One word? When seven would do…

It’s all go being a minor local HE celeb you know 😉

I’ve now had 2 people putting themselves forward for the role as my PA which made me laugh. Not the notion that I’d be needing a PA you understand – that is entirely plausible. I’ll be needing my phone answered, my emails replied to, my spelling checked when typing comments on the Argus website and my table kept clean and tidy to name but a few tasks.

Not even the idea that working for me would be some sort of prize job. For a start there would be very little in the way of renumeration – I’m hardly flush with the cash these days.

No, what really made me laugh was the idea that I’d have not one but two children home all day with me under the guise of being Home Educated when the genuine reason for them not being in school is so that I can keep them in domestic servitude. PA? Hardly, I’ve already got two of them! 😆

Scarlett managed to bump her head on the radiator while playing Horsey rides with Davies first thing this morning. PA Davies was deputised to kiss that better.

I made my own cup of tea, poured cereal into bowls for the children and let the chickens out and fed them all myself. I like to keep it real, stay in touch with my roots, that sort of thing.

I whizzed round the shop to get a copy of the paper and left the children to look after each other. That seemed to go swimmingly.

We packed a picnic and headed off to the p.a.r.k. Lucy and I had arranged to go there and sit for as long as we could before needing to aquiesce to children’s demands to go home and stop playing with each other. Our children are not known for getting on well with each other for any length of time. Usually. But today they proved us all wrong and we sat in the park for over 4 hours while they all got along swimmingly. Life is so much better since we arranged marriages and betrothed them all to each other – the pre-marriage guidance counselling we set up has ironed out all the problems between the four of them and they are on track for a long and happy life together.

There was much hilarity in the park when the park cat – she does seem to be genuinely the Park Cat and spent most of the day loving being with all the children – got cornered by 3 massive dogs and they staged a Hairy McLary-esque panto across the fields chasing each other. The children mostly got dirty and had fun together while we chatted.

Back home I made pizza dough (bored of pretending I use Davies and Scarlett as PAs now) and let the little chicks out within the big chickens area to see what would happen. It all seems like it’s going to be a straightforward introduction to each other. The children spent some time out there with them all and then came in to finish off the colouring and drawing they’d been doing before it was dinner time.

I ran them a bath to wash off the park grime, chatted to Ali on the phone and restrained myself from engaging any further with the loony man commenting on the Argus thread. Just as well really as he has this evening proved himself to be quite deranged!

Ady came home and he and Scarlett read together with her attempting the odd words here and there, while Davies made a start on his Mr Gum book. He did well but I suspect it is just too fast paced a read to appeal when he is still at spelling out stage. He’s certainly getting there though 🙂

I read them because I’d ordered in various award winning books for us and some of which Scarlett had been asking me to do as she looks at it in bed and then I finished off with a chapter of Mr Gum read aloud to them.

Ady and I played ‘name the tune first’ with his Mp3 player, both had baths, and I cooked dinner. Scarlett came back out of bed to sing along to some Michael Jackson and then we had dinner.

We’re planning on heading off with the tent for the weekend in the morning, so I probably won’t be around til Sunday evening.

Work day for me today and an all day-er with Nightmare Colleague (henceforth known as NC). I had morning teabreak with her and should have been on lunchbreak with her too but simply couldn’t face it so took my sandwiches and a book and went and sat in my car instead.

Other than that it was a nice day – everyone at work had seen me on TV and so had several regular borrowers who came in to say ‘saw you on telly!’. So much for protecting my anonymity and keeping my home and work life seperate and private them eh. I guess if there was something worth coming out of hiding and risking our not known status for it was the threat of losing such status anyway but it does all make me feel slightly edgy. Seeing my name on various national lists is also a bit unnerving. I think I might be An Official Home Educator now ;). I briefly thought I was going to be on the radio agian next week but am very pleased a replacement has been found. Quite apart from the hassle of getting there with children and going through the nerves beforehand I think I am a bit overexposed now and it’s in danger of morphing from ‘Home Educators are up in arms about the review’ to ‘Nic Goddard is a bit pissed off about the review’. We were playing the clip to my parents earlier and they all laughed at me for being able to recite the whole clip including all the bits that the reporter says too.

