One word? When seven would do…

Today’s blogpost title is brought to you by Roly Mole from The Fimbles 😆

I woke before my alarm (Scarlett had come into our bed in the night having had a bad dream and had then noisily got up and gone into Davies’ room) and listened to the sound of Davies and Scarlett chatting in Davies’ room. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but there was the companiable sound of two people who are really comfortable with each other just being together. Listening to them laughing or enjoying each others company is one of my great joys in life, knowing that I am responsible for both of them existing and that they give such pleasure to each other just warms my heart. So I was already feeling quite glowy when I poked my head round the door to say good morning and was faced with this sight 🙂

Davies has taken it upon himself to teach Scarlett to read and she is utterly compliant when it’s him that’s doing the coaching – a far cry from the resistance I meet at the mere suggestion of helping her. They were looking at some Read at Home books I bought from Book People years ago in one of my minor wobbles about resources and have sat untouched on the book shelf ever since. Davies has way more patience, kindness and other such reserves than me and there is very little Scarlett won’t do for him so it’s a bit of a win:win situation really :).

We got dressed, breakfasted and then Caz and Bid dropped Archie and Eliot off. The kids disappeared upstairs and I had a frantic half an hour having realised all the information I needed to get everyone to Book Club was on facebook and facebook was down. I had no addesses, no phone numbers or anything. I sent texts to a few people who might know address or phone number but had no joy and then remembered Julie is super organised with such information and rang her. She came up trumps with landline and mobile numbers, then someone else texted me an address and when I went online to find it on googlemaps I discovered facebook had come back up again anyway.

I loaded everyone into the car and we headed over to Mel’s for Book Club. It was very interesting listening to the conversations – for quite some while they recited huge chunks of the script from The Simpsons Movie, which put me in mind of being in the pub with blokes ‘impressing’ each other with large chunks of Monty Python sketches – maybe this is some sort of essential life skill for males? 🙂 😆 I then turned up the radio and did Popmaster which I imagine impressed everyone with my superior knowledge – my own equivalent of Monty Python I suppose… 😉 Davies sat in the front with me and acquainted himself with all the dashboard controls and the cigarette lighter.

We arrived slightly early so nipped off again to get some petrol, thus cementing once and for all in my mind where Mel’s house is for future reference. Will be able to drive straight there in future :).

Book Club was good, they’d been reading The Happy Prince and Katy read it to them again and they did some artwork inspired by that time period and talked about morals, fables, expressive words and language. They all came out with some very impressive artwork inspired by the story :). I sat and chatted to some other parents which was interesting. I was pondering slightly if we (I) am a bit too insular and self contained in Home Ed as I don’t feel any real need to be part of a Home Ed group these days, feeling the kids get sufficient structured learning from Wildlife Explorers, YACs, Badgers, swimming lessons and the odd ad hoc things we do which coupled with hanging out with mates and answering the questions that arise day to day is more than enough. But you can only listen to so many people fretting about Maths and GCSEs and whether Home Ed kids miss out on science resources in schools before you have to reassure yourself a little.

Interesting conversations though :).

I had a chat with Katy about Chatterbooks and shared some thoughts about what had worked well for me and might be a success with the Book Club and offered to be a second pair of hands if needed before spiriting off ‘my’ four. I was taking Archie and Eliot to Etudeo, the school-like resource that so many of my HE friends use and where Caz and Bid are working as teachers at the moment. It’s the first time we’ve been in the building and I was quite curious to see it really. My curiousity is satisfied that it is indeed quite school-y and whilst the people who go might be fab I can’t get away from feeling the concept is simply not for us at this stage (quite apart from being too far away, too expensive to attend and none of us wanting to commit to anything additional at the moment).

We stayed for a cup of tea and the kids had a play before we headed for home and a very late lunch. Then it was back out again for swimming. It was the penultimate lesson and we’ve missed the last two weeks. Both the kids are staying in the same groups next term but Davies got his 15m badge and Scarlett got her 10m :). I managed 48 lengths in just over 50 minutes so I was pleased with that having not been for a while. My knees are protesting now mind you.

Ady had beaten us home and got the kids some tea on so while they ate and had a bath I nipped out again to the Co Op for some bits for dinner, came home and got it cooking and then started reading The Firework Makers Daughter. We only got part way into the second chapter but are enjoying it so far :).

The kids went to bed and then Davies reappeared with a book he had made for Scarlett. He has a character he invented called ‘Day’ who is a crisp packet who lives at a landfill site. He has ‘written’ a whole series of stories about Day and the dump and other characters including a broken tv set and a sweet wrapper which are fab and Scarlett adores them so he has made Scarlett a ‘learn to read with Day’ book which has all the letters of the alphabet in it for her to learn so she can get better at reading. It is totally fab and she is thrilled with it and has gone to sleep tonight clutching it to her chest :). I suspect she will treasure it forever :).

I really do have lovely children :).

This morning was a visit to a soft play centre. Julie and I used to meet there fairly regularly when it first opened about 4 years ago and it was all new and shiny but I’ve not been for well over a year and had heard it had gone downhill, indeed the last time we went it was feeling shabby and tired. But Julie and I had arranged to meet there and put it out on the local home ed facebook group and a few other people had said they might come along including Caz and the boys as it is Eliot’s birthday today.

So, running late as usual we dashed out of the house with home made card and hastily wrapped present, and socks for Scarlett. The smell of feet, school changing rooms and general despair hit us as we opened the front door, ah the odour of soft play 😆 Twelve quid (twelve fucking quid!!!) later we joined the others and I took my cup of overpriced tea to sit down with Julie, Caz and Lou while the kids ran riot with the pack of kids for a couple of hours.

The place is in even more tired repair than when we last went and they have this big list of RULES posted up which includes things like ‘any food and drink brought onto the premises will be confiscated and returned when you leave’. You can get a paper cup with tap water for 10p and get free refills 😆 Scarlett rinsed my teacup out in the sink in the toilets and took that up and asked for tap water. I didn’t ask her to but did find her attitude very funny – ‘well you paid a lot more than 10p for it so I think that you should be able to get that cup filled up instead!’ 😆

It was a nice couple of hours despite the surroundings and expense and neither Davies or Scarlett really wanted to go, paricularly when they learnt Archie and Eliot were headed for a picnic on the beach. But Chatterbooks needed finishing so we came home for lunch and then headed out to the library.

Today was the session I had probably put the least effort into planning really as I have booked the display space from next week and wanted the children to do a display of what Chatterbooks has been about for them to put up and celebrate the sessions / explain to other library users what we’ve been doing. So I’d got in all of the books we have used in sessions so far, plenty of paper and pens and was hoping creativity would strike.

We started off with refreshments and talking about all of the sessions we’d done so far to see who could remember – I got some great feedback there from the children remembering sessions with plenty of enthusiasm. It was clear that the storytelling session had been popular, along with the film and book session. I’m really proud of that as those had been the two sessions I had put most planning effort into and had been completely my idea rather than inspired by sessions I’d read about – the storytelling one particularly had been fairly ambitious so I’m glad we pulled it off and the kids enjoyed it :).

We had cake and juice and then I read to them by popular request while they did drawings, wrote poems, copied book covers or whatever else reminded them of Chatterbooks. I was very touched to get a couple of pictures of me along with a thank you card made during the session. And a box of chocolates presented to me by some of the kids too :).

While I did all that Abi spent some time chatting to the parents and getting some feedback forms completed, then came back into the junior library and worked her way round the kids and got their answers on what they had liked and disliked. The popular answer for favourite bit was ‘biscuits!’ proving either we’d not phrased the questionnaire very well or we’d really not needed to bother laying anything else on other than free biscuits in the library – I’d definitely not bother doing refreshments again 😆

Very popular was being read to, with most of them saying they enjoyed that and the storytelling and film sessions getting several mentions too. I’ve brought home all the paperwork from the sessions and will write up a proper report for work over the next week or so – I have a proper debrief session with Important Library People in 2 weeks time.

Everyone left with a flurry of thank yous and goodbyes – I do feel like I made connections with all of the kids in some way over the 6 weeks and several of them I really clicked with and will miss although I’m not sorry not to have the regular committment and stress of the crowd control element of the sessions, I really did struggle with that at times.

I had a chat with Brenda, the chief librarian who had come in to talk about changes in hours (mine will just have a very slight shift and I will do 11.5 hours one week and 10.5 the other so still an average of 11 hours a week although the 10.5hr week is the one I work a Saturday morning in so I will lose half an hours worth of Saturday enhancement, which probably only works out to be about £1 a week so I’m not too stressed about that.

Brenda and I had a long chat about Chatterbooks and I was warmly thanked for having done it. I’ve learnt a lot, it achieved my personal aims of proving there was a need, providing that experience for Davies and Scarlett (as I am often telling them if the world doesn’t offer what you want it to, make it happen for yourself, that was about doing just that), giving me something else to add to my CV and another feather to my bow, giving me a small amount of career advancement potential and getting my name known in higher circles and meeting a need that I personally feel the library service fails to do and am quite passionate about us failing to do. I have really enjoyed vast elements of it, will take what I’ve learnt and use it and hopefully be instrumental in offering a better service at some future point to that slice of our customers.

Fully Chatterbooked out we left the library and came home for dinner, putting chickens away, getting the fire lit and finally sitting down with a large mug of tea.

We rushed through the end of The Happy Prince in preparation for tomorrow’s Book Club. Davies told me he was proud to be my son – comments like that from him are worth 400 feedback forms from anyone else :). He and I had already shared some knowing looks when the kids at Chatterbooks were talking about ‘golden time’ – as he later told Brenda ‘my whole life is ‘golden time’ :)’.

Bed for them, bath for me, Ady cooked (again). I might even try and get to bed before it’s tomorrow.

A day at home planned for today, particularly as the weather forecast proved right and it was lovely and warm and sunny. Everyone slept in and Ady did a fab cooked breakfast at about 10am which saw us through the day.

I’d brought home a Ray Mears dvd on Friday and the kids and I had watched some of the extras where he made containers from tree bark, lit fires, made drinking water safe and used an axe. Davies particularly liked the axe clips so we all watched some of those again and then Davies and I watched a 4 seasons episode where Ray Mears travels round the UK as the seasons pass and does various bushcraft things in various places.

We all went out into the garden with the plan of clearing the patio area out the back ready to put some crops in. We had a very productive day including chopping up an old rabbit hutch we used to use for the chickens which was so rotten and patched up it was only good for firewood, emptying out loads of old pots of things into the chickens area, clearing loads of rubbish, moving an old green cone and generally tidying up and clearing space.

Both the kids had a go at chopping firewood and did really well with the small axe, Davies created a whole pile of kindling for the fire for the next few nights 🙂

Scarlett installed a stepping stone path in the chicken run with some old roof tiles, Ady dug over the borders and I did a couple of runs to the tip with unfreecycleable / reusable rubbish. We put in some seed potatoes (the growing for schools ones that had been chitting indoors for a few weeks) and Ady and I assembled the mini greenhouse and got some seeds potted up and put in there. More about growing and stuff over on self-suffish for interested parties.

We also cleared the front garden a bit and have another good days work ahead next weekend to get various growing areas we’ve nominated up and running and then we’ll have plenty of stuff growing here at home as well as up at the allotment, which will be great :).

We finally came in at about 5pm just as it was getting colder, the kids had a bath as they were filthy from helping in the garden – Davies said ‘I love days like this, I feel like we really do live on a farm’ :). Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner but it ended up rather later than was ideal and the kids were very hungry by the time dinner was ready at 7pm ish.

We all watched Masterchef Australia and Come Dine with Me before packing D&S off to bed and collapsing into bath / sofa / chilling out. A really nice family weekend 🙂

It rained pretty much solidly all day long on Saturday. Someone had linked on a local list weeks ago about the Surrey Science Circus which is in Guildford, only an hour away from us. Having missed the Brighton Science Festival (expensive rather than free and on a day I was working all morning) and not managed to make Cambridge once again I thought this would be a good way of getting some science in.

We did a big family consultation about which shows to book and settled on The Bubble Show – Science Museum.
Back by popular demand! Find out the secret Science Museum bubble recipe, learn how certain materials can change the way others behave, and step inside the famous human bubble. Recommended age 5-11 (Scarlett),

Murphy’s Law. Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down – Richard Robinson.Murphy’s Law is the most important law in science – whatever CAN go wrong WILL go wrong Richard Robinson takes you on a white-knuckle ride through your own mind. We see how the senses take things in, how the mind interprets them, and how we get it regularly wrong. Recommended age – any (Ady and I) and

A light drawing workshop with light graffitti (Davies) which was already booked up so we went for the 3D sea monsters film instead as the only thing not clashing with what we’d already booked.

Predictably we managed to be late leaving home so my plan of having half an hour or so once we’d arrived to get our bearings, use the loo etc didn’t happen and instead we were running from the first car park where we’d parked and later realised wasn’t the nearest by a long way, to get to the first show, The Bubble Show, in time for the 1130am start. Which meant we dashed past the big top outside where there were various hands on activities and some goodie bags.

In the end we were there in plenty of time, the show started late anyway and we should have at least got goodie bags as we dashed past as they were all gone by the time we came back out again :(.

The Bubble Show was good, the kids and I had seen it at the Science Museum years ago although neither of them remembered it was so long ago. The guy presenting was quite the showman and loved having an audience to make do what he said so we enjoyed that. I was most entertained by the kids reactions to the desks – Scarlett looked bored and Davies (encouraged by me I have to admit) put his feet up 😆

The show had been allocated 30 minutes which given the late start time was always a bit tricky to cram in so it over-ran which meant lots of people started leaving at midday when it was supposed to end in order to get to their next show – they have at least 3 events happening at any one time and the timings are not all in line with each other as some shows are longer than others which meant there was lots of moving about and settling down issues at the beginning and end of each show. We stayed til the end of the bubbles as our next show was 15 minutes later in the room next door so we were fine.

Richard Robinson was fab, very Jasper Carrott with his observational humour but with science and fact backing up his talk. He was pitched more at the adults than the children although nothing he talked about was above them and he did a quick whizz through how humans make sense of the world using the information available to us, the information we actually filter through to our brains, how we make sense of that using our memories and emotions and how we try to make it fit what we expected to see / hear / smell. He did some optical illusions, some tricks on our ears, made a mars bar dipped in lucozade look like a poo dipped in wee and then grossed us out by eating it, did some clever sleight of hand tricks and a few political jibes about global warming. He then ran out of his time slot but said if anyone didn’t have to rush off he’d love to carry on talking and about half the audience stayed.

He did various other things including talking about toast landing butter side down and taking audience suggestions as to how we could combat it – some hilarious ones from children in the audience 😆 Then he did a trick of getting 10 kids to come and join him and all give him an object to remember. He told us about the mnemonic he uses but thanks to some of the kids either struggling to think of objects and thus putting him off or one particularly precocious child who tried to be clever and came up with ‘remember to remember to not forget’ he only managed about 6 out of the 10 (still impressive but I suspect he normally has a much higher success rate). Ady and I really enjoyed his lecture :).

We came out for some lunch then and a quick look round the hands on activities. It was pretty busy and we were all hungry so we went back into the main building and sat on the stairs with our picnic as it was still pouring with rain. We enjoyed the (probably subsidised) vending machine tea, coffee and hot chocolate rather than the expensive tea stall outside 🙂 and watched some juggling and diablo acts in the foyer. Richard Robinson came out and chatted to the juggler for a while, had a bit of a go himself and then swept off. Really liked him :).

Then it was back for our final event which was a 3d film about sea monsters. Ady and I both felt it was good but not amazing, but I suspect we have been spoilt for 3d films in the last year or two by the very good ones that have been in the cinema. This was a film following the life of a dinosaur from birth to death with the discovery of it’s fossil millions of years later. It was interesting and a good story with lots of facts along the way. Both Davies and Scarlett said it was their favourite event.

As we left (still raining) the queue for the space ball was quite short so we joined it. Davies and Scarlett both had a go and said it was excellent, indeed they seemed to really enjoy it 🙂

We had a quick look round the hands on area but it was mostly packing up and as we wanted to have a look in a camping shop on the way home we decided to call it a day. A really good event, we could definitely have made more of it too by arriving earlier and booking event tickets earlier / thinking about splitting up to see more events. I’ve joined the mailing list and will definitely go again next year.

The camping shop trip is in aid of a search for another tent. We love our Outwell and canopy for long stays of a week or more and are really happy with our cheap little tent for staying in friends’ gardens or quick overnight microcamping trips but have been thinking of something inbetween for a genuine weekender tent as the little one really is very little and has no room for trying to cook or storing anything. We are thinking specifically of Norfolk and the Green Fair weekends when we will be camping for 2 or 3 nights, based quite firmly in the tent but not really wanting to go to all the effort of putting up the Outwell, which I think I’d struggle with on my own anyway. We’re trying to decide just what we do want in terms of size and layout so wanted to have a look at some errected tents to get an idea.

We saw a couple we liked (a Vango and an Easycamp) but at £150 ish I think we need to give it a little more thought before rushing in.

Back home again via the supermarket the kids had tea and then we very foolishly let them start watching Titanic on tv. I’d not realised quite how long a film it is and only checked at about 930pm when I was expecting it to be winding up to find it was on til 1135pm. That clearly wasn’t going to happen so after some debate we flicked onto C4 where it was already an hour ahead and they skipped the hour in the middle to watch the end. It wasn’t the best film to be watching just before bed with the middle chopped out and the dead bodies bobbing about in the sea took them by surprise rather so at Davies’ request I read them a story before bed ‘to cheer us up’. We had a riotous read of Stinky Cheese Man which had everyone laughing before they headed off to bed, way later than I’d planned. Everyone was asleep very quickly and no one had dreams about shipwrecks fortunately. Ady and I got to enjoy our curry, albeit incredibly late.

A work all day day for me.

Dad was here in the morning so having made him a coffee and had a quick chat I headed off to work. James commented last weekend at how much I look like my Dad and it is something I see ever more in photos of myself these days. I also recognise many of my Dad’s traits in me (although my mother has always muttered darkly about me being ‘just like your father…’ so it must have forever been the case ;)). Yesterday as I called goodbye and shut the door behind me I could hear Davies and Dad chuckling about something and making each other laugh. Davies very much shares my sense of humour which often takes flights of fantasy in the surreal and ridiculous and I definitely get that from my Dad. Dad and I could spend hours happily engaged in making up nonsense together and Davies is heading the same way. I made me all smiley as I drove to work thinking about my father and my son sharing a laugh together and my boy taking after my Dad in some ways given my Dad is my first and will always be my biggest hero :).

But it did have me wondering quite why it pleases me to see both physical resemblance and character similarities between myself and a man in his 70s. I am now about the same age as Dad was when I was born, so still younger than my first ever memories of my Dad. I clearly recall him being 44 and dancing about in my bedroom singing ‘I’ve got the key of the door, never been 44 before!’. There is a very silly, juvenille quality to my Dad which my Mum not only doesn’t share but she doesn’t appreciate or get either. I do, and I often find myself being really very silly and revelling in it. Dad is still like that in his 70s, I hope he’s still like it in his 90s and I hope I go to my grave (in many, many years time) remaining equally childish and finding joy in small and silly things.

After I left Davies, Scarlett and Dad talked about money, with Scarlett proclaiming that you can have too much money and Dad telling her not to be so bloody stupid, of course you can’t! :lol:They had a good morning apparently with lots of interesting discussions. My Dad will never quite get his head around Home Education and still regularly tells me the kids would be far better off at school but has now come out of the closet so to speak about having HE grandchildren and is clearly revelling in who they are and the questions they ask and conversations they have with him. I’m really glad Mum has her full time job, not just because I am pleased for her but because it means it is Dad who looks after D&S once a week these days and I think all of them get so very much out of it :).

Ady came home just after lunch and was here for the afternoon. They did chicken clearing out and playroom tidying.

Meanwhile back in the world of libraries I did the banking and Baby Rhymetime preparation. If likely rota changes come about I may be doing Storytime more frequently which I am happy to do if I can drop a Rhymetime and do one storytime and one Rhymetime a month so I was training up one of the Sarahs to do Rhymetime. We went through some of the rhymes and the tunes and actions and came up with a list for the day. A slightly surreal (Davies and my Dad would have loved it) moment came when 3 other colleagues came in the office and there were five of us all demonstrating the finger movements we use for Incy Wincy Spider 😆

Tea break and then Sarah and I were on. We had 10 children and 9 adults attending and thanks to Sarah’s dodgy knees we did some standing up songs. My style is rather more slothful and I tend to sit on the floor with the kids and parents and stay there, Sarah can’t sit on her legs for 20 minutes so we got up for The Grand Old Duke of York. While we were all up it felt right to march properly so we all marched in a circle. We got up again later for ‘heads, shoulder, knees and toes’ and I did threaten to do ‘the hokey cokey’ but didn’t carry it out. It was rather more of an aerobic workout than either I or the mothers are used to though 😆

The rest of the day was pretty slow; I rang Cara for a chat about Chatterbooks feedback questionnaires which were worked on and delivered to me later in the day ready for Monday. I also thanked her for a braille book that she had sent me for Davies and Scarlett to get a closer look and feel of after the Badgers session as she thought they might be interested. They were and we have all been marvelling at what a feat reading by fingertip must be, particularly if you don’t even know what words look like anyway.

Finally it was home time – a tea time chat with Sarah who ‘celebrates’ her 25th wedding anniversary next week was rather sobering. Ady and I are 17 years together in a few months and I can honestly say hand on heart I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else, it makes me sad to imagine there are so many couples who feel trapped or constricted or indeed anything other than a feeling of jubilation at such anniversaries really.

Am I a smug bastard? 😆

Back home again – having responded to a text asking to pick up fish and chips for one child and a tin of tomato soup for the other. Children fed I read a chapter of Happy Prince before they headed off to bed. We had pizza for dinner but I had peaked rather too early with alcoholic beverages so we ended the dvd we were watching (Run, Fat Boy, Run inspired by the Eddie Izzard documentary we’d watched the night before) and went to bed Very Early Indeed.

We looked at Davies and Scarlett’s pit trap this morning to see whether they had caught any mini-beasts. They’d netted an ant and a couple of tiny wee bugs so we got out the eye-clops to try and get a better look. We couldn’t operate it properly though so gave up and returned the pit trap to it’s spot to get Ady to have a look for us later.

Then it was off to Tasha’s. Having been talking about a regular creative workshop skillswap type event we are now at the point of setting dates and arranging what we’ll be doing when. We interspersed this today with huge amounts of chatting, bitching and catching up which was most enjoyable. We barely saw the kids from when we arrived til when we left five hours later aside from throwing some food at them sometime in the middle. Vinnie is at that very charming point of finding speech and gabbling away with items of great importance to impart to anyone who will listen so I enjoyed ‘chatting’ to him too :).

Tasha and I even got out notepads and made lists of things we want to do and visits we want to arrange, all based on things Davies, Scarlett and Toby have expressed interest in. We felt most efficient providers of education ;).

Back home Scarlett was feeling rough and looking full of cold so I ran them a big bubble bath and they enjoyed a nice long soak while I got dinner on – Davies had requested shepherds pie and I made Scarlett a big plate of mashed potatoe and broccoli – two of her favourite things :).

Ady arrived home while they were still eating and he sorted out the eyeclops for us so we spent some time looking at the ant from the trap before I read another chapter of Happy Prince (this time was selfish friends, good story :)). Bedtime which was quite protracted for all; Ady had found some blank tapes and shown Davies how to record onto them using the mircophone so he was most excited about that and Scarlett has a cough which is keeping her awake. Thankfully tomorrow is a day at home for the kids while I go off to work so she’ll get some rest.

Caz, Bid, Archie and Elliot arrived at our house this morning while Davies and Scarlett were still breakfasting and indeed Scarlett was still in her pyjamas. It was only about 830am mind you, so still early for us ;).

They were here to spend the morning with Davies and Scarlett while I went off to work. They were meeting some fellow Home Educators off at a local nature reserve for the morning. I had a quick cup of tea and chat with them before dashing off leaving them here as they had another hour or so before they needed to meet the friends.

I had a good morning at work, I like Wednesdays 🙂 Although from May we will be open all day on Wednesdays as our new opening hours have finally been announced. We are currently 930-700 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 930-100 on Wednesday and 930-500 on Saturday. The new hours will be 10-6 Monday to Friday, 10-4 on Saturdays. I don’t know yet how this will effect me but I guess it will either mean losing an hour a week or starting and finishing my shift half an hour later. Neither way is great but hopefully we’ll have new timetables drawn up soon so I will know what will be happening.

I worked on the counter first thing and got everything unpacked, then had tea, then spent an hour tidying up the Chatterbooks admin and ordering in copies of all the books we have used in sessions so far to help with next Monday which is the last session and I have planned a group display (I’ve booked the space from the following week) and some feedback from the group. I thought having all the books we’ve used might inspire some artwork /book reviews / ideas from the group for that and if all else fails I can photocopy the front covers to make the display look good :).

I spent the last hour shelving and then when there were no more books to shelve tidying up and pulling books off the shelves that need new jackets and spines reglueing.

Bid had rung to say that Eliot had fallen in the stream at the reserve so they were heading back to their flat and to join them there after work. I nipped home on the way to get changed and then had a look round their flat. It is very nice, a lovely feeling space masionette built in the bottom of a massive block of flats on the seafront. Ady and I lived in the actual block of flats when we were very first together and loved living there :). We had a cup of tea and then walked across the road to the beach.

Predictably everyone got wet playing chase the waves, but Davies and Archie moved up the beach to play with the stones while Scarlett and Eliot got crazier and waded out to sea a fair bit. It lasted a good 20 minutes before they were overcome with the cold and had had enough. So we stripped them down, wrapped them in the towels we’d brought for that very eventuality and then wandered back across the road for cocoa. I carried Scarlett which is not easy when walking up the banks of pebbles I’ll have you know!

I think we could all have happily stayed there all day as the kids settled into watching dvds together and Caz and I got our diaries out and arranged a few more get togethers but I was mindful of Badgers and getting home, fed and changed so we left just before 4pm.

Scarlett’s nose is very sore from being runny and she had clearly gotten quite cold in the sea so she wasn’t feeling great but it was far too late to cancel going to Badgers, partcularly as Cara, the Childrens Librarian was giving a talk tonight so I fed them and rallied them and off we set.

Scarlett did wobble rather for the first ten minutes but when Cara arrived both Davies and Scarlett were really pleased to be known already to the guest speaker so she perked up and was fine again for the duration of Badgers.

Cara did a good talk, it was mostly for those Badgers doing their Communication Badge and I’d asked her to talk about types of book including large print, braille, books on tape and cd aswell as non fiction to demonstrate how much books can be used to communicate information and stories. She did some reading aloud to get them to use their imagination (very similar to what I did at Chatterbooks this week) and then handed out some sheets with ‘the man walked along the street and he saw a dog’ printed at the top and four boxes to carry on the story and either draw or write what they looked like, what happened next and so on. Some of the Badgers worked in pairs, some worked alone, some threw themselves into the challenge, others really struggled and we had some very different interpretations. I loved Davies’

he had the characters coming out of the boxes and coming to life on the page, telling their own story before going back into the box again. Very, very Davies :). He just can’t stay inside that box ;).

Cara had some braille books which we all had a look and feel of and then she handed me some sheets to write your name in braille which I gave out. It was a good session although one of the more challenging girls really put my back up by being rude and just pushing it for the sake of it. Fortunately Julie had already spoken to her once tonight so I reported that she’d been difficult again and will let Julie deal with that in her own strict way without needing to get involved myself. Grr.

Back home again Ady had arrived and was cooking roast chicken which was very lovely (missed our roast on Sunday). I read the kids another chapter of The Happy Prince and other stories – tonight was The Selfish Giant. And they went to bed, Scarlett looking very much the worse for wear after a long day.

We watched a programme about Tourettes which was very interesting. Davies currently has no tics at all and hasn’t had for quite a while but he is definitely prone to them and I fully expect more in the future. I don’t think he has anything as extreme as Tourettes although he is still young enough for it to develop I guess.

Today I have been eating mostly hot cross buns. Hot from the oven freshly cooked and then later on toasted (using that revolutionary bagel setting which truly has changed my life). And reading. Lots and lots of reading.

Davies woke feeling fine but still covered in his rash on his arms, legs and cheeks. Scarlett was more rash-y today too with it on her arms and her bum and tops of her legs. I didn’t bother with antihistimine as it wasn’t bothering either of them but took the decision not to go swimming. Partially as not being sure what it is I don’t want to risk them being infectious (although of course I did take them to Chatterbooks yesterday), I didn’t want to bring the possible irritant of chemical-laden swimming pool water into the equation and I didn’t want them to feel self-conscious about being all blotchy half naked infront of other children. They were both disappointed but understanding and philosophical.

I’d brought home a dvd of Jamie and the Magic Torch so we stuck that on and I enjoyed being transported back to the 70s and early childhood. I had to collect a parcel from the post office and we needed a few grocery essentials so I nipped into Lancing to do that leaving them infront of Jamie and Wordsworth and was back within half an hour. The parcel turned out to be a letter with insufficient postage on which my irritation about was dispelled by it being my certficate proclaiming me a qualified Waste Prevention Advisor and my returned exam with a score of 97% of which I am very proud :).

Davies and Scarlett continued to watch Jamie and made several observations about it having watched several episodes. They were both on the tired and floppy side still so I was quite happy for them to have a day of doing not a lot.

Over lunch they watched Flipper – I’d got the most recent dvd from work although even that is about 15 years old and has Elijah Wood and Paul Hogan in it. They enjoyed that 🙂 I was furiously reading as I’d only really toyed with the first chapter of the book for Reading Group tonight up until yesterday so was having to read pretty much the whole 250 pages in one go today.

After lunch I took a break from the book and we looked at the folder for the Wildlife Action Awards. We’d done really well last year steaming through the bronze award and most of the silver award but I’d not written up the last couple of activities they’d completed and printed it off to send for their silver. I’ve promised to do that and we looked through the program to decide which activities they want to do to complete their gold. After some discussion they chose a final six and while I stayed inside reading they went off outside armed with a plastic tub to bury in the ground to create a pit trap to catch some bugs complete with banana bait.

We took some photos of them digging the hole to bury it and it in situ and will check it tomorrow for any bugs found for the ‘minibeasts up close’ activity. Next Davies made a chart for a ‘Save it’ activity based on saving energy and water. He came up with six things he will try and remember to do to save them and will add a tick to them each time he does so – the list includes turning off taps while cleaning teeth, turning off lights, turning off electrical equipment, opening curtains in daylight and drawing them at night, showering instead of bathing and turning the heating down. We struggle a bit with these sorts of activities to find things we can change as to be honest we are all pretty aware of and good at ensuring we are not wasting water or energy anyway but Davies does often leave his bedroom in the morning with his nighttime light on and his curtains still closed so those will be good ones to crack. Both the children were most bemused at the idea on the activity instructions of ‘give yourself a star when you do these actions. When you have ten stars you could reward yourself with a treat’ as they felt the reward would surely be having been more environmentally friendly rather than giving yourself some sweets. Yay us and our non-perpetuation of extrinsic rewards eh?! 😉

Scarlett did a chart for ‘bike, bus or walk’ which she needs to list all the journeys we make in a week and whether we could take more environmentally friendly alternatives. We drove to the library yesterday so discussed whether we could have used a different mode of transport, having ascertained that with the amount of books we took there and brought back walking would not have been an option and deduced that public transport (would have to be bus, train station is further away than the library) would have involved almost as much walking as walking would have done! It is an area we could improve on though, not public transport use so much as once you have a car and have forked out financially to do so I think public transport becomes prohibitively expensive and I do think we are good at lift sharing etc but we do rely on the car for journeys that we could conceivably walk instead. It will be an interesting chart at the end of the week anyway.

So that is 3 out of the 6 activities already begun 🙂

Scarlett made me laugh loads while we were doing it when I said ‘slash’ as I was spelling something out to Davies (open slash close). He asked what slash meant and I drew a / and said ‘like that’ to which she piped up ‘is it like that or is it that?’ which is something I am often asking her when she peppers her speech with ‘like’ 😆 😆

Davies and Scarlett did some drawing while I read some more, then I did their tea, read some more and Ady came home as I finished the book.

I went off to the library for Reading Group having finished the book not even an hour before hand but was at least able to talk about it with very fresh impressions ;). It was an enjoyable meeting and I stayed behind to help tidy up which seems to have become a habit now. I don’t mind though and it all goes down well in terms of my committment to work.

Back home for dinner and we watched Richard Hammond’s Invisible World which I thought was very good and will try and show the kids on iplayer tomorrow as I think they’ll enjoy it.

Now it must be bed o’clock.

feel free to groan at the lazy title pun.

Let’s get the rash stuff out of the way first. Both Davies and Scarlett have had unexplained rashes over the years a couple of times each. Scarlett has rather more delicate skin than Davies and has had a rash on her hands and wrists with the odd flare up on her neck / cheeks for the last week or so. I’ve been treating it with moisturising skin cream as I’ve been pretty certain it is an allergic contact reaction to oils and perfumes she has been playing with and it certainly has seemed to flare up when she’s been in contact with something chemical-y. At the weekend she had very rosy cheeks though and closer inspection showed it to be a blotchy rash of some sort rather than ruddy cheeked healthy glowing. I’d written it off as further reaction to something she’d been touching but Davies woke with a rash on one side of his face / ear yesterday so I started to wonder if it was more than that. I gave them both some anti-histimine and it seemed to clear up so I thought no more of it.

Today when I woke Davies up both his arms, his legs and his cheeks were covered in a fairly angry looking rash, quite ‘lacey’ in appearance, flat not raised and not at all itchy. His lips were not swollen (as they have been in the past, as have his ears in previous rashes) but he said his glands in his throat were a little sore. I checked his groin area and it was painfree aswell as rashfree. He did have a small rash of spot like things on the inside of his lower lip yesterday which he complained of hurting and hasn’t mentioned today though.

Scarlett still had sore hands rather than a rash but her cheeks looked rash-like. The rash on both of them was not painful or irritated and disappeared under pressure. They are both incredibly tired and have slight cold like symptoms of runny nose / cough but I’d put that down to a mad weekend rather than anything else. Davies did feel quite warm to to the touch and complained of being hot but was not running a temperature or fever.

I gave them both a dose of anti-histimine again and the rashes subsided but didn’t totally fade. Some googling and reading back on their rashes of the past leads me to conclude a possibility of slapped cheek, some sort of post viral reaction which I suspect they are both suceptible to on past experience or maybe some sort of contact or consumption allergic reaction although I can’t imagine what. In the absence of any other concerning symptoms I have ensured they had lots of fluids today, a fairly quiet day, regular antihistimine and packed them off to bed nice and early (for all the good that did, they were still awake late 🙁 ). I’m being this comprehensive as I found it a really useful record to read back on ‘rashes of the past’ on my blog this morning by the way, not because I am trying to set a new record for blogging the mundane ;).

So drugs administered, breakfast consumed, daytime attire donned we were about to set off for me to go and give blood when I looked over the form and realised that I have a really chesty cough and possibly children who do have some possibility of something infectious so actually giving blood probably wasn’t the best plan today after all. So I reappointed that for a couple of weeks time and helped Davies boot up his laptop. He got irrationally upset when it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to though so I decided he was not really in the right frame of mind for anything like that and sent them both into the playroom to ‘go and get toys to play with like children!!!’ (or yes, I know how to deal with irrational children. Behave like an irrational adult! :lol:).

Davies made some marble runs and Scarlett played with Connect 4 for a while before getting out a machine that puts jewelled rivets on material for customising clothes and things. It was a charity shop buy ages ago and had languished in the playroom so she had fun with that.

Meanwhile I made full use of having a washing machine and a nice drying outside day and got lots of laundry done. I made the dough for some hot cross buns and sorted out lunch.

Davies remembered we’d not finished the Wildlife Action Awards so we plan to have a look at that tomorrow and finish off what we need to do to complete them. I read some of the book that I need to have finished by tomorrow evening for Book Club (rolls eyes at self and homework mentality to things I actually do want to do).

We had lunch and then headed into Lancing to get some medicine (we’d used all the antihistimines) from Boots before going to the library to get set up for Chatterbooks. Scarlett particularly wasn’t up for it today and was all tired and floppy and not really in the mood which made it tricky for me. I was helped today by Brenda, who is an Operations Librarian and pretty high up and important, but also the woman I run the monthly reading group with so know very well and have done since before I worked for the library. I like her a lot and she is an ex-Childrens Librarian before she got really important and misses the contact working directly with kids. Brenda had brought along some worksheets for the session which tied in really well so we chatted a bit about what the plan for the session was and got the library set up ready.

Another full house and another two parents coming to tell us how great they think the sessions have been and thanking us (me) so much for doing them. It has been very worth it for that sort of feedback alone I guess.

Today was about books and film / tv show adaptations so 2 weeks ago I gave them all dvd and book pairings to take home and read / watch. These varied from Horrid Henry to Swallows and Amazons with some Cat in the Hat, Harry Potter and Charlottes Web inbetween. We started off by going round the circle and saying what they’d taken home, whether they’d preferred the book or the film and why. We had a good mix of both and some interesting conversations about how the book had been kept totally true to, characters added or taken away, used as a springboard to base characters and ideas on and so on. We talked about books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which have had more than one adaptation and how endings are changed sometimes. Davies talked about Stig of the Dump which noone else had seen / read, Scarlett talked (a little) about Cat in the Hat. We then had a couple of the group who had brought along something to share – a short story they’rd written from one and a full on car chase scene using two toy cars from another as he gave a narrative of what was happening. It was the first time that lad has spoken in the group so I was really chuffed when he asked to show that as he walked in :).

Then I read The Rascally Cake but kept it inside a folder so the group couldn’t see the illustrations and told them to really listen and try and imagine the scenes and characters. They split into various groups of their choosing – some threes, some twos and a couple working alone and we handed out some sheets to get them thinking about how they would turn the book into a movie. We had some character design sheets with some ideas of face shapes, expressions etc and a storyboard sheet with some questions designed to get them thinking about locations, characters and action scenes along with six boxes to map out scenes. We also had plain paper to draw on.

The group had about 15 minutes for that and Brenda and I worked round the room suggesting and assisting where needed. I spent some time chatting to a couple of the girls about what they imagine the scene looked and smelled like and got some great descriptions from them. We reconvened and most of the group had something they wanted to share from their characters or storyboards. Davies had done some great characters and Scarlett had rallied and done a fab storyboard based on the book but taking it outside of the scenes in the book and giving it a really good twist of an ending. Some of the others had focussed on smaller details like ingredients for the cake, some had planned the location in great detail, others had worked really hard on character development. I was really chuffed to hear two of the boys plotting to carry on working on it at home and ask their mums if they could get together to work on it more after school this week :).

The group is clearly too big for even two people to manage when we break into smaller groups and the couple of personalities who can be disruptive just need so much more bringing back into the group than I have the patience for but it was a good session and I had some great feedback :). The end was rather tainted by our resident drunkard sitting on the bench outside and yelling at the kids which had one of the girls in tears and several of them quite upset. Brenda went out and laid down the law to him though and he was quite contrite afterwards but a shame it had to happen 🙁

I had a quick debrief with Brenda before gathering ourselves up and heading for home. Having flopped quite spectacularly in the too-warm library both the kids perked up when we got home and came out to me while I was gathering the washing in. Davies said he was wanting to make a log pile construction in the chicken run so I said they could while I got their tea ready. They did a great job of adding some logs to the run to give the hens a few more places to lay eggs if they want. They have all been really noisy the last few days and we are wondering if it is due to not enough places to go and lay when the need takes them.

Ady arrived home just as I was serving up their tea. We all watched a new cbbc programme about ghosts and then I read the first story in ‘the Happy Prince’ which is the book club book for this month.

I battled with the wireless router for ages, declared it broken, went to Tescos and got a replacement and then have managed to get it working after all. Grr. Ady’s taking the other one back tomorrow. Scarlett managed to take forever to go to sleep which made me cross as we had cracked that but clearly 2 nights of sleepovers in Davies’ room followed by another late night last night was enough to have her back being wobbly again :(. Ady cooked a lovely steak dinner though 🙂

Am hoping rashes will have cleared up tomorrow so the kids can go to their swimming lessons.

Friday morning seems a long time ago. I have a feeling there might have been not very much going on in preparation for a long crazy weekend ahead. If there were any moments of sheer brilliance, demonstrations of genius or the like then sadly they have passed me by now and will remain undocmented.

Dad came over just before 1pm and we had a coffee and a chat together before I headed off to collect Caz and go over to Caroline’s for the ‘Meet the LA!’ event detailed below. He stayed with Davies and Scarlett until Ady got home a couple of hours later and apparently they had some interesting conversations about recreational drugs, police forces in the UK and US and other such things. Davies tells me it was ‘very interesting’ 😆

I collected Caz and the boys, we dropped the boys off with Bid and then over to Caroline’s. I found the afternoon to be very interesting, enjoyable in many ways, I felt proud to be part of such a diverse but open to debate and amicable disagreement community, scared of the depth of ideas so different to my own, in awe and respect of some of the other people there and reassured that certainly for now the LA are prepared to engage with us in such a forum.

I could have happily sat chatting for far longer – we stayed for about an hour after Ellie Evans left just chatting and going over some of what had been said – but Caz had to get back and I needed to get home too really, so I dropped her off at her parents and arrived home in a huge downpour of rain which was most unpleasant to be driving in as it got dark.

Ady was home and had fed the kids and started to prepare the house ready for weekend guests. I had a bath, chatted to Ady and the children about the whole meeting and then quickly committed some of it down before it all escaped me too much.

Just as I finished typing Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex arrived and aside from the odd bit of wikipedia-ing to clarify popfacts that was me offline for the next 48 hours.

A and M went straight upstairs to Davies’ room where D&S were already allegedly ‘going to sleep’ so they joined in with that charade (eventually ceased at 2am after we’d all gone to bed too and I got fed up with the noise still coming from their room when I was trying to go to sleep as I had to be up for work in the morning.

I was equally put out when they were noisily awake again at 7am on Saturday 😆

I went off to work for the morning and left everyone else to it. Ady went to collect a washing machine (my Dad who provided our last one from a house he owns had come across another one from a similar source so we now have that and will try and replace the broken bits in the last one at some point so he can have that one back but at least we now have a working one and no pressing urgency to get it fixed).

Saturday afternoon and evening seemed to pass fairly quickly in plenty of tea drinking, pizza cooking, kids playing, adults chatting, wine o’clock and 80s pop. And lots of jokes where the punchline was ‘Lebanon’ 😆 I dimly recall watching Sesame Street too for quite a while…

Sunday started earlier than ideal when Scarlett crawled into bed with me having been up a while and just snuggled back down and went to sleep in my arms. A lovely start to Mothers Day :).

I was presented with a gorgeous painted canvas from each child which are already hanging on the lounge wall in pride of place – will photograph them tomorrow. And a pair of bright cherry red DMs which Ady had found in a charity shop, all but brand new 🙂 I heart them 🙂



He also got a grey flowered pair at the same time but they are a size too small, which he did know but as they were also new and at a bargain price he bought them anyway. My mother has now appropriated them as they are her size. I’ve made her promise to give them back as and when Scarlett grows into them though.

K, J, A and M left us and went to look at the ocean before they headed for home I believe. We went over to my parents via the seafront too as the main road was unbelievably congested. We had a nice lunch over there with my Granny and Frazer too. We then scattered about a bit with the kids and I spending some time playing on the piano – I taught Davies how to play Twinkle, twinkle and Row, row, row your boat which he picked up impressively quickly. Dad and Ady watched the football with Granny in the lounge too and my Mum sort of floated about. My Granny ended up leaving in a bit of a huff which I had no sympathy for at all but upset my Mum rather.

After some debate and persuasion from Davies and Scarlett we arranged to meet my parents at the local Harvester in an hour and nipped home to put the chickens away and get changed before going there.

We had a nice meal although D&S were pretty wiped out and then came back here for coffee. They did do their usual trick of staying far longer than we really wanted them to, especially after D&S went to bed and I finally kicked them out at 11pm when countless hints, obvious yawns and ‘well, busy day tomorrow!’ type comments had all bounced straight off them. I suspect I have not really pulled off fantastic daughter or granddaughter today but I maintained my personal standard for mothering so I’m pretty content with that.

First a disclaimer – I will write up something in the next couple of days for my public blog / facebook etc as I know there is interest generally but this is a quick brain dump for me about this afternoon. So I won’t be being cautious about what I write, changing names to protect the innocent or generally sanitising it yet. I will do so later but I’d really appreciate if you are able to read this and therefore have a password then you respect being privy to my thoughts about stuff that I want to keep private.

Today was a meeting with Ellie Evans from West Sussex LA. If you watched the Select Committee stuff you would have seen her on that. There is a thriving local group, ActivEO in the West Sussex / Hampshire area that organised a meeting with her at a members’ house to talk about how the LA can help Home Educators and how we can help them. We are not members of ActivEO although we have been in the past and lots of our friends, including Julie, are. I went along as it seemed like a safe, comfortable environment to ‘meet the enemy’ so to speak, in advance of the axe falling.

Caroline, who hosted it is a long term HEor with 4 children. She is one of the families in Free Range Education and has long been a ‘public face of Home Ed’ but only very recently been officially ‘known’ to the LA when trying to access exams for her oldest daughter. Two of her daughters were around, one of whom ended up being extremely combative to some us later. Her husband was also present.

Another couple (and two of their three children) were also there. They used school initially for the two older children and are currently also trying to access exams for their oldest. They are known.

A woman with a toddler and a pre-schooler was there. She has been researching ‘Home Schooling’ to be sure she can ‘teach her children at home’. She was keen to put across that her 4 year old can read and her toddler knows all his letters. She isn’t known but fully intends ringing the LA in September if they go ahead and Homeschool so she can register as EHE and get access to their help.

There was a Professional Home Educator there who is absolutely lovely but about as far away from me philosophically as you can get. She has 3 children and a HUGE timetable up on their kitchen wall with all their many activities. Their home is more resource stocked than a very good private school and she has a relationship with the LA dating ten years back. They are like ‘old friends’ and have lots of contact including her ringing them to tell them what topics they are covering and the LA helping her source workshops, events, sending her photocopied information and so on. She is a working model of how it can work really well if you want support.

There was Caz, a teacher herself, married to another teacher with a philosophical ideal very similar to my own but a very different route of coming to it. They were known after de-resgistering but having moved (to NZ!) they clearly haven’t been caught up with since coming home again.

There was Cate, mother of an adult son and two younger HE children. They are autonomous and she frets about not meeting the LA’s tick boxes with her not-reading-yet 11 year old.

There was a man who has a now adult autonomously educated son who didn’t read at 14 but now studies drama and makes his living from reading scripts.

There was Chloe Watson. I doubt she needs any introduction ;).

There was Chloe’s Mum. And her boyfriend. And Chloe’s Dad a bit later on.

And there was me.

And Ellie Evans.

First impressions of Ellie Evans? How can one woman wear so much make up? And how does she lift her hands up to gesticulate so much with the weight of those false nails? 😆 But I imagine it was a suit of armour because really, she’s just a person like all the rest of us and I believe she does have what she thinks are everyone’s best interests (including her own, naturally) at heart and it was pretty bloody brave to walk into someone’s house knowing she was facing a room full of Home Educators with several axes to grind.

There was no real agenda and I did feel there were several different agendas at play really. The ‘known’ folks were, I felt, keen to justify their status and demonstrate how very beneficial that has been to them, and to continue working with the LA to better improve relationships generally. And for all of the rest of us to do so too.

The unknowns were keen to ascertain precisely what is to be gained from being known.

Some were there to score points against each other.

My initial feelings are:

Positive:
Having met Ellie in person I am reassured that she does get Home Ed, she does understand (to an extent) autonomous Home Ed and that she is happy to tick a box and say some evidence of an education is being provide and move on to the next person.
She has a team of 3 people who do the EHE visits. She was very keen we didn’t refer to them as Inspectors as they are Advisors. Potatatoe, potartoe say I (or if you prefer registration, licence). They are all fairly universally recognised as ‘good’ by those who have encountered them. She was keen to put across that their remit would remain the same, any subsequent staff would be of a similar ilk, indeed she had already been approached by people keen to join her team who had worked with the traveller community and ‘you can’t get more used to different educational styles and philosophies than that’. She is keen to foster links with the Home Ed community and would like some of us to sit on a panel helping to recruit and train future advisors.

There is currently no joined up way of getting registered. She is in charge of Children Missing in Education and EHE children. Basically anyone not on a school roll is MiE unless they are on the EHE list. So that would be Davies and Scarlett. Except they are not on the list at all because unless you contact them, or the school does when they deregister or some ‘concerned’ outsider reports you then they don’t seem to have any method of finding you. She couldn’t answer quite how that might change when/ if a registration requirement comes into play. Which leads me to feel secure for a while longer in simply not being found.

From a purely personal point of view I have always felt confident that as an intelligent, articulate, passionate person with a strong belief in the way I am raising my children I could convince anyone that they are being provided for educationally. I am even more confident of that now. But that is selfish and leads me to…

Negatives

Ellie has a background in some way in Child Protection / Welfare I think and her views are totally clouded in the meshing of education/ welfare. No matter how many time we (Chloe, me, a couple of others) stressed that the two are not connected she refused to accept that. She actually said ‘I don’t want my face on the front page of the Daily Mail in connection with a childs death!’ I did question in what way someone with a remit of Education would ever have that as a concern when there are other agencies concerned with child protection but she refused to accept the division. She blanket accepts that Home Ed is a factor in the Khyra case (and I do accept people in her position will be running scared and taking every single precaution to ensure their necks aren’t on the line but not at the cost of me and my kids). To be fair though this argument isn’t one to be having with someone at her level I guess. If laws are passed that blur the lines between welfare and education then she will be accountable on some level.

A big part of the conversation was about us telling her what we’d like. She was clear about the fact that in order to get anything we’d have to be registered first and that as all budgeting is a business / supply and demand issue then in order to gain funding for exam places, subsidised music / sports / science / literacy / numeracy / whatever other demands we might make they need numbers and to get numbers we have to be registered. I accept that and if and when I want to claim my ‘goodies’ then I might consider registering. Until then I’d rather be left alone.

I was slightly disturbed by the atttitude of the known people with their ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to hide’ stance and you could feel Graham Badman in the room rather than Graham Stuart ;).

Ellie said she supported Badman to an extent and that she particularly supported the ideas of help for Home Educators. Except that she already knows about 400 Home Educated children in West Sussex that are registered and presumably have been for a while and so far there is no funding or support available for them (other than the reward of a pat on the back and a well done from one of the inspectors advisors and maybe some photocopied information).

So my concerns: There is nothing at all to be gained for me, Davies and Scarlett from being registered and known. There is no guaranteed funding / support / access to facilities / free exam places.

There doesn’t seem to be any imminent risk of a SAO either inasmuch as I am pretty sure we would be considered fine in terms of our educational provision but I am championing the right of a single mother in a council flat having a bad day to Home Educate, the rights of my children to autonomously Home Educate their children (my grandchildren) in the same way as they are enjoying being HE’d, I am securing my rights to continue this path should my marriage suddenly fail and me become depressed or alcoholic.

I am fighting to protect the right to home educate for as long as a child is considered safe to remain at home with their parents. At the point a child is at risk of abuse or there is a welfare concern then it is clearly not an educational issue any longer, up to the point a parent is considering capable / acceptable / worthy of parenting then in my opinion they are also by definition up to educating that child too. I don’t buy into the scenario of a lack of education being abuse, I can’t see that ever happening in isolation and I don’t think you can fail to provide an education, if anything that would be one of the very last things to go in an abuse situation because for me, by my beliefs and values simply living is education.

So Ellie took away her list of things like ‘lay on educational workshops in libraries, give us free exam places’ and off she went, with parting words that it was a two way street and she expected phonecalls to register on her EHE list on Monday morning 😉 😆

I was left feeling that LA is like the NHS. I’m glad it’s there, I am happy to support it with my taxes and should I wish to avail myself of it’s services then I want it to be there ready for me to do so. If I am ill and I cannot deal with it myself by lifestyle changes or over the counter medication, or googling my condition on the internet or finding a book about it at the library, or talking to friends, or even considering homeopathy (;) ) then I might visit the doctor. But the idea that I should be subject to checks to ensure I am getting enough exercise, eating the correct foods, not smoking or drinking to excess is not acceptable. Currently the responsibility for my health lies with me, as does the responsibilty for educating my children. When I want help, when I’m doing ‘topics’, when I need the external validation of being told I’m doing a good job or even the brain stretching exercise of writing a report to illustrate as such then I will know just where to go to access all of that. But do I want it forced on me? No I do not.

Nothing I heard today convinced me of any benefit to anyone of us being registered. I did hear things that convinced me of potential

benefits of others of being registered and I would support their choice to do so but it should remain just that – a choice.

And now, Kirsty and James have arrived. Will be back!

We were doing ‘by the seat of our pants childcare’ again today. Not sure why it’s particularly tough at the moment but it is. So Ady had gone into work to collect the company credit card as his task for the day was some serious plant shopping – and by serious I mean four figures. Apparently in order to prove they are cheaper than the competitor one of the large retailers has to go and physically buy products from the other, bring it to be inspected by their lawyers along with proof of purchase and compare with the same offering from themselves.

This meant I was woken before my alarm clock to say ‘get the kids ready, I’ll be back to collect them in 20 minutes!’. I say woken and that was something of a novelty last night as I seemed to spend most of the night coughing so felt like I only actually fell asleep once it got light 🙁 . The kids were already up so I got them breakfast and rallied them to get dressed while I did the same and had them presented, Jane and Michael Banks stylee at the front door awaiting their father’s inspection when he arrived home 😆

They all headed off plant shopping for the day and I gathered up books and dvds to return and went off to work myself. It seemed like a very long day today, not sure why. I did rather put my foot in my mouth by talking about someone without realising they were nearby 🙁 I am very hopeful she didn’t hear me although I suspect she may have done so I am feeling a bit bad about that 🙁 One of those tricky situations that you can never really put right either, unless they openly confront you and you get to unreservedly apologise. A lesson there to be learnt in either not being so bitchy or at least ensuring the coast is clear first I guess…

I beat the others home by a good 90 minutes but was feeling pretty rough with my cough giving my a headache by then. I also (whinge alert!) managed to hurt my finger yesterday at the allotment while pulling up parsnips. I’m not sure if it was just a load of dirt going under my nail or an actual splinter but it has gone all infected and is really throbbing under the nail although aside from a bit of redness and swelling there is nothing visible. So I made myself some tea and toast and sat on the sofa moping for a while 🙁 I tried to chop some kindling and managed to get the hand axe stuck in a log so was feeling all helpless and pathetic. I did get a fire lit in the end though, put the chickens away and got some dinner on for the kids when they arrived home.

The children ate, we had lots of cuddles (I do *really* miss then when I work all day, particuarly when the day is elongated like that with another 2 hours), they had baths and hairwashes while I got dinner sorted for Ady and I and then we watched the last of Lambing Live which we have really enjoyed. Will miss it. Davies and Scarlett did get me to email in a question, which ironically was the same as one they answered from someone else tonight about how ewes can have one white and one black lamb. A shame they didn’t get name checked, that would have been fab although I’m guessing many thousands of people probably emailed in to the show.

Davies and Scarlett went to bed, I had a bath and did dinner, we watched a couple of episodes of Lead Balloon that we’ve been working through having borrowed the whole of series one on dvd. Am hopeful for a better nights sleep and tomorrow I’m off to meet the LEA!

This morning we had arranged to meet Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna at Littlehampton museum. It’s a really small but very well laid out modern museum that we have visited a few times before. We only had an hour or so thanks to cutting fine our timings for today which was enough time for the museum but probably a bit of a trek over there to not do something else afterwards to justify the journey. The kids all did trail sheets – Davies and Scarlett chose an I Spy sheet, while Jack and Maisie did a different one so we coexisted happily finding things and writing the answers. J&M then went on to do a second sheet while D&S found a ‘draw a poster of your favourite thing in the museum’ challenge which will be used to create a giant mural made of lots of childrens’ work. Davies drew a stuffed jay and Scarlett did some china from a fancy beachfront hotel from 100 years ago.

Julie took out a loan box and we cast a glimpse over the list of available ones which looked quite interesting so we might revisit that at some point and see about borrowing something else – we’ve had a geology one before which was good and they seem to have added plenty more to the list.

We left them at the museum and nipped home to grab a sandwich to take with us to the allotment where we were meeting Caz, Bid, Archie and Elliot. The children imediately went off to play in the woods while Caz, Bid and I did some digging over, some planting, some weeding and some chatting. They have offered people power and planning input on the allotment which we are very gratefully accepting with the promise of sharing whatever we grow.

We had a lovely couple of hours in the sunshine working and chatting about stuff while the kids were off playing together. They had to head off as they also had further people to see and places to go so we parted company.

The kids and I came home and they watched Black Beauty which I’d ordered in to work as part of next weeks Chatterbooks sessions on books and film adaptations but it didn’t arrive in time so I brought it home instead.

There has been much furtive Mothers Day making going on here too so they both spent some time holed up in their bedrooms doing secret things too.

Then it was time for Badgers. It was something of a free-for-all tonight as Julie, the leader wasn’t there thanks to her daughter having chickenpox. Neither I nor the other woman helping our group were there last week so we winged it really. We had 9 children in our group and 3 laptops to help them make newspapers. We called them into a circle and talked about news, what makes news, shared some news that had happened to us all today (something new they learnt at school, one girl’s shoe had broken, a birthday and so on), looked at a newspapers layout, coloumns, headlines, adverts, pictures etc. and then split them into groups to create their own. Some were great and could do stuff like editing text, others needed more help but they all created something. In the meantime another assistant leader was coming round with a camera to take their photos for another activity so we got them to take photos to accompany their news stories and go in their papers too. The group I was working with came up with the idea of a newspaper for a fantasy world they’d made up so we did a couple of news stories and some adverts, another group did an interview and the other group of older girls did a more newsletter style effort.

The children then went downstairs for their drink while we saved their efforts on the laptops and went down to join them. We found all of the Badgers on the floor with their hands on their heads having ‘been naughty’. Davies was sitting rather than lying and several of the kids looked pretty pissed off. When I asked them about it later they said some of the children (quite possibly themselves included) had been messing about and the leader had made them all do that. They were both pretty shocked by it and a bit fed up and I agreed it was degrading and unnecessary. I suspect she had found herself alone (which shouldn’t normally happen but I think we were still upstairs and the other helper was still in the kitchen tidying up and she’d not been able to maintain control so she went with that method. Not something I would ever do, or feel at all comfortable with but hopefully a one off and not too lasting an effect on any of the kids 🙁 Or maybe other people think that is okay?

Back home again Ady was still not home so I made the kids a quick tea of eggs and toast, got a fire lit, cleared up the kitchen and started dinner before he arrived home. We swapped then and Ady carried on with dinner while I watched Lambing Live with the kids. The later bedtime of 9pm for the last few nights seems to have helped with bedtime issues a bit – they are now properly tired when they go to bed and seem to fall asleep quicker despite going to bed later. Not sure it is something I want to run with all the time though – 9pm really eats into our evenings.

I am now pleasantly achey from the work on the plot this afternoon and feeling nicely tired from a good busy day :).

I had a course today, whenever I have my PDR I always say I’ll do whatever training is on offer and a couple of computer courses had come up, I’d been put forward for them and accepted so along I went. We were doing seat-of-our-pants childcare again and Ady took Davies and Scarlett out with him for the day.

I waved them all off before 8am, got dressed, ate breakfast, sorted the chickens out and then spent about 15 minutes wobbling about not having worked through the manual in advance of the course.

I drove there and found parking nice and easily and walked to the building which used to be a Southern Water HQ but is now shared by Worthing Police and West Sussex County Council. I got a drink and introduced myself to some other attendees – there were 8 of us from all around WSCC services including Children and Family Centres, Libraries, Working with Adults with Learning Difficulties and so on. The guy running the course reminded me of Bill Bailey with his delivery and he was very funny. By the afternoon he was putting me more in mind of Chris Tarrant somehow and I couldn’t see Bill Bailey in him anymore…

I’ve never had any formal training on computers, all I do know is self taught so I liked the idea of some proper training. The course was Word – in the morning we did formatting text and paragraphs, find and replace and other such stuff. I knew some and learnt some. We had a short lunch break and then four of us returned to do using pictures in Word including clip art, pictures from file, watermarks, captions, wordart, drawing tools including graphs and charts. Again I learnt some and knew some already.

If I’m honest I don’t know that WSCC will really get their moneys worth out of me being training as I’m not really doing much in the way of working with Word in my job anyway although I guess I’ll be doing a report of Chatterbooks so I’ll be sure to add in plenty of pictures and charts etc.

The course finished at 430pm so I drove home through all the coming home traffic which is dreadful on that 4 miles stretch. The course was held very near to where I went to sixth form so it felt odd to be sitting in rush hour traffic both ways nearly 20 years on from when I used to drive to and from sixth form in my little yellow mini when I first passed my driving test.

I beat Ady, Davies and Scarlett home by about half an hour so dealt with the chickens, chopped up some firewood and got a fire lit and put the kettle on before they arrived home. After lots of debate we’ve bought a little netbook for me and my laptop will become Davies’. One of the things we wanted to buy with the bonus as Davies is getting more able and keen on the computer so I wanted to give him more access to one, mine is starting to run slower and has been much loved and well used so is an ideal first laptop for him. Ady had done lots of checking and finally found a good one on special offer at Asda so came home with that. I’m very happy with it, it perfectly meets my online wants :). So I’ve spent most of the evening setting it up and moving across email addresses and rss feeds etc.

More Lambing Live before very tired children went to bed (will no doubt jinx it by mentioning but Scarlett had been much better the last week or so about bedtime generally and sleeping through. Fingers crossed for it continuing, I know extreme tiredness has helped ;)). We had a late dinner and watched Stephen Fry in America which we’ve been very much enjoying.

I woke with a bit of a cough which has worsened through the day and am hoping won’t develop into anything further. I suspect sleep would help…

Pulborough Brooks in the morning. I was expecting a big turn out as the weather was so lovely (clear, crisp and sunny, if still very cold) and we’d been hoping to finally cross paths with a localish Home Ed family we’ve made contact with online and been told by various people we have very compatible children with but sadly they didn’t make it.

Davies and Scarlett declined spotter sheets so we decided to just look for signs of wildlife generally and hope to catch up with some other HEors along the way. We found some deer footprints and some fox poo and then came to the area where adders hang out when the season is right. Sure enough there were three curled up along the path, all being photographed and exclaimed over by people. Davies spotted one and alerted the photographers to it, Scarlett was sad she’d not spotted one herself but did spend time chatting away to the various people along the route quite happily 🙂

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We finally caught up with someone we knew coming the other way so stopped for a brief chat with them before continuing and coming across Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. They were quite happy not to continue their circuit and carry on with us back to the visitor centre and playpark.

We had lunch in the sunshine, the four older cousins viewed a group of school children on a school trip rather suspiciously and visibly relaxed once they’d left, then it was time to head for home. We bid Julie & co a farewell and took the scenic route over the downs which only adds a few minutes to the journey and is beautiful taking in stunning panoramic views of the sea, the south downs and all that’s lovely about where we live. Particularly lovely to see all the lambs already turned out into fields with ewes :).

We had time at home for a quick cup of tea for me before going to the library for Chatterbooks. It was the fourth session of six and after last week’s debacle I had assistance in the shape of Cara, the Childrens Services Librarian for our area. When we arrived she was in the throes of putting together some new furniture for the childrens library – Scarlett was horrified at the thought of the old furniture leaving and it looks like we might be adopting the book boxes :rolls:. Davies spent about half an hour assisting with flatpack assembly and offering what seemed to be helpful suggestions and input while I got everything ready for Chatterbooks and Tarly tidied the junior library up.

I briefed Cara on what the session was to entail and we assumed Chatterbook positions ready for the onslaught ;). Today was Storytelling and I’d deliberately planned for lots of input from the children and plenty of mixing them up with each other and breaking up the troublesome little cliques. Much to their horror ;).

I explained that we all have plenty of stories we carry around with us, from remembering books we’ve read and films we’ve watched to knowing fairy stories off by heart. I said that books are fab but being able to tell stories without books is just as good and we will probably tell them slightly differently each time and that each person would tell a slightly different version to each other too. I checked that they all knew the ‘classic version’ of 3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf and then read two alternative versions: and which between them perfectly illustrated humorous deviations from the story, merging different well known tales, repetition and familiar storylines, a story told in verse and plenty of twists in the tale.

Next I split them into groups of my choosing (very specifically chosen) and tasked them with telling a different section of the story each using different methods. First we had a group telling the beginning of the story where the mother pig sends her 3 little pigs off to start a life of their own – this group used a narrator and mime / acting. Chapter two was a house made of straw being blown down by the wolf and the group working on that used plasticine to create models to tell the story. Chapter three was the house made of sticks and the group used comic strip style storyboard illustrations to tell this part of the tale. Finally the last group got to make up their own twist in the tale and do whatever they liked with the ending, the wackier the better! They had no props although I suggested they write their section down to help prompt them in the retelling.

Cara and I worked our way round each group suggesting and supporting them with their ideas. The mime / narrator group worked well together – Scarlett was in that team and the three of them were all coming up with ideas and discussing how to do things. They quickly nominated roles and got on with practising. The plasticine group also did well – Davies was in that group. I put one of the stronger and slightly more difficult children in that group on the basis that Davies would ensure they didn’t take over and he has been pretty silent but strong in sessions so far. They worked out who was doing what and worked well as a team. The third group were less cohesive and tended to do their own drawings seperately without working together so well, the last group had the strongest child in it and she was getting frustrated by the inertia of the other two. I was hoping she’d rally them but they needed a fair bit of support (which Cara gave them) and the quieter two didn’t participate so much in the final retelling although they did have input in the ideas.

The children had about 15 minutes to do that and then we regrouped and told the story as a group. Unfortunately the library seemed to have filled up with about 5 people in there selecting books (we obviously remain open) which didn’t help with noise levels or concentration but the idea worked and the children all said they enjoyed it and got the idea of telling stories without books, using different ways of telling them and being inspired to get creative with your own spin on stories.

Davies, Scarlett and I had a chat with Yvonne in the staff room afterwards before heading for home. The chickens had laid 6 eggs yesterday so I collected them and was in the process of doing the kids’ tea when Ady arrived home. He’d been on a charity shop trawl and come home with a load of old videos including Flipper/Flippers New Adventure which Scarlett predictably fell upon. So we all watched that while the kids had their tea.

I nipped out to get a few bits for my dinner (Ady was having leftover curry from when Mike and Rose came round to not swing with us on Saturday). We all watched Lambing Live and the kids went to bed. We cooked our dinner, watched a few episodes of Lead Balloon on dvd and then I fell asleep on the sofa which accounts for why I’ve sneakily changed the time stamp on this email ;).

And to today 🙂

Caz and Bid arrived at 10am to collect the sofabed that has been in our playroom. We got it way back last year or maybe even the year before from freecycle on the basis that it might encourage the kids to use the playroom more and would be a spare bed. But all that has happened is it gets used to dump stuff on, it takes up a large area in the playroom and all of the friends who come to stay here are campers who could bring a camping mat to sleep on anyway. It just hasn’t earnt it’s large space in our small house. So when Caz and Bid were moving into a new flat with zero furniture it seemed an ideal chance to pass it on to someone who would use it :).

They stayed for a drink and a chat before Ady and Bid loaded the sofa into their car and they headed off. We breakfasted and got dressed and then went off out too. The sheep farm where I did my Lookerer training is lambing and had invited lookerers to come for a visit after several people had offered to help with lambing or just asked to come and visit. We finally found the right turn off (I’d not been driving when we went on the course and had been chatting rather than paying much attention to how we got there) and went in. I recognised a couple of people from my course. There were about 30 ewes in pens with one, two or three lambs each with some oddities. The first was a lamb wearing another fleece over his own – he had been a third lamb to a ewe and as ewe’s only have two teats triplets always pose a problem, the ewe he was in with had lost her lamb but had plenty of milk so they fleeced the dead lamb, made a little jacket of the fleece for this lamb and the ewe accepted it and was feeding it as her own. There was a very ill ewe who had had two dead lambs yesterday and was being left to see whether she would pull through. There was a black ewe with one black and one white lamb which apparently she has had for the last 4 years running. She has also killed off the white lamb every year so they were keeping a close eye on her and her white lamb this year. There was a ewe seperated from her lamb by a bar which prevented her turning around but allowed the lamb to feed as she was rejecting it but they were hoping if it carried on feeding it might come through. There were two lambs without ewes which had either been rejected, triplets or their mother had died so they were being bottle fed and were available to cuddle.

They leave their ewes to give birth out in the field and then bring them to the barn once they’ve been born. While we were there two ewes came down that had just given birth along with twins and triplets. The twins had been born just minutes before and so we watched them take their very first wobbly moves to standing and then first steps 🙂

Their cords were dipped with idoine and they were sexed – both girls. We chatted to Sam, the shepherd and his girlfriend for ages about various things to do with the sheep and lambs and then after cuddling the lambs once more we headed off leaving them to their incredibly busy weekend. The kids made friends with the sheepdog and once again we all had a yearning for a different lifestyle.

Home via the garden centre for more chicken food and the supermarket for some bits to go with dinner. A very late lunch and then we watched Aliens in the Attic and the first Disney Alice in Wonderland. Ady cooked roast beef and we watched Countryfile and looked at pictures of us in 2004 on Hadrian’s Wall (a feature on Countryfile about lighting up the wall next weekend, all 73 miles of it at 250metre intervals – if we lived closer I’d definitely go and see that).

Dinner eaten, we had the sorbet that didn’t get eaten last night and then having seen it advertised on Countryfile and with it being particularly relevant given our morning we all watched Lambing Live on BBC2. Once again I was surprised at how much knowledge about animals the children, particularly Scarlett retain. She knew loads about the tupping, enjoyed learning about how they chose rams and how auctions work, laughed like a drain at the ewes chasing the rams when they were first introduced and then went all gooey over the lambs, particularly when one was called ‘Scarlett’ :).

There, all caught up. A crazy few days with loads of fab things happening but barely room to be sleeping, let alone blogging! Next week is looking just as madly busy.

We don’t seem to stay still for very long…

Up and out early to Wildlife Explorers. Scarlett was first for an hour and her session was about cuckoos. They did some colouring, watched a film about cuckoos and then went out onto the reserve to look for signs of spring. Scarlett said they found buds and shoots.

Meanwhile Davies, Ady and I walked round the newly acquired land adjacent to the reserve, taking a slightly different route to last month. Ady has a bonus coming at the end of this month so there is much debate currently about how best to spend it. Davies was joining in the discussion really intelligently and sensibly, along with stopping to look at things around us such as the evidence of feasting squirrels. Oh and climbing up the odd tree here and there.

We went back to collect Scarlett and I noticed Davies looking very uncomfortable all of a sudden. He then said he didn’t want to go in for his session. He didn’t seem to have a reason for this and I put it down to tiredness so insisted he went in and waved him off. Ady, Scarlett and I were walking back towards the car to get a drink when I hear footsteps behind us and turned to see Davies, in floods of tears running after us. I walked back with him as I didn’t know if they would have realised he’d gone so needed to check. We sat outside and I tried to get out of him why he was so upset and what he didn’t like. I finally got from him that he feels he is expected to be able to do more than he is capable of – I suspect and infact he later confirmed, that this is mostly reading and writing tasks. He said that in the younger group the adults have more time and patience, the older group is bigger and they want to crack on with the rest of the activities rather than support reading and writing struggles.

While we were talking the leader came out and sat with us. She gave Davies a cuddle and asked what the matter was, explaining that if she knew what was wrong then she’d be able to fix it for him. I explained he was finding the transition from the younger group to the older group a bit hard, aswell as the longer session (Scarlett is there for an hour, Davies is there for 2.5 hours) and she agreed that lots of the children do struggle at first. She was keen to encourage Davies to go back in but equally keen for him not to be forced. I was worried that if he walked away then it would build up into an even bigger deal for next time so we agreed to have another 15 minutes composing himself time and then he might go in.

Davies and I sat on a bench in the sunshine and talked about it. We discussed doing things that scare you and how good you feel about having done them, assessing the risk of the worst that could happen about what scares you and how you would deal with it if that did happen, rising to challenges, compared it to a rollercoaster ride where there is that moment at the top just before you go over and hurtle down that pretty much anyone would jump out if they were given the choice but seconds later you are flying and loving it and so, so glad you did it. We talked about why he goes to Wildlife Explorers, what he gets out of it and what he would miss, how he could rise to challenges and so on. It turned out what had tipped him into running out was the first task on the table being paper to write down a list of birds you’d seen already this spring. We talked about how he could have had a go at that and he very easily spelt ‘robin’. I suggested drawing pictures if there wasn’t an adult to help or making a mental list and then asking quietly for some assistance with spelling or just having a go and risking getting the spellings wrong.

Diane the leader then came back out to say they were about to show a film so it would be a good point to rejoin the group but Davies said he didnt want to go back in today but would be back next month. Diane then suggested that rather than lose him she would be very happy for him to come back to the younger group again and be with Scarlett. Scarlett will go up at the end of this year and while I’d hope Davies feels ready to go up before that happens he is clearly not ready to be in the big group just yet. He leapt at this chance and is now really happy about going back next month and into the younger group again.

I am a bit worried that he has done a fair bit of avoiding things he knows he can’t do and possibly feels fretful that he should. He definitely bowed out of Sea Scouts for that reason and I don’t want him to miss out on things particularly if the fears are unfounded anyway – Wildlife Explorers is not school and they don’t as far as I know have any sort of literacy agenda to fulfil so I’m guessing they don’t care at all if he can’t spell bird names although I appreciate they don’t have a spare adult available to sit with Davies and hold his hand through all of the sessions either. I do think a lot of these stumbling blocks are in Davies’ own mind and either they would turn out not to matter anyway or actually if he gave things a go more readily he would realise they are totally achievable for him. Ah well, solution to this one easily found in the end and he will go back to the younger group again for now.

So, we left Pulborough Brooks rather earlier than planned and went to visit Tom at his Dad’s which is nearby. We were there for an hour or so and met their two Tamworth pigs that they are hoping are pregnant after AI last weekend – if so we’re hoping to go along for the birth or very soon afterwards to meet the piglets 🙂

We looked under some tarps to see if we could spot any just-waking-up adders. We weren’t lucky with adders but did find some sleepy lizards 🙂

Their bees are just starting to wake although their chickens are a bit behind ours in starting to lay again. We then went down to the lake where Tom’s dad and brother were chainsawing down some trees. They bought the house and land a couple of years ago and have been spending lots of time and money taming the land to how they want it which includes a couple of very large man-made lakes with fish for fishing to complement the fast flowing stream already naturally running through the bottom of the land. We were very lucky to see a kingfisher flying around the lake, three times which enabled us to point and say ‘isn’t that a Kingfisher?’ at the first turquoise flash and then have two more chances to be sure that yes it was. Amazing sight, I’ve never seen one before and they are far smaller than I had imagined them to be.

Davies and Scarlett adored running wild with the pack of dogs and crossed the stream at shallow spots, encouraged the dogs to leap in the stream and the lake by throwing sticks and generally loved being there 🙂

We spotted some toadspawn and then Ady and the kids (and one of the dogs) had a row round the lake in the little rowing boat. I declined on the basis I was fairly sure they were going to fall in and wanted to be on the bank to capture the photo. They didn’t 😆

It is just so lovely there with a lake to fish and row on, a stream to splash in, woodland and fields, horses, bees, chickens, pigs, a pack of dogs and loads of land for growing fruit and vegetables. Davies and I spent some time indulging a fantasy of ‘if we lived here…’ and Scarlett was practically in tears when it was time to leave she loves it there so much. A real ‘wrong life!!!’ alert moment I thought…

Back home again Dad came over to collect some logs and ended up staying longer than we’d planned. It was lovely to see him and he and I taught Davies how to play several versions of patience with his newly won pack of cards which was nice. Dad and I used to spend hours together playing cards when I was about Davies’ age.

But it did mean that a mere 3 hours before we were expecting Mike and Rose to arrive for dinner I was still googling recipes and writing a list to take to Tescos to buy stuff for 😯

We’d decided to go for an Indian food theme and cook curry, with veggie and chicken options (mainly so I didn’t have to eat vegetarian). Ady had already cooked the chicken curry last weekend and frozen it and was doing the rice, the bombay potatoes and had bought some breadmaker mix for naan breads which was already on. I found recipes for onion bharjees and vegetable samosas and so headed off for supplies.

When I got back we had 2 hours before they were arriving and I split my time up and tried to be all Masterchef about what was left to do. I made pastry for the samosas and got that chilling, made the filling for them and got that simmering. I made the mix for the bhajees, whizzed up cucumber and mint for one dip and coriander and garlic for another and then got the veggie curry on. It was a version of Helen’s much loved camp curry which clearly I can’t offer an opinion on as it was full of cauliflower and various beans but went down well :). I finally made the samosas (they tasted really good but I’d use readymade filo pasty next time as the recipe turned out nice but dry and fiddly to work with pasty so we ended up with sort of mini curried veg pasties rather than samosas).

Meanwhile the kids had a bath and some dinner, Ady got the house tidied up, found candles, lit a fire, got Davies’ bedroom ready for a sleepover for the kids and had a bath so that he could take over making the potatoes, frying the bhajees and samosas (I’m not allowed anywhere near hot fat), shaping the naan breads and keeping an eye on the curries while I had a bath and got changed.

All was well and I was just putting dishes of bombay mix and balti peanuts out when Mike and Rose arrived. We had a really nice evening – Indian beer and non-Indian wine. The food all went down well, conversation ranged from intelligent and grown up to downright silly, the kids reappeared a few times but were very tolerated and well behaved before they finally went to sleep around 1130pm. I’d got turkish delight and sorbet for dessert as Indian food tends to be little, very sweet puddings and this was the closest I could find, but everyone was so full up we only had some turkish delight and some of the chocolates Mike and Rose had brought with them along with coffees and liqueurs.

They left earlier than usual – still after 1am mind you, as Mike’s daughter who is 12 and is with them on weekends has suddenly shown an interest in attending church so they have been taking her to the morning Sunday service and Mike was conscious about needing to be up and ready for that in the morning.

Ady and I sat up awhile talking about favourite songs and playing some of them before finally going to bed ourselves sometime after 2am.

I worked all day on Friday. We’d had a last minute childcare crisis which meant Frazer came over to be with Davies and Scarlett in the morning. He was, predictably, late and stinking of cigarettes but the kids were delighted to see him and so I headed off to work, arriving a mere ten minutes after I was supposed to be starting work. I’d had a ‘chicken drama’ last week and Yvonne said to me she always knows I’ll be in if I’ve not already phoned to say so but assumes it will be due to a drama of some description, so ‘Childcare Drama’ was sufficient explanation to let me off the hook.

I did banking, rhyme time preparation, sending all the Rainbow Fairy books back to the libraries they came from as I took great pleasure in dismantling the ‘Fairy Magic’ display and made space for a ‘minibeaasts’ display instead, manned the counterm, dealt with the desk and generally had a good day at work :).

Meanwhile at home the kids had a good time with Frazer and then Ady arrived home and they spent some time off out with him in the afternoon.

When I arrived home they were already back and had eaten so I got busy with the face paints on Davies and stitched some pulling in stitches in the shoulders of Scarlett’s dress aswell as de-plaiting her hair. Davies’ outfit was very much of his own creation, face painting aside which was at his direction and he looked fantastic. Scarlett’s outfit was not as complicated and of course with her long blonde hair she was already Alice-esque to a point but we made a little blue waistcoat for her toy white rabbit along with a cardboard and string pocket watch so she had accessories to make up for less of an effort on the costume.

I’d bought popcorn, drinks and sweets from the pound shop at Lancing to take with us so fully equipt we headed off to the cinema. We have a trio of local theatres here in Worthing, all council run and arts council / lottery grant / state funded which I do like to support if possible – this year I have been three times to the cinema screens there. In looking at their website, which I regularly do I’d spotted the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Gala Event and booked tickets earlier this week.

Davies had pretty much sorted his own outfit out after I’d shown them trailers of the film and dug out waistcoat, wig and top hat from the dressing up box. I found a scarf of mine to use as a bow tie, we dyed the wig ginger and got a patterned shirt from a charity shop for a couple of quid. Jeans and his red and gold star DMs completed the look with a bit of face painting from me.

Scarlett had a nightie from the same charity shop tied with another of my scarves, her hair was made wiggly with the help of 8 plaits put into wet hair the night before, she wore the boots she wears for Badgers and we made a waistcoat and cardboard pocket watch for her toy white rabbit.

I thought they both looked fab, proper home made creative costumes with heavy emphasis on having done it themselves:

We managed to park fairly near the cinema and followed the trail of playing cards stuck to the pavement and were greeted by staff dressed up as rabbits, Alice and the Mad Hatter. We nipped into the box office to collect our tickets and Ady saw the film posters for the first time that we’d modelled the outfits on:

As we went in we were given a box of cakes each and a cup of tea (or coffee, hot chocolate or selection of cold soft drinks) to get into the tea party theme. There was face painting (which we didn’t need ;)), hand painting, photo morphing (which the kids had done, Davies turned into a playing card and Scarlett a cheshire cat, we’ll get send those in the post) and an eat me / drink me competition with 10 different things to try and guess / identify to enter a prize draw. It was mostly fizzy fruit drinks and flavoured jellybeans so nothing too yucky or tricky.

There was also staff walking about chatting to people, photographers taking pictures of the dressed up people (he took some great ones of D & S, will have to see if they make it into the local paper) and some Pixar mini films (the ones from dvd extras, we’d seen all of them before I think ;)) showing on the big screen. It was really good 🙂

Then it was the fancy dress parade. They had children first, then adults (Scarlett was most cross with me ‘I *told* you that you should have dressed up Mumma!’ :lol:. There were probably about 30 children, lots of Alices, several Mad Hatters, a few white rabbits and some playing cards. They judged on audience applause and it was quickly obvious that Davies was going to be in with a strong chance 🙂 Sure enough, he and another Mad Hatter were named winners and got a huge goody bag from Pixar each.
I love Scarlett’s reaction captured on camera as Davies was proclaimed a winner 🙂

(you can’t see Davies as the nearest Alice stepped forward infront of him as I took the shot). He won loads of fab prizes including an Alice in Wonderland pocket watch which is gorgeous, a charm bracelet with teapots, playing cards, drink me bottle, key and so on on it, a magic key keyring, a tin of Alice in Wonderland playing cards, a torch and a voucher for 4 free cinema tickets to a film of his choice 🙂 Excellent haul 🙂

The adults were judged and winners chosen and then it was time for the film itself. It is also out in 3d and I imagine it would be well worth seeing in 3d as the effects in the 2d version were fab and there were some shots, eg Alice falling down the rabbit hole which would be excellent in 3d. I was slightly worried that Scarlett might find it scary as it is classic Tim Burton and on the dark side but she loved it. We all really enjoyed the film, thought it was very good :).

Yet another late night though as it was nearly 11pm when we got home and having eaten cakes and popcorn already still felt lacking a ‘proper’ meal so made pizzas which we were still eating at gone midnight.

we even talked about curriculums!

A much needed lay in all round this morning saw a lazy start to the day. Ady had picked up a box set of Simpsons videos yesterday in a charity shop so Davies and Scarlett watched some more of those until it was time to head off to Tasha’s.

It’s been way too long since we saw them properly so Tasha and I had loads to catch up on, which we did admirably over much tea drinking (for me) and some very fantastic cake. The kids disappeared and played inside, outside, upstairs and downstairs, only surfacing every so often for feeding. They also rather loved the cake :).

Tasha and I finally thrashed out some plans for getting a few local Home Eddors together for creative workshop type stuff which we’ve been talking about vaguely for ages but not previously managed to discuss at length. Feel very positive about that :). It was a really nice day 🙂

We got home just in time to collect another 4 eggs from the henhouse before they all started going to roost. That’s 11 in 3 days which suggests most if not all of the 12 hens are now laying 🙂 A few odd shaped ones these last couple of days means some of the new hens have laid their first eggs and I know our 2 speckled hens are both laying as they have very white shelled eggs. Hurrah :).

Dinner for the kids and then I got a fire lit, the washing up done, the house hoovered and a bath running and read them which is a version of the story for book club this month – we have other version ready to read too. I also read some which I’d picked up when a new copy came into work as it features several of our favourite authors.

Then I packed the children off to bed. Ady arrived home shortly after I’d done so so he went and said goodnight to them and when I popped in to check on Davies just after 830pm I was staggered to find him asleep. Davies. Before 9 o’clock!!! Unfortunately Scarlett didn’t get to sleep until nearly midnight and that included all sorts of nonsense which I fear I veer between dealing with really well and really badly, often within moments of each other :(. She went to sleep smiling at least.

After a rather last minute potential childcare crisis my brother is coming over in the morning to look after Davies and Scarlett as I am working, so woefully short on my usual couple of hours of everyone-free time I usually relish each night I am going to bed too.

I worked in the morning, Ady dropped Davies and Scarlett off with Julie.

Work was good, I like Wednesday mornings as they are very busy with all the delivery to unpack and the books leaving to get packed up. Wednesday is often the biggest delivery of the week as it tends to be the day that books reserved on Saturday arrive. We have four staff, two of whom are called Sarah. When I was at school about the half the class were always called Sarah, Nicola or James, clearly the most popular name choices back in 1974. It’s comforting to be at work with two Sarahs and a James 😆

I topped up my Jean Auel display which is proving popular – will get a photo of it tomorrow. I had a visit from one of the librarians to apologise in person for the whole Chatterbooks debacle on Monday and she showed me the email from one of the senior people that had been alluded to in an email I’d had and I was quite curious to see myself. It was very complimentary which was nice and the only real criticism was that I wasn’t perhaps aware of the ‘after school baggage’ that attendees come along with. An interesting, and true point I’d raised myself but for me yet another reason why we shouldn’t be trying to do an ambitious programme straight after school on a weekly basis.

I nipped into the book shop to pick up a couple of the WBD books as I know they sell out pretty fast and then drove over to collect Davies and Scarlett.

They’d had a lovely morning with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna including a trip to Arundel to walk round the lake. They were all very muddy of trouser, rosy of cheek and bright of eyes thanks to some fresh air, exercise and time to be crazy with cousins :). I stopped for a cup of tea and a chat with Julie.

Home again for a very quick turn around of scoffing some of my hot cross buns and getting changed from work clothes into clothes that would see me through standing around on Brighton seafront for a few hours and then standing around inside the Brighton centre for a few more hours, then jumping up and down, singing and dancing pressed very close to many, many other people for a few hours- tricky wardrobe dilemma that, but never one where the answer is jeggings.

Ady and the kids dropped me off in Brighton and I walked through the lanes down to the seafront. I had a plan to find a coffee shop to sit in nearby and kill a couple of hours (they dropped me off as the parking costs more than the Mika ticket, it’s cutting it a bit too close for the last train home and I’d have to walk 15 minutes from the station through Lancing at night which isn’t nice. But they needed to be back in Worthing for Badgers so had to drop me off early). But when I got to the seafront there were already about 15 people standing around queuing. At which point I decided if I was killing time anyway I might as well do it in a queue really. So I chatted to the teenagers and their Mum (she didn’t stay) next to me for a bit who didn’t really believe me that I had a friend coming to meet me and kept saying things like ‘but do you, like feel that like all of us are your friends, joined in love for Mika and that?’ and sounded *just* like Catherine Tate’s Lauren.

I was very glad when Ros arrived nearly 1.5 hours later 🙂 and I was able to prove I really did have a friend! We spent the next hour in the queue catching up and finally got let in. Last time we went they were pretty good at maintaining the queue order from outside so being very near the front of the queue meant you were first in. This time they had several entrances open and it was a bit of a free for all when the doors opened. I was slightly pissed off that having been about 15th from the front we still ended up about four people deep back from the very front – we should really have made it to the actual front row. But we still had an excellent spot and when I looked behind us afterwards I realised just how many layers deep the standing crowd went.

We made friends with Colin and Emma who were standing nearby, to the extent that Ros ended up giving them a lift home as it was on her way and they were cutting it fine for the last train home. Lovely couple 🙂 although Colin did seem to have a very weak bladder ;).

So we stood for a further hour or so, then the support act came on and did about 5 songs. The drummer was very pleasing to observe but the music was not at all to my taste and just made me feel old. A further half an hour or so and then finally, a mere five hours after I first joined the queue outside Mika came on 🙂

He was fantastic, put on a fab show, sang wonderfully and utterly entertained us for the whole 90 minutes he was on. It was utterly fabulous, over the top, crazy costumes, glitter and balloons falling from the ceiling, women plucked from the stage door earlier in the evening paraded on stage with corsets and fancy headgear and we very quickly forgot our aching feet and need to have a wee and jumped up and down and sang our hearts out along with him. I was quite hoarse this morning :).

Ady and the kids picked me up and on getting in the car I realised just how tired I was. The kids went to bed as soon as we got in, I had a bath and ate the shepherds pie Ady had made for me before stumbling up to bed myself.