One word? When seven would do…

Early start all round here which never feels right. Bleary eyed and staggering I wrapped Lorna’s (very) late birthday present, the children got dressed and they all left the house so Ady could drop Davies and Scarlett at Julie’s for the morning. I enjoyed the half an hour or so of the house all to myself and then headed off to work too.

Work was fine, I had quite a bit to do having been off for two full days with my allergic reaction and then working at another library last week. I checked stocks of several suggested reads from book club last night and have ordered books for the next three meetings, finished editing and printed off a letter inviting all the various book clubs that get their books from us to a coffee morning event I’m organising for next month and dealt with numerous enquiries about how to operate the photocopier and several demanding customers wanting help on silly things that seemed to take far longer than they should. I also listened to two colleagues bitching about each other – the atmosphere at work is rather tense just at the moment. But I had a productive and mostly enjoyable morning anyway.

Over to Chris & Julie’s and as I pulled into the road I saw Jack and Davies walking towards me from the nurseries at the end of their road. Gerda (Julie’s mum) and Lorna were at the house and looked mightily relieved to see them as it turned out they had been walking a different path to the others and Julie was getting very worried about just where they were. Julie, Maisie and Scarlett then appeared all looking quite harrassed and equally relieved to see the boys. Sort of glad I missed that drama really although the boys seemed totally oblivious to any fuss they may have caused :rolls:.

Julie was clearly having one of ‘those’ mornings as she then had to deal with Jack getting stung by a bee, Maisie having a strop about something to do with cereal and Lorna whacking Jack with a bag of tomatoes. And a phonecall from someone who wanted to chat. I made tea and waited. We did manage quite a good chat in the end and then she asked if I could help her catch a chicken. They have three hens which are not really handled at all and are pretty terrified of people but have scaly leg which needs treating. Scarlett had helped her catch one of them this morning and held it while Julie rubbed vaseline in to it’s legs so I helped her catch a second and held it. She decided that was enough trauma for one day and we’d do the third one some other time. I was going to hang around and mind all the kids while Julie nipped out to go and collect her car but Chris arrived home so we left when Julie did and followed her most of the way home as the garage was on our way. Very busy diaries mean it’s another two weeks before we managed to arrange a date to meet up again – I miss Julie and wish we managed to see more of them 🙁

Back home it was 3pm and we were all hungry (the kids had had sandwiches but eaten them mid morning and I’d not eaten at all) so I made a pile of pancakes as a tiding us over snack. The winemaking kit I’d picked up yesterday had been minus instructions so we left for Badgers slightly early to swap it for a complete kit.

Badgers was really good tonight which was typical as Davies, Scarlett and I had been chatting about all the reasons why despite thinking Badgers is great for them it is not really that much fun for me. We’d been agreeing that Ady would be far better suited to being a Badger leader than me and trying to decide where my strengths lie instead. Tonight was a much smaller than usual group – just 9 of them and we were doing map making. For once Julie was keen to let the children lead it and her plan was for them to work together or alone and come up with a map of an imaginary place and do some symbols to create a key for it. She tried to demonstrate some symbols and is very crap at drawing so I took the pen from her and did a quick example, which turned into a rather lengthier one as the children started calling out loads of things for me to draw – all felt a bit Rolf Harris for a while 😆

Once armed with pens and paper we left them all to it for a while and then wandered over to see how they were doing. Some were great at it, really creative and imaginative whilst others struggled. I helped those having difficulty by asking lots of questions designed to get them thinking and creating and then did a quick map of my own to show symbols, keys and scale and talked to them about all of those. I quite like tasks like that when you are encouraging children to be creative, come up with ideas and unleash their imagination :).

We finished up with 10 minutes playing games outside and I rather embarrassingly fell down the concrete steps. I did it quite slowly and almost gracefully but will still have new bruised on both knees tomorrow to replace the all-but healed ones from falling over in the campsite toilets the other weekend :rolls:

Home time and Ady had beaten us home. Davies came and did his own dinner under supervision – he’s really taken on board the whole doing more for himself thing :). I stuck on the first six bottles worth of home brew wine which in theory is ready in a week (although it does say it will improve if kept over the next 3 months). I’m going to have a go at a kit chardonnay first to see how it all works and follow close instructions but after that the aim is to use as few chemicals as possible and maybe experiment with flavours and ideas – hey parsnips wine counts as one of the five a day right? 😉

Instead of stories we watched Springwatch and then Davies and Scarlett went to bed, Ady and I had baths and a Nic o’clock dinner at 1030. We’re so rubbish!

A local friend who runs a Circus skills group with her husband and another woman had facebook messaged me last week to say this week they had a gymnast coming in to teach the children some tumbling skills. The Circus group runs on a Tuesday afternoon and clashes with swimming lessons. I have previously tried to swap swimming to a different day so we can do circus but had no luck. Much though I think Davies and Scarlett would enjoy circus, and quite a few of their local Home Ed friends go along I’m not prepared to drop swimming altogether. But I’d talked to Debs before about tumbling and acrobatics when D&S were wanting to learn back flips as I thought it was more of a circus skill than the sort of gymnastics they were doing at the local gymnastics class when they tried that for a term. So we decided to miss swimming today and go along to see what Circus skills was all about and be there for the tumbling too.

We had talked about going swimming in the morning today instead as Davies missed swimming last week, they both missed it the week before and I’ve missed it for ages and ages for one reason or another. But our local pool literally just had the big pool open this morning and the two nearest other pools are really expensive, have pay and display parking and are quite a drive away, plus their timetables on line looked like they were doing Adult Swimming so I suspected we’d get frowned at.

After some moaning from me Ady had spent some time tidying up the playroom yesterday so D&S took full advantage of the accessibilty of the toy animals and the lego and were playing with those. Davies then got out the animationstation and was making some films with lego. I decided to nip to The Range as I’d heard they had home brew stuff and I want to have a go at winemaking so Scarlett and I nipped out leaving Davies to his animation. When we came back half an hour or so later (empty handed, we could find no home brew stuff at all) he had made lunch for himself and Scarlett and tidied up :).

I processed some laundry and spent some time online while the kids watched some How’s It Works and ate lunch. After eating they both clearly had far too much energy so I sent them outside to play in the garden for an hour or so.

Then it was circus skills time (with a quick skip into town on the way for a home brew wine kit). We knew several of the children there although we were expecting to see Archie & Eliot and Toby and none of them were there. I really liked the sessions, thought it was a good mix of structure and guided learning with lots of scope for doing your own thing. They spent time with the gymnast doing various bits and also used hula hoops, diablos, staff, poi, juggling balls and spinning plates. There were 5 adults to help and everyone got plenty of one to one time on whatever they wanted to learn more about. The session started with some circle time, a couple of fun warm up games and ended with 15 minutes up on the stage showing off what they had learnt today.

Davies and Scarlett enjoyed it and we’ll have another look in September to see if there is scope to move swimming so they can go to Circus each week.

Back home Ady had arrived so I just dropped the kids off with him and headed straight to the library. It was reading group and I was running it as Brenda is on holiday. I laid out chairs, got drinks ready and printed some stuff off about the book we’d been reading – Carry Me Down by Maria Hyland. There were 15 of us including me and we had a good discussion about the book, spent some time tossing about ideas for future reads and generally chatting. It was good :).

Everyone left, I put stuff away and closed down computers, turned off lights, set alarms and locked up. Home for dinner and chats about all sorts of things with Ady and now I’m falling asleep over my laptop so I’ll boing off in a Zebedee type manner.

Today was Pulborough Brooks day but taking inspiration from Jan who was not going to be standing around in the rain today I’d looked at the weather forecast and didn’t plan to be walking around in rain today. As it turned out the weather forecast was wrong and we’ve had another day of glorious sunshine here but having got everyone breakfasted and dressed there was actually very little enthusiasm for PB today and when we checked facebook to see noone but us had confirmed as attending it seemed not really worth the drive over on the offchance.

I wanted to go into town to look at winemaking supplies and having had several goes, including one rather brutal attempt by Scarlett to force an earring through an old pierced hole on one my ears and failed as it has closed up I’ve been hankering after getting it re-pierced. I can’t really explain why, it is shallow and vain and I’m far too old to be up to such tricks but I wanted to do it anyway. And Davies and Scarlett knowing the history of all my ear piercings (and indeed being responsible for one each) were quite curious about the whole process so I claim Education as a motivating factor ;). We also needed to get a birthday present for Lorna and Davies who appears to have finally grown, or indeed been in his trousers so long they have shrunk in the wash before he has grown out of them needed some bottom half clothes.

Before we left I made some phonecalls and online purchases meaning we were far too quickly over £300 worse off – I taxed my car online and bought the tickets for FOH then made a phonecall to book some October half term workshops for Davies and Scarlett at Making Space. I am being very proactive for Davies just now as a result of chats we have had about things he wants to do. I suspect he will turn 10 in September and either flourish with loads of new ideas and things he wants to do and learn about or slump so I’m keen to pre-empt that with lots lined up following his passions and interests which primarily are bushcraft and animation. So he has one full-on, outside, professional input on both experience lined up for the autumn which will hopefully help deal with that birthday phenomena where they all do this big changing leap thing as soon as they go up a year (or is that just my two?).

Then into town. We parked for two hours and spent it very productively looking at winemaking stuff and pricing it up but sensibly (for me) not buying anything and coming away to do more research first. We perused charity shops and I was the one who did best really coming away with four new tops, we got Davies 2 pairs of trousers and a pair of shorts, chose a book and hand puppet for Lorna and found only Claire’s Accessories to be offering ear piercing at the astonishing price of £21.95 so my ears remained with the same number of holes in as before. We nipped to the theatre to get tickets for a Shrek gala event like the Alice one we went to which means we need to think about fancy dress (for all four of us apparentely, D&S are insisting we participate – your favourite fairy tale or Shrek character, all suggestions welcome).

We dashed back to the car as we were out of time on the parking and came home via Sainsburys for various food supplies. We had lunch and then back into Lancing to the library. First though we nipped to the little local hairdresser who do ear piercing for the price of the studs and happily made a new hole in my ear and supplied me with a pair of 9ct gold earrings for well under a tenner and explained the whole piercing gun procedure to the children too :). See, educational ;).

Chatterbooks went well. We missed two children from last week but gained one (friend who’d been invited for tea of one of the attendees forgetting they were at Chatterbooks) so had 10. We did Poetry and started off chatting about what we’re reading at the moment before moving on to talk about stories in rhyme. I read Wild About Books and some Edward Lear Nonsense and then we tried to write a poem about the group. We got some good rhymes for the children’s names, ages, gender, location and interests but some were still struggling so I read On Beyond Zebra about made up letters and meanings and I said it was fine to make up a word too aslong as you made up a meaning for it. This worked rather better and I got all the children to made up a word rhyming with their name and a meaning for it. I kicked off with a Glick – a beautiful flower that smelt horrid. We had all sorts of things then – a Zeve (rhymes with Eve) which is a giant rat as big as the Eiffel tower, bright green and smelling of cheese. A Grethan (rhymes with Ethan) which is a green banana that sometimes tastes of apple pie and sometimes pizza, A Marlett (rhymes with Scarlett) that looks like a chicken, makes the sound of a horse and eats sharks, a Borren (rhymes with Lauren) which is a hut where there is peace and quiet, a Dyan (rhymes with Rhyan) which is a dinosaur as big as the universe that has big claws and could pick up everything in it’s hand but is friendly as long as you feed it chips. This exercise worked really well and we had loads of imaginative ideas and creative thought with plenty of enthusisasm when directed the right way with the right suggestions. We had ten minutes left so I handed out paper and pens and read them out what they’d described and got them all to draw their creations.

One of the children has ADHD and last week was no trouble at all but this week was quite a challenge. Russell spent lots of time with him and had a brief chat to his mum at the end. I suspect he does get lots from the sessions but it is not really fair for her to go off and leave him unsupported as it takes the whole attention of one of us away from the rest of the group. Next week is storytelling which should be fine but he might struggle in the final week of book and film reviews so I need to factor in him and his needs in planning the session.

We collected the many, many books we had waiting for us (we’re back to about 80 items on loan between us again :rolls:) and nipped home to collect various plants before going to the allotment. Having done loads of growing from seed this year we had a few gaps on the plot so Ady begged some plugs plants from work and we had some sweetcorn, peas, beans, strawberries and cabbage ready to put in. Davies and Scarlett did some wildlife spotting and pond exploration while I did some weeding and planting. The kids were delighted to see the first crops of peas and set about eating them all :). Ady arrived and he came in while the kids went out for an hours ‘adventuring’ in the woods. Ady was in work clothes and shoes so not keen to get muddy he watered the plot while I finished putting plants in. There is more weeding and cutting back to do and we have about 1/5 of the plot empty but we plotted and planned and will hopefully have that in use soon.

We rang the kids to come back and headed for home. I made the kids tea, sorted out washing and then read several more chapters of Alone on a wide wide sea. Ady watered the crops in the garden and tidied up the playroom. I cooked dinner and we watched some Hugh and chatted about smallholdings.

Today was our fourth Open Farm Sunday attending event. The first year we went to Lancing College farm which is just up the road from us and more of an educational resource than a working farm with a handful of all animals but no real crops. Years two and three we went to an organic lamb farm which was highly educational as they are very passionate about what they do, education for all and sharing their views on organic farming, homeopathic treatments for their animals and restoring old farming methods and have a mix of arable crops to feed their lambs and a very labour intensive method of farming. We’ve combined that with a visit to a more commercial visitors farm down the road. This year we decided to head in the other direction and found a different sort of farm to visit – a large farm which grows lettuce and celery for supermarkets and local grocers. After some email contact with the owner booking places on tractor rides etc she emailed me to say she had arranged a limited number of canal boat rides to and from the farm on the Chichester canal and would we like to book that too?

So 1130am saw us dashing to the canal basin (traffic had been bad) and being last on the canal boat. We joined three other families aboard and had a lovely 30 minutes or so along the canal having wildlife (loads of ducks, coots, moorhens, a heron, terns) pointed out and spotted and the history of the canals talked about, while the kids mostly hung out on the top and all had a go at steering the boat, we arrived at the road. A tractor and trailer was waiting for us and took us along the road (very exciting riding in a trailer along a road) to the farm.

We had some tea and coffee and a look round the stalls – we particularly liked the wildlife stall where a very knowledgable woman was showing some stuffed mammals and animal skins. I then queued for ages and ages (about 40 minutes) for hog roast for Ady and I while Ady and the kids sat and ate the small amount of food we’d brought with us. The hog roast was delicious and worth the wait but frustrating because it was one of those situations where there was no real reason for such a delay.

Scarlett spotted a dead shrew on the floor and insisted on taking it to the wildlife woman to show her. They truly bonded over animals and a man from the next stall which was about owls joined in the love-in with his tupperware box of owl pellets. The three of them spent about 15 minutes rummaging through the fur and feathers and bones pulling out small mammal skulls and exclaiming at each other about them – I think Scarlett had found her spiritual parents 😆 She donated the dead shrew to the woman, Sarah, who promised to use the shrew to learn more about animals.

We then jumped on another tractor trailer for a tour round the farm. Huge fields filled with four different varities of lettuce and celery. They supply Asda, Sainsburys, Co Op and local greengrocers. The farmer commentating told us about sowing, harvesting, delivery to cold stores ready for collection, irrigation, pest control and how supermarkets dictate colour, size and weight. They have 2 llamas who they shear annually and sell the fleece and 3 pigs who eat all the reject lettuces but no other animals. They have 23 tractors and farm machines of all different types, some of which were out for children to clamber over.

We had time for an ice cream (made on a farm down the road, truly delicious) before needing to catch the next tractor to return us to the canal for our return boat trip. This time all the children spent the whole duration of the ride on the top deck while all the adults stayed below decks chatting to the member of staff. The farm visit was really good and the canal trip made it ever better – and all free :).

There was a family fun day at Shoreham airport today as part of the Adur Festival so we came home via a quick visit there to see if anything was happening but they seemed to be wrapping things up there so we came home. Ady and the kids did garden based things while I got a roast dinner on. We sat down to eat and watch Countryfile.

The kids and I read a few chapters of Alone on a wide, wide sea and they had yet another late night.

Thursday I was at work all day. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t feel like I have much to blog about on my all day at work days. Today was no exception really. I had an okay day, some banter with colleagues, spent some time writing up an account of the Chatterbooks session on Monday and preparing for next Monday’s session. I talked to Cara, the childrens librarian who came and ran it with me and we agreed it had been a good first session. Another colleague has just handed her notice in to leave and there is rather a feeling of rats desserting a sinking ship at the moment with even senior members of staff pretty disillusioned and insecure in their jobs. It’s far from a great working environment at the moment but that all makes for easier decisions elsewhere I suppose.

Davies and Scarlett had been out with Ady for the morning, back here for lunch and to meet my Dad and then home here for the afternoon with him while Ady went back out to work. I’m not sure what they’d been up to but they’d not seen Dad for a while and had enjoyed spending the afternoon with him :).

As I left the library K, from Reading Group called me over as she had just pulled into the car park. She is a nice woman who is very difficult to make conversation with so we had a strange ten minutes or so struggling to think of things to say before I finally said I needed to be getting off and left. Back at home the kids were starving so I made them a quick dinner and caught up with their day. We’d half been planning to go to the allotment but it was cold and grey and looking like it might rain so we decided not to. Ady was late home having delayed his days work in the morning.

The kids and I started reading Alone on a wide, wide sea which we have had home from the library several times but just not started before. Having finished The Scarecrow and his servant I was looking for another good chapter book to get stuck in to and this, as Morpurgo always seems to, filled the gap nicely :).

I cooked dinner, we watched the final of Junior Apprentice and although we all had the best of intentions of getting to sleep early I don’t think any of us actually managed it.

Friday The South of England Show. The kids and I have been for the last five years or so, sometimes with all the family, sometimes with my Mum, sometimes with Ady and once just the three of us. This year Ady had booked the day off work and when I mentioned it to my parents a couple of weeks ago they said they’d come too. They are having one of their fairly regular periods of not talking to each other and there is lots of friction between them but they did come along today albeit ignoring each other.

The weather had been dreadful all night with very heavy rain and it was still grey and drizzly on the drive over there but when we arrived it stopped and although it remained overcast all day it was dry and warm and actually perfect for walking round outdoors all day.

The price was a bit of a shock – £35 for a family ticket which has gone up loads since last year 😯 – Dad very kindly said he’d pay anyway though :). We started with looking at the hounds, Scarlett’s favourite and watched some of the judging of them for a while. We looked at the Countryside Alliance stand where Tarly impressed one of the staff by naming all the stuffed birds – she came over to tell Scarlett the names of the actual ducks aswell when she couldn’t name the Teal and the Shoveller Ducks (she did jay, magpie, pheasant, partridge, crow and so on).

Ady and I used the saved admittance money to get a waxed jacket (me) and pair of waterproof boots (Ady) :). We looked round all the usual stalls and did the same activities we’ve done before – this time I got to be the Beekeeper which was ace :). Suited up I had to go in to the demo area, help smoke out the bees and take the hive apart, bringing over the supers to show the audience. The overwhelming things were the noise – 20,000 bees make one huge buzz, you actually have to raise your voice to be heard over them and just the amazing industry and focus that bees have. I am in awe :). I wasn’t at all scared, even when I suddenly realised I was covered in them with several hundred all over me. I chatted to the beeman for a while about how to get started. We have definitely pushed livestock keeping to the utter perimeter here at Osborne Drive but bees are high on my list for the next venue – Chris (Goddard) would be my resident expert though as he already has two hives. I bought some honey and beeswax based creams (lavender lip balm and some barrier cream and pollen cream) from the woman I’d bought stuff from last year who said she remembered me :).

We spent time at the stands for Plumpton and Brinsbury colleges which are argricultural, farming, animal and equestrian courses and I chatted to some of the students about their courses, what they were learning and where they wanted to go with their qualifications. We picked up information about Young Farmers Club, Small Farm Training Club and several other interesting looking places to join or get more information.

We looked at the livestock – lots of ducks, chickens etc. and we bought a dozen hatching quails eggs which will go in the incubator tomorrow. Tom wants quails so had asked us to hatch some for him but depending on the success of the hatch we might keep a couple. We were surprised anew at the prices of chickens and bantams and ducks and may have to think about hatching to sell again – it looks rather like we’re turning down easy money by not doing so. Scarlett should be breeding them rather than us looking at other small animals I reckon.

There were the usual cows, pigs, sheep to look at too, ferrets, tortoises and other more ‘exotic’ animals such as cockroaches and snakes. We spent some time sitting next to the horses jumping and being paraded round the rings resulting in the hilarious (and loud) comment from Tarly that ‘I didn’t know horses had such big willies – that’s HUGE! It’s like it’s got five legs or something!’ to the amusement of everyone nearby and the further embarrassment of the poor woman leading the horse round the ring 😆

We had a very full day there and did the various tents for food, drink, crafts, flowers and the always impressive WI tent with various crafts. This year the theme there was ‘fun and frolicks’ and there was a fab display of bras, quilts, cupcakes, limericks, papier mache models and more. We finally left just after 6pm as things were winding up for the day.

We had a really good day there but the entry price of £35 was very high, I felt there was less there than usual in the way of information and activities and far more stands of people trying to take yet more money off us by selling things, very few of which had any real relevance to the agricultural roots of the event. It was a good day out but in direct contrast to River Cottage last weekend at considerably less cost with far more of interest and none of the commercialism I guess we were slightly disappointed this year. Ady and I both said we probably wouldn’t bother going next year.

Back home Dad stayed long enough for a sandwich before heading off as he was going out with a friend for the evening. The kids had some time in the garden with the ducklings before coming in for dinner, bath and a begged for sleepover which had them still awake past midnight. Mum stayed for dinner and some full on moaning about my Dad. I gave some advice and maintained my position of not getting involved or dragged in but saying I would support and love her no matter what she does and always be there for her regardless of what happens in my parents marriage. It did rather like the sort of pep talk a mother should give to a daugher than the other way round but I guess that has always been the case with us….

Mum finally left about 1am which is why this blogpost is brought to you on Saturday (maybe, I’m cutting it fine for that deadline too :)).

Saturday I was up for work. I’d been asked to go to Burgess Hill library for the morning as they were short staffed. When Brenda had rung me to ask she’d checked if I’d be okay to be on the Enquiry Desk and I’d been slightly surprised at the question. I found the library okay and was given a quick tour round before being left to my own devices really. I covered the desk for the whole 3 hours while the other staff looked at me in awe. One of them asked me if I was a manager and when I said ‘no, I’m just a library assistant like you are’ they were shocked as apparently the library assistants there don’t go on the desk. I actually really enjoyed my morning, it was busy enough to stop me from getting bored and the enquiries were nice and varied. I spoke to someone on the phone who wanted details of Playaways (inbuilt mp3 players with batteries and headphones and just one audiobook on them) for children, I found details on the library intranet about them being introduced, found out how to get a list and then emailed it to her, took some childrens books off the ticket of a woman in her 70s who said she’d not taken children’s books on her ticket for about 30 years and helped a guy who wanted to tax his car online.

Back at home Ady, Davies and Scarlett had walked into Lancing and been at the library here for a storytelling session this morning as part of Adur Festival. David Arthur was the storyteller and they had had a great morning with him at the library. I arrived home with just enough time for lunch before we were off again to the local Children’s Centre for a second storytelling session. I caught up with the library staff running the sessions and had a long chat with David himself who had been impressed with Davies and Scarlett and found out we were HEing and wanted to chat about that. The second storytelling session was equally as good – David chatted to Ady in the refreshment break and also spent some time talking to Davies about learning and education. He did make me laugh by saying he felt HE was great but worried about getting qualifications to ‘make it in the real world’ to which I replied that as he makes his living travelling round telling stories perhaps we don’t all need to go out to work in an office wearing a suit – he had to agree 😆

We had a quick look in a charity shop on the way back to the car which was being staffed by one of the regular old men who use the library. They had a box of marbles for sale on the counter and he chatted to the kids about marbles and stuffed loads of free ones in the bags they bought for 50p each.

Davies had found a wallet on the path outside our house this morning and it had a nhs card with an address in it along with various other stuff so we dropped that round to the owner, bought a portable tv / video combi from someone else local out of the local free paper for a fiver so Davies now has a tv in his room for watching videos and playing x box on when friends are over.

Back home again the kids played in the garden with the ducks and chickens who had their first day integrated into the same pen today and seem to be getting on just fine aside from the chickens eating all the ducks food. Ady and I watched a couple of episodes of The Good Life and then I made the kids some dinner and Ady nipped out for some food shopping and the kids and I watched Doctor Who.

Davies made a heroic effort to care about / be interested in the football and watched it with Ady. He got to half time which I thought was quite commendable ;). I offered Scarlett the choice of doing whatever she wanted and she chose a bath with me so we had a long bubble bath with face packs, hair treatments and foot and back rubs for each other :). Her hair now looks fabulously shiny and gorgeous although she says she has full intentions of getting it matted, tangled and full of moss and mud again by this time tomorrow 😆

Everyone went to bed far later than they should have done but although tomorrow is another full day it does at least have a slightly later start time. I didn’t get anywhere close to posting this while it was still Saturday thanks to an 1130pm dinnertime. I never have quite worked out where all the hours in the day run away to…

First of all a bit of a disclaimer. At this stage we are very much at the sharing hopes and dreams, putting it all ‘out there’ and not letting cold hard reality prevent us from talking about our vision. The next stage will be the rather tougher information gathering reality check level. We’ve sort of been here before with a previous exploration of small-holdings as a possibility and various reasons stopped us from going further. This time we are dreaming bigger and further and as yet I’m not at all sure whether that makes it a more or less possible dream.

Ultimate Goal – to live a more sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. To have all four of us working together towards providing for ourselves whilst having as many elements of our shared, and indivdual ambitions met. To be living our passions full time rather than indulging them in small ways around the rest of life. To be doing things for ourselves wherever possible and putting our own food on the table (bloody tables!) rather than going out to work to earn money to pay for food (or tables). To have our life be our work, our work be our life and everything rolled in together in providing for ourselves, realising our dreams and spending our days in tasks taking us towards where we want to be. No pointlessness.

So where does all that point us at then? A couple of years ago we were looking at small holdings and self sufficiency. We realised we couldn’t afford to buy outright which would mean we had a mortgage, which meant we would either have to be self-sufficient AND productive enough to sell stuff to pay the bills, or be self sufficient AND go out and earn money some other way aswell to pay the bills. It suggested all of the worst aspects of what we already have with work, plenty of slog, being tied to where we were with no freedom to head off camping / visiting friends and on a bit of a whim given we’d not done anything like it before so could just end up hating it. We decided to create as close to our yearned for lifestyle here at home and focus on the things we love about our life already. I was enjoying my library job so was happy to keep that up and try and grow the role, we took on the allotment, got serious about breeding bantams, have grown fruit and veg here at home. I went on the lookerers course and have done some volunteer shepherding for a taste of that, completed the Waste Prevention Advisors course and learnt about composting, recycling and loads of other ‘green’ things, many of which we have put into practise. Davies and Scarlett have continued with things like Wildlife Explorers, Forest School, hatching ducklings, Wildlife Action Awards and so on. But it’s clear we are all still hankering after more of that way of life and every time we visit Tom’s parents house, or Jan and Jonathan’s, or our friends who have been raising orphaned lambs, or indeed River Cottage we realise we are still just playing at this and feel sad that we don’t have all the elements of what we want and the compromise still isn’t enough. Ady and I had concluded that bringing in small bits of that lifestyle would be enough and if we still wanted to do it then we could think about it in our retirement when Davies and Scarlett are off doing their own thing. Turns out their own thing still seems pretty likely to be that anyway.

So the four of us have been talking, sharing all the things we’d love to have and then trying to fit them together into one coherant idea with which we can do lots of research into cost, feasibility and how it could all work, which elements are pipe dreams and which could become reality, which need to be actioned first and made a priority and which need to be put on the back burner for the future. Here are the lists:

Ady
learn more about butchering, possibly slaughtering.
Growing fruit & veg
Spending more time with Nic & children
Fishing
Cooking
Practical skills

Davies
Bushcraft / survival skills
Working with wood
Driving tractors and understanding how they work
lifestock – particularly sheep and chickens
fishing
a lake with a row boat
a treehouse

Scarlett
wants dogs and cats!
animal breeding – ducks, chickens, maybe small animals
keeping pigs and sheep

Nic (longer list ;))
Keeping livestock – pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, bees (for meat, eggs, honey)
Having a cow for milk & making other dairy – butter, cheese, yoghurt
Growing food for us and livestock
Bartering / skill exchange / education
cooking / baking / preserving / brewing
crafts – sewing, knitting, basket weaving, woodcraft – making clothes, tools, household objects.
composting
renewable and sustainable energy – a green way of life -= solar, wind, water power, biomass fuels, woodburning
building from sustainable sources – strawbale builds, compost loos, solar showers, rainwater harvesting

To me that translates as the following absolute ideal:

A model of self sufficient living for four people. That means working out how many animals needed to breed / rear for meat per year, working out the costs for keeping / feeding them (do we grow our own crops for feeding them, buy in crops and if so at what cost?), working out levels of fruit and veg needed for a year and how much space needed to grow them. Factoring in failed crops, cost of seeds etc.

The 100% self sufficient model probably doesn’t exist – I am fairly sure you could work out your own meat / dairy / eggs / fruit and veg and work out preserving, storing and freezing sufficient to keep you going but there will be some out of reach ideals such as rice, pasta, cereals, flour. A bulk ordering, packaging free option is a possibility and maybe by being the coordinator / storage or selling on would cover the cost of your own requirements. I like the idea of a bartering scheme for the costs you do have to find – could you pay for animal feed by swapping it for meat or livestock? Supplement your own fruit and veg growing by exchanging for things you have a glut of? A co-operative approach to meeting the needs you can’t provide yourself.

In terms of housing I like the idea of sustainable, eco-friendly building, with renewable energy resources. Solar panels, wind turbines, renewable wood burning, maybe harnessing water energy. If we could live off-grid and be self-sufficient in energy then we reduce bills and expenses and live closer to our eco-ideals. If we were able to build from scratch then I am interested in strawbale building, composting and reed bed toilets, rainwater harvesting and so on. If we can’t then how can we get close to those ideals with existing buildings.

Once this self-sufficient model is in place and working phase two of the dream is to share it. I’d love to operate a residential education centre. Camping, camping barns, yurts. People could come and learn about how it all works, exhange labour and payment for education. Building a strawbale solar powered shower block should be possible by buying in the materials and expertise and paying for it by offering hands on training courses leaving everyone paid, taught and us with the structure.

Aswell as a recreational and learning destination it could be a part of the community, local schools could visit to learn, community groups could use the space. There is a huge trend towards interest in this way of life, the way of the world financially and environmentally means the need for harnessing these skills and knowledge will only increase with time.

For us as a family it will enable us to live the way we want to live, for us to have time together, to indulge all of our individual passions, interests and learning goals. For Davies and Scarlett it would offer every possible opportunity for them to learn, to explore all the different ideas they have about their future, to find potential careers and revenue streams aswell as having their own visions of their perfect childhoods. It would make full use of all the skills we already have as a team and personally – managerial, customer service, training, presenting, crafts, being with people, gardening, growing, livestock etc.

So how feasible is it? Well if we were looking to buy the land and finance it then it is a complete non-starter. But we do have about £100K equity in the house if we paid off the mortgage and the debts. We wouldn’t be in a position to borrow money (nor would we want to – the idea is to live as bill-free as possible) but it might get us started with renting land and property to start up. Long term it could potentially be a profit-turning enterprise which would then pay for rental once our funds have run out. The other ideas are all financially costly initially but I suspect there are grants and funds available for the sort of alternative energy / eco-friendly ideas we have particularly if there is an intention to be educational / keep agriculture and farming going etc. We would think about sponsorship / selling our story / writing about it or even approaching TV companies if it brought us close to what we want.

So the hitches – well, the obvious risking everything financially is the first one. I can’t really see a way of protecting our assets – the house could be rented out and pay the mortgage but with debts to clear we would still be left with a monthly sum of money to find and I suspect certainly initially the plan would quickly fold if we had to do more than feed ourselves. The idea of having to work outside of the plan doesn’t appeal (although something like writing or being prepared to tell our story to cover those costs would be okay). There is the chance it simply wouldn’t work and we’ll find ourselves in a few years tired, broke and with nothing to show for it other than a sob story and broken dreams. I’m more than prepared to jump and take that risk but I have three other people to consider, one of which isn’t great at sleeping anyway so doesn’t need crazy stress levels about whether there will be enough food to last the month.

We might just do it and decide it isn’t for us after all. It might be too much hard work, we might miss our freedom (long term I could see time ‘off’ being perfectly possible with other people stepping in to oversee it / share the workload) but certainly short term we’d be tied to it. I suspect we’d be a popular place for friends to come visit so hopefully wouldn’t miss out too out much on seeing people but depending on where geographically we are we may find ourselves struggling with a change in location. I think we have had as good a taste of this lifestyle as you can get in suburbia and we’re still with it after a good couple of years of progressively increasing our committments to crops and animals.

Next steps then. This is a fairly huge idea and has many elements to it which need investigating before we come up with a proper plan. It could be we need to start small renting a farm and getting as many elements of the lifestyle as possible before branching into the other aspects, it could be we try and find out about funding first, or look at campsites or existing businesses. I need to find out if there are already people doing this and whether we can learn from them or even work with them. I need to find out just what numbers of animals we’d be looking at to be self-sufficient and how much land to grow which crops, we need to look at where we’d ideally geographically and how feasible that is and all of the other implications. Above all we are spending lots of time talking about this, between ourselves and to other people and feeling out what the idea sounds like when we speak it out loud. So far I get more excited with every retelling and from it being a pipe dream I am now starting to see potential ways it could become a reality – maybe.

So there you are. I’m guessing it’s not a shocking plan, indeed I’ve shared elements of it with several of you in some form anyway. Comments very welcome, from super critical picking holes to ideas to whatever else comes into your head when you read it. It’s all still very half formed and I’m hoping that in getting it written down and read by others I will start to get some clarity on where to go with it all next.

The promised post is in draft but it’s taking ages to get written down properly.

Today Davies, Scarlett and I went up to London. When I got the latest Educators brochure from the Science Museum I went through and booked up various events. They are super cheap and generally very good. Today was a Space Day and we’d booked to see Fly Me To The Moon at the Imax 3d cinema and a drama character talk of an American actor playing Gene Cernan (the last man on the moon).

So, up with the alarm, breakfasted, lunch packed and on the platform with a full 15 minutes before our train was due proving we can do it when we have to, it’s just that we don’t really want to ;). I’d brought the kids’ DSs to play on the train knowing they can get a bit restless – it’s one hour 20 minutes to London from Lancing and only the very last five minutes has much worth looking out of the windows at when you are a child who has done that journey so many times before. I get tired of playing ‘on Monday I went to the supermarket and I bought…’ for the full 3 hour return journeys every time 😆 So they DS’d, I’d brought a notepad and pen and spent about half an hour writing down things to commit them to paper – don’t remember the last time I wrote like that, it was very productive :). I then read The Metro and once I’d finished Scarlett had tired of her DS so she borrowed the pen and doodled all over the faces of all the pictures in The Metro. Actually we all three joined in with that, it was very entertaining. We left our masterpiece there for others to admire 😆

Straight through Victoria and on to a tube, I’d been fairly sure we were on the right platform heading in the right direction and we’d leapt onto the train that was about to pull away when we arrived so it was a relief to hear the ‘next station is…’ announcement was what I was expecting :). The long walk through the tunnel to the Science Museum, a thankfully empty bag search and tickets queue and we were at the Imax for the required 10 minutes before the film started. Actually they were very slack at time keeping and the 1040am start didn’t happen until about 11am.

I’ve not been to an Imax before and it was just awesome – the hugest screen ever and the 3d effects were truly amazing. The very first scene had everyone gasping, exclaming and reaching out to touch things that seemed right infront of our faces and the whole hour of the film maintained the effect. If you’ve not experienced it I’d really recommend it. So much so we are looking to book all of the 3d films there soon, especially as on Educators rates I was free and the kids were only about £4 each.

We were all hungry and debated what to do next as we had about half an hour before the Gene Cernan thing. In the end we decided to head to the cafe for tea and sneaky eating of our brought lunch at their tables. We needed to get back for Badgers tonight but our next couple of booked dates are on days we have no need to hurry back so we decided to shelf further museum exploration for when we have more time.

Gene Cernan was okay – Davies and I quite enjoyed it but Scarlett didn’t find him engaging or interesting enough. He was quite preachy and teachery and did that annoying thing of telling you what you were going to find interesting or boring. He was up against various late arrivals of school groups which didn’t help and meant he lost his thread a little. The best bit was the last five minutes or so when he took questions which he actually did really well at. He talked about gravity, Einstein and his theories, how rockets get to the moon and back again, how you eat, drink, sleep and go to the toilet in space and certainly knew his stuff even if he wasn’t terribly convincing as the real astronaut.

We came out and decided to head for home there and then. It was raining quite heavily but thankfully aside from a short dash to the tube station the rest of the journey was undercover. There was a train pulling up as we arrived once again and we only waited about 10 minutes at Victoria for a train home. The kids mostly DSd although we chatted a bit too and then they played a very extended game of rock, paper, scissors which also featured fire, wind, water, electricity and trees 😆

We were back home by about 330pm so they had some time in the garden with the ducklings while I drank tea and cooked their dinner. Badger clothes on and back out again. Julie wasn’t there tonight so it was a bit chaotic. Jan, who used to run it years ago was there and in a fit of rebelliousness we all decided to do outdoor games at the beginning of the session rather than at the end to wear them all out a bit, they came in ready for a drink and a rest which meant they were able to listen and be calmer easier. We talked about things you can and can’t eat in the wild. Jan isn’t great at getting the Badgers to listen or participate and tends to ask the same children each time for their input and ignore all the others. There was also some not strictly factual stuff said about what is and isn’t edible and I could see Davies and Scarlett squirming but wisely staying quiet. They then all did a poster warning about picking and eating things if you don’t know what they are.

We got home not long after Ady and I finished reading Scarecrow while the kids scoffed fruit. We’ve enjoyed Pulman and suspect we may come back and read more of him another time. It only started as we are seeing a play of The Firework Makers Daughter later in the summer so wanted to have read the book first. Davies and I read some of Clockwork and we enjoyed the Rat too. I think we may return to a Morpurgo again next though, his books are just lovely to read aloud.

Junior Apprentice, lovely dinner by Ady and now I’m heading to bed as I’m back to work tomorrow and suspect I have a backlog of stuff to be getting on with making for a long and busy day.

Off to visit our new friends who live on a boat today. Abbie is 8 and gets on really well with Scarlett, sharing a love of animals and talking non-stop. They have met three times now and still fill all their time together nattering away like two old women :). Helen’s middle daughter, Alex, who is 12 and has just done a short stint in school for 8 weeks before coming back out again to be ‘boat schooled’ was there so we met her too today and she is lovely :).

We had a couple of hours on the boat and Helen had put out various crafty bits and pieces for the kids to make stuff with while the rain drummed the boat windows and we drank tea – something very lovely about the little cabin and the smell of meths from the cooker. We had lunch and the children all spent some time out on deck watching the swans, ducks, coots and moorhens that hang out in the marina. The weather had finally cleared up so we went for a walk alongside the canal, through the woodland and sat on the beach.

We saw various wildlife including a pair of moorhens and their chicks and loads of ducks. At the beach the girls spent ages looking at shrimps and crabs. Helen and I chatted and idly watched a group of firemen doing a rescue training exercise to a stranded fireman out on the sand flats. All very watchable ;).

By then it was getting close to us needing to head off so we said goodbye and arranged to meet up again soon, then we drove back to Worthing to the beach where we had time for 20 minutes before swimming lessons. Davies said his arm was still hurting – he has been using it fine and no real bruising has come out but it clearly is still playing him up a little. I am fairly certain it was a bad fall that will sort itself out rather than anything requiring attention and have been watching him closely to make sure he is using it but was prepared to agree swimming might be painful. He was also being a bit wobbly about Scarlett playing with Abbie and not really needing him so I used the opportunity to sit and have a chat with him while Tarly had her lesson.

We talked a bit about Home Ed generally, how I feel he sometimes coasts along with things rather than using the immense freedom he has to best advantage and how coming up to ten I would have expected to see more strides out for independance from him. I think he often forgets how liberal I am about letting him try things if he only asks, but not so proactive at pushing him forward, prefering for him to make these leaps and bounds on his own. Last year was a big year for him with things like Badger camp and I think he maybe overreached himself slightly and has fled back to me again and safety. I am more than happy for him to plod along with all things at his own pace but would hate to feel he is missing out on opportunities or may one day regret not being more adventurous or demanding of new things. We talked over a couple of things he wants to learn more about, discussed some ways he can make things happen for himself and I will let him go away and digest some of that and maybe follow it up again in a few days to see how he is feeling about it all. I think Davies can be a lot like Ady – excellent at acheiveing when someone puts him on the right path but not so good at working out what he wants and how to get there. His self-motivation isn’t huge and sometimes he needs a prod to remind him that he wanted to do something and therefore he really should get out there and do it. I don’t want to be prodding particularly but maybe I do need to do it every so often.

Scarlett had a good lesson, her backstroke is coming along really well. She now gets herself changed for her lesson and dried and dressed again afterwards which is nice – she is counting down the months until she is 8 and can be in the pool herself. When Davies was first 8 I couldn’t contemplate leaving him but I can easily see me letting the two of them go to the pool by the time Scarlett is 8. Can’t really see how or why I might need or want to but I could see it being perfectly possible dropping them off outside and collecting them again an hour or so later.

Back at home I cooked various versions of eggs for the kids’ teas while Scarlett played outside with the ducklings and Davies watched Astroboy. Ady arrived home and Tarly and I nipped up to the allotment to cut down some grass. Back home again I read some story and they went to bed to listen to an hour of audiobooks each. They are both listening to various Harry Potter cds so it is quite soothing to listen to Stephen Fry’s voice drifting from various parts of the house. For once I did make them both turn off after an hour or so though as we are off to London for the day tomorrow so will have a far earlier start than any of us are good at.

Otherwise I won’t catch up!

Slept in late, must have needed it. The kids had sorted out their own breakfast – hurrah! I’ve been lecturing Davies lately about getting a bit more self-reliant as he is *nearly ten!*. I think some of it is going in. He is very hard to be cross with for long as he has so little attitude and when I point out something he is doing wrong / annoying he tend to agree, promise to try harder and at does seem to try. Probably just as well, I couldn’t cope with two who shout back ;).

Kids did some Xboxing, played with the geomags, fell out and made up, I cut Davies’ hair a bit as it was just getting on the neglected side of unkempt rather than a style choice. They played outside with the ducklings.

We had lunch, nipped into Lancing to the pound shop for Chatterbooks supplies (squash, biscuits, felt tips etc.) and then into the library. Got everything ready for Chatterbooks, talked to two of the children from the previous sessions who happened to be in the library and were really pleased to see Davies and Scarlett and the four of them chatted for quite a while together which was nice to see.

New Chatterbooks attendees arrived and we all introduced ourselves. They made name badges, had refreshments etc. Two of the girls remembered Scarlett from Rainbows which was nice :). We did the tour of the library, chose books by their covers, did the book cover jigsaw, designed our own book jackets and talked about illustrations. It all felt slightly rushed (we had squashed two sessions into one) and tough getting to know names etc so quickly but I think it went well. Certainly less obviously disruptive children this time, which is good.

I did some photocopying for Badgers, caught up with various colleagues, the kids collected a MASSIVE pile of audiobooks I’d ordered in for them, Scarlett chose a heap of non fiction books about animals (she has about 35 items on her library ticket at the moment!) and then we came home.

I made them bacon and mashed potatoes for their tea, hung some washing out, brought some in (just before it started to rain), made pastry and cooked more bacon for quiches (for dinner, for having cold for lunches and for the freezer for a dinner next week), turned some very sad bananas into cupcakes and chatted to Ady who had arrived home. Nipped to the supermarket for more supplies leaving the others in the gartden, came home to recall too late I’d left a quiche baking blind in while I was gone 😳 so made some more pastry.

I read the kids a chapter of Scarecrow along with a non-fiction books about food chains and food webs which was interesting. They went to bed, I had a bath, finished making dinner and Ady and I caught up with Doctor Who.

Having had a fab weekend with friends last weekend this weekend the four of us enjoyed some time together just our family :). I’d booked tickets for a Spring Into Summer event at River Cottage HQ months ago as a surprise for Ady with the intention of camping nearby on the Saturday night if the weather was suitable. The forecast suggested it would be so we booked one night at Shrubbery Campsite as recommended by River Cottage website.

On Saturday Davies and Scarlett had Wildlife Explorers so we had our usual mad dash out of the house in the morning, dropped them in the classroom at Pulborough Brooks (their session was on ponddipping, they found loads of different things in the ponds at PB) and Ady and I sat on the patio of the cafe enjoying the sunshine, drinking tea and coffee and talking about some fairly exciting plans we are in the very early throes of looking into for the future (more about that later, probably).

The drive down to the Dorset / Devon borders should be 2 hours and we have done it in that before but the New Forest section of the road is always very trafficky and the A31 / A35 is often very slow so we anticipated it being more like 3 hours and that is what it took. We’d initially planned to head straight there and find lunch when we arrived but plaintive cries of hunger and being starving from the backseat meant we stopped at Sainsburys for sandwich supplies instead along the way. Duly sated we carried on our journey with all four of us talking about different life ideas.

We found the campsite, enjoyed the warm welcome the website had promised and were told to go and pitch anywhere. It was ideal for being located near to River Cottage (about 2 miles), had nice flat grass, a good mix of all sorts of pitch (we were just on non-hookup so no marked out pitches, just a guide of being 6m away from other tents). There was a fairly big kids playground with swings, slides, climbing frames etc. The toilets / showers / washing up areas were all super clean and modern and the shop was well stocked and reasonable. Not somewhere I’d go for a long stay as there was none of the sense of wilderness I like about camping and it definitely wasn’t a lighting a fire to sit round in the evening type campsite, but perfect for pitching our tent and heading off out again from.

The tent went up really easily, we’re fretting now that the big Outwell will seem like such an ordeal in comparison to this littler tent when we use it for Scotland. We got sleeping mats up and sleeping bags installed and then shut the tent up again and headed out to Lyme Regis. It was slightly too far to walk, which was a shame as it was a lovely warm afternoon and parking is a nightmare in Lyme Regis but we found a one hour space which gave us enough time to look round a couple of the fossil shops, recreate a picture of Davies sitting on a cannon from October 2004:
Original: ” alt=”” />Updated:” alt=”” /> and have a wander along the beach / paddle / clamber on the ‘Keep off the rocks’ rocks and back again.

We got an ice cream and headed back to the car. We’d realised we didn’t pack towels so needed to go and buy at least one from somewhere for a shower later so we went into Axminster to get towels and milk for tea / coffee later / for the morning. Then back to Lyme Regis where parking restrictions had ended for the evening.

We walked along looking in rockpools at crabs, sea urchins and little fish, watched a cormorant perched on a rock just out to sea displaying his wings and the kids climbed up the sea wall. The tide started to come in and we were all getting hungry so we headed back to the main beach via the chip shop and had fish and chips on the beach for tea, threatened by seagulls coming ever closer in hope of being tossed a chip or two.

Davies and Scarlett had another paddle and we finally persuaded them away at about 830pm. Time for a couple of self-timers and a look in a book shop which was still open. Scarlett spent ages chatting to the owner and was very tempted to buy a book but decided against it at the last minute.

Back to the campsite and Ady and I sat and chatted while Davies and Scarlett joined the throng of children playing in the park area. I could see the games getting progressively wilder and more boisterous and was wondering how long it would be before there were tears when Davies came back cradling his left arm with a very concerned looking Scarlett by his side. He got all the way over to me before bursting into tears and saying he thought he’d broken his arm. I’d not been watching and whilst Scarlett was adamant it was the fault of a couple of girls who’d be chasing Davies and was all for going over to yell at them Davies was more measured and said he’d fallen heavily on it and it was just an accident. Ady and I looked at it and got him to do various arm testing things and decided it probably wasn’t broken but badly bruised instead.

We decided it was bedtime for the kids so I took them across to the shower blocks to get cleaned up, teeth brushed and into pyjamas. I’m sorry Davies got hurt but it did mean there was a more calm feeling to bedtime and they both laid down quietly chatting in the tent which is a bit of a novelty as they usually take forever to get to sleep when we’re camping. Ady and I sat up for a bit longer chatting before deciding we were actually quite tired too so we joined them in the tent. I read a chapter of The Scarecrow and his Servant and all three of the others were all but asleep by the time I finished that. I read a bit of my own book and I think even I was asleep before midnight.

Sunday morning I woke first. We’d had a bit of rain in the night but it was dry again by morning. I had a shower and managed to spectacularly slip over on the wet floor with bare feet. I’d not yet put my contact lenses in so couldn’t see very well either and people came over to help me up. Very embarrassing! I was not seriously hurt but do have a very impressive bruise on each knee to show for my clumsiness. Back at the tent the others were all stirring. Davies had slept fine and aside from some small purple bruises on his elbow and it feeling a bit stiff seemed to have no lasting effects. We went to the shop for some cereal for breakfast and met the campsite cat who was sitting on the counter. Back at the tent Ady was making tea and coffee on our little stove. Really impressed with it, it folds down really small into it’s case, doesn’t even need matches and seems to be fairly efficient on it’s little gas bottles. I wouldn’t want to be cooking loads on it but it’s ideal for boiling a kettle for overnights away.

Davies and Scarlett went off to play crazy golf on the campsite while Ady and I packed up. Scarlett managed to get bitten by the campsite cat which did have us wondering if we could sue the campsite for nearly broken arm, child savaged by wild cat and serious slipping injury in the shower block – or whether we should just hurry up and leave before something happened to Ady :).

River Cottage HQ was a really short five minute drive away. It’s very discretely marked and they are firm about the fact it is a working farm that does not accept visitors other than for pre-booked events. I’m not sure how many people were there but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred, parking restrictions alone (one small field) would prevent bigger numbers. We waited for a tractor and trailer ride down from the field to the farm and looked at the programme of events, talks and demos. Hugh F-W has long been one of Ady and my heros and although we knew he wasn’t going to be there it was still pretty cool to be in the venue for the TV shows and books we know and love. We have definitely been inspired by River Cottage and HFW and he is one of the few ‘celebrities’ that our rather famous-people-ignorant children would recognise, probably as ‘that chicken man’ 😆

First stop was the Produce Exchange stall where you could hand in something you had made / grown / baked yourself for tickets to come and barter for something in exchange later. I’d taken a pot each of strawberry and chilli and strawberry and lavender jam. The strawberries were picked fresh on Thursday locally and the chillis were from our freezer, grown here at home last year, the lavender was from the garden that day. We got two tickets in exchange to come back with later and select from what others had brought. Fab idea :).

Next we joined a standing room only talk about butchering a whole lamb being held by one of the butchers watchers of River Cottage will have seen, with one of the RC chefs cooking the meat as it was cut and a member of the audience duplicating the butcher’s actions to show how easy it was. They said you can buy a whole organic lamb direct from an abbatoir for £80 – the two leg cuts would be £40 each alone so if you can butcher and joint it yourself everything else is a bargain and what a lot else there is! This is one of Ady’s passions /interests / yens to learn more about so he was pretty enthralled, I was really interested as while slaughtering an animal is something I’d still be pretty nervous of cutting it up afterwards and learning what to do with the various cuts is very interesting. Davies and Scarlett were possibly slightly less enthralled but interested nonetheless :). We realised we were so far back we wouldn’t be getting any nibbles of the various delicacies the chef was preparing and there was so much else to see that we moved on after abotu 15 minutes. Ady was quite gratified to note that while he might do a cruder job he already had a good enough working knowledge of what is inside a lamb to have a pretty good go himself at such a task. We heard from both that butcher and a guy preparing a squirrel later that nature has provded the eater with some pretty clear guidelines on cutting up animals to eat with natural lines close to bones and that a basic working knowledge of how an animal’s body works should tell you which bits you might want to eat and which to avoid ;).

Next port of call was the local produce tent – they are very picky about who gets to have a stall at RC and they are genuinely local and of very high quality. The overwhelming feeling of the day was a complete lack of commercialism and a real passion for food, sharing what is good and educating and inspiring rather than making money. For once the ‘free samples’ were just that – people so proud of their produce (and the stands were manned by the actual people who’d grown / made stuff rather than salespeople) that they were more than happy to encourage you to try it and love it rather than to buy it. We tried the most amazing chocolate (chilli, ginger, spiced), cakes and cookies, goats cheeses, chacuteries (spelt wrong probably but you know what I mean – air dried meats), honeys and other produce. I bought lip balms from two stalls and learnt that spring honey tends to be the set one while summer honey tends to stay runny. The kids bought a stunningly decorated (and apparently delicious) cupcake each for just 50 pence each and debated hanging on for a space to do some sugarcraft animal making but decided to move on. There was simply too much to see to do everything.

Next Davies and Scarlett planted a seedling each and chatted to one of the kitchen garden gardners while Ady and I wandered round looking at the very impressive kitchen garden beds. We paused at the farm house (which was off limits) for a tea and coffee (fair trade and organic of course and a bargain at just £1 each) for us and made-at-River Cottage elderflower cordial (free – all water, blackcurrant and elderflower cordial was free and in copious supplies all day long) for the kids.

We walked up the hill and Ady and the kids spent some time at the catapaulting while I watched a squirrel being skinned and boned and put on sticks to cook over the fire.

And yes I did go back an hour or so later when it was cooked to try a bit. Not really much in the way of meat on a squirrel and what there is isn’t a delicacy by any means. Very interesting to see how to do it though.

All that squirrel prep made us hungry so we joined the queue for lunch – a choice of ciabatta rolls filled with either spiced mutton, salad leaves (all from RC of course) and mint raita or locally caught mackrel with lemon and herb dressing – all made on site from home grown / reared or local produce. There was a veggie option of potato and spinach tortilla but clearly that wasn’t for us. We got one of each, an extra ciabatta each for the kids and all tried some of everything. The mutton was delicious – Davies and I loved it :). I washed mine down with a glass of RC sparkling elderflower wine (well, Scarlett helped ;)) which was equally moreish.

There was a full nature trail round the smallholding to see more of the land and animals but we simply ran out of time and the weather was far from the forecast doom and storms and was gorgeous all day long meaning it was one of those days for a little exersion followed by some lazing around again straight afterwards 🙂

We walked round the pigs, sheep, chickens, polytunnels and looked out over the land though to get a really good feel of what it was all about. I loved the little touches like ‘Chicken Out’ carved into the door of the chicken run 🙂

We split up for a bit as Davies and I wanted to watch the friction fire demo and Scarlett wanted to explore the little caravan and the stream so she went off with Ady.

They looked round the meadow and happened to be close to the farmhouse chatting to some of the staff about the gardens when Scarlett needed the loo. Rather than walk back up to the portaloos the staff said they could nip in the house and use the bathroom – yes that house 🙂 So of course Ady got some pictures inside – very envious 🙂


We reconvened for ice creams and then remembered the produce exchange. Rather belatedly we arrived and swapped in our tickets for a jar of chutney and one of pickled onions. There was very little left and I was pleased to see my jams had gone – wonder who’s kitchen they are in now? 🙂

Davies and I wanted to see the flint knapping demo and Scarlett and Ady went off to catch shrimp in the stream. I chatted to the flint knapper for ages about how he got into wilderness and bushcraft stuff, whether he makes a decent living from it and so on and that was really interesting. I’d talked to a flint knapper before who was very insistent that women can’t do it and this guy was equally adamant that women can. He showed the very small group of us there how it all works, the tools of the trade (antler and stones for hammer stones – it all felt very Clan of the Cave Bear ;)) and talked about some of the tools made from flint through history. Davies had a go while I spent some time with Tarly at the stream:


When I came back he was very keen for me to have a go and I suspect would have stayed there all afternoon with me to prove I could do it – as it was I reluctantly moved when a small child was asking ever increasingly desperately to have a go :).

I really enjoyed that, would love to learn more.

It was now over half an hour after the official finishing time and we were pretty much the last few people there so we had a last quick look round at the remaining things to see – a blacksmith making tools over his open fire, all of the food and drink stalls completely sold out and made our way back up the hill again to the car.

What a fabulous place, loved every minute of the day, really keen to re-visit another time and learnt lots and got loads of inspiration and ideas from it. 🙂

The traffic was bad on the drive home and we stopped for McD’s for the kids for tea when it became obvious we wouldn’t be home in time to cook them dinner at a sensible hour. We got home and they had a bath, followed by toast and a chapter of story before they went off to bed. We had late dinner followed by late bed but slept really well after a fab weekend 🙂

I had a lie in this morning to fully justify being off sick. I have quite some sleep deficit to catch up on thanks to some truly dreadful nights over the last week or so and now the itching has properly stopped I am sleeping very well again. I woke and finally looked more like me again rather than one of those computer generated age enhanced images of Nic Goddard in the year 2025 which is what I’ve felt I looked like for the last ten days.

Scarlett spent lots of time outside with the ducklings today, Davies is In The Zone on a Harry Potter xbox game so is spending lots of time on that and rampaging through the levels, doing lots of along the way reading, reasoning, logic, exercising his fingers, honing his hand-eye coordination and demonstrating that left to their own devices Home Educated children really do do nothing but play computer games :lol:. He and I also watched Doctor Who from the weekend so we’re caught up again. Of course we’re not home yet again on a Saturday evening tomorrow so we’ll be catching up on that episode sometime next week yet again…

I’ve done stuff like book a campsite for tomorrow evening (very exciting micro-camping weekend, more about that when we return), booked Wickstead and pondered lots on some hopes and dreams that I’m hoping to record in a blogpost sometime soon. I sorted out a mobile phone for Scarlett – she’s had one for a while but not active with a sim. I really don’t think seven year olds need mobiles BUT she does like to roam when we’re up at the allotment / camping in familiar areas and I’d rather she had the freedom to roam with the security of being able to stay in touch. We have a very comprehensive stash of old phones from free contract upgrades and the sim was free. I’ve stuck a tenner on it (I did that for Davies back last August for Badger camp and he still has over £5 left on it) and showed her how to use it to answer and make calls. She is very happy with the novelty and the idea of freedom it offers. 🙂

I did some laundry and then my Dad arrived. I suspected he might having had a brief chat with him on the phone last night and realised he missed Davies and Scarlett – he’s so much more attached to them than my Mum is and really seems to miss then when he’s not seen them for a week or so. He stayed for lunch and a catch up chat, familiarised himself with the duckling set- up for bird-sitting over the weekend and left just as Ay appeared home for some lunch between store visits.

Davies, Scarlett and I nipped up to the allotment and they went off in the woods to their ‘hideout’ while I watered. We really need to spend a few hours up there next week to do some chopping down of tall weeds and getting some more stuff in. I was there for about 45 minutes then rang Scarlett to get them to meet me back at the car. Without a phone or walkie talkie they simply wouldn’t be able to go out of sight / hearing like they do. I remember hanging out with other kids after school and making camps and hideouts, creating secret clubs and I love that that is part of their childhood too :).

Back home again Scarlett went back outside, Davies did more Xboxing and I made some jam with the strawberries from yesterday. I made 4 jars of strawberry and chilli and another 3 of strawberry and lavender using lavender from the garden and chillis from the freezer that we’d grown last year here at home. Scarlett came and tasted them and brought me lavender then sat next to Davies and did some drawing and pencil sharpening. I got all misty eyed in the kitchen as I stood there hulling strawberries to make jam that I’d picked with the children yesterday while Tarly kept coming to gather more strawberries to share with Davies, I chucked the leaves and tops out the back door to the chickens who had gathered there for that very purpose and thought about how very perfect life is when you can pick strawberries in the sunshine one day and be making them into jam, sharing the fruit with your wonderful children and the waste with your chickens while the sun shines in the kitchen door. Soppy!

Ady arrived home and cooked steak for Davies as he’d promised last night (A and I had steak for dinner yesterday and it is Davies’ favourite dinner), Ady watered the garden and I read some stories to the children. Davies and I measured how many litres of water our kitchen sink holds after me pahing at an advert for dishwashers that 49 litres of water is used for handwashing. Our sink holds 13 litres and we only fill it twice a day most days for washing up (we don’t have a dishwasher). The water is heated by our very efficient (and spanking new) boiler as needed. We don’t have room or funds for a dishwasher anyway but I’m not at all convinced it would be the greener option for us regardless. The 13 litres was then taken out of the sink to water the garden and top up the chickens and ducks water. Ady has been using our grey water (bath) to water the garden recently too which makes me feel better about our rather extravagent habit of bathing every day (we do share bathwater but it is a *very* big bath :oops:). We all gathered clothes to pack up for camping, the kids went to bed, I had a bath and made dinner and we sat down very late indeed.

Back on Sunday :).

which is what you get when you spend the first two days wandering up hills and sitting in cars I guess :).

Wednesday Very tired indeed I did sleep through from Tuesday night but woke very itchy, puffy and flaky yet again. I went to work but the concerned peering at my face from all my colleagues pressing me to go back to the doctors convinced me I was still looking far from great. I was having a real come-down from the weekend too and just feeling generally low, ugly and ailing. Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the morning and met me back at home when I arrived. I got an emergency appointment for the afternoon and we spent the rest of the day hanging out at home while Ady went into the office.

Scarlett spent loads of time with the ducklings who are now quacking. We decided they are big enough to move outside so Wednesday was their first night out in their run sleeping in their hutch. The plan is for them to move in with the chickens eventually but we’re having some side-by-side either side of the fence time first before moving the fence away sometime next week.

Davies did some Xboxing and some geomagging, they both opted to stay home while I nipped to the doctors so I left them to it. It’s very nice to have old enough children to confidently do that every so often :). I saw yet another doctor and he was excellent. My neck and chest was very swollen and red, my eyes have huge bags of excess skin on both upper and lower lids and my facial skin is coming off in huge flakes. I said I wasn’t sleeping, was scared the effects on my eyes were permanent and just wanted it all to stop. He took me really seriously, agreed it was an extreme reaction in terms of length and severity and assured me my skin would be okay and my eyes would recover. He said he felt the steroids had not been for long enough at a 3 day course so although they had started to alleviate the problems once I’d stopped taking them it had carried on. He feels it is still the same initial allergic reaction carrying on rather than a series of reactions and gave me just the right level of professional sympathy to make me feel much better :). I came away with another £14.40 worth of prescription (bringing the total to £36 now, not to mention the additional £20 or so in recommended creams, eye gel packs etc.) for a ten day course of steroids which should hopefully knock it on the head once and for all and a tube of really good moisturiser for my face.

I managed to get washing done, dinner for the kids and bedtime stories and have them actually in bed by 8pm which was a welcome return to some sort of normality for me if not them ;). Junior Apprentice and dinner for us.

Thursday I awoke after another decent nights sleep to a far less ravaged looking face and no itching. I still look pretty rough and was told about four times today I looked tired, but tired I can live with. It was session three of the Book Club display crafts so we headed over to Bognor to Clare’s house for that. A fab time was had by all with plenty of bouncing on trampolines, sitting in the sunshine drinking tea and chatting, crafting to make yet more planets for the display and generally enjoying becomming part of that rather lovely group of people. Davies and Scarlett seem to have fitted in really well and there are some fab kids there including a huge group of teenage girls who are all really nice kids I am very happy to observe and see my children in the company of :).

We could have happily stayed longer but we’d had a plan to call in at the PYO on the way home so left at about 345pm in order to have half an hour strawberry picking before they closed. We filled 3 huge trugs and spent £19 on strawberries which I am planning on making jam with a large amount of tomorrow. We also called into the farm shop for some fruit and veg stocks.

We arrived home at the same time as Ady who was wanting to nip into town to get some roof bars he’d reserved at Argos. We have acquired a roof box for £30 second hand which is HUGE and looks perfect but the roof bars are proving something of a challenge. We whizzed into town and collected fish and chips for the kids’ tea on the way home which they ate in the garden with the ducklings while Ady and I wrestled with the roof bars unsuccessfully. Ady took them back while I bathed, dried, hairbrushed and read stories to Davies and Scarlett.

After some agonising I rang into work to say I wouldn’t be in tomorrow. I need to apply this face cream at least every couple of hours which means wearing make up is impossible, the steroids are giving me stomach cramps which are tolerable but an unpleasant side effect and I found standing on the counter / manning the desk really tough yesterday feeling so obviously physically not right. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was right not to go in, they were all feeling so sorry for me and that recovering properly was the most important thing. I feel both a bit fraudulent and quite relieved not to be going in but I think it is the right decision.

Saturday I worked in the morning and was kindly on duties not too close in contact with the general public. Every member of staff came and had a good old peer at me though and offered the same line of questionning about whether we’d changed washing powder. Is that one of those urban myths toted out in every case of allergic reaction? Does anyone actually know anyone who has reacted badly to a change in washing powder or is in akin to swans breaking your arms and ladders having your eye out?!

Ady and the kids collected me at 1pm with a fully laden car, sandwiches and a cup of tea and we set straight off for J&J’s. On a really good run it should take 4.5 hours. Unlikely ever to happen given the route includes the M25 and m1 but it was more like 6.5 hours in the end. The M25 was bad, the M1 had various issues including road works and average speed cameras for vast chunks restricting us to 50mph and then we hit an accident that had happened about 2 miles infront. After the first 20 emergency services vehicles had screamed past us and then the air ambulance thudded overhead very low we resigned ourselves to a wait. It actually wasn’t too bad, under an hour and the diversion was off and straight back on again as the accident had happened at a junction. The only sensible reaction is to feel grateful it is you caught in the resulting traffic rather than causing it really. Thankfully Davies and Scarlett are really good travellers in the car having done it since birth (travelling from Sussex to Manchester and back was a regular occurance since they were babies and of course all of our holidays and weekends away are done by car travel so they are just used to it) so aside from the odd ‘how long now?’ ‘three hours’ ‘but you said that half an hour ago’ ‘yes and we’ve not moved in half an hour so it’s not changed!’ we got on with DSing, singing along to the radio and in-car dancing.

We were one of the last families to arrive and were greeted with hugs, wine / coffee, cheers and love. Ady and I decided getting the tent up pronto was a top plan so headed off to do that. Ady did some stone removal and some horse poo shovelling and generally looked scared as he often does while a tent is going up. I bet we’d have it pitched in half an hour and we did. Of course putting in the bedding etc took longer but the tent itself was up. Chris and Alison arrived while we were pitching and put their tents up too. Everything installed we headed back to the house for the serious business of eating, drinking and catching up with friends.

Helen had come up with the marvellous idea of everyone bringing a cake to put together to create one big cake, patchwork style. So 11 families brought 13 cakes all with a letter on to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Other than coordinating letters and size of cake we had not discussed flavour of cake or anything so it truly was a random selection. All transported collectively hundreds of miles, some lovingly cooked and decorated, some just as lovingly bought and decorate. All indivdually delicious and remarkable and put together just so much more than the sum of their parts. Nearly 70 people singing Happy Birthday while candles on 13 cakes flickered had pretty much everyone feeling a bit misty eyed I think. It was truly one of the loveliest moments I can recall. I hope we’ve started yet another new tradtition :). Missed those who didn’t make it for various reasons and just felt very honoured to have such an amazing circle of wonderful friends.

Cakes presented, candles blown out, plates found and everyone served with cake people scattered again into small groups to chat. I spent a very enjoyable time in the kitchen debating silverback gorillas. I think we all know who the silverback was eventually ;). The kids drifted off along with some of the adults and the remainder gathered into the lounge. We played some toy car into stacking cups tiddlywinks which is about as close as I get to playing games, enjoyed the music (soundtrack to show about two hard hitting crazy Scottish cops) and some of us went to bed quite late ;).

Sunday Started very early thanks to some children waking with the sunrise ;). I managed to turn over and go back to sleep :). When I did surface for tea and sunshine I spent some time chatting to various people before wandering back into the house when the wind got too much and helping with kitchen tidying and lunch preparation. The wind was very strong and Ady spent lots of time tent watching to make sure the tents were all okay. Most stood up to it very well but I suspect at least half of them had been specifically added to their owners tent collections simply for J&J’s field so they should really ;). Ady also took Scarlett and Claudie down to the stream for a paddle / dip / play / soak.

After lunch a walk / geocache was suggested and a large amount of the group went along to that including all four of us Goddards (at least 3 by coersion ;)). It was a fab walk with crazy wind, a reservoir in the middle of the moors that was just amazing with the wind whipping up waves, the blue sky creating a tropical hue to the water and a lovely sound of lapping water. Quite surreal :). It was at the top of a very steep hill which the children rolled down, I came down on my bum and Ady very very amusingly also rolled down. Still can’t believe no one captured that on film, it was amazing!

Back at the house it was approaching tea time. We had some Pimms and got stuck into food. 3 families left during the afternoon bringing numbers down a lot (particularly as one family has 9 people in it! :lol:). More chatting, more eating cake (that was quite a characteristic of the weekend) and just generally hanging out together catching up on each others lives.

Monday I woke very itchy again. I was feeling quite sorry for myself and took additional antihistimine and mourned the fact I wasn’t improving as quickly as I’d hoped I might. In the morning some of us took various small girls (all girls for some reason!) to the stables to see Tipsey’s new foal. We’d hoped to see Megan’s pony too although Patience the foal more than made up for that in serious levels of cute. We also spent some time in the pen containing chickens, ducks, rabbits and guinea pigs and several of the children had a sit on the back of the horses there. Scarlett was more interested in the furry animals and declined the offer of sitting on a horse.

In the car on the way back I had Chloe, Megan, Beth and Scarlett and we had most enjoyable converations about rubber replacement feet and other surreal medical ideas. I do love listening to – and even better joining in – with kids’ conversations :). We also debated what potential damage we could do to Ady’s shiny new 4 day old car that he was a bit precious about me driving and filling with girls in horse poo covered wellies ;).

Back to the house for lunch, more cake and another walk. Note I am glossing over the fact the walks contained geocaches. Not because we didn’t find them – we did, but because I don’t get geocaching I don’t think. I guess I am not competitive enough and don’t want to exchange plastic tat for more plastic tat or worse still explain to my kids why a shiny stone is not a suitable swap. In future I will raid the pound shop in advance for genuine plastic tat rather than found treasures 😆

Only Scarlett and I went on this walk – Davies was feeling a bit washed out so rested in the tent and Ady sat with him chatting. Ady says what he likes most of all about these types of weekend is going to bed early with the kids and having interesting conversations. Which is just as well really as I have no intention of going to bed early 😆

I struggled with the walking up so steeply at the end and had to pause several times and use my inhaler. I would have been happy to wait lower down for all the others but Barbara and Michelle very kindly waited with me chatting when I paused and urged me to make it to the top. It was very worth it as the views were just spectacular. They’d found the cache including a Happy 40th Birthday badge which seemed incredibly fortunate so that was swapped to bring home for our hosts.

We walked back and I loved how at different times people slowed down or increased pace and fell into step with various other people, both combinations of adults and children. I spent a fair bit of the descent with Lulah, Beth and Scarlett which was very entertaining :). Back at the house again yet more people had headed off while we were out and aside from Marcus, Michelle and Chloe and us everyone else left after tea and cakes. Ady and I went to Morrisons for butter and strawberries and came back for a very low key tea with very dwindled numbers.

After eating M,M & C also left leaving just us and our hosts. Jan wasn’t feeling great so retired early. A lovely alliance was formed between Catie and Scarlett on the basis of chatting about dolphins and evolution looking at a poster while queuing for the loo and then Catie read some stories that Scarlett really enjoying listening to. Ady stayed up with Jonathan and I for a while and then left. We stayed up a fair bit longer emptying wine bottles and chatting – it was really nice :).

My itching got worse and by the time we said goodnight at 230am I was really suffering. I cast a cat off my pillow to go to bed and laid there scratching and not sleeping until it was 5am and daylight. Half insane I went for a shower in the hopes of cooling off and then elevated by head with 3 pillows. It finally worked and I think I fell asleep about 6am, only to be awoken shortly afterwards by Ady as we needed to get going.

Monday Ady had to visit some Middlands stores this week so to save his company money and tie in well with him not having to drive loads we had stayed an extra night at J&Js and come home down the M6 rather than the M1. We left not long after 8am and got home at 930pm so a very long day :(. Ady only actually *worked* for about 3 of those hours, the rest was sitting in the car, in heavy traffic, on 2 hours sleep with continued itching. 🙁

We went into a garden centre where Ady had a meeting / presentation and the kids and I spent ages looking at pets, overpriced gifts, underpriced books etc and I actually bought them a book to share then we went back to the car and I had a 30 minute nap while they looked at the book. We had lunch at KFC – Ady and I had both been saying how familiar the road looked when we realised it was where a Travelodge was we’d stayed in when we visited Cadbury World years ago. One more garden centre and then heading for home.

Yet more traffic (overturned lorry on M25) meant the time was ticking away and we finally got home at 930pm. Ady bathed and fed the kids while I dashed to Sainsburys for bread, milk, etc. It might have been late but my bath, dinner and bed were all very welcome :).

I spent a lot of time this weekend reflecting on how incredibly lucky we all are to be part of this group of friends. I adore how Davies and Scarlett’s memories of childhood will be weekends like this – playing til long after dark with friends, white Christmas at Helmsley shared with 50 friends round the table for Christmas dinner, walks and trips on moors, downlands, beaches and woodland, hanging out, forming alliances and friendships that I hope will endure through the years. And for me? I feel so priviledged that decisions have led us to meet such an amazing group of people – so diverse, so different and so dear. I love how we have shared laughter and tears, been there for each other, celebrated and comisserated in our very 21st century fashion supported by blogs, email groups, Brightkite, twitter and facebook but most of all I love falling into step with 20 different people on a 3 mile walk, the in jokes, the affection, the knowing each other, the support, the love and the real, genuine, 100% friendship we share. You’re all bloody amazing and I love each and every one of you.xxxx

God what a tedious week it has been. We were supposed to be in London on Monday, meeting Helen on her boat on Tuesday, at home ed book club Wednesday, working yesterday and meeting friends today. Instead with the exception of Tuesday, two trips to the doctors and several outings in sunglasses to various chemists and supermarkets we’ve had a whole five days at home. Pah!

Today was day six of the rash / puffiness / itchy / whatever the hell it was and thanks to steroids / a change in the wind / the third lot of antihistimines / someone somewhere getting fed up with hearing about it and performing acts of black magic it is finally on the way out. More about that in a minute though.

So Thursday, I woke with a definite improvement to my face, the itchiness abated but incredibly puffy eyes. I certainly could not have gone to work and stood at the counter for fear of scaring the public / explaining 322 times just what was the matter with me. It rained most of the morning so I couldn’t even feel useful by getting laundry done. Scarlett put the ducklings out for a bit to see whether they agreed with the ‘nice weather for ducks’ saying. It turned out they didn’t and so she brought them back in again looking all miserable and wet and shivery. I’d had a chat with Davies and Scarlett in the morning to thank them for being so patient and understanding about all the cancelled plans this week and to explain that it was going to be another day at home, that I was feeling bad tempered and irritable and they would be best off finding something to entertain themselves for the day. They rose to the challenge and spent most of the morning in Davies’ room creating a Viva Pinata garden with various scraps of material, cardboard and coloured paper. I didn’t actually see it but they were very happily amused and chose to stay home and carry on playing while I nipped out for baking essentials.

We had lunch and then the weather cheered right up and the sun came out again. That was all the motivation we all needed and Davies and Scarlett scooped up the ducklings and went out into the garden while I cracked on with the laundry and some baking. I made three cheese, egg and bacon quiches, a chocolate orange cake and some macaroons with the egg whites from the quiches. The moving about seemed to help with my puffy face too and it was definitely looking much less swollen by the evening which was a relief as I was intending to go back to the doctors again this morning if there was not a marked improvement as of course it will be Tuesday at the earliest before I’d be able to get attention if things hadn’t improved.

Ady cooked dinner and I moisturised lots.

Today I woke and the difference was really marked, although far from back to normal. My skin is now very flaky, dry and tight and definitely still on the puffy side. My eyes have gone right down but the cost of that is loads of baggy skin all around upper and lower eyelids. Also as that skin is so delicate and was clearly under lots of stress for 6 days it is very sore and red and tender. Focussing on the positive at least it has all gone down and stopped reacting to whatever had flared it all up, on the negative I will be living in fear of it happening again and will probably have rough skin for the next week or so – no close ups this weekend ;). Just as well Im not vain eh? 😉

We had a big pile of library books to go back and I’d had email notifications of more things arrive so we decided to nip into town to take stuff back / collect new stuff, call in to say I would be back to work tomorrow (I needed to ring to let them know, so it was as easy to pop in) and get some cocoa as I seemed to have run out. Everyone at the library was gratifyingly horrified at my face which made me feel justified in not having been there yesterday and backed up my ringing in with proof. Quite nice to be flocked round actually, I don’t normally have that level of novelty value ;). We collected the next lot of audio books which were what had come in for the kids and then did a quick charity shop trawl and got a few bits in the CoOp for lunch before coming back home. By then it was lunchtime so we had lunch and Davies, Scarlett and the ducklings headed outside while I got busy in the kitchen. I iced the chocolate orange cake, mixed up batter for a malterser cake and put some pizza dough on for dinner, made the icing for the malteser cake and did some washing.

I then decided a sun hat might be a good plan for the weekend and remembered having seen some cheap ones at The Range so we nipped along there where I got a sunhat and so did Tarly, Davies got some sunglasses in their half price sale and we picked up some toffee bon-bons which are a Goddard family essential for long car journeys (we even have a jingle for them – ask us, we’ll perform it for you this weekend 😆 see we can do musical showing off too!).

Back home we were greeted by the lovely smell of fresh baked bread – Oops I’d put the breadmaker on loaf setting rather than pizza dough. On the plus side we have a lovely fresh loaf to bring tomorrow, on the down side it was too late to make more dough in time for Davies’ dinner. More apologising to the nine year old from me :(. I finished decorating cakes, put more pizza dough on and made the kids alternative dinner. Ady arrived home and did some bits in the garden, sorted out the ducklings for the weekend and tidied up while the kids and I packed up clothes etc for the weekend.

I had a bath and made pizzas for Ady and I and we watched Million Pound Drop while different bits of Harry Potter audio books drifted from the childrens’ bedrooms. Should really go to bed, work in the morning and I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t be an early night tomorrow ;).

what a novelty!

I woke at 4am and my face felt on fire. Ady was snoring, I was lying there awake itching and getting crosser and crosser so I got up, had a drink of water, examined my eyes in the bathroom mirror to see my eyes were so swollen I could barely see out of them – honestly my nose was looking like cleavage they were that puffy! I decided to take an anti-h despite it not being 24 hours since the last on the basis that admission to hospital for A/H overdose would at least get the face thing sorted too (see I really shouldn’t be allowed drugs, I am *so* not responsible with them. Did I tell you about nearly missing my Maths GCSE exam by taking too many painkillers for period pain and failing to wake up despite alarm clocks and ringing phones and my Mum getting called and having to come home from work to shake me awake? I was all dark and Winnona Ryder-in Heathers-ish in school after that day, shame it coincided with leaving!). Then I decided it must be something in the bedroom making me allergic so tried to sleep on the sofa. And then the cockerels woke up.

I did get to sleep though because the next thing I remember was Scarlett touching me on the nose and telling me it was morning.

Feeling slightly scared now by it being day four of The Face and wondering if this was the new shape of my life – Ady laughing at me and saying ‘that’s what you’re going to look like when you’re old!’, the children finding their sole reason to be glad about having been Home Educated missing the teasing of peers in the playground about their donut faced mother and a lifetime of being able to see my own cheeks without needing a mirror. I made another doctors appointment, was told it would be the ‘duty doctor’ and spent the next hour with my fingers crossed it wouldn’t be the same doctor I saw yesterday.

The upside of living across the road from the surgery was not needing to take Davies and Scarlett with me so I nipped across, sat in the waiting room for half an hour and was finally called to the doctor, a different one to yesterday and a woman, with whom I was really able to play the ‘look at me, I’m hideous!’ card. I tend to be too airy with doctors (and possibly life generally) indeed when I had a really bad ear infection when pregnant with Scarlett Ady and my parents got really cross with me for downplaying how shite I felt when I talked to the doctors. I just don’t like whinging and feel bad about taking up their time. But I explained I was feeling scared, wasn’t sleeping, was supposed to be at work tomorrow standing behind the counter in the public library, was having to sit on my hands to stop myself from clawing at my own face and could barely see out of my puffed up peepy-hole eyes.

She was very understanding, described several possibilities (from one off allergic reaction to potentially the first episode of something that could flare up again and possibly lead to long term use of antihistimines once under control) but agreed the main goal right now was to calm down the symptoms. So I was prescribed yet more anti/h and a 3 day course of steriods. Neither available over the counter (so nearly £15 at the chemist – ouch!). She told me to take the a/h for a couple more days after the rest of the symptoms fade too. She reckoned I’d see results in 24-48 hours so I have every intention of getting another appointment on Friday if I’m no better as I don’t want to leave it til Tuesday if this doesn’t work.

Back home I had some toast to take the seven (yes seven!) tablets with as they were to be taken with food and sat snuggled up with Tarly watching Davies on the X Box. Tarly and I then nipped out to get some bits for lunch and I finally found a gel eye mask (that you can put in the fridge to cool your eye area down) in a little chemists. Ady searched all the big supermarkets, Boots and Superdrug for me yesterday and came home with cucumber instead!

Back home for lunch and then we watched Where the Wild Things Are on dvd and the kids played with the geomags. They have been utter stars today, really responding well to me apologising in advance for a potentially boring day with a bad tempered mother to contend with. I rang work to say I wouldn’t be in tomorrow and Badgers to say I wouldn’t be there tonight and my Dad to say I didn’t need him for childcare tomorrow.

I dropped Davies and Scarlett off at the door at Badgers and came home to a blissfully quiet house for an hour. I had a bath, read my book and used my gel eyepack, getting out halfway through to drippily stick some dinner in the oven for the kids and stick the front door key in the door so everyone could get in before getting back in the bath.

Ady collected the kids from Badgers, served up their tea and watched the end of Avatar with them. I then spent an hour and a half on the phone, first to Julie and then to my Mum so the kids got a bedtime reprieve :).

Dinner and Junior Apprentice and I’m hoping to wake tomorrow to a much improved reflection in the mirror.

Monday I’d set my alarm early for London but having woken with an even more itchy, rashy face with added puffy eyes I decided London was not going to happen after all. Quite apart from not wanting to be out in public I thought the heat and contact with all sorts of other potential allergens wasn’t worth it. Fortunately Davies and Scarlett were fine about it and quite happy to be home for the day instead.

Scarlett was quite upset at the sight of me and wanted me to go to the doctors. I don’t remember the last time I used a doctor so I pacifed her with going to Boots to talk to the pharmacist instead. I’d already taken some Clarityn antihistime that wasn’t making any discernable difference. I’m sure doctor google is really unhelpful to the medical profession generally but to someone like me who is pretty un-hysterical and tends to think the best rather than the worst, particularly where minor ailments are concerned I think some common sense and the internet can be reassuring and helpful rather than heading off to the gp every time you sneeze. And infact the pharmacist didn’t have anything to add to what I’d already been thinking / doing.

We had a fairly quiet at-home day with Scarlett giving the ducklings plenty of outside time and me staying inside, away from the sunshine applying cold flannels to my eyes and face. Davies and I caught up on Doctor Who and I watched the final Lost having recorded it at 5am that morning.

I can’t really remember a lot more about the day now.

Tuesday I was up early again as I had to do the sheep and we had planned to visit a new friend on their boat (20 miles in the opposite direction to the 10 miles away from home where the sheep are). I’d been debating cancelling both as my eyes were still really puffy and the rash on my face no better. I managed to get an 830 doctors appointment though so Ady dashed off to do a local competitior shop and then came home to stay with Davies and Scarlett while I nipped across the road to the doctors. Aside from diagnosing an allergic reaction and suggesting antihistimine he was unable to help 🙁 The prescription he gave me was cheaper over the counter at the chemist so I called in and bought some, came home and took one and decided to carry on with my day behind sunglasses.

The rest of the day can be seen over at Monster & Teeny as I did manage to do my photoblog day.

Bits that didn’t make it there were just how cool Helen’s boat is. They have a boat and a campervan and spent the summer sailing and the winter campervanning somewhere in Europe. We know nothing about sailing and I suspect it wouldn’t be our dream but I am certainly envious of the freedom of their lifestyle. Scarlett gets on really well with Abigail and they have an older daughter Alex who we’ll meet in a couple of weeks when we have arranged to meet up again.

Swimming was hellish for me – it was incredibly dry and hot in the spectators area which made me feel my face was on fire, I couldn’t wear sunglasses so felt really conspicuous and disfigured and was pissed off I couldn’t swim again as I was in the mood for swimming but thought chemicals in my eyes and on my face would be a really bad idea. The kids did well though, Davies had his lesson in the big pool and did well, I suspect he’ll be moved up next term into the big pool which will be great for him. The swimming at our pool system is Swimmers A (non Swimmers), Swimmers B (which both kids are currently, although Davies is in a more advanced group than Scarlett), Swimmers C from which you can go into Rookie Lifeguards, Swimmers D (working on technique and stamina) or the Worthing swimming club (which enter competitions). Davies would love to do Rookie lifeguards so if he does go up to Swimmers C next term he is a big step closer to that :). And he might even end up with a lesson at the same time as Scarlett, which would be good :).

Everyone else watched Avatar in the evening. I hung around for the first 20 minutes or so but it utterly failed to grab my attention so I gave up and went and had a bath instead. The rest is in the photoblog.

Friday Work all day for me. Ady took Davies and Scarlett to work with him. I was still feeling a bit rough from my cold and there is an odd atmosphere at work at the moment. Yvonne, my direct boss has gone part time so she only works the first half of the week which means the second half (when I work) has a sort of rolling cover of various librarians which makes for an inconsistent feeling and a bit of a free for all on the rota. Not sure how it will all pan out really and there is another round of redundancies and job changes coming later in the year (it won’t directly affect my level but could mean a whole load of changes nonetheless). I’m very aware I wouldn’t get an 11 hours a week job anywhere else very easily, let alone one which pays so well or has such good perks so it would be a rather futile exercise to even think about looking for something else and it is my wages that pay off our debts but I am conscious of the feeling if itchy feet and having been in a job too long. I suspect I have done as much to grow my role as I can possibly can within the limits of my hours and whilst I am very highly thought of and get loads of good feedback I have struggled with the last two full day shifts I’ve done feeling all resentful about being there when I could be doing something more interesting with Davies and Scarlett instead. Hmm reading that back I can’t decide if I’ve just been in a whingey frame of mind where nothing pleases me or whether the time is right to move on really.

Anyway, whilst at work I did the banking, Baby Rhyme Time, phoned a load of people from Reading group to tell them to come in and collect books from the Orange Shortlist, tidied up the Chatterbooks folder and did a load of photocopying in preparation for the next sessions, checked all the books and dvds I’d ordered were in and put them in order for the sessions, wrote a couple of emails to other people about Chatterbooks and the Summer Reading Challenge display and did some dealing with borrowers and issuing books too :).

Ady and the kids dropped me off as they were leaving the house at the same time as me and going in roughly the same direction, so they came and picked me up too, arriving about half an hour before I finished and hanging out in the library til we closed. Scarlett took the ducklings outside for a swim in the paddling pool, Davies had a play of a new X box game he’d picked up in a charity shop and I did a bit of sewing, turning that famous long pink corduroy skirt that all the HE girls had into a bag. Scarlett had one, although I picked it up at a NCT nearly new sale and she never actually wore it. It’s made a nice bag though :).

Ady and I had a Very Late Dinner Indeed at about 11pm of curry and Davies and Scarlett had a sleepover.

Saturday We had to be up and out as Davies has YACs. They were doing a walk that ended in a different place to where it started so as Ady wanted to go along too Scarlett and I had to drop them off and then pick them up two hours later elsewhere.

Ady and Davies had a really enjoyable guided walk learning various things about the little village including some WW2 landmarks, details about how the whole village was wiped out the the Black Death and other little tidbits from the leader of YACs, a really nice bloke who’s day job is working at the Museum of London and is very passionate about archaeology and getting young people interested.

Scarlett and I went to Haywards Heath which was the nearest town and did a charity shop trawl (result, one pair of jeans for Scarlett) and stopped for tea and cake in a bakery cafe which was very nice. :). We allowed ourselves quite a buffer for finding the pick up point, for which we had a photocopy of a hand-drawn map from the YAC leader which was just as well as we drove up and down the same road about four times before working out just what the map meant. As usual the YACs ran over time though so it was nearly 20 past 12 by the time they appeared.

We called in at Emmaus on the way home which is my favourite chariy I think as it’s support is a direct solution to a problem rather than just funding. I bought some material, lace trimmings and ribbons. We called into Sainsburys for supplies and came home to fire the barbecue up for a late lunch.

Ady suggested I rang my Dad which I did and he rang back and came over to join us too. Scarlett brought the ducklings out to potter about in the garden with regular dips in the pond. We also brought five of the chickens round to ‘meet’ the ducklings and get some grass too (as they have long since trashed their own grass supplies in their area). Scarlett and I had a walk round to the corner shop for more bread rolls in bare feet (sorry Joyce) which we found both liberating and enjoyable but rather precarious at the same time, playing a sort of verbal top trumps with what would be worse to stand on in bare feet ‘metal in the sunshine’ ‘BLACK metal in the sunshine’ and so on. We ate sausages, laughed at the ducks learning to dive and the chickens seeing their whole world massively expand. My Mum came round after work too for an hour or so, Davies and Scarlett took the ducklings across the road to introduce them to Don and Maureen our neighbours. Then Mum and Dad left, Davies and Scarlett had a bath and some tea, I put pizza dough on for Ady and I for later and did some laundry.

Ady and I had dinner, late by most people’s standards but rapidly becomming our norm.

Sunday I woke with the birds troubled by itching all over my face. I did get back to sleep but I have a rash today rather similar to one which came up a month or so ago, lasted 24 hours and faded again. Not at all sure what could have caused it but it is very itchy and annoying :(. I was on the rota to do the sheep today so we headed over there to headcount, get running and check water and fencing. The limping sheep seemed lots better :). As we were over that way we tried a car boot sale in that direction but it was pretty rubbish and we came away having only bought a walkman for Davies for 50p so he can listen to story tapes while we’re camping / in the car.

Back home the other three spent some time in the garden – the ducks were out, the chickens had some time on the lawn and Ady did some hedge trimming while I sat indoors. The sunshine is lovely but the heat was far too much for me to be out in today. We waited until about 330 when it had cooled down a far bit and then headed up to the allotment. Thanks to time, weather, being away a fair bit and growing quite a lot at home we have neglected it rather up there this year so far. Things are doing well nonetheless and we took some more peas to plant in that I’d sown and some sweetcorn Cax has sown and was ready to go in. We also had some onion and garlic sets to go in too.

Davies and Scarlett went to build dens in the woodland while Ady and I watered, weeded, planted and sorted a bit. We had about 2 hours up there and it was already looking improved when we left. We’re planning to go up again tomorrow evening to do some more weeding. We rang Davies to get them to meet us back at the car and came home.

I got a roast dinner on, the kids had a bath and then we watched Doctor Who – we’re only a week behind now, might try and catch up on that tomorrow. Roast dinner was lovely :). We watched Halcyon River which had Scarlett in floods of tears when six moorhen chicks died (moorhens are her favourite bird), cue lots of talking about wildlife photographers and whether they should intervene in what they are filming. We watched some of Countryfile (we turned over at talk of badger culling as Tarly was far too delicate to cope with that, particularly while eating meat…) and then caught the last ten minutes of Britains Got Talent before it was bedtime for the kids.

Tomorrow we’re off to London, a plan which I am already starting to regret as we’re all tired and I suspect London in a heat wave will not be a nice place to be, so early start again…

not all in a good way 🙁

Alarm waking again this morning. I always have a mental tally of how many mornings left before the alarm doesn’t need to be set. This week it won’t be til Sunday, so roll on three more mornings :).

We packed a picnic and headed off to collect Tasha, Toby and Vinnie who were joining us for lookering duty. We arrived and Scarlett and Davies headed up to the field first with Toby. Normally it’s just a case of a head count of nine sheep, checking they are all up and moving, checking they have sufficient water and a quick once over the perimeter fence for damage. Today the children had already head counted and got them all up but the biggest white sheep had a distinct limp. We got her running but I wanted to have a quick look at it to see if it was anything very serious so we had to catch her. Cue two women and four children performing a comedy sketch right there in rounding up and catching a sheep 😆 Tasha managed to grab her but let go and she took off again with Scarlett still holding her and dragged Scarlett along a little way. Scarlett whoa-ed her sufficiently to stop her again until I got there and hoisted her onto her back so I could look at her hooves. The back right was looking pretty dodgey but she seemed otherwise fine and calmly sat while the kids petted her so wasn’t too traumatised by the whole thing. I texted the shepherd to let him know and he will have gone and dealt with her properly.

A quick check of the fence and water supply and then back into the car again. This time off to Rackham where the meeting-up-on-a-Thursday-Home-Ed meet up was. We’d never actually been there before but I knew roughly where it was so we headed for Rackham assuming we’d find it eventually. We did a bit of a scenic drive round the local area with Tasha and cooing over all the same cute cottages with roses round the doors and acres of land and deciding if Ady and Ryan aren’t up for adventurous self sufficiency maybe we should marry each other instead 😆

We finally found the place we thought was right, released the children and sat and ate our lunch. Poor Vinnie developed a rash around his mouth and was suddenly sick after eating. He then brightened up so we assumed heat and long period in the car and then other HE folk arrived. Sadly the rash continued to spread and Vinnie got increasingly puffier of face and less happy :(. We decided piriton was the order of the day and no one had any so we had to call Davies, Scarlett and Toby back and head off. It was a real shame, particularly as Archie and Eliot arrived with some other friends just as we were pulling out of the carpark 🙁

We got back to Tasha’s, via a quick drug stop at the chemist and Vinnie cheered up and seemed much better. Davies, Scarlett and Toby had an hour or so playing while Tasha and I carried on chatting before we headed off. We stopped in Lancing on the way home at a local charity shop which sells buttons and ribbons and stuff at cheap prices, a quick peek in the library for some audio books for Tarly and then home.

Davies and Scarlett had a bath as they were both filthy, I dealt with some laundry, washed up and cleared up the kitchen and got some tea on for the kids. They came out of the bath and I brushed Tarly’s hair and repaired the rainbow braid in her hair which had grown out by about six inches by putting two more colours of braid at the top. Ady arrived home in time to serve up their tea and they watched the latest Harry Potter dvd that I’d brought home from work yesterday.

They went to bed, Ady and I watched Outnumbered and tomorrow is work for me all day long.

I’ve had a boring and tedious sandwich today with only the middle bit being enjoyable.

I’m sure it’s mostly down to feeling rough and therefore incredibly intolerant and impatient. For years and years I hated Wednesdays for various reasons and today was just a pants Wednesday I guess.

Work in the morning – Bid was here with Archie, Eliot, Davies and Scarlett. It did feel slightly strange recieving a man on the doorstep with a hug and kiss and then heading off leaving him here with all the children – I’m sure David Thankyou Neighbour was having a fit behind his binoculars ;).

It’s all a bit bleak at work really, lots of very fed up people thanks to changes in working hours, the threat of more redundancies higher up in the next six months and just general fed-up-ness. There are only two of us who do Storytime and Rhymetime without a big fuss (and I hesitated over typing ‘happily do’ because I’d personally rather not but it was part of the job description at interview, I am capable of it and deliver it to the best of my ability when the need arises) and that is causing all sorts of friction. So today there was an atmosphere because the person who was supposed to do it had come in claiming illness so the boss had said the other person who also doesn’t really like doing it had to do it instead and both of them were clearly hoping either I or the boss would do it. I was feeling rough (and will be doing Rhymetime on Friday and have clearly stated that whilst I am prepared to do either or both I don’t want to be saddled with it week in, week out either) so didn’t volunteer and got on with my own work in my usual fast manner which was also commented on in a slightly sneering manner. Oh it’s tiresome!

Did enjoy chatting with my boss and bantering with borrowers though, so not all bad.

Back home again the four children were out in the garden having had a nice morning troughing the selection of baking I’d left and Bid had brought round, giving the ducks some time in the bath and making potions and experiments. Bid shot off to collect Caz, I had some lunch (how happy was I to be able to heat up some of Ady’s home made chicken soup and home made bread, just the thing for a cold :)) and then sat drinking tea and chatting to Caz and Bid about life, the universe and everything. Well small schools, GCSEs and whether anyone could help a child through a maths exam or not.

That was the lovely bit in the middle of my day. Intelligent, enjoyable, respectful chat with friends.

They all left and I made Davies and Scarlett some food before dashing to my parents house via Sainsburys for a crate of beer to wish Frazer a Happy Birthday. Only Dad and Frazer were home and Frazer told us they were going to a local steak house (that my Mum has always said is too expensive to take us to ;)) for a meal and we were welcome to come. I teased him about being the favoured offspring whilst privately being very glad I am the one not at home any more, explained to Davies and Scarlett that while 34 is quite old it is still younger than any of us knew Grandad at (as he was 35 when I was born) and that Frazer and I’s ages added together made Grandad’s now. Then we had to leave to go to Badgers.

Badgers was pretty rubbish, two of us took nine of the Badgers out onto the field to pitch a tent. I tried really hard to balance all of them remaining involved and learning something without being too preachy but spent way too much time stopping them from running around on the grass. We went back in, they had their drinks and then they played a game called Queen’s headache which basically involves most of the children sitting still and being quiet for long periods of time. Davies was put in charge and got undermined by one of the more stroppy and bossy girls so he felt bad and I was slightly resentful that I’ve been given a ‘lesson plan’ for next term to deliver to all the most challenging children with just the help of a couple of other mothers and where I thought I’d be doing the planning and arranging it already seems to have been done. I’ve had a look through the ‘syllabus’ and am deeply uninspired by the dull and prescribed ideas I now have to try and engage these children in when I had envisaged getting them more involved in the planning and ideas stage. I’m sure I can do more with it and be more creative but today was not a good day for feeling glass half full so I wallowed in feeling resentful instead ;).

Back home again Ady had brought home some cardboard boxes and fashioned a new, improved duckling abode which Lucky and Sploosh seem very happy in :). Being cardboard it also gives Davies and Scarlett the opportunity to decorate it with felt tips too so it is now a very custom designed duck abode indeeed :).

I was feeling too croaky and generally crap to be reading so D&S had toast and went to bed to listen to audio books instead, we watched Junior Apprentice which I’m loving.

Hoping to wake feeling better in health and frame of mind tomorrow.

Up with the alarm again this morning as we were off over to Bognor again. Thanks to a facebook group we have gradually gotten more involved with a load of Home Educators locallyish that we first met several years ago but lived just that little bit too far away from to see regularly. Having joined Book Club late last year we’ve seen more of them and have been making the effort to attend the odd other event too such as the May Day one last week. I really like the adults so I am very happy with this turn of events and Davies and Scarlett seem to be gaining some friends out of it too. There are several nine-ish year old boys and several sevenish year old girls who despite me not particularly worrying about the children not having enough friends are nice kids that D&S get on well with so more friends is nice :). We are meshing some other friendships in the process too as lots of them attend Etudeo where Caz and Bid are working and all of them know Julie so the children all know Jack and Maisie. I don’t *love* big groups of women and often feel quite out of my depth in some of the conversations about things prefering mixed company really but I am enjoying the diversity of the group particularly now the children are of an age and we are at a stage in our Home Ed where I am confident of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and happy to sit about discussing it. The weekly get together at some venue or another with some incarnation of the group of other seems to be suiting us well just now.

So today we were back to Claire’s for Book Club art display making. Not sure if I blogged before but the book club is doing the Summer Reading Challenge display for Bognor Library. We’re doing a vast mixed display on the theme of space with all sorts of book inspired planets including factual planets with facts and figures (which we made last time), junk planet inspired by Iron Man, crazy Moomin and Clanger inspired planets, quilted cloth planets, collage planets inspired by Lauren Child, fantasy planets with Narnia and Alice in Wonderland spin offs and loads more.

Today Scarlett did some work on a blob-head planet alongside Poppy who has never really been on her radar before despite me thinking they should get on well really. Poppy is a good friend of Maisie though and had told Katy (her mum) that she doesn’t like Davies and Scarlett because they always hog Jack and Maisie 😆 I think as individuals they all get on well in pairs but the group dynamic simply doesn’t work. Today however Scarlett and Poppy really hit it off to the extent that we’ve arranged to go over there next week for the day 🙂 It’s been a good week for collecting friends for Scarlett so far and we’re only on Tuesday! :).

Davies and I worked on the Junk Planet which involved making different coloured cogs, making little 3d boxes and turning them into trashed white goods and other such metal junk. Really enjoyed creating tiny washing machines, microwaves and making them spew out wires and cables :). We had regular breaks for running out into their lovely sunny garden and bouncing on the trampoline (well I didn’t do that, I sat around drinking tea and chatting ;)) and Scarlett loved spending time with their dog Florence too :). Clare’s two daughters who are now 13 and 15 were some of the first older Home Ed children I met about 5 years ago and I remember thinking then what lovely girls they were and that if they were indicative of what Home Ed kids grew into then that was great. They are now much bigger but just as lovely and fab examples of just how lovely, relaxed, happy and friendly teenagers can be when you take all the crappy pressure of teenagerdom at school away (which isn’t to say you don’t get lovely schooled teens too because I know some of them aswell but Clare’s girls really shine with the difference that their HE lifestyle gives them :)).

There was a funny moment when we called the children back in after lunch to start on the next bit of the planets and they all groaned as we did so and I told Davies and Scarlett that was their first taste of what it’s like every day being called in from the playground at the end of lunchtime by the school bell :lol:. Fortunately it was to spend more time painting, creating plasticine and old electrical bits and bobs robots and generally being arty and creative so not too much of a hardship :). The finished planet was awesome and will look just fab as part of the display 🙂
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More playing and then Clare had to leave to drop her oldest daughter off somewhere and we had to leave to get back to Worthing for swimming lessons. I had reading group tonight and still had the last 50 pages of the book to read so had to sit at the side and read rather than go in. This meant I sent the kids to the respective male and female changing rooms off on their own and got them to meet me poolside with their clothes having got changed, then back again at the end with their piles of clothes to meet me at the top having got dressed and dried. They’ve not done that before so it was good to see how well they both did and how quickly and properly dry they reappeared :).

Both had good lessons from the bits I watched and I finished my book just as Scarlett got bored on her own in the pool as it was almost empty and came to sit with me and watch the end of Davies’ lesson.

We got home just before Ady and he cooked their tea while Scarlett gave the ducklings some swimming time in the bath and some running around time in the lounge. Sploosh has started diving to swim underwater (although didn’t oblige to let me catch it on film) which is very cute. Their really quite large box that we’ve previously happily kept up to 7 bantam chicks in for weeks is already looking far too small so we’re thinking of bigger alternative housing ideas for the next 4 weeks or so before they are ready to move outside.

Book group was good, quite a long discussion on the book we’d read (William Boyd, Ordinary Thunderstorms) and some interesting general debate about CRB checks and databases generally. Back home for pasta and some taped Heston cooking crazily.

I can’t quite believe it but I seem to be snotty and coming-down-with-something-y *again* – we have had so many coughs and colds so far this year I really thought we’d seen the back of them for a few months through the summer. My immune system must be so crap :(.