I got home and the children wanted pancakes (Davies) and french toast (Scarlett) for tea so I stood in the kitchen doing various things with batter and frying pans for ages. Mum had been here for the afternoon and claims to be teaching Davies to tell the time. I rather suspect he has just picked it up from the bits I’ve said to him and what he’s worked out himself but telling the time is one of the things my Dad is often to be heard going on about him not being able to do so aslong as Davies is happy with that I don’t really mind.

Dad arrived while the pancake cooking was happening and sat in the lounge with the children while I explained to Mum exactly what the whole bubble thing was about and why it is such a big deal and how there are no ‘these other people pretending to Home Educate who should be found out’. She finally got it, got indignant and agreed to write to our MP – well actually no, she said ‘if you write a letter and print it out for me, I’ll sign it’ actually and sign the petition.

Back in the lounge Dad wanted to see the tv clip again as they’d caught it on the hop last night and he claimed to not know what the fuss was about either. It took longer to convince him of the issues and he still maintains any government action will be done with the very best intentions but finally did concede that taking our freedom away is simply not okay and agreed to sign the petition too. He said he doubts very much we’ll get anywhere and realistically I’m sure he’s right but I refuse to be apathetic about this and will drag him along with me til it really is too late.

Ady came home and cooked dinner which was lovely. My Mum pissed me off by fluttering around him and muttering about how he shouldn’t have to come home after a days work and do the cooking.I did remind her that actually I’d also been at work all day and the extra work was caused by cooking for them too but she said ‘yes, but I can’t believe a man comes home and cooks’ which even Frazer picked her up on talking about TV chefs. Argh my family!

We had a mostly nice evening though, with my cookie and ice cream sandwich birthday cake laden with candles going down well if being rather melty and drippy.Tasted nice though.

Mum, Dad and Frazer left shortly after the kids went to bed (about 1130pm) and now I am really very extremely tired and am going to bed too.

We all slept in this morning thanks to a very late night last night. We rushed around getting dressed, breakfasted and kitchen cleared before nipping out to pick up Tasha and co to bring them back here. We’d not long been in when my food shopping arrived so Tasha (and Vinnie) very kindly assisted in bringing that in and putting it away.

Tasha and I had a couple of hours chatting, the children played, Scarlett appeared downstairs and spent some time organising all my knitted patches into a blanket shape – I’m nearly there so have set myself a target of Sustainability Camp to get it finished and sewn together.

We had lunch and then headed off to the local green where there was a National Play Day event. I have to confess to previously having had no idea what it was all about and only knowing about it and going along as we’d arranged to meet Caz and Bid there as they were supporting some friends who run circus skills workshops. It was way more than that and there were 100s of people there doing arts and crafts and making and stuff. Davies and Toby got busy with totally ignoring all of the free activities on the green and going off into the trees to play with Archie and some other new found friends. Scarlett did some massive mural type artworks which she brought over to me, using shaving foam, footprints, paint and more and then went off to join the boys.

It was lovely to see Caz and Bid as always and they were most interested in yesterday’s antics and indeed text me later to say they’d caught the tv stuff as it was repeated on various other local news programs around Sussex throughout today.

We finally left about 330pm after an ice cream stop and dropped Tasha and co home on the way back. Davies took a call on my mobile from the local paper and arranged for them to ring me back, which they did and I did yet more waxing lyrical on what we do and why we do it while hanging the washing out.

I made 3 giant chocolate chip cookies to sandwich together with ice cream for my Dad’s birthday cake tomorrow as cookies and ice cream is his favourite dessert and got dinner ready for Davies and Scarlett who were very busy playing a Michael Jackson game with the geomags. Don’t ask me how MJ has now become a game my kids play but they are experts on the life and times of him complete with discography of all his songs and names of all his siblings. They don’t seem to know all the ins and outs of the child abuse allegations mind you and I think I may leave filling them in on that whole episide for now really.

Ady came home, the kids had a bath, I brushed Tarly’s hair and we read the last few chapters of the Mr Gum book we were re-reading before it was bedtime for them.

During all of this my parents rang to say they’d just seen us on TV. A slightly odd conversation where my Mum said to me ‘well you love all that don’t you?’ about me being on TV and radio as though I am some sort of Jordan / Posh Spice type media whore. Which I so am not! I’d never actively seek out that sort of scrutiny and whilst I’m happy I did a fair job of representing myself and the message we were trying to convey yesterday I’d have been far more happy to go along and anonymously blow bubbles really… She followed that up with ‘there has been a lot of fuss about all these people pretending to home educate and not really doing it hasn’t there?’ and then my Dad came on to mutter something dark about how ‘they should all be at school’. So not much in the way of ‘well done’ ‘you came across well’ ‘we’re proud of you’ or any of the stuff it would have been quite nice to hear from them really. Gahhhhh. All of which meant I had a minor wobble and spent ages with both children seperately listing all the things I love about them and am so proud of them for and think they are amazing and awesome at. NEVER EVER will my children feel anything but love, warmth and admiration from me, particularly when they are brave and strong about something they are passionate and believe in and stick their heads way out of their comfort zone to support.

Fortunately in our house it’s a two way street and my kids are equally as intuative and in touch with me so Davies called me upstairs at 11pm to tell me he loved me and asked if I could stay with him while he fell asleep so he could play with my hair (which is how he fell asleep for years and years but hasn’t done for a very long time). I realised today he is barely a month away from being 9 which means he is halfway to being an official adult. OMG!

Anyway…. a bath, dinner and a pep talk from Ady and all’s well again. Tomorrow I will play the dutiful daughter role with my home baked birthday cake offering and Dad’s favourite dinner cooked by Ady. I did get a very lovely text from my brother saying all the right things though so it’s nice to know both of us feel what the other needs even when our parents don’t quite provide it.

Or even about 15 given how verbose I can be at the best of times ;). And today I had it brought home to me just how quickly I speak, which probably goes some way to explaining my one word, when seven would do approach to blogging ;).

I had a really bad night’s sleep last night and finally fell back asleep at about 6am. Hence I fell back asleep again after turning my alarm off. I woke with a start and we had to dash about like mad folk eating breakfast, packing picnics, sorting out chickens and getting dressed. I have to say if I’d known what was ahead I may have dressed and done make up more carefully but never mind.

We left home on time and were at the station with minutes to spare for our train and met Tasha, Toby and Vinnie as planned on the platform. Toby was keen to go to Brighton Museum and I was keen to visit the Bead Shop and the Infinity Shop (I wanted a couple of Tisserand products and didn’t want to pay P&P for them) so we walked to the museum via the Laines. I got the bits I wanted and I think everyone got a few bits in the bead shop – I got beads to make two new necklaces – a metal cow pendant which I’ve strung with some black and white beads and on impulse a very cool metal person figure which I’ve strung with rainbow beads. Tasha said it looked like the figure was scaling the crevice between my cleavage which I quite liked 😆 The kids both chose some beads and some string and have made themselves pendants too. Davies chose a ying and yang thing which he asked me to remind him the name of again later saying ‘That’s right, ying and yang. I always want to call it Dick and Dom’ 😆 😆

Then to the museum. Predictably the 3 of them didn’t actually get much out of it for pressing buttons and chasing around but both Davies and Scarlett hung back with me at least twice each to ask a question about something or tolerate me trying to educate them ;). I maintain museums are places best visited without friends really.

We decided everyone was in need of food and open space to run around in so went to the adjacent Pavillion Gardens to start eating lunch / chasing pigeons. We’d not long been sat down when Ali and Freya arrived, Ali bearing her phone and a plea to take over the radio interview she’d set up while she did TV stuff instead. I’d never volunteer to be on the radio and certainly wouldn’t ever phone in to a show. Mostly because when impassioned I know I can get carried away and am all too often to be found shouting abuse at the TV and radio when I don’t agree with something – I don’t really trust myself not to carry on with abuse and swearing if I find myself actually with a real voice.

So while Tasha watched over the children and Ali headed off to be filmed for TV I spoke to Danny Pike. All nerves disappeared when I realised he was only asking me questions I’ve answered probably 100 times before in different places and on listening back I can hear myself in full on ‘like me, I’m great, believe everything I tell you and I’ll be your mate’ mode including trademark laughing heartily at things I don’t find at all amusing. I also smiled when I heard back the bit where he tries to interupt and I carry on recalling how I’d mentally slapped his wrist with an ‘I’m not finished yet!’ feeling. It’s fine, I feel I conducted myself okay and aside from changing Ed Balls job title I think it’s not a bad reflection on me and HE at all. 🙂

By the time I returned to my sandwich it was lost to the pigeons though so I never did eat my lunch.

Gradually more and more HE folk started arriving and it was ace to see some faces we’ve not seen for ages and catch up with people. We moved across to infront of the museum where Ali did a fab job of directing people including air hostess arm movements. The TV reporter came over and asked if I’d be happy to be followed and interviewed and when asking to be introduced to my children said ‘Oh this is Davies. I’ve heard all about him from Freya!’ 😆 She said she’d follow us and the group we were in on our path to New Road which was where the bubble blowers were to converge so I chatted with her along the way about what we do, why and how we do it and stuff.

We walked a little way in the other direction and then at 145 all turned back towards New Road and walked back blowing bubbles and handing out leaflets as we went. By 2pm the whole group of about 60 had all re-met in a haze of bubbles and kids in Liza’s fab tshirts and adults handing out leaflets. We carried on in much the same way for about half an hour I guess, chatting, laughing and being very clearly a community. It was peaceful, happy, very visible and tear-jerkingly what we’re all about really. There were kids there from heyc which is another fab HE thing I feel very proud to be even tenuously linked to (by virtue of knowing a couple of the kids, being a Home Educator and hoping that my children will be following in similar footsteps) and just a whole load of people who are so proud and confident in what we do we are prepared to take to the streets to sing about it.

I did the on camera bit that was used on the local evening news – you’ll also notice my lovely offspring on the still and camera panning round 🙂 and was also talked to and comprehensively photographed with Davies and Scarlett by the local paper too who are planning a big spread and will be following up with a phone interview at some point soon. Blanket media coverage all fantastically arranged by Ali, who also came up with the idea of the flashmob and organised the whole thing. Yay Ali 🙂

There was a great moment when the reporter said to me ‘We thought it was only supposed to be going on for five minutes’ and I replied with ‘Well that’s how Home Ed works really – you start something and if everyone is having fun, enjoying it and learning you just carry on with it’ 😆

We went back into the gardens afterwards for more sitting and chatting while the children ran around playing together which is what forms the backdrop of the to camera piece the reporter does. Davies and Freya were interviewed but it wasn’t used. Once all the high drama was over it all seemed to settle into just another day sat around with friends really while education happened all around us.

At one point Davies was talking quite animatedly to a woman over the other side of the gardens so I wandered over to check all was well. It turned out she was one of the people who keep the gardens in order and they were chatting about litter. Clearly he had initiated the conversation and he was so very much on her level chatting about our litter walk, recycling, how often the bins get emptied there and so on. She thanked him for the chat and said goodbye when he went off to start handing out more of the leaflets we had left 🙂

One of the HE lads had done such a good job of handing out leaflets he’d brought over a possible recruit to talk to us and she was delighted to find a whole crowd of HEors sitting there waving and smiling when she admitted one of her worries was whether she’d find other people doing it :).

I think we could have happily stayed there all day but I was conscious of the rest of our plans for the day so at about 3pm we headed off for home. The walk to the station was good – Davies, Scarlett and Toby still had a handful of flyers each left so they tasked themselves with getting rid of them all except for one to keep each. They chose to approach children and ask if they went to school and give them one if they didn’t.

They wanted to call in the library ‘to say hello’ as we were parked in the carpark there so did precisely that (and I collected a couple of books that had arrived for me) and then we came home. I did a hasty pasta dinner for them and we listeded to me on the radio before Ady came home and it was time to head off again.

This time it was to a long standing booking for Pulborough Brooks ‘Nighttime wing and other things’ event. I’d been really chuffed to book this at the time as one of the things D and S asked to do last year was see bats and we didn’t make it happen so I was hopeful tonight would remedy that.

It was the most perfect weather night to do it – it was still really warm, dry, clear and bright. There were loads of flying ants and midges about which are perfect for attracting bats and it had been a warm day to ensure plenty of wildlife was still out and about.

We started with looking at about 30 different types of moths that they’d caught last night in their moth trap. They’d been put into plastic boxes, chilled to put them into a semi-sleeping and therefore stress free condition during the day and then identified and brought out to show us. We all handed them round in their little magnified boxes and oohed and ahhed over how beautiful so many of them are. Then we all got to let some go 🙂


Then we walked out onto the reserve. First we paused to look at the deer and learnt a bit about them. They are fallow deer and have their origins in a group which escaped from the ground of nearby stately home, Parham House in the 1987 storms. Many stately homes which have their own bred group of deer keep a particular colour prevalant and Parham had gone for very dark deer. This has been all but bred out of them now as they breed with other wild deer in the area.

We also saw loads of rabbits, various birds and either a fox or a badger. The children were all insistent it was a badger and they do (claim to) have a badget sett on the reserve so the leader though that was a possibility.

We looked at various animal poo including deer, rabbit, green woodpecker and other tracking signs of wildlife aswell as the tiger moth caterpillars which live on the ragwort and are very distinctive with their fuzzy black and yellow colouring.

Next we lifted a couple of corrugated metal panels which had been laid out in the sun with the intention of attracting reptiles. Sure enough whilst there were only ants under the first one the second one was harbouring a grass snake and a slowworm :).

Further trekking across the reserve led us to bats. We looked at the bat boxes and had a long chat about bats and all we knew about them. They had fancy bat detectors and sure enough in the area they’d said we’d see bats we did :). About 5 in all, soprano pipistrelle bats all whizzing about in their trademark erratic way. The bat detectors were excellent in picking up the echolocation noises and their feeding noises too when they caught something. We learnt that each bat can catch up to 3000 insects per night and often when 2 are flying together it is a mother and child with the mother at the front doing the echolocation and then suddenly dropping down just before reaching the prey so the child behind her can make the catch.

Both children had been starting to flag (unsurprisingly after their very busy day and it being 9pm and all) but this perked them both up and they were thrilled to be seeing the bats swooping about right over us and they got a long chat with one of the volunteers about his bat detector machine.

We walked back to the carpark, stopping to look at a toad someone’s torch picked out and the moth trap with tonight’s haul starting to flock to it

and finally to shine the torches in the pond and see the newts

It was, as usual there, an excellent event. Really glad we went 🙂

We had to call into Sainburys on the way home which meant it was long gone 10pm by the time we actually made it home.The kids had toast and we watched ourselves on the news thanks to J’s youtube clip, then they went to bed. We had baths and finally sat down to dinner at ten to midnight. Honestly it’s all go being a minor local celebrity 😉

So I’ll not bother.

Morningtime stuff included dealing with chickens – definitely 2 cockerels and 5 hens in the chicks -woohoo. They’re doing well outside and a mini-integration with me setting one free for a while under supervision proved okay. Our plan is to keep one cockerel and four of the hens and to sell the other cock and one hen as a pair. I did a fair bit of laundry – washing, drying, dealing with my maverick washing lines which keep falling down on me, and giving piles of clean, dry clothes to children to put away in the revelant place / screw up and shove at the back of their wardrobes.

I decided to care about the Summer Reading Game too. I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing really. One the one hand I dislike the whole creating an aura of ‘work’ around reading and the whole rewards thing with the stickers and membership cards. Quite aside from the money and tree felling that goes into producing all that paper I don’t actually want in my house I’d far rather children read books because they love the book that because some carrot is dangled at the end of a stick for them.

But… I know from the other side of the fence that we often see children at work who never otherwise get to share their passion for reading with anyone. I know I personally take responsibility for following up any glimmers with any children I talk to about the Summer Reading Challenge by finding out what they loved about the book they read, talking to them about that genre, that author, other books they have written and how they can order them for free etc. So I know it can be a hook for children into reading too. I guess it’s like star charts – personally I find them abhorent and wouldn’t use them with my own children but I can see a place for them out there.

So, I probably woudn’t even have bothered signing D and S up for it this year but we were in town a few weeks ago and bumped into Sian who I work with and she suggested we do it and the children were up for it. They chose books and I’m conscious that as starters with cards in the box at work I’d rather they now were finishers also. Davies is clearly progressing with his reading, mostly by way of writing really, and he’d chosen a couple of books to read himself. Scarlett is still adamant she can’t read at all so she chose books she’d like read to her.

So this morning we gathered them all up. I re-read Scarlett’s two choices to them both – the wonderful which is just gorgeous in every way and which I suspect she had as one of her choices last year too but is one of her favourites and she loves the low text, high illustration impact of it.

Davies had or a version thereof, not sure which copy as there are just so many. And which he sat and read fairly fluently to me. He’s definitely at the stage where he can read but needs to still think about most words before he reads them, although he does then go back and read each sentence with feeling which is nice :).

Books at the ready we walked into Lancing. We took our litter walk alleyway route and Davies and Scarlett decided to count the litter items they saw. Clearly starting with zero six weeks ago when we did our litter collecting, they reached 116 before we got to the library. They were a bit disheartened but if anything I suspect it’s spurred them on to want to do it again rather than having them wonder what the point of their effort was. I’m very proud of them :).

At the library they sat and chatted to the volunteer teens about their books and then chose their next two books each and a couple of dvds. We had a look in the charity shops and Davies got a chemistry set that I’ve been eyeing for a couple of weeks but decided against incase he wasn’t really interested. Turns out he was and we brought it home today. It was bulky and heavy and I sort of wished I’d bought it before when I had the car really 😆

Back home I made popcorn and we sat and watched which was utterly charming. It is based on a book which we have read (among other of his books actually) and was just lovely. We also watched the making of bit afterwards.

Davies and Scarlett wanted to play outside so they did so while I did nothing in particular – might well have been mostly playing bejeweled blitz actually 😉 Oh, and an online food shop order. And more washing.

Dinnertime for the children, Ady came home having bought a food smoker at a cut down bargain price. Davies and Scarlett watched Invasion of the Body Scratchers which we’d recorded for them last night. I read a couple of chapters of Mr Gum – we’re now on the second reading of the last book and it was bedtime for them.

Several hours later it was curry time for us – we have a lot of averaging back out again from getting dinner on the table for Joyce and Bob at 8pm! 😉

instead of being vegetarians with dinner party grandeur instead! Would wife-swapping sex be better or worse than having to eat lentils last time and broad beans this time? Would I feel any less dirty, ashamed and sullied? 😆

I worked yesterday morning. I’ve swapped Saturdays for the indefinite future as there is a staff shortage issue of people able to be second in command and cover the desk in the supervisors lunch break. It’s no big deal to me (although Tarly is less happy about three mornings off to work in a week ‘You can’t be going again, that’s twice in a row!!!’ she told me yesterday morning as I put on work clothes) and means I get to only work one day a week every other week. I like to have stored up goodwill in the bank too to bring out and trade against if I ever have to ask favours in return.

It was a nice enough morning, I worked with one of the supervisors I rarely see but get on well with so it was nice to have chats with her and catch up a bit. It was fairly busy and I was utterly charmed by identical twin boys who came in to do the summer reading challenge on their second visit. They were gorgeous, all blonde haired and big brown eyed, finishing each others sentences, teasing each other and answering questions at the same time but with different answers. It’s not often I melt at other people’s children but these two were lovely. 11 years old and about to start the HUGE secondary school here in September though which had me quivering on their behalf (they’re just babies!).

I got home at 1pm and Dad’s van was outside which was a nice surprise. I really don’t see enough of him these days. He’d been here since about 10am and been hoping to see me so had hung on when he learnt I was at work but home at 1pm. I’m sure Ady’s hospitality of breakfast, lunch and copious freshly brewed coffees inbetween helped convince him :).

We’d had half a plan to go to a camping shop for various things we might want to buy and for Davies to peruse for birthday present ideas too. He wants his own tent, better penknife, own firesteel and various other survival-y things this year (he’s so nine!). But it was 230pm by the time Dad left and pouring with rain which would have rather scuppered looking round the outside displays of errected tents so we looked at porches on ebay and bought one instead to satisfy that desire 😆

Scarlett spent some time playing a zoo game on cbbc and Davies disappeared to his room for a while to play. The rain did ease for a while so Ady and Scarlett went outside to cut hedges including Peggy’s (next door neighbour who had a fall and only came home this week, bless her). I nipped out to Tescos all alone (I offered to take either or both children but they both declined) and picked up wine to take with us in the evening. