased to have the quails in his bedroom (who promptly started flying despite being only 3 weeks old so have a cover on their box now.

It’s highly unlikely we’ll be Wicksteed and FoHing next year given our plans for 2011 so it was fab to have had such a great weekend with so many friends. It was also the perfect end to such a wonderful week in Scotland, with J&J sandwiched inbetween. Ady is telling anyone who’ll listen how it ranks for one of his top holidays ever, Scarlett now has in perspective how amazing it is she has seen dolphins, Davies did a really good job of being the spare to Scarlett and Chloe and hanging out for the end of the week with Marcus and Ben – and as it turned out Maddie too 😉 and I am now looking at through rather different eyes and I had 11 nights away where despite being in really quite a lot of pain from my ankle had an excellent holiday. I loved the scenery, wildlife, views and campsite in Scotland and the comfortable, enjoyable company of Marcus, Michelle and Chloe. I loved dropping in at J&J’s for the peace of their landscape and gorgeous home, calming company and great taste in youtube clips, I loved being with our fab group of friends round a campfire at Wicksteed with all the in jokes, comfort for those in need and laughter and support. I also very much loved getting home to my house with a bed, a bath and a fridge ;).

Last year Scarlett expressed a desire to see dolphins in the wild. I did some online research as to whether this was a feasible challenge here in the UK and uncovered various ‘hot spots’ including Cornwall, parts of Wales and Scotland. We had really hoped Shell Island in North Wales would answer this one for her as we were camping there in July and some advance contact with the campsite and local boat tour opertors suggested we had a good chance. In the end despite countless time gazing out to see across the bay and a rather expensive boat trip the dolphins proved elusive and we didn’t see any. We saw seals which Scarlett considered a worthy runner up but we carried the quest over to this years list of ‘things we want to do’ for her. I am a great believer in finding ways to make dreams come true whenever possible.

We were reliably informed that Scotland, specifically the Moray Firth is *the* place to see dolphins in the UK, infact in Europe and arranged with our tried and tested holiday sharing family 😉 to have a camping trip there this year. Michelle took on the role of researcher and tracked down a fabulous campsite at Rosemarkie which we were excited to see had many rave reviews about dolphin sightings on a regular basis, both from the campsite and from nearby Chanonry Point. A six night stay for us made joining the Camping and Caravanning Club financially worthwhile so we did that, got it booked up and then dealt with the full logistics of a 12 hour drive to get from our ‘almost as far south as you get’ home to ‘almost as far north as you get’ destination. Not quite John O’Groats to Lands End but pretty damn close.

So Wednesday was the first leg of the journey – six hours driving to a Travelodge (booked in their advance booking £22 deal) in Carlisle. Six hours driving in a car filled with enough stuff for 11 nights away, with two young children and a woman with a cracked ankle is never going to be a delight but armed with toffee bon-bons, many painkillers and my crutches in the top box we were off. We’d been initially aiming to be away for 9am, stop for lunch mid-point and then drive back out for dinner somewhere in Carlisle once we’d checked in. The ankle, left over packing from the night before and me only being able to crawl round the house on hands and knees meant it was closer to 11am when we actually set off. Getting up and down the stairs was a nightmare 🙁

Aside from being in agony and the shiny floor surfaces of Services being no place to skitter across on crutches the twice we stopped for wee-breaks it was fine. No real hold ups, a very brief wee-stop once and a fairly brief McDonalds for kid-food and tea & coffee for Ady and I stop and we were at the Travelodge by 6pm. We had a rest and recuperate in the room and then set out to find food. The sat nav told us cashpoints and shops were six miles away but when we set it to go there it changed to 23 miles away meaning a nearly 50mile round trip thanks to being on the north bound side of the motorway. Some debate ensued about whether to do it or not but Ady was driving-tired, I was in pain and the kids were hungry so we went for dinner at the services Burger King instead.

This put us back in the room before 8pm, already fed, down to the last teabag which I knew I’d need in the morning, without a sniff of alcohol (not allowed to sell it on motorways apparently) and therefore fairly fed-up 🙁 . I settled for sitting in the bath (water came up to mid-thigh, lost all semblance of dignity trying to get in and out with ankle then taking many painkillers and reading my book in bed. I did send the others out to ask at the desk for more teabags though (along with another pillow as we only had three between four of us and some more loo roll as there was only half a one when we arrived which got used up in just one visit to the loo each by D&S (what do they do with it?) ).

All of which meant we were up and out nice and early on Thursday morning though. We cheered as we passed the border into Scotland quite quickly and stopped at some more services for tea, coffee and pastries to go for breakfast. The final leg of the journey was slightly longer than satnav expected due to lots of road works but so breathtakingly beautiful with scenery that noone minded. Some text conversation with Michelle told us that calling into teh nearby Co Op along the way would be wise to get supplies and then we were there!

A speedy check in, despite my failing to think of bringing the C&CC membership card to prove our member status and we were offered a choice of two pitches. One the other side of the loos and showers to where Marcus and Michelle were pitched, so close to them as we’d initially requested when booking, or one right on the beach front (all of a minute’s walk to M&M’s tent). No contest really :).

Predictably the wind and rain put in an appearance as soon as the tent was out of it’s bag with poles threaded. Davies and Scarlett and Ady really tried to be helpful but as none of the three of them had any real idea of how the tent actually goes up and my ordinarily great temper was slightly frayed due to really being in pain by now so in the end we gave up before the wind broke a pole or we all broke our relationships and sat on the tent to stop it blowing away. And then along came Marcus and Michelle 🙂 🙂 🙂

And suddenly the wind dropped and with four adults and a bit of a plan it all seemed terribly easy – I’d say it was our best pitching ever :). Marcus had some spare rock pegs (an utter necessity for that campsite – along with a claw hammer to bang them in and get them back out again afterwards, a handy hint from a campshop owner when Ady bought pegs) and we were very quickly in and sorted. Michelle and I sat in the car to rest my ankle while Ady and Marcus emptied the car into the tent and then as the time was right according to changing tides we all headed off to the Point. It is a fairly short walk along the beach and my only real regret of the week was that I never did manage it as it looked beautiful and walking along beaches – either to see dolphins or come back to the tent for relaxing and drinking wine – rank in my all time favourite past times. The last evening was my planned ankle-almost well enough time to do it and the tide was too high meaning there was no sand and only very big pebbles making it impossible for me to navigate across so I never did do that walk.

Marcus and Michelle had seen dolphins every day they’d been there but even so Ady, Davies, Scarlett and I couldn’t quite bring ourselves to expect to see them. I was hobbling slightly behind with Ady when Scarlett came flying back calling out what we first thought was ‘I’m going to see dolphins, I’m going to see dolphins!’ but turned out to be ‘I’VE SEEN DOLPHINS! I’VE SEEN DOLPHINS!!!’ 🙂 🙂 One child, dream made reality :).
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At that point Michelle says I broke into a run and I certainly forget my ankle hurting or the 12 hour drive or the trauma of the tent pitching and I too saw dolphins 🙂 My longing for dolphin spotting has been all about making it happen for Scarlett but they are very magical creatures and it was quite a moving experience. Neither Ady or I got anything like the photos captured by Marcus and the crowd gathered at the point every turning of the tide was always at least half made up from serious photographers, several of whom sell their photos to the press, for calendars, postcards or for stock images of dolphins. There was a real camaraderie between the regulars, some of whom spent a month or more there every year for the dolphins. The other half of the crowd was people like us, drawn there from all over to see dolphins. Watching and listening to lots of other people get their first glance of dolphins over the course of the week was also a lovely experience.

Suitably thrilled, educated about why the dolphins leap (catching salmon to eat, they knock them out of the water to try and break their necks or otherwise disable them, they also need to swallow them head first so have to be quite adept at throwing and catching), and now rather cold we headed back to the tent. The kids disappeared to the beach, Ady cooked dinner and Michelle and I drank wine and admired the view.
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It doesn’t get dark until after 11pm which is just blissful and ideal for us with our tardy dinner habits so for once we ate in daylight all week 😉 .That first night we rang the children to get them home at about 1130pm – suitably ashamed of our slack parenting when they told us they had walked all the way into the village 😳 It finally did get dark and bedtime was called.

Friday – one of the few non-dolphin related things on our list was to visit Loch Ness. It has long been somewhere Ady has wanted to see and when we realised how close it was it was top of our list of places to head to. We ended up not doing rather a lot of the other things on our provisional list really, mostly due to my ankle which coupled with the loveliness of the campsite and the regular appearance of dolphins visible from the tent meant we were happy to have a relaxed, doing-very-little time.

So to Loch Ness – we lost Marcus and Michelle on the way – we’d assumed we could follow them and not bother with satnav, they’d assumed we’d got satnav and would arrive around the same time as them. This meant some frantic use of my phone to track down a postcode for the place we were heading for to put into the satnav and put us about 15 minutes behind them. A complete lack of mobile phone coverage meant that I got their voicemail and text messages over the course of a couple of hours all in one go at the same time as they got all of mine. So we completely missed each other as they ate first then went round the exhibition while we went round the exhibition and then ate. When we arrived we parked on a fairly steep hill and when I opened the boot to get coats out (it was pouring with rain) a bottle of oil fell out and landed right on my ankle causing a yelp and tears to my eyes 🙁 .

The Loch Ness visitor centre was, I thought, pretty good. Not necessarily a ‘must see’, nor at £18 for the four of us exceptional value but educational, enjoyable and excellent for setting the scene for Loch Ness which all of us knew a little, rather than a lot about. They have set up about six walk through chambers with films projected onto the walls and a different feel in each. The centre was very scientific in bias, not exactly debunking theories on a Loch Ness monster but certainly not subscribing to them either. I thought it was very good although my least favourite bit about it was the walk through an array of ‘retail opportunities’ on the way out, flogging a variety of Nessie themed stuff, some traditional Scottish stuff like heavy jumpers and kilts and finally a whisky and shortbread shop. We resisted all lures to spend money until the cafe where we had chips (kids) and tea / coffee and quite possibly the best millionaires shortbread I have ever tasted (Ady and I). Having already seen dolphins and therefore decided the money set aside for a dolphin spotting boat trip would not be needed after all I decided to book a Loch Ness boat trip instead. The others took some convincing but on the basis that none of the four of us might ever be at Loch Ness ever again I persuaded them. It was well worth it :).

We had an hour to kill so drove into the village and looked at the castle but decided admission prices made it prohibitive so visited the tourist information centre and a gift shop instead where Ady was assured by a wise old Scots woman that the weather would clear up by 4pm. As it had been raining non stop all day long and mists were swirling around the place in a spooky and atmospheric fashion this seemed rather unlikely.

The boat takes 12 passengers but there was just the four of us and a German couple so we had an all but private charter. John, the skipper picked us up in a mini bus and we arrived at the Loch side to board the boat. The boat is one used for scientific research on the loch and had all sorts of sonar and radar equipment which he explained to us before heading out to the widest and deepest part of the loch, telling stories, history and personal anecdotes as he went. I spent a lot of the time outside loving the murky feeling of the loch and the air of mystery and magic all around. At one point Ady, Scarlett and I were outside and Ady asked where Davies was – we looked round to see him sat up at the wheel steering the boat :). John then let Scarlett have a go and between the three of them they brought us back to shore. What a fab memory, to have steered a boat across Loch Ness 🙂 .
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Back to the campsite ready for another evening trip to The Point for dolphin spotting and another lovely evening infront of The View.

Saturday Rosemarkie, the little local town had a ‘Beach Fun Day’ so we walked along the beach to have fun ;). I think all we really participated in was chatting to Charlie Phillips of WDCS (whale and dolphin conservancy society) who is very cool and has the most soothing accent I could listen to him talking about dolphins for hours. The kids wandered off to play in some woods while we sat and drank tea and coffee and pondered the village fete-ness of the day which included Cutest Pet, Sandcastle and Best Cupcake competitions. Cutest Pet must have been a sure fire win for a little huskie puppy who looked like a wolf cub and was so gorgeous even I rather wanted to cuddle it. We walked along the beach to the furthest point we could see from our tent and did some rockpooling finding various ‘treasures’ both live and not including a huge piece of wood, washed white and weathered but quite incomprehensively on the beach with no real evidence of quite how it would have gotten there. We walked back via the Spar and deli in Rosemarkie and I think we had another evening visit to Chanonry Point before dinner.
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Sunday was the night the wind and rain came in and I spent quite a while sitting in the car trying to get warm and reading my book. Ady cooked a curry which I shivered my way through eating and then Michelle and I sat in her porch, Marcus and Ady sat in our porch and the kids sat in our tent until some sort of sibling altercation between D&S put an end to their evening and effectively ours. It was a noisy night and I think there were some casualties on the campsite but our tent stood up to it all just fine and aside from some puddles in the middle section (really must waterproof those cross seams) we were fine. Ady did a spot of dry stone walling with some beach pebbles to build a barricade where a small gap showed between the side of the tent and the floor thanks to a small hole in the ground.
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Sunday morning was when it became apparent that Davies needed some sort of fleece as one of the casualties of chaotic packing was him having one lightweight denim jacket and nothing else with sleeves at all. Scarlett’s wellies also died so a shopping trip was in order. We went to Inverness and after much faffing finally found some good solid Dunlop wellies for Tarly, a Regatta fleece for Davies in a sale and some really good waterproof walking boots for him in the same sale too, with which he is very pleased. I got a neoprene support bandage for my ankle which was improving but feeling very unsupported and like all the inside bits might be falling apart so this was good for holding it all together. We visited Morrisons for food supplies and then called in at the North Kessock WSCS as Michelle had tipped us off about a free gift for visiting both centres and we were planning to visit the Spey Bay centre on Monday. We saw no dolphins from their large viewing window but the kids enjoyed the various activities including some enormous floor puzzles showing food chains and some feely boxes of natural and man made things you might find in the sea.

Back to the campsite for more view, friends, dolphins and relaxing. I think this was the night where I woke in the early hours to go to the loo and was so amazed by the orange light beaming into the tent I got up, found my glasses and took a picture. Right infront of us in the sea was a small boat called The Ballena which we’d been admiring and using as a barometer for the weather – it sat still on a calm sea and bobbed about like crazy on a rough one when it was windy and rainy. We’d debated who might own it and why they might use it, it was sort of the mascot of our week. We were really sad to learn that the day we left a storm caused it to come loose from it’s moorings and crash onto the beach 🙁
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We’d started to make friends with people around us by then. We had a Dutch family opposite us who were very friendly – their two boys (late teens?) were lovely lads who had a brief dip in the sea every evening. We’d also spent some time chatting to one of the photographers who came along to Rosemarkie every year for dolphin pictures. It was a really friendly campsite where you exchanged a word or two with every single person you came across.

We’d decided we’d make the drive to the Spey Bay WDCS centre with a plan to call in at Findhorn . So that was Monday’s plan. In the end the drive was longer than expected and there was enough to do at Spey Bay to keep us there for most of the day so we never got to Findhorn. We had a cup of tea on arrival and then joined a talk on Whale and Dolphin Watching. We spent some time in the shop and had a go on various computer based activities including learning about all the adoption dolphins, listening to various underwater sonar sounds, listening live underwater and chatting to the staff who were all very enthusiastic and friendly.

We’d brought food for lunch so sat outside eating watching various birds (gulls, gannets) and looking out for otters and seals. They make all their cakes on the premises and we’d seen them mixing up cake batter when we had our cup of tea earlier so we headed back inside to sample some cakes and scones which were delicious before joining another talk in the ice house there. It is the biggest ice house in Scotland, dating back several hundred years and has six chambers. It was used to store sea trout and salmon caught from the river Spey using ice taken from the river. Davies, Scarlett and I had been looking at the remains of an ice house in Bognor the week before from the outside and talking about them so this was perfect to now see inside one and really understand how they worked.

The tour was really good, the chambers had all been set out in different ways with the first one containing some art work made from marine litter such as fishing nets, broken cans, bottles etc. They were mostly mosaics of dolphins, whales and other sea life and were very lovely, while still being made out of rubbish and are done to raise awarenss of the dangers to wildlife of beach litter. The next chamber contained lots of found original and recreated tools from the ice house days including picks, carrying containers, a boat and various tools they have yet to identify the use of. There were also pictures of the river Spey in recent years with it’s vast amounts of ice, grainy old photos of people holding up prize catches of fish and we were told about the river and how it floods and breaks its banks every year when the snow and ice melts and changes the flow to the sea creating new sand banks and mini islands every year as well as how rich in wildlife it is.

The next chamber was filled with bones of whales and dolphins, some whale teeth and we were shown and handed around the ones we could touch. Finally we made it to the fifth chamber (the sixth was just used as a foyer) where a life size dolphin and new born calf models were suspended above our heads showing us the size and scale of just how big the Moray Firth dolphins are – the biggest in the world, nearly twice the size of the ones in places like Florida, as a result of living in so much colder water. Then a short film was projected onto the wall all about whales and dolphins and porpoise. This was mostly beautiful film footage of them along with plenty of facts and figures.

When we came out there was the hourly shorewatch going on (the staff spend the first ten minutes of every hour with binoculars observing the shoreline to spot wildlife, noting anything they see) and a small crowd was gathered watching osprey and then suddenly there were dolphins! So we stood and watched them out at sea, had a go with their really good binoculars and another, different perspective of dolphins until a sudden thunderstorm drove us back inside again and then finally when it looked set in we decided to head back to the campsite.
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On the drive back we stopped at the Baxters Highland village for a quick look around, a taste of whisky and peep at the museum-y bits of an olde fashioned shop.” alt=”” />

Back to the campsite for another visit to Chanonry Point, more playing on the beach til late for the kids and more sitting admiring the view for adults.

Tuesday was our last full day and night and we’d already decided to stay close to the campsite. The tides changing meant there were two chances to see dolphins that day so we planned a picnic lunch at the point seeing the first, a visit to a nearby brewery that offered tours and tasting, a last quick trip to the WDCS in North Kessock and then a communal haggis dinner with Marcus, Michelle and Chloe before a final visit to Chanonry Point in the evening. We nipped to the deli in the morning for supplies and wished we’d visited earlier in the week. The man behind the counter was a true salesman, encouraging us to try various things (all of which were so delicious we ended up buying some) and chattering away to us. I’d planned to walk to the point but seeing no sand and far too many rocks to make it safe for me at the best of times let alone with my poorly ankle I had to acknowledge my limits and we drove. It was pretty cold down there but we had our picnic and then when the dolphins were heading off we did too to the WDCS.

This time we were in luck and had a stunning aerial view looking down on about 12 dolphins spread out below us in groups of two and three. There was loads of activity and it was a very different perspective looking down and seeing how they interacted with each other. Scarlett had found various crab claws and dried up starfish on the beach over the week and had decided to offer them to the centre for their display so she did that and they were gratefully recieved and put straight on the display which pleased her 🙂 . We watched with the various binoculars and enjoyed the enthusiasm of the girl who worked there excitedly shrieking ‘ooh did you see that!?’ every time a dolphin jumped out of the water. We watched the tour boat, packed with people go out into the middle of the dolphins for what would have still not been as good a view as we’d been treated to every day at Chanonry Point and were most grateful that the dolphins of Moray Firth had shown themselves to us with such amazing regularity each day :).

Back to the campsite via the Black Isle Brewery where we joined one of the free tours of the tiny operation of beer making. It was really interesting and we enjoyed sampling a couple of different beers. Ady bought a couple, I bought some beer soaps.

And so to Haggis Night 🙂 . Marcus had volunteered to cook haggis and gravy which left us with mashed potatoes and mashed swede. I was on peeling duty then Ady took over, realising we didn’t have a masher (rather short sighted, must add that to our camping list along with a whisk 😉 ). It took ages to cook them as it was breezy and the gas was blowing about on the cooker making for an even longer cooking time, then they needed mashing up with a fork but we got there 🙂
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Scarlett loved the haggis but was less keen on the swede, Davies loved the mash and swede but was not keen on the haggis, I liked it all, loved the flavour but was slightly offended at the baby-food-ish texture of everything being mashed up and scoopable up with a spoon. Would have it again though 🙂 .

Michelle and Chloe were not fussed about Chanonry Point, having plenty more opportunities ahead as they were staying for the rest of the week so very kindly did all the washing up :). The rest of us went off for a final bout of dolphin spotting.

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A lovely last night back at the tent admiring that view and drinking Black Isle Brewery beer 🙂 .

Wedneday morning with huge thanks to Marcus and Michelle we packed up and were away in record time (ankle considering 😉 ) bidding a fond farewell to our lovely holiday companions and a truly fab campsite and gorgeous place. I always say I’d not go back to any campsite on the basis there are so many others to try and so many bits of the UK to see but I think I’d make an exception for Rosemarkie, it was a fabulous six nights with pretty much nothing possible that would have made it more perfect :).

The seven hours to Jan and Jonathan’s was the biggest chunk of all the journeys over the holiday. We stopped only once, at everyone’s favourite services Tebay and arrived at about 7pm. As always hospitality, company and surroundings were fabulous there and we all enjoyed our brief stay with Davies and Scarlett having a great time playing with Jasper, then watching various Youtube clips with Catie and Megan (and the rest of us 😉 ) before bed, then the rest of us sitting and chatting for a couple more hours about respective life changing plans. Before getting a really rather good nights’ sleep in a bed.

The display for Bognor library we’d been working on as part of Home Ed Book Club had been put up ready for the launch of the Summer Reading Game. We wanted to visit to see it all up in all it’s glory anyway so when a plea went out for any of the children involved to go along on Tuesday at 1pm as the local paper were attending to take pictures and do a short article we decided to combine the two (always up for more media opportunities 😉 ).

So Davies, Scarlett and I headed over to Bognor, parked up at the park near the library and had a picnic lunch there. I had posted up that we would be doing so if anyone wanted to join us but no one arrived so D&S played in the wooded areas and I read my book in the sunshine – very nice :).

We walked through the park to the library and had a chat with the other three families who had come along, were positioned infront of the display in various poses by the photographer and I had a quick catch up chat with Jody, who used to work at Lancing and moved across to Bognor last year. Very impressed that he remembered the kids names 🙂 . We left there and headed back to Worthing for swimming lessons.

I can’t even remember now why I decided not to swim that afternoon, I think it might have been simply to save on leaving wet washing hanging around for 2 weeks but it proved to be a rather foolish decision 🙁 I sent Davies and Scarlett to their respective changing rooms and went to the spectators area. The swimming pool itself is at ground level but there are three flights of about 15 concrete steps up the front of the building with the top level of the car park, the reception and a gym area all upstairs with a tiered spectators seating area back down to pool level again. I have fallen on the steps / chairs before and made a fool of myself so I really should exercise more caution, but weak ankles, silly shoes, general carelessness and clumsiness along with a knack of never really learning by past mistakes meant I did it again, this time with even more spectacular results 🙁 The steps themselves are pretty steep, concrete ones and the area with chairs is more steps, twice the depth of the steps with wooden cinema style folding up chairs. I attempted to negotiate one of these double steps, got one of my shoes (flip flop style ones) snagged on a chair which tripped me up, the shoe broke and my full weight ended up on the foot / ankle I had put first, which crumpled beneath me, my bag of towels and the force of gravity coming down onto the concrete. It felt like the whole swimming pool stopped to look although I suspect it was merely the two women just infront of me who turned with gasps to ask if I was okay. I’d already identified some damage done but for someone so attention seeking I am notoriously bad at admitting I need help when in pain and just wanted everyone to stop looking at me so I could assess the damage privately. I assured them I was fine and just needed to catch my breath back before sitting for a couple of minutes on the floor breathing heavily and then hauling myself onto a chair.

My ankle / foot was already swelling up, my shoe was broken and I knew the chances of being able to get down the steps outside and drive home were pretty slim. I sat holding it all together until Davies appeared and I whispered to him what had happened. He was an utter star, admitting later he’d been really scared. He asked me what he should do, offered to go and get dressed again, go and get help / whatever. By that time I was starting to fret about where Scarlett had got to as her lesson was already about to start and she was off in the changing room alone. I sent Davies back to find her, he came back with her (still not sure just which shiny thing had caught her eye and distracted her) and I sent her to her lesson. Davies and I pondered what to do and I rang Ady. At the sound of his voice I dissolved into tears. He insisted I go and ask for a first aider and get some help, waving aside my ‘but I feel really stupid’ whinge with a tut and telling me to just go and get a bloody ice pack! I left Davies there as he was already changed into swimming trunks and hobbled out to reception.

I explained to the receptionist that I had fallen on the stairs and could she get me an ice pack, she paged a first aider, who took ages to come and then wanted to write his incident report and check the steps weren’t slippery or wet first (I rather asserted myself again at that point and asked for the ice pack first please!). I assured him it was my clumsiness rather than any liability on their part, filled in my details for his form and he bound it up for me with a bandage. Davies reappeared, now dressed again, looking very worried as I’d been gone about 10 minutes and he was fretting I’d gone off in an ambulance or something. He helped me back to the spectators area, got changed again and collected Tarly from her lesson and went to his. Tarly is the worst possible child to have around a sensitive body part as it is like a magnet to her treading on it but I managed to mostly contain her by yelping ‘mind my ankle!’ approximately every 30 seconds.

I rang Ady who said he was leaving work but wouldn’t be there before the kids lessons finished so I rang my Dad to ask him to meet us at the pool and take us home in my car and Ady would drop him off to collect his van later. I also knew I’d need help getting down the outside stairs. I took the bandage off as it was still swelling and by now was far too tight and then my Mum arrived, having been rung by my Dad and just a 10 minute walk away from the swimming pool at work. Davies finished his lesson and got dressed, then we all hung about at the top of the outside steps waiting for my Dad to arrive. By the time we’d negotiated those Ady was also there so now we had four adults, four cars, two children and one of those chicken, fox, grain puzzles. Added to this the ankle was still swelling and getting ever more painful rather than easing. If we’d not been due to drive to Scotland the following day I may well have left it and gone home for a soak in the bath, some painkillers and an ice pack but worried about being away from home with a possibly broken bone unattended to I was persuaded by my Mum to go to hospital instead.

So Ady took Davies and Scarlett home in his car, Dad took Mum and I to the hospital in my car before going back to our house for Ady to bring him back to the swimming pool to collect his van and once I was safely installed in the waiting room at A&E Mum walked back to the pool for her car ready to bring me home in. Poor Ady cooked the kids tea and then fretted about packing the car up ready for the holiday – a job we’d been supposed to be doing together as it’s not his strong point (he has many, many qualities but knowing what to pack, where to pack it and how to put it up once we arrive is not one of them).

A&E have a system of tiered waiting where you are bumped down the list by new arrivals if they are deemed more emergencyish than you. Children are bumped up the list. I was (rightly) considered a minor case and told it would be at least 2 hours. I had no shoes, was cold from the air con, starving hungry, in lots of pain and equally fretting about the holiday. Mum did a fine job of talking about all sorts of things to fill the silence – in fact it was one of her finest parenting moments really. It ended up being more like 3 hours with a rather frustrating wait in the middle – I’d assumed once diagnosed treatment would follow but you returned to the waiting list again and could be bumped back down by new arrivals.

The A&E experience was predictably depressing, old people there alone, bleeding and confused, a few rowdy probably self-inflicted injured as the evening wore on, a young, very pregnant girl who kept going outside for a smoke and not nearly enough staff to deal with us all. The doctors and nurses were all fantastic; friendly, professional and apologetic. NHS always seems to me to be in turn amazing and wonderful but dire and inefficient. Amusingly it was one of the world cup football matches that night and it was being shown on a TV in the waiting room, eyed by a large amount of the people waiting and every so often a collective groan or gasp or ‘oooh’ would echo round the room which seemed funny given the low level of such noises happening there anyway from injured people. 😆

Having hobbled about in immense pain (really should have accepted the offer of a wheelchair, will I ever learn?) I was prodded, X-rayed and eventually told I had cracked my ankle bone. This is better than an actual break I was told as it won’t need a cast and should knit back together perfectly, better than torn ligaments as they can’t really be treated and remain forever weak but nontheless very painful and likely to take a long time to heal. I was told the treatment is fourfold – elevation, pain relief, cold and exercise. The doctor I saw was lovely and said he had done almost the identical injury himself last year and as a result changed the advice he gave from ‘painful for about 2 weeks’ to ‘ very painful for 2 weeks, quite painful for 4-6 weeks, a bit painful for several months and eventually better after about a year’. He gave me prescription painkillers and crutches, told me it would be agony in the morning, really bad the day after that but should get incrementally better each day onwards, strapping it up was my choice if I felt it helped but was no longer something they did as a matter of course.

So after a (almost literal) crash course in using crutches I learnt very quickly that a) they are not as easy as they look and I had always imagined b) A&E is the very best place to have a first go on them as you appear to be in danger of a repeat injury to the other ankle as a result of the crutches unless you are very careful 😆

Back home Ady had done a fine job of starting the packing up of the car so I gobbled some painkillers, had a much needed glass of wine, instructed Davies and Scarlett to bring me various clothes and packed them, struggled to get in and out of the bath, ate a very late dinner and went to bed where the combined effects of my two types of painkiller, wine and tiredness cocktail meant I fell asleep and slept through til morning.

We had a nice quiet morning with me doing various online bits and trying to clear emails from my inbox before loading up swimming things and heading over to Lewes. We stopped at Asda on the way to gather picnic supplies. Parking proved to be an issue – both my rather rubbish parking ability (I am fine when I concentrate and always surprise myself at managing when I actually try but would rather find a nice easy drive-into-able space if possible) and the lack of actual parking. I managed a very good reverse parking between two cars then got out to buy a ticket and realised that side of the road was permit holders only 🙁 . I drove around the block again and found a space eventually, parked, paid and we headed over to the park where Ali, Jay, Freya and the other birthday-celebrating-guests were. C, E, M and D who we’ve not seen for ages.

We gave Freya her present and were speedily presented with a present each back for Davies and Scarlett as she’d requested Ali get gifts for all the attending children rather than party bags / prizes for party games. And very excellent, well chosen gifts they were too – Pop Up Book kit for Davies and Lip Balm maker kit for Scarlett.

As the weather had been very changable all morning and we seemed to be heading for a sunny interval Pool Time was called and we headed over to the open air swimming pool next to the park. We’d been there before to celebrate Freya’s fifth birthday, although neither Davies or Scarlett could remember it according to them. I had decided not to go in although I had brought my costume. The water was very cold and it just wasn’t a hot enough day to have me desperate to plunge into cool water. The others all had a good dip before coming back to eat food. Everyone had brought food to share so a very good picnic was on offer including some very interesting ‘pakes’ sweet pizza bases to spread with sweet toppings. After eating most of the others went back into the water again, I sat chatting to J enjoying the sun which had decided it probably would shine actually.

The others had a date at a pizza place for the more traditional savoury version so after a very nice couple of hours they headed off there while we headed for home. We stopped by the allotment to do some watering and harvested some garlic which was ready along with some peas and beans.

I rang my Mum as it was her birthday and we had provisionally planned a barbecue for dinner or a trip to the Harvester depending on weather. The weather had remained changable all day and we decided it was bound to go overcast and breezy as soon as we cooked food outside so the Harvester was the plan.

Back at home the kids got some clean clothes ready to change into and explored their new kits. Ady came home and we all got changed and my parents arrived. We gave Mum her card and presents and she had a look at the ducks, the quails and the chicks before we went to the Harvester. Mum and I decided fizz was in order and we toasted her birthday in the bar before moving through to the restuarant. It was very busy in there and they pre-warned us there was likely to be a bit of a wait for food and service. There was, but the food was probably the best we’ve had there, probably partly due to waiting, partly due to having plenty to drink while we waited and partly due to having lots to talk about while we waited.

Frazer joined us for dessert (he didn’t finish work til 9pm) and then the rest of us returned here for coffee.

Otherwise I’ll get too behind and forget stuff.

Saturday A far too early start given the lateness of the night before but we had to be up for Wildlife Explorers. We are *always* late and I was determined not to be so got everyone up, fed and out way earlier than normal. Just as well as there were loads of little hold-ups for road works and despite leaving half an hour earlier than normal we were only 10 minutes early. We looked around the shop for a while, talked to an expert on hand about binoculars and then dispatched the kids at WEX. They did grass sweeping and found lots of little bugs and beasties.

Ady and I debated walking or sitting in the sunshine with tea and coffee and the hot drinks won :). It was very lovely sitting looking out over the reserve chatting – no interuptions from anything :). We’d driven past my parents on the way and Dad had been outside with a bloke he’d gotten round to cut the hedges so we’d stopped briefly and said we’d call back on the way home. So we did just that. Dad shoved £20 at me and told me to go and get some lunch so we walked up to Sainsburys and bought all sorts of luxury luncheon items then walked back and made lunch for everyone. Frazer was there too and joined us and it was very nice :). I explained in more detail about the whole WOOFing idea. I’m fairly sure Dad thinks we’re bloody mental, well actually I know he does because he told me so, but is supportive of us chasing dreams and will help which is the most I’d have hoped for. He’s already offered to store all our furniture which is one worry / expense to not have to think about.

There have been some waterworks going on locally which have created a problem with their water (and all their neighbours) coming through contaminated and undrinkable unless boiled so Dad has been flushing it through by over flowing his pond which cleans the pond out and drains off the unusable water. He did that and we all sat by the pond enjoying the sunshine while Tarly made boats out of leaves and rescued all the ants getting caught in the flood.

We finally left when the kids started to get a bit annoying to each other. A quick stop at Aldi on the way home for some binoculars and some bits for dinner. Davies and Scarlett had a bath, I dealt with lots of washing, we took some pictures of the quail chicks and brought in a bantam chick to compare size. I read some Alone on a wide, wide sea and the kids were in bed and actually asleep at a fairly sensible hour. Ady cooked a very lovely steak for dinner.

Sunday A much needed lie-in for me. Ady and Davies played chess in the garden, Scarlett played with the birds and I did more laundry processing. I’d realised we only had pastry left to make and we’d finished the flour section of the River Cottage family cook book. I read about pastry to the kids out in the garden as they were eating ice lollies and then we came in and did some making. Having made soda bread, several loaves using bought yeast, our sourdough starter yeast and turned the same dough recipe into pizza we decided to finish the chapter by making flatbread. We quite often buy wraps or tortillas. Davies made the dough and kneaded it and after resting it Scarlett did the rolling out and I cooked them. They were eaten up for lunch and declared delicious by everyone.

While we were resting the dough we also made the component parts for a lemon tart for pudding tonight. Scarlett made the pastry and Davies the lemon curd. This involved weighing, cutting up butter, rubbing in, seperating egg whites and yolks and kneading for Scarlett, zesting lemons, juicing lemons, seperating egg whites and yolks, weighing and cutting up butter, sugar for Davies and then cooking the sauce (which he did on one ring while I was cooking the flat bread on another). Lemon curd left to cool and set, pastry put in the fridge to rest.

We had lunch and then I wanted to nip into town to get a card for my Mum’s birthday tomorrow and a gift voucher for her. We did that and then Ady did some lawn mowing and hedge cutting, Scarlett rolled out and baked blind her pastry case and Davies mixed cream into his lemon curd to make pie filling. Pie constructed they decided they did want to glaze it later before serving so we put it back in the chiller. They went off to tidy their bedrooms and I cooked a roast dinner.

We watched Countryfile and then the end of Peter Pan while eating dinner. We glazed the tart under the grill and ate loads of it with cream – it was utterly delicious :). Then we watched an episode of River Cottage Treatment. Davies is really into it but Scarlett got upset about some lambs being slaughtered. We had a long chat about meat eating, how it’s killed, how it’s kept and what my opinion is about it all. Both the children really like meat and Davies is very clued up and realistic about where it comes from and how we get it. Scarlett does know but sometimes chooses (as do most meat eaters in fairness) to not think about it too much. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ends up vegetarian eventually and would support that and make it as easy as possible for her.I’d far rather a conscious vegetarian than an ignorant meat-eater.

Davies and Scarlett went to bed, Ady and I watched a programme about foxes and having finally caught up on blogging I’m off to bed.

I was at work for the day. Dad was here in the morning looking after Davies and Scarlett. He’s not had them for a while as we’ve been managing with them going to work with Ady so both he and the children were pleased to be spending time together. I had a quick ten minute catch up with him during which I blurted out details of the whole Living The Dream Plan.

I had a good day at work. I’m rather enjoying something of an elevated status at the moment thanks to my contacts with more senior members of staff due to Chatterbooks and being part of the Reading Group. Fortuunately I get on well enough with the rest of the staff that it doesn’t seem to be causing any animosity although I suspect it would if I were there for more than my rather paultry 11 hours a week.

It was Baby Rhyme time and to start with we only had 3 children – one who has been coming since she was a tiny baby and is now nearly 3, her mother used to be my hairdresser way, way back in the day and I have long since diagnosed as autistic. She goes way beyond the worst toddler tantrums I have ever seen (and I’ve witnessed a few 😉 ), is really obsessive, has a very closed, angry look about her and despite having seen me fortnightly at the library for pretty much her whole life, being ‘Nicola the Rhyme Time Lady who could well go and work for Cbeebies if it doesn’t work out at the library’ still just glares at me when I say warmly ‘Hello X, how are you?’

The other two were mad, will be on the stage one day, X2 and her little baby sister. Mad,WBOTSOD X2 sat right infront of me, close enough to be inhaling my exhaling breathes, her little sister is still at glazed eyes while focussing all her energy on sitting up stage and autistic X grabbed *her* instruments and went to sit on the bench while studiously ignoring all the people singing nursery rhymes for the full half an hour. Her Mum ignored her and sat joining in with the singing and actions. We then got another three children and their mum join us 10 minutes late as they’d been stuck at the railway crossing so ended with 6 children and 3 adults. Not that you’d have known it as mine was the only audible voice again. I tried engaging the new arrivals with ‘Old McDonald’ asking them what animals live on a farm, noting one of the girls was dressed in pink so asking what pink animal might live on a farm. The only response was from M,WBOTSOD girl who stood right in front of me shouting ‘I know! I know what animals live on a farm! Ask me! ASK ME!!!’ so I did and got ‘Goat!’ in response. ‘And what noise do goats make?’ I asked and was told ‘Goat!’ again.

We ended up singing ‘with a goat, goat here, a goat, goat there…’ etc just because I was getting bored. Then MWBOTSOD girl got hold of my list of songs and started pointing to the one she wanted next. For some random reason I have ‘one finger, one thumb’ on there and she was adamant that she knew that and wanted to sing it. So we did. Well actually no, I did, and did all the actions, getting right the way through to ‘one finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, one nod of the head, stand up, sit down, keep moving’ while everyone else just watched. I made them all clap me at the end for my one woman show, drifted off briefly into a Simon Cowell fantasy again, collected up my instruments and was most pleased to note that I’ll be away for the next Rhyme Time and there is only one more after that before we break for the summer. My colleagues had very much enjoyed this week’s Nicola Goddard show, particularly my tambourine shaking during Grand Old Duke of York which they said was reminscent of the Mamas and the Papas, so we spent some time harmonising about when they were up they were really, really, like up and when they were down they were oh so very low, low down. I’m planning to do have summer holiday themed Rhyme time for the last one before the summer break so that at least if it is me all on my own singing I can have some fun with it and not just have to sing Twinkle, Twinkle all by myself again. Actually I think I might bring D&S along with me that morning, they’ll sing and play instruments with me 😆

The rest of my workday was all pretty run of the mill stuff and when it got to ten to six I got kicked out early to go home and get green :).

Ady had gotten home around lunchtime and so the kids had eaten and were ready for Operation Fancy Dress. Having had a great time at the Alice in Wonderland Gala event at the local cinema we’d booked for Shrek Forever After Gala Event. At Alice there had been a huge turn out of fancy dressed children and adults. Davies had beaten off stiff competition to win and both children had said Ady and I should have dressed up too. So we decided to for this event. The brief was to dress as your favourite character from Shrek or another fairy tale. Ady and I felt our physiques lent us perfectly to Shrek and Fiona as ogres so that was us sorted. After some debate Scarlett said she’d go as Puss in Boots and Davies as ‘Gingie’. A charity shop find of a walking stick, some end of roll fabric, scraps from my own material stash and face paints later Davies was indeed Gingie . Scarlett became Puss with material from a cheap fleece blanket, hair tied into ear shapes, the same hat that served as the Hatter’s for Alice, the boots she wears for Badgers and a sword from a Captain Hook outfit. The feather was fashioned from yellow paper. Ady wore his own trousers, belt and shoes, a top of mine, a waistcoat I made from offcuts of Davies’ outfit and lashings of green facepaint. I wore a green sundress from the cheap shop (that I will wear again), more face paint and a tiara from the pound shop!

Suitably Shreked up we headed into town and fortunately found a parking space right outside the theatre. They had costume characters of Shrek and Fiona and a real live donkey from a local farm there. We quickly realised nowhere near as many people had come in fancy dress, and NO adults at all. We collected our drinks and boxes of cakes (ginger bread man, some chocolate mice, cupcakes etc) and went to our seats. They had laid on face painting, nail art and manipulated photos but the queues were pretty big so we sat and chatted to people instead. The photographer and the manager of the theatre came and found us and asked if we’d go back downstairs and have some photos taken with the donkey. We agreed so trailed back down again to the street, had loads of photos taken with the donkey and a load more infront of the theatre which they got our permission to use as publicity photos.

Back inside it was time for the fancy dress competition. We’d already deduced there was not much in the way of competition and sure enough Ady and I won (jointly, once they’d ascertained we were together), two very small children (one dressed as Shrek and the other as Puss) won and Scarlett won. There had been some confusion and actually the real winner was Davies but the whispered deliberations from the judges to crown the ‘gingerbread man’ had been misunderstood by the man with the microphone and Scarlett got it instead. Which was fine as Ady and I gave Davies our goody bag and they all contained the same thing anyway – a gingerbread cookie cutter, keyring with film cell from the Shrek film, bag of sweets, Shrek ears, voucher for two free cinema tickets. Links to follow of coverage in local paper / theatre website.

The film itself was pretty good we thought. Plenty of funny, sad, exciting, tense and poignant moments. The 3D is pretty good too. Scarlett was flagging rather by the end, I think she’d had quite a bit of sun during the day, not enough to drink and by 1030pm was tired and thirsty – must remember to take water to the cinema next time. But she snuggled up with me and really enjoyed the evening. Back home the kids went off to bed having been wiped clean of fancy dress faces and Ady and I enjoyed the curry he’d put in the slow cooker earlier in the afternoon.

I’d arranged to meet Julie at PYO this afternoon. Somewhere along the way I managed to invite lots of other people and collect Tasha, Toby and Vinnie to bring with us. In the end we only had one other attendee – Bid & boys who cycled there and arrived pretty much simultaneously to us.

We caught the tractor up to the furthest picking for today which was strawberries, apparently 1/2 mile from the entrance or as Bid christened it ‘weigh out shack’ which pleased me 🙂

Davies, Scarlett, Archie, Eliot and Toby all get one well knowing each other all from various places as well as as a group. Vinnie hung out with Tasha, Bid and I and we set up camp amid the strawberries. Tasha and Bid loosely know each other too, both from Home Ed contacts and Circus Skills and because Bid is doing some art work for the Empty Shops Initiative that Tasha is involved in. We had very interesting and diverse conversations and did some weaving as Bid had brought some hemp strong, cardboard blocks and scissors so we created woven tablets of random things we could collect from strawberry fields. Tasha and I had left our lunch in my car so we caught the tractor back to the car park, realised I’d left my car keys back up at the field so stayed on and I jumped off the tractor, ran ahead of it to the next stop, grabbing my keys as I went and jumped back on. This inspired a ‘jumping on the moving tractor game’ for the children which enjoyed at length before the tractor driver told them off.

Tasha and I walked back to the others with lunch and carried on sitting in the sunshine eating our fill of strawberries. Tasha had come over all Domestic Goddess and made bread rolls, coleslaw and hummous all before we came out which was rather impressive. The kids had just been told off for playing in a wheat field when Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna arrived.

Julie and I had a good catch up and then Tarly needed the loo. It’s quite a walk to the toilets – they have some over by a field used for car boots sales at the weekend and some more in a cafe by the farm shop, both a good 10 minute walk. Tarly and I chose the car boot sale field loos and walked briskly there and then back through the irrigation spray which was very refreshing :).

The others had moved on to pea picking by then so I hung out with Julie to pick peas. It was getting on for 4pm by then: Julie had to get Jack to the dentist, Bid and boys needed to tackle their cycle ride home and Tasha and I were all fruit & veg picked out. I walked back with Bid chatting about Scotland, camping and plans for the rest of the summer. We’d been there for 5 hours, eaten our fill of strawberries and I just bought £1.50 worth of peas – I don’t feel bad as we have often spent loads of money there and last time we visited I bought a sack of potatoes in the farm shop that were all rotten so they owed me those free strawberries ;).

Scarlett pressganged Tasha into inviting us in to see their kittens – four weeks old and very, very cute. So we had half an hour of kitten worship for Tarly and me. Then home.

I’d taken braised mince out of the freezer for dinner tonight knowing it would force me into pasta making when we got home. So we checked the quails – still just 3 eggs hatched, checked the chicks – 2 hatched, one still not, washed our hands and made batches of pasta dough. I read out the recipe and Davies and Scarlett each made a 100g flour / 1 normal egg (so 2 of our bantam eggs) amounts – I made double ready for Ady and I later. While that was resting they both made a batch of bread dough – one for pizza /garlic bread base (garlic bread to go with Ady and my dinner tonight, pizza for the kids’ tea tomorrow night) and one for a loaf of bread which I cooked later for everyone’s lunch tomorrow.

Then we rolled the pasta out and cut it up. Scarlett went for fairly random shapes, Davies copied me and went for long and thin. Ady arrived home while we were at this stage. The kids both cooked their pasta, checked to see when it was done and I drained it for them. Davies had just butter on his, Tarly had grated cheese and they both emptied their bowls and proclaimed it ‘best pasta ever!’. They both recited the recipe for me and said they could make it again :). They are learning so much from this cooking exercise. I have learnt we need a second rolling pin ;). I read a couple of chapters of Alone… to them while they ate.

We transfered the quails into a brooder, Ady had brought home chick crumb for them so they are installed under a heat lamp and are Very Rowdy Indeed. We’ll give the other four eggs in the ‘bator til the end of tomorrow before turning it off and throwing them out. The third egg under the hens now contained a dead chick 🙁 Scarlett broke it open and it had not managed to take in the egg yolk properly so it’s stomach was a big bubble but it seemed otherwise fully formed. Frankly if an egg doesn’t hatch under a hen it has no chance as they are far more able at intervening than a human will ever be so that was just a life not meant to be. Scarlett and Ady buried it in the garden. The other two chicks are doing really well out there so far though and the three quail seem to be thriving.

I finished sewing waistcoats, tails and gumdrop buttons onto various costumes so they are all ready for tomorrow night, had a bath, made garlic bread and cooked dinner for Ady and I and baked the loaf the kids had made earlier. Ady watered the garden, painted Davies’ walking stick with white paint ready for Davies to paint a red stripe on tomorrow to be a candy cane and put the bins out. Suddenly it was 1030pm, so a Nic o’clock dinner again.

We watched Up In the Air – a George Clooney film which I really enjoyed and thanks to yet more fresh air and exercise D&S seemed to get to sleep pretty quick once again.

I worked this morning. Bid was having Davies and Scarlett and being car-less and living right next to the beach the plan was to drop them off with him. I’d allowed 45 minutes which given it’s about 3 miles away was plenty of time to get there and back but I’d not factored in a traffic jam down to the coast road, two sets of temporary lights and the just-before-9am-traffic. So when we were still sitting waiting to get on to the coast road at 9.05am with me needing to have dropped them off and driven all the way back to work again I was getting quite stressy. I resolved this by shouting ‘I’M GOING TO BE LATE FOR WOOOOOOOORK!!!’ regularly, drowning out Chris Evans on the radio, making Davies and Scarlett laugh and people in neighbouring cars with their windows down jump. As a strategy it seemed to work though as I was only a couple of minutes late and the amusing anecdote charmed my manager into laughing rather than frowing at me once I did arrive at work.

It was a bit of a free-for-all at work this morning. Brenda, the chief librarian was in charge, back off two weeks holiday and with a very distracted, not quite present air about her. I manned the desk for 2 hours and was on the counter for an hour so I did just fine out of the deal but the rest of the staff were less impressed with their duties. I was planning to talk to Brenda about career breaks today but she clearly had other things on her mind so I left it. I was telling a colleague about a job I worked at for 10 days before they asked me to leave and some of the events leading up to it and realised an event which felt huge at the time has now been consigned to the status of ‘an amusing story’. I was in Bhs with the kids yesterday which was another job I loathed and was terribly miserable at for quite a long time before leaving and had avoided going in there for years but wondering round yesterday realised I didn’t have the tight chest, scared feeling walking round there any more, nearly 11 years after I left. Most of the time I don’t feel like I’ve changed or grown up at all but then I happen upon a memory that shows me I have. Generally this is followed up by me doing something very juvenille to balance the feeling of course 😆

I nipped home to change into my jeans, check on the chicks (two hatched, one egg with pips so hopefully will hatch over night) and the quails eggs in the incubator which were due to hatch yesterday / today – nothing happening. Drove to the beach and walked along to find Bid and all the children. The four children have been pairing off more often these days, particularly on the beach as Tarly and Eliot tend to go nature watching, while Davies and Archie do some sort of Harry Potter / Star Wars game. Bid and I chatted and caught up on each others news and enjoyed sitting right at the edge of the sea coming in :).

We had a couple of hours and then I was getting hungry and so were all the kids, we had Badgers to get to and both Davies and Scarlett had big bleeding scrapes on legs/ knees / ankles which neither of them seemed too bothered by but I wanted to clean up and get a look at (neither that bad, both from scrapes clambering over rocks and barnacle encrusted wood). We all walked back together as I had parked outside their flat, said our goodbyes and we headed for home.

We ate, the kids got cleaned up and changed and we went to Badgers. It was Davies’ last ever. I just looked up his first ever. He’s completed 12 badgers which makes him a Super Badger, he’s been a Follow Me Badger for several terms, been Badger of the Month at least twice, marched in several Remembrance Day parades and laid the wreath last year, had his first big away from home experience last year at Badger camp and generally gotten a heck of a lot out of his time there. I feel quite sad he will miss the last two weeks of term, particularly presentation night and should possibly have borne it in mind when holiday planning given Scottish schools have broken up already so we won’t necessarily be avoiding school holidays where we’ll be, but Julie has asked if he will go along to presentation night in December and have it all awarded then, which we will. She did call him up to say goodbye, thanks for all the commitment over the last 4 plus years and wish him well.

I had a fairly crap time there – we did an exercise with blindfolds where the Badgers worked in pairs with one blindfolded leading the other around the building, then an obstacle course was set up and they had to guide each other round it with verbal instructions only. Except to set it up they shut all of the Badgers in the coffee room with nothing to do except wait, supervised by me. I HATE that, have no skills to keep a room full of 12 rowdy 5-10 year olds, at least two with SEN under control nor any desire to do so really. I tried a few tactics, failed quite miserably and sort of gave up. 🙁 I’m sure the answer is to have a few ideas of things to talk about / games to play / entertaining plans to pull from my sleeve like a magician in such times but I don’t and I am happy enough with the skills I do have in life not to feel a failure in not managing to be great with kids. Grrr.

Still, that’s it til September now and with current plans afoot we’ll only have one term left anyway. Davies will try cadets in September. My personal prediction is he won’t like it, which is fine, I think he has gotten loads out of Badgers but am quite happy for him to leave it at that but I will support and encourage him in giving it a good go and then respect whatever decision he comes to after that. Tarly will have gotten her Gold paw by the end of this year leaving her just 3 more badges to do to get Super Badger so even if we do go away for a year she will potentially be able to pick up when we come back and finish it too, if she decides she wants to.

Back home again for a late dinner for the kids, Ady arrived a few minutes after us. I spent some time sewing bits onto Davies’ costume and then read some Alone on a wide, wide sea. At bedtime we realised 3 quail had hatched so all cooed over them for a while (soooo tiny!) and for once an early start, sea air, running around for 10 hours of the day meant they fell asleep fairly quickly. Ady and I had dinner, watched Outnumbered Christmas Special on dvd from the library and now I’m learning quickly about rearing quail before bed.

We started the day with nothing planned other than swimming later this afternoon. But I was fretting about not having a dress for being Fiona in and had realised from my brief foray into dressmaking yesterday that a proper garment for me to wear is way beyond me – fleece puss in boots costumes no problem, dress that will hold up to being worn by me for 3 hours? Not so sure.

I went out to check on the chickens and ducks, heard a tweeting from the henhouse and on investigation found a very fluffy cute day old chick nestled under the five or six broody hens in there :). We all cooed over it for a while, the kids decided it will be called ‘Harry’ and we came back indoor again. Davies wanted to ring Ady to tell him and I realised that the rather hi-tech phone Davies has been using is far above and beyond what he needs. Scarlett’s phone managed to go through the washing machine and is now deceased – which offered a cautionary tale to both Scarlett and I ;). So I decided to look at cheap handsets for them both that they won’t be scared of pressing buttons on, I won’t give a monkeys about getting lost or kept in a pocket whilst paddling in the sea or any of the other likely fates for a phone in the care of a 7year old! I feel I should qualify the fact they have phones at all at this point by saying they have them not because they particularly want them but because it gives me confidence to let them roam knowing they are contactable when still out of sight / hearing range. Neither of them know any phone numbers (other than 999) or how to do much more than ring the numbers programmed into them or answer a phone call when it rings.

So we did the rounds of Asda (nothing – handset or Fiona dress), Matalan (Fiona dress ditto), Terrible Tesco (nowt), charity shops and Peacocks in Portslade (not a thing) and finished at Sainsburys which had no handsets or dresses but we did stock up on food for lunch, dinner and cereals. We got a handset from Terrible Tescos but realised on getting it home it was a T-Mobile specific handset so Tarly’s existing, still has nearly a tenners worth of credit and survived the washing machine even though the phone didn’t SIM card won’t work in it. Fixed that by putting credit on the T mobile card it came with and when Davies runs out of credit he can have that SIM card in his and use that credit.

Home for lunch, another chick had been born so we cooed over that, ate, I read and agonised further over lack of Fiona-dress. Eventually we left early enough for swimming to nip into town first when I found a sundress and shrug which will be perfect to be Fiona in and I will actually wear afterwards. Hurrah :).

Swimming was very hot. I didn’t go in and sat with a book sweltering while the kids had their lessons – very good both of them.

Back home we finished off the sourdough starter and made it into a loaf. I cooked it tonight while I was doing dinner and it looks lovely. We’ve set aside some of the starter for the next loaf if everyone likes the taste. The loaf looks fantastic and smells divine, hoping it lives up to itself when we try it tomorrow. D&S have LOVED breeding wild yeasts though and really enjoyed making bread (soda bread, commercial yeast and now their own sourdough yeast) and pizza dough. Next is home made pasta and pastry 🙂 . Sadly I don’t think we’ve said goodbye to supermarket sliced white just yet but at least they know what the decent stuff is, can recall the ingredients, know what it should look like at each stage and understand the pros and cons of processed verus home made. That puts them infront of plenty of adults I know.

Ady came home, the kids had tea, they both did some drawing, I read some Alone on a wide, wide sea, they went to bed, came back out of their rooms again, went to bed (repeat x 23). And that’s all I have to say about that.

Everyone had a lie in this morning, including Ady who went to the dentist first thing. The rest of us had breakfast and debated what to do with the day. I realised we only have today and tomorrow free before Friday when we are off to a Shrek gala event and will need fancy dress. Ady and I had already decided to go as Shrek and Fiona. Scarlett had planned to go as Aslan (the brief is your favourite Shrek character or character from a fairy tale) but after some discussion agreed to go as Puss in Boots. Davies had decided to be Gingerbread Man so the hunt was on for material and accessories.

We headed to Shoreham where there are several charity shops for first port of call and then a Dunelm Mill store which has a fabric department. The charity shop came up trumps for a walking stick for Davies to paint to look like Gingee’s candy cane walking stick for £1.99 and we got end of roll and off cut and half price sale fabric in Dunelm Mill for the rest of their costumes and Ady’s.

Back home again for lunch, I read Ice Age 2 the movie storybook to Scarlett as part of her Chatterbooks ‘homework’ and then we went into Lancing for a quick look round the charity shops before going to the library. It was very hot and we were quite early so we set up and then had a drink in the staffroom. Russell arrived and we had a catch up chat before the children started arriving. It was the last session today and we did book and film reviews with everyone talking about the book and dvd pairings they’d taken home 2 weeks ago, which they prefered and what was the same and different with both. 8 of the children prefered the dvds, we’ve had a less reading-keen group this time for sure.

I then read ‘Ted’ which I’d typed out so there could be no peeking at the illustrations. Everyone listened and then I tasked them with drawing pictures of the characters and using some storyboard book to film worksheets to plan scenes for a film adaptation.

We did a spiel about the Summer Reading Challenge, compared notes on what we thought Ted looked like before I brought out the actual book so we could see the illustrations and then got the kids to fill out feedback sheets on the sessions. We got some great feedback and several parents gave us some very positive feedback too. I’m glad we did it again, but slightly relieved it’s over. I’ve learned more again from doing it a second time and although I’m not sure Davies and Scarlett got so much from the actual sessions this time the ‘compare and contrast’ element alone has been interesting for them, not to mention being party to all the post-mortem conversations with me and the other staff.

Back home again I made Davies’ Gingerbread man costume. It needs some adornment hand sewn on it now which I’ll do tomorrow and we’ll need to paint his face to go along with it but I think it will look pretty good. He is pleased with it :).

I made their tea and Ady arrived home. I then did Scarlett’s costume which proved far easier and then Ady went to water the allotment while I got the kids trying the costumes on at each stage. Tarly needs a belt and a yellow feather for her hat and will need face painting too – oh and her tail sewn on! Tomorrow I’ll finish their costumes off, check our face paint supplies, run up a tunic and waistcoat for Ady and work out just what I am going to wear!

The kids and I tidied up – having been distracted by a TV show with Caroline Quentin, and I read several chapters of Alone on a wide, wide sea. Ady arrived home, the kids went to bed and we had dinner. Not at all sure quite how it got so late but dressmaking beckons in the morning so I really should go to bed.

Anything solar powered is onto a bit of a winner at the moment :).

I’m on the mailing list for Chichester Harbour Conservancy and they have loads of cool events happening year round but we never seem to be around to get to many of them. This weekend other than me working yesterday morning we had nothing planned though so when an email came through earlier in the week about the solar powered boat trips I rang up and booked it for today.

Everyone struggled to get up this morning but we did manage to get out the house for our planned time of 930am and found the car park and were at the jetty at the appointed time despite hitting some serious traffic as most of West Sussex seemed to be heading to the Witterings for the day.

The Solar Heritage boat was one of three built in Switzerland for an Alternative Technology event and then sold off. One is in New York in a museum and one is here in Chichester and is used for education, harbour trips and to raise awareness of alternative technologies. It was sailed across the Atlantic from New York to the UK and has been modified back since to hold 60 people on a half-open sided deck. The engine is all but silent, the roof is covered with solar panels and it is incredibly manouverable. Due to design of the boat not only does it not use fuel to run it also creates very few waves which is good for wildlife and does not contribute to coastal erosion by creating waves.

Various events are run using the boat and today we did a Harbour tour to Chichester Marina and then a 3 mile walk back to Itchinor again. Davies and Scarlett were the only children on boat (and actually I was the next youngest person after them) and the commentary from the skipper was very much geared to his audience so covered lots of pointing out historical interest facts about the harbour and coast. There was some talk about wildlife but there is a specific wildlife tour too which might have been more interesting although this was certainly not boring and we all enjoyed it.

I had thought the walk back was more ‘guided’ than it actually was and that we’d have more pointed out to us but it turned out to be one leader at the front of the group keeping pace with the fastest walkers, one at the back with the slowest and the main idea being that they ensured we found our way back to our cars. As it happened this was perfect and the four of us found our pace somewhere in the middle of the group and walked along chatting and spotting things as we went. It was public footpath all the way, mostly hugging the coast, past some very gorgeous, very expensive houses, through some fields (one of which we saw a red deer in) and finally along through the marina. We did the walk in under an hour and given I’d been expecting a bit of moaning for 3 miles in such heat (it was by now 1pm) it was very nice and noone complained at all :). We bought ice creams and sat watching the boats coming and going. It was a really nice trip and one of the things on my personal list of ‘we really must do that one day…’ things so I’m really pleased to have ticked it off :).

Back home again some people watched football, some played with chickens and ducks, some played with geomags and some made popcorn. I read my book (finished it tonight, the new Lionel Shriver, Very Good), we tried a rather unsuccessful roast dinner on the barbecue in an attempt to keep the kitchen cooler by not using the oven. The potatoes ended up rather well done and the beef was too rare for everyone but Ady. Then Ady got distracted by something, is crap at multitasking so had got me to start cooking vegetables and getting everything ready to serve up before he was ready with his bits. Grr.

We all ate together and watched Willy Wonka (the original, think it might be Charlie and the chocolate factoy actually, that one) which was nice and mellow. More chicken & duck stuff, the kids and I added to our sourdough which is looking good – even better they caught the bit of River Cottage on tv tonight where they make it and heard about someone having the same sourdough starter for 13 years.

We spent some time talking about our trip to Scotland and researching dolphin watching trips, Loch Ness and other local attractions.

Work for me this morning. And getting up was a shame as I was having a very delicious dream ;).

I enjoyed a good bitch at work about the state of the library service. All public sector workers have been sent a letter from Dave & Nick asking for radical ideas for cost cutting so that set us all off in ‘If I ruled the world…’ type ponderings. I spent some time on an NHS website training module -I think West Sussex’s long term vision is for ‘Service Centres’ offering library service, health care, a place to report pot holes, get on the council housing list, meet your MP and pay your council tax. I imagine this is phase one of making us all multi-skilled enough to be the one to boot the computers up of a morning ;).

At home everyone was in the garden with various chickens and ducks eating lunch cooked on the barbecue. I joined in with the hanging out in the garden and then we went to Halfords to get roof bars. We picked up a roof box courtesy of Ady’s workmate Fergie who seems to have taken on the role as our dealer for pretty much anything we want / need. So we have a roof box for £30 complete with a set of roof bars which don’t fit either of our cars but will probably ebay to cover the cost of buying the box :). Having tried cheapo bars we eventually went for Thule as the price difference between halfway decent and branded was very little and we figure we can ebay them afterwards too if we end up with a vehicle they don’t fit.

We fitted the bars in the car park to check we could, nice and easy :), nipped into Sainsburys and came home and fitted the roof box on. We’ll leave it on for tomorrow and check how the car drives with it attached.

Scarlett played with the chickens and ducks, Davies watched a HP film I’d brought home and Ady and I sat in the garden eating ice creams and hatching plans for next year. Then Ady cooked the kids tea on the barbecue, Davies and I watched Doctor Who, the kids had showers and eventually they went to bed. Not at all sure they are actually asleep yet mind you.

Ady and I spent some time perusing the WWOOF website getting all excited at various listings. At one point after I’d read out another listing of people living with no mains electricity, rearing animals to eat, keeping bees and making their own cheese and looking for people to come along and join them for a week and help work on their land Ady said ‘it all sounds too good to be true’ and I had to remind him that we are splinter group minority weirdos and most people would be horrified at the very idea of compost loos and time spent weeding in exchange for two meals a day! 😆

We had a very late dinner (quel surprise!) and were both rather worse the wear for beverages when first Scarlett and then Davies about 15 minutes later came to complain of sore fingers. One finger, unrelated injuries – I think Tarly’s is a paper cut, Davies seems to have had something stuck under a nail. Ady offered a tub of Sudocrem with an instruction to ‘stick your finger in that and waggle it about lots’. I suspect not only would we not get medical qualifications we often would fail basic parenting tests too! 😆

In other news I strained and bottled my elderflower cordial from yesterday and it is divine – Spring in a glass :). I also bottled my first attempt at home brew wine and the kids and I noted bubbles in our sourdough yeast starter and have added more flour and water ready for tomorrow’s inspection of it.

It’s 1am and I strongly suspect the only Goddard asleep is Ady but as we have to be up in the morning early-ish I am off to join him. I’ve left the Sudocrem out incase the children need it while we’re asleep…

Thursday Early up for one and all as D&S were off to work with Ady for the day. Once they’d all gone I spent some time researching roof bars on the internet and looking into hiring them. Turns out that’s not cost effective :(.

I had a good day at work. I talked to my boss about career breaks and West Sussex County Council does offer career breaks between 3 and 12 months, unpaid but with guaranteed return to work, no loss of benefits or break in service. For employees with 5 years plus service. I will be four years in December :(. She did say it was worth talking to the head librarian to see if they would be prepared to extend that deal to me though particularly as all vacancies are currently being filled with 12 months contracts only anyway. I will talk to her next time I see her. It would certainly not be make or break and I strongly suspect that the last thing I’d want to do is return to 11 hours a week at the library but it would make sense to have it as a back up option and be risking even less with a year out.

Other than that it was a normal day really, perfectly enjoyable but with a feeling of biding time.

Ady and the kids beat me home having had a good day. D&S do have to spent a fair whack of time sitting in the car while Ady nips into shops when they go out with him for the day but they have DSs and get to have lunch out so it’s not all bad.

Ady and I chatted in the garden for a while before Scarlett and I headed up to the allotment for some watering. We had a water fight with the hose pipe which left us both soaked but was very funny, Tarly harvested some peas and we both gathered loads of elderflowers from the tree at the end of out plot – some with me lifting Tarly up while she held loppers to get to high up flowers. Health and Safety is certainly not my forte even if it is Ady’s ;). We got quite a few heads from there and then had a walk up and down the lane leading to the allotments to get more so came home with quite a bagful.

A quick stop at CoOp and then home. It was getting late and an early morning start meant they were both asleep fairly early (for them) so no penguin suits here.

Friday Was far more back to form with the kids and I scrambling out of bed at the last possible moment, shovelling down breakfast, frantically packing lunch and heading out of the door still yelling at each other. We were late but it didn’t seem to matter too much :).

It was the last of the four sessions of Bookclub Crafts for the library display and today was papier mache moon surface with crater making. It was at Mel’s house which is rather like our own garden with plenty of veg growing, chickens and ducks along with added dog and rabbits. I enjoyed catching up with friends and chatting, Scarlett enjoyed the same with added papier mache-ing and once Davies had gotten over himself and his rather annoying shunning of friends asking him to play in favour of hanging round me he did the same too. I had a chat with him on the way home about it. I think he is struggling with Scarlett finding her feet with that group and not needing him and him being slightly lost as an indivdual rather than half of a pair, which is understandable and if he was being ignored then I would understand his quietness but he is being actively asked to play by really nice, same age as him kids he knows and likes and rejecting them. I suspect they have a finite number of asks before they get pissed off and stop bothering and I think he now understands that too.

We left there and headed for home debating what to bake. Davies is loving the idea of being able to sort food out for himself and Scarlett has always liked being in the kitchen but I am really chuffed at their enthusiasm levels for this whole idea.

Friday night is Pizza night in our house so having explained that pizza dough is the *exact* same recipe as a loaf of bread, just dealt with and cooked slightly differently Davies took on pizza dough and Tarly the loaf. I read out the recipe and they did all the weighing, measuring, mixing and kneading. I got them to see what a teaspoon of salt or yeast looked like in their hands and then test themselves to see how accurate they were without measures (similar to the ‘pour a shot’ competition the barmen in my favourite bar did on my 18th (which we had to pretend was my 21st given I’d been a regular for so long :lol:)) – they clearly have their mothers knack of measuring ‘by eye’ and were pretty spot on. I know baking is a science and weighing is important but I do most of my cooking by eye and taste rather than weights and measures and if I can get them thinking that way of instinct and an appreciation of just what 4oz / a teaspoon / 300g of an ingredient looks they are far less likely to mis-read a recipe and get it wrong or be able to memorise recipes and know at each stage whether it looks right or not.

While they did that I made some elderflower cordial which is resting in the pan for 24 hours but I know from dipping and licking a finger is divine :).

Ady arrived home and while we were waiting for proving to happen Davies watched some Harry Potter and Scarlett spent some time with the ducks.

Davies and I tried to make some homemade tomatoe sauce for the pizza but his hand slipped while adding oil which made it too liquid to use for that. He also declared it too garlicky but said he’d like to try making it again for next time. I’ve frozen it to use as a pasta sauce base instead. Davies shaped the 3 pizza bases, spread his with tomato puree and cheese and put it in the oven while Tarly shaped her bread and cooked it doing the relevant checks. Both really proud of themselves and justifiably so. Tarly made a gorgeous loaf of bread with no real help which is something plenty of adults couldn’t manage. While that was cooking we also set off some sourdough starter to see if we can breed our own yeast to try.

The kids had tea, Ady and I syphoned off my home brew wine which is now ready to be bottled and tastes pretty good if just a bit like cheap, supermarket own brand wine. I have plans for more flavourful and less chemically-enhanced recipes next but need to collect some wine bottles to store it.

We read a couple of chapters of ‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’ which we are really enjoying and then it was bedtime for small people. I finished off pizza prep and cooking for Ady and I, have joined WWOOF and should probably be dressed as a penguin by now as I have work in the morning.

Dentist for me and the kids this morning for our six monthly checkup. It would have been for Ady too but he is currently having some sort of dental issues which may or may not need expensive treatment and I am keeping out of so he has his own appointments for the next couple of weeks. Our dentist has changed and the new woman is lovely (as was the old one actually). I went first and was fine, she said I have a little staining from tea drinking, which normally gets cleaned off as part of the check up appointment but now is considered cosmetic rather than medical and so I would need to see a hygienist and pay privately for – I will invest in some whitening toothpaste instead 😉 . Davies was fine, a bit of plaque picked up and some hints on where to be concentrating on brushing, a bit of a cross bite issue potentially although I suspect that is him not biting where he normally does as I know I never seem to bite properly when asked to consciously do it. I have been aware of him overbiting his lips with his two new front teeth though which might become an issue. Both kids seem likely to have overcrowded mouths and possibly be candidates for braces in the future which is a surprise as no one in my family has ever needed anything like that. Mum has had lots of dental issues and has false teeth on the top but that is due to gum disease rather than tooth issues. Ady’s teeth however are all over the place and both Davies and Scarlett look like they have his teeth patterns rather than mine :(. Something to put off thinking about for now though.

Scarlett had a small patch of decay on a back tooth last time and this time it had gotten worse (which I knew) so it was drilled out and some fluoride cement put in, apparently not technically a filling but it looked a lot like one to me. She was a star, sat through the whole thing including X rays (to check it has not gone through to the adult tooth underneath) and had more cement put thinly on the other back tooth too. We walked home again talking about X rays and why we all had to leave the room while Scarlett had it done.

We were home with a full couple of hours before we needed to be out again so I got the River Cottage Family Cookbook out and told the kids I wanted to start reading it to them. I explained that if we go WWOOFing then we will need to be eating together rather than in shifts as we do now, there will be no freezer therefore no chicken nuggets and potatoe waffles and that I consider part of my job as their parent to teach them how to cook, what is healthy and needed in their diet and show them how to prepare meals. Tarly has always enjoyed baking and Davies has been showing a real interest in cooking his own food lately so it seemed the right time.

So we read the introduction which talks about how everyone should understand where their food comes from and basic, raw ingredients rather than packets of processed food. We read about flour and bread and as I had hoped both the kids were imediately asking if we could bake bread. I explained we hadn’t enough time before lunch to make yeast bread but could manage soda bread and prepare a yeast loaf for later for dinner too.

So, to the kitchen! I read out the recipe, reached high up things and nominally supervised the oven but between them they made a loaf of soda bread and then the dough for a normal loaf. This involved weighing, mixing, kneading, melting and so on, all the time referring to RCFCB for the ‘science bit’ behind it all. We talked about how our bread had 6 ingredients and we knew where they all came from and read the ingredients list on a loaf of supermarket white sliced bread which had many more, most of which we’d never heard of or sounded quite scary. We left the dough to rise, brought out the baked soda bread to cool and cleared up the kitchen.

Sofa bread for lunch was lovely :). The chickens and ducks got fed the remainder of the sliced white supermarket loaf 😉 .

Then we collected together swimsuits and towels and change of clothing and headed off for Ali’s. We arrived before Freya to find a paddling pool being filled :). Unfortunately the styles of enjoying said paddling pool were not compatible between the three children, or indeed even any two of them at any one time. I got very bored, very quickly of micro managing D&S who got very bored of being so ‘ruled’ so it wasn’t quite the happy meet up with a not-seen-for-ages-friend we’d been hoping for. They did manage to have an overall nice time though, with the apparent highlight being dunked headfirst into the water for Davies and 22 bounces on the trampoline to cure a shallow-fresh water vampire bite to Scarlett. Can you tell I don’t just stick with a conventional ‘kiss it better’ routine 😆

Was very lovely for me to see Ali (and J) though and I really enjoyed sitting on the patio drinking ginger beer and eating ice lollies and chatting :).

I’d left anticipating heavy traffic and alllowing for it and possibly another 10 minutes later leaving might have demonstrated that but we were home in 20 minutes so called in home to bake the bread. It had risen beautifully, Davies kneaded it, Scarlett shaped it and between them they monitored it in the oven, turned it over and tapped it to check it sounded hollow before turning it out to cool. Then off to Badgers.

Next week is our last week, we will miss the final two which is a shame as it is the end for Davies so next week is his last ever Badgers. There is some debate about when he will get his Super Badger award having completed the 12 required badges but I think it will probably happen in December if he is happy to return to Badgers presentation night then to recieve it.

Badger was a little underplanned tonight with the theme being compasses. We talked a little about coordinates and directions and then went outside to practise. We are obviously lucky being within hearing distance of the beach at Badgers knowing we live on the south coast so therefore the sea is south. We did some running about to show different directions and then came back in for drinks. We played some quieter games indoors but it was clear if we didn’t have more on offer than games we were going to struggle so we took them back outside again for more games. Running around games were something I HATED as a child so even though D&S seem to quite enjoy them I don’t really like standing around supervising them so it was a not good night particularly for me. I don’t get anything out of herding a group of children really.

On the way home we played spot the elderflowers as we want to make some cordial (and maybe some wine) so were planning a route to harvest some later in the week. Ady was home so I dropped D&S off and nipped along to Co Op for some sausages for Ady and I and some tinned pasta for the kids which was what they’d requested to go with their home made loaf (baby steps! 😉 ). Davies offered to come and do it when I got home so he opened tins, tipped into pan and heated, cut and buttered bread etc while Tarly got drinks and cutlery sorted. Funnily enough the next thing to make is pasta so we’ll try and do that this week too.

No story as I was cooking dinner and the kids got caught up in a Simpsons episode instead but we did candle the quails eggs and discarded 5 of the 12 as empty giving us 7 potential hatchers. Been meaning to do that for days. I cooked a lovely toad in the hole which inadvertantly used up loads of eggs as in a 12 eggs recipe (six normally but I was using our bantam eggs which only count as half an egg each) egg number 10 was bad 🙁 It must have been either a found egg from the garden that had been part incubated or left in the sun or just old or very poor egg rotation in the kitchen on our part. It wasn’t 100% rotten but didn’t smell nice and with plenty more eggs I chucked the mix away and started again. So it was a 22 egg recipe in the end. Luckily we’re good for eggs ;).

I’ve been looking at campervans online tonight which are surprisingly cheaper than I realised :).

All the most important things in life :).

We slept in this morning and once we’d dealt with chickens and ducks and breakfast and I was sitting down with River Cottage family cookbook and debating yeast starters and home made bread when I got a text from Bid to ask if we were free today. We decided we were so arranged to meet him and the boys on the beach with picnic at lunchtime. Davies and Scarlett took the two injured hens round to the front garden for some grass grazing. One seems totally recovered today, the worst injured one is much better and all the swelling has gone down and the bruising come out so she has a spectacularly colourful neck and I think her sight is a bit compromised too as she was injured in the eye which was fully closed yesterday but it open today.

I threw together a picnic and grabbed swimming stuff and the collection card for a parcel which had been returned to the collection office yesterday as it was too big for our letter box. I called to the kids to put the hens back in the back and Davies brought one through fine but Scarlett managed to spook the other one (the colourful neck one) and she flapped up onto the garage roof. I tried to encourage her down and she flapped up onto the house roof :rolls: I figured if she could get up there she could get down again so got the kids loaded in the car. I then realised she was no longer on the roof so went to check and she was back in the henhouse looking a bit fraught but okay. She is one of our original bantams and I’m hoping she’ll recover but I imagine adventures like that won’t do her much good :(. On the plus side seperating the ducks seems to have been a winner – they are a bit quieter, the cockerels have calmed down and are quieter and although a couple of the hens flapped into the ducks area today but could flap back out again and escape. I’m quietly campaigning for keeping them for now on the basis that there is every chance all the birds will be rehomed in a few months although I’ve not told Tarly that yet. So fingers crossed the seperation continues to stop any problems.

This made us rather late so a quick dash to the post office for a parcel which delighted Scarlett (thanks again Alison :)), the petrol station which delighted my thirsty car and then to the beach. Bid and the boys were already down there. Davies and Archie headed off in one direction, Scarlett and Eliot stripped off and headed for the sea, Bid and I stayed put and chatted. We had a very lovely few hours soaking up the sun, chatting and catching up on each others news. D&A loved spending the whole time out of sight, wandering far from the rest of us and staying in touch by phone. S&E stayed in sight but far out of hearing range and once they’d tired of the sea they rockpooled, played games with digging sand and found all sorts of sea creatures including crabs and shrimps. It was all very perfect :).

We had to leave at 4pm to get to swimming lessons. Thanks to Circus last week and Davies arm the week before he’d missed the last two, Scarlett had missed the last one and thanks to a whole hosts of reasons including my allergic reaction I’d not been in the water for weeks. It was lovely after the heat of the beach to be in the cool of the pool. Scarlett had a good lesson and came and joined me doing lengths for a while and managed 3 in a row straight off – 100m – and a further 3 a bit later so a fairly speedy 200m from her :). Davies had a really good lesson too, didn’t mention his arm and was all happy because they’d been practising breast stroke which he enjoys. And me? I managed my 50 lengths in the hour which I was pretty chuffed about given the lack of swimming recently. My knees protested and are still a bit achey so I’ll know I did it in the morning probably but I’m pleased I’ve not lost the level I’d built up.

Back home the kids had an eclectic mix of things for dinner and then went back outside. Ady came home and we chatted about our respective days and plans ahead. Ady and Davies took some plants to two of the neighbours, both of whom were telling Ady how lovely it is to hear the ducks in the garden 😯 then the kids got ready for bed and I read a couple of chapters of ‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’.

A catch up on the news for Budget stuff, dinner, more planning chat and I drank cider rather than wine, while it’s still cheap :).

Since the blogpost outlining hopes and dreams the four of us have been talking and talking and talking. I’ve done some online research and looked at ideas such as Blackberry Farm Community (thank you Alison 🙂 ) and even contacted them (although I’ve not yet heard back), thought about what we would and wouldn’t do and what our personal ‘terms and conditions’ would be.

We do want our own front door, even if that is just a tent flap . I need to be able to yell at my kids, eat when I want, have bedtime when I decide and have a space that just belongs to us. That writes off shared living ideas.

We’re very cagey about throwing in our lot, financially and generally with people we don’t know. Intentional Communities sound wonderful things on paper and at best could provide a ready made extended family of like minded people all working together towards a common goal and building a small scale version of an ideal world. At worst you could end up tied to a group you don’t get on with, giving your all to a compromised dream. With so many reservations about the idea before we even start down that path I don’t think that is the answer for us.

Our actual dream isn’t financially possible. We can’t buy as even though we could probably sell our house and buy another property with land for a similar amount that leaves us with a mortgage to pay and household bills to meet, meaning one or both of us would need to work other than on our own land. We could sell the house and that would give us capital to rent somewhere short term but it would only last a couple of years and then what would we be left with?

So, we’ve been talking about what we think we want, the gaps in our knowledge of both skills involved and whether we’d really like it if that was our day in day out lifestyle. We’ve been looking at training courses to learn about rearing pigs, sheep, cows, slaughter and butchering, beekeeping and so on. All at high costs, all without the chance of practical application any time soon to keep the skills up to date and in use. Ady’s chief reservation every step of the way is coming off the property ladder. I understand his worries and whilst I am more flightly and would risk things Ady is more measured. Probably for the best really ;).

Which leads us to where we currently are. We need: practical experience in what we think we want to do, the chance to learn from experts or people already doing it, the opportunity to see that lifestyle – warts and all and decide if it is really for us. To hone our rather general plan of a ‘bit of everything’ to something more concrete. We need to know all the potential pitfalls, what does and doesn’t work for us, what could go wrong, whether we really do want to be sitting up all night on a snowy March evening lambing, whether milking a cow chaps my hands and chips my nails and I can live with that or not and so on.

And there is an answer… and it’s called WWOOFing. It’s what Caz and Bid did, both in this country and internationally. They had a different agenda and motivation to us but I think it could well be our next logical step. Basically it’s an organisation that costs £30 for membership which gives us access to farms, smallholdings, businesses, self-sufficient and eco-living people who want help on their land in exchange for board and learning and benefitting from their experience. You make your own arrangements direct with the hosts for how long you want to stay, when and what you can offer.

Ady and I read the first ten results on the ‘teaser’ section on the website, using the filter ‘families’ so hosts who are happy to take people with children. I got 187 hits so certainly plenty to choose from and we were excited by all of them – home educating families, talk of eco-living, various lifestock, people wanting WWOOFers who could help look after chickens, help run Forest Schools, assist in the sorts of projects we are interested in learning more about. It was like reading a list of dream hosts really :).

This morning I shared the idea with Davies and Scarlett who are equally as excited by the prospect of what we’re proposing so we have them on board and enthused.

So the plan: We join WWOOF and draw up a list of places we want to visit. This will be both a geographical and what we want to learn type wishlist. We might as well see as much of the UK as possible, on as sensible a route as possible and cover as many of our learning wants as possible. The aim is a full year of doing it in order to see the best and worst of weather, a full cycle of all the seasons, sowing, growing and harvest of crops, breeding, birth, rearing and killing of animals. I want to milk a cow, assist in lambing, learn about shearing, see piglets born, reared and eat the bacon so timing and planning to achieve all that will be quite a job.

From talking to Caz and Bid we know that having a campervan to enable you to live with your own space whilst on someone’s land is a good idea. My Sharan would not be the car to go travelling all round the country so it makes perfect sense to trade it in for a campervan (and add some money to it obviously – if it’s going to be ‘our home’ for a year then we need to invest as much as we can in it). We will rent the house out, which will (fingers crossed) pay the mortgage, make the monthly repayments to CCCS and possibly even give us a small income which would help cover running costs for the vehicle. We’ve rented the house out before, albeit five years ago now and it rented easily, brought in £775 a month even back then and was very smooth and straightforward, particularly with Dad just a mile away as first port of call for any issues tennants may have.

I would investigate staying on the library staff relief register which I think means I’d need to do a shift every 12 weeks or something. If we factored in a visit back to Sussex every 12 weeks that would bring in some extra cash. Ady will speak to his company about the possibility of some freelance mystery shop reports from around the country which he could do in a couple of hours and email in. I would also look into potentially writing about our experiences for a magazine or other avenue that might bring in some money too. All of that could cover any unexpected expenses or pay for time off as we’d still attempt to have some time camping with friends over the year.

So worst case scenario? We walk away from jobs we are not happy in anyway, discover we hate the whole idea of farming and self sufficiency and come back a year later to settle back into our house, find jobs and go back to our ordinary lives. We’ll have scratched the itch, answered our questions, had an adventure and an amazing experience, learnt new skills and had a great year together as a family and met lots of new people.

Best case scenario? Sky’s the limit really. I’m guessing we’ll have learnt enough to be credible employees in that area, have worked out precisely what we want, maybe have more equity in the house ready to sell and invest in our dream, realised what we can live without and what is really important to us.

House is safe, mortgage and debts still get paid, likely we could pick up the same or similar jobs we walked away from, we learn stuff, have a great adventure, spend lots of time together, probably get fitter and healthier, kids have a ball in the environments they crave.

So, timings. Ideally we’d save a bit of cash first. My car plus our final months salaries plus anything we can save should get us a campervan and put it on the road with tax, insurance etc. We need to get the house ready to let with any tarting up it needs, get chickens and ducked rehomed or long loaned out, make decisions about what gets put into storage, what gets sold / freecycled, what comes with us etc in terms of possessions and stuff. We need to plan our route, set up hosts, get our year organised. We have time away booked in July, September and December. It doesn’t make sense to go away at the start of winter when everything will be at it’s bleakest so we’re thinking maybe March, which gives us several months to plan, save, prepare. Winter will be the best time to buy a campervan, spring will be the right time to start a journey like this I think being the start of the farming year.

That’s it, as always up for debate and discussion and amending but for now the four of us are very excited at what seems like a real proper plan :).

A nice slow start to today, much needed after waking with alarms for at least the last five mornings in a row. I have all but given up fretting about the kids getting enough sleep figuring if they still have energy left at the end of each day to spend a couple of hours in their rooms quietly playing, drawing, listening to audiobooks etc even on days when we have woken them and dragged them reluctantly out of bed then they just don’t need the sleep. They are certainly not lacking in exercise, fresh air, general stimulation or anything else I can think of and never really seem to complain of feeling tired, walk miles when required, run rather than walk everywhere are just never asleep much before about 11pm no matter what we do during the day. But it’s still nice to sleep in until about 9ish when we get the chance ;).

This morning we were expecting a visit from Helen, Alex and Abbie, our friends who live on a boat. We’ve visited them a couple of times but this was their first time here. We had a bit of a tidy up and then Davies and Scarlett went out to play outside while I caught up on some emails. Our guests arrived and while I gave Helen a tour of the house before settling down with cups of tea the children went out to play with the chickens and ducks. Two of the hens (the oldest, original two actually) both had nasty injuries, one of them worse than the other with blood, bruising and swelling around their eyes and mouths. I put it down to pecking from the other hens but further investigation from Ady later has us attributing it to the ducks – more on that later.

The kids had a great time playing in the garden the whole time, watching a fledgling blackbird learning to fly, rescuing woodlice (not entirely sure what they were rescuing them from), creating a snail hotel and playing with the chickens and ducks. Helen and I had an equally lovely time chatting 🙂 .

We had lunch, the kids went back outside and finally they left and we headed into Lancing for Chatterbooks. We had another really good session – Storytelling this time. We talked about telling stories, the ways in which we can tell them, I showed a quick comic strip sketch of Little Red Riding Hood and we passed it round the group with everyone telling one picture worth of the story. Then I read Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig and Three Little Pigs and the Gingerbread Man. We split into three groups – first telling story by illustration, then by plasticine models, then by narrator and mime. As we only have 10 children I took the final part as twist in the tale and had to finish the story where the mime team left it. Cara worked with the drawing team which included our challenging, learning difficulties child, Scarlett was in the plasticine team and Davies in the mime team. We mixed them up so no sibling pairs or couples of friends were in groups together and they all worked really well. We told the story once as a group and then as some parents had arrived for collecting children we told it again for an audience. It was a good session :).

We came home and I did Davies and Scarlett’s tea. Ady arrived home and we realised the injuries to the hens were most likely duck induced where they had grabbed food from the them. The ducks are far bigger than the chickens, have been upsetting the balance and pecking order, making the cockerels more noisy and now it would seem have hurt two of the hens too. As the ducks are pretty noisy themselves and far bigger than I had hoped we have all but decided they have to go. They plan (as was always the back up plan) is for them to go to Tom’s Dad’s where there is a lovely big lake complete with islands in the middle for them to sleep, nest etc safe from predators. We would then think about incubating again this time with runner ducks eggs which are the breed I think would suit us best. Scarlett is understandably upset and we have not finished talking it all through just yet but for now have put up a divide between the ducks and chickens to ensure no further upset or injuries happen. Already the chickens seem calmer. The two injured ones should recover fairly quickly aslong as the other chickens don’t peck at their injuries or pick on them for being hurt. We gave them some time round the front on the lawn and they are both very perky and otherwise fine so we’ll see how they do over the next couple of days and hope we don’t need to seperate them from the others.

I went up to the allotment to water and while I was gone Davies and Scarlett talked Ady into a sleepover, so another late night for them. We had dinner and exciting chats about things, which it has gotten too late to share tonight but I will hopefully blog about tomorrow.

After a slightld disappointing Ardingly South of England Show this year (too pricey to get in, too commercial once you were in) we decided to give the Sussex Game and Country Show a go this year. In previous years we have always either been busy this weekend or assumed it will be a poorer relation to the SoES. Being Fathers Day I’d invited my parents to join us so after some card and gift giving at home and some packing up a picnic we collected them on our way and arrived just after 10am.

The Scouts were doing parking marshall duty with rather hilarious effect, really making a meal of the hand gestures and we were quite tempted just to sit in the car and enjoy their theatre but did make our way in. We were greeted with steam engines on one side and gun dog competitions on the other. We enjoyed looking at an organ for a while (and had a quick peek in the back at the workings)

and the different engines and their different uses before turning our attention to the gun dog trials. They had six different pens or ‘scurries’ to test various skills in dogs and people had brought along their dogs to test them. Some were incredibly, impressively good, others were rather amusingly not so good 😆

We joined the main arena and spent some time looking at the falconry birds of prey in their static display. Ady managed to bag a table next to the arena so he sat there with Davies while the rest of us chatted to the woman on the birds stand and found out what all her birds were, how she comes by them (captive breeders) and how they are trained. We joined Ady and Davies on the bench, got some coffees in and installed ourselves there for the next couple of hours to watch the constant entertainment laid on.

First we watched a gathering and display of Sussex Spaniels, a fairly rare and obviously local heritage breed of dogs. None of us (with the exception of Tarly) being particularly dog-people we found the rather over enthusiastic commentary far more entertaining than the actual dogs. Next up was a very interesting demonstration about long nets for catching rabbits for pest control (and eating of course :)) which we really enjoyed. The guy doing it was very funny, full of stories to tell, wisdom to impart and knowledge to share.

Scarlett was getting restless by then so while the others protected the table Mum and I went for a wander with her. The stalls surrounding the arena went farther back than I’d realised so we returned to the others with the intention of exploring further later all together. We declared it lunch time and tucked into our picnic while watching dog training in the arena.

Next came my favourite show of the day, the falconry. They invited anyone wanting a closer look into the arena so Davies, Scarlett and I went in and were mesmerised by the amazing displays of the birds swooping right over our heads, hovering above us and flying way out at top speed. Again the couple doing the display were expert showmen and put on a really entertaining show with lots of facts thrown in so we felt educated as well as entertained :).

I declared it ice-cream o’clock and got a round of 99s in to watch a very impressive display of stallions next. Two incredibly talented horsewomen (sisters) and their beautiful horses doing all sorts of amazing stunts, all introduced by another sister while their 12 year old brother joined in on his motorbike. They had the horses galloping while they dangled off them, lying down to play dead and getting back up again, all with a rider on their back, rearing up, marching and dancing, crossing raised platforms while the rider stood up on the horses back and the brother went under the horse on his motorbike – all very gasp-worthy :).

We watched the last display before the programme repeated itself of a man and his five sheepdogs herding a flock of geese all around. Again they called for audience participation so Davies and Scarlett went into the arena along with lots of other children to create live corales for the geese to be herded into. I found that display probably the most impressive just for the amount of training that had gone into the dogs, the relationship between the dogs and the owner and his own great skill at commanding them all and getting them working together. He had trained all of them to respond to different words for ‘left’ and ‘right’ so he could talk to one dog at a time – they included ‘fish’ and ‘chips’, ‘king’ and ‘queen’, ‘powder’ and ‘rocket’ as well as the more traditional ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘come by’ so was calling all these various words which just one dog of the five responded to and coordinating them all to work together to herd these geese. Amazing stuff.

Next we went for a wander round the stalls which were a mix of stuff for sale, information, charities and organisations on recruitment drives and activities. We paused at the army surplus stuff, the guns for sale (Davies and I both interested in shooting, Ady can do it anyway and says he’ll speak to Tom about some coaching for Davies and I in air rifles and shotguns 🙂 ) and looked at some knives and other camping / survival stuff.

We paused for a while at the magician on stilts, spent ages talking to the staff manning the information about deer stand and looked at the various skins, skulls, antlers and feet they had on display. They were promoting slowing down when you see the caution deer triangle road signs and showing you the impact on deer, car and people when they collide 🙁 .

We looked at ducks, chickens, geese, rabbits, mice, gerbils and other furry animals for sale and on show and then stopped for the ferret racing. That was lots of fun, four ferrets wearing different coloured neck scarves racing down long tube against each other. Tickets for sale at 10p each to bet on a ferret for winnings of 20p each if your colour won. Davies and Scarlett both chose blue having looked at all four ferrets as they were brought round to the audience and after a tense race (blue was in the lead all the way and his nose was poking out of his tube long before any of the others but then he stopped while still in the tube to eat grass and the rule was the winner had to be all of the way out of the tube. With yellow coming up fast behind blue finally came out to cheers :). Davies and Scarlett’s first taste of gambling and they won! :). I fully expected them to want to place their 20p winnings on the next race but they heeded our advice to walk away winners and we moved on.

Ady paused to chat to someone in the food festival tent (lots of lovely smells and free samples) who knew an ex Portsmouth player (Ady was wearing a Pompey top, not sure why I say that as you all know he only ever wears Pompey tops ;)), then to someone he knew through work and then again to chat to a couple we bumped into we both knew. We then queued with the kids to go on the bungee trampolines which is something they’ve wanted to do every time we’ve seen them anywhere so agreed to them having a go on there. They both LOVED it 🙂

We watched the falconry display for a second time, which had slightly different things happening including an owl flying very low over audience members lying down and was very impressive. A quick walk round the last part of the grounds where a display of vintage caravans and other vehicles was laid on aswell as a rifle range with tuition, but the queues were too huge for that and we finished up with cups of tea and coffee and some cake to watch the sheepdogs display for a second time.

The sun had been in and out all day and I’d lost count of the times I’d taken my fleece on and off but suddenly the sun was really powerful and all of us ended up caught out by it and rather pink cheeked 😳 as we’d not thought about suncream. No lasting effects though, just a few extra freckles each this morning 🙂 .

We watched the last few fundog trials happening as we walked past on the way out and finally left at about 530pm just as things were winding up for the day. A really good day out, we’d definitely go again next year :).

We dropped my parents home, spent some time in the garden, Scarlett and I walked to the shops for some supplies for dinner while Davies and Ady did some X boxing and then Ady had a bath while the kids and I watched some River Cottage before they went to bed.

Ady and I had dinner, tried and failed to watch a film (The Good Night, don’t bother it was terrible, we turned it off!) and watched a River Cottage episode instead.

Ady and Davies went off to YACs this morning. Ady is now an almost official parent-helper I think and was the only adult permitted to stay today as they were doing a dig and they encourage adults to be hands-off otherwise they take over apparentely. I love that Ady is going, partially as he seems to enjoy as much, if not more than Davies, partially because they have so very little that is something they do just the two of them together and partially because it means Tarly and I get to have one to one time too. They’ll miss the next session because we’ll be away and I’ve a feeling they don’t meet in August anyway. I may well see if Dad can have Tarly for any future sessions that I happen to be working for (or even just bring Tarly to work with me actually) so that Ady can carry on attending.

The dig was good, Davies came home and told me about flint and chalk, how flint can be different colours, what he’d dug up (mostly pottery) and which dates it was from and was most enthusiastic. Ady even more so ;).

Scarlett and I had breakfast and watched a couple of episodes of Wildlife SOS which is one of her favourite shows (have just been looking at their website, might try and organise a group visit there). Then we tackled a task we’ve been meaning to do for ages and went through her wardrobe and drawers trying on every item of clothing in there. She’s ended up with loads of clothes that fit and she is happy to wear rather than rotating the same few garments. We also ended up with a HUGE pile of clothes she has outgrown or doesn’t like. I seperated them into age 3-5 years, age 5-7 years and age 7-9 years and bagged them up, stuck them on freecycle and they were collected within the hour :). She now does not possess a skirt or dress or anything other than nightwear which is pink. I kept a tiny pile of clothes I had loved her in including the silver outfit she wore for Kirsty and James’ wedding. She is such a funny mix of girlie and vehemently NOT girlie :).

Back to some more wildlife documentaries and some lunch and then Ady and Davies arrived home.

Scarlett and I went out for a couple of hours in the afternoon – a trip to the big charity shop to see if they had any demijohns for my homebrewing adventures (no 🙁 ) and then to Morrisons for beer and picnic supplies for tomorrow and then into town for Fathers Day cards for my Dad. We have long since stopped buying any cards for each other between the four of us as it seems crazy paying a fiver for a card to say things we are capable of saying to each other far more sincerely and a waste of paper too but my parents are quite big on ‘nice’ cards so I wanted to find sone for minimum price and maximum shallow impressing effect ;).

We had a quick look in a couple of shops and while I was looking at flipflops and Scarlett was looking at toys in one shop she picked up a couple of toy frogs that you could squish and their insides pop out as they are liquid inside. She brought it over to show me and say ‘Look, you can make it look like these two are mating’ as she popped out the relevant bits into cavities from one to the other. All very innocent and IMO exactly how a young child should view the mating process of animals. Except she had approached and shown the wrong grown up! 😆 😆 She’d wandered over in my general direction, misplaced where my voice had come from as I’d not looked up and assumed the woman standing where I had been was me so demonstrated the mating frogs to her 😆 The woman found this hysterical (thankfully) and once I’d gotten over my initial embarrassment so did I 😆

Back home again Ady cooked dinner for children, Scarlett played with the ducks and chickens, Davies and I watched Doctor Who and then the kids and I watched a really good programme about the Top Ten Natural Wonders of the World. They included giant redwood trees, the Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Mount Everest, a volcano, Victoria Falls and more. The number one was one of my personal Must See Before I Die sights of the Northern (or indeed Southern) Lights. We decided we’d all actually like to see all of them (although I can tick off Grand Canyon at least).

Ady and I had duck for dinner which was very lovely (and scared Scarlett when Ady asked me how long to cook it for and she assumed we meant Sploosh or Lucky :lol:) and watched an Aussie version of River Cottage where the guy was having to protect his veggies from possoms.

I was at work all day today and Ady took Davies and Scarlett off with him. He was doing a B&Q store visit in Watford and the kids stayed in the car while he popped in and out. They had DSs and the radio and each other and were quite content sitting there. They got McDonalds for lunch, were much praised for being such stars and then came home again.

I had a really good day at work. I’ve felt really exhausted from all the drama yesterday and have exchanged a few texts with Frazer who seems okay but I am planning on having a proper chat with in the next week or so to offer some practical help for him working towards moving out somehow. I have no idea what will happen but having realised just how rubbish his life is I am determined to help in any way I can to improve things for him.

First thing this morning was banking, the preparing for Baby Rhyme Time. That was fairly intimate with only four adults and six little ones coming along. Frankie later commented that it was like ‘The Nic Goddard show’ for half an hour as I was the only one singing for much of the time. Fortunately I am not remotely fazed by singing to an audience and shaking plastic maracas and I live in eternal hope of being talent spotted by Simon Cowell for a pilot episode of a new TV show called Library’s Got Talent.

we spent some time talking about Country Music and then someone returned 2 cds of compliation country music which I took as a sign and have borrowed to listen to in the car and learn all the words to. Expect plenty of blog posts entitled things like ‘never count your money when you’re sitting at the table’ and ‘please don’t take him just because you can’.

Back home I caught up with the others and then nipped out to Sainsburys for various bits. Back home again the others were watching the football and then D & S went off to bed. Ady made pizzas and we watched Michael McIntyre who I used to not like at all but have come to think is quite funny.

And now I really do need to go to bed.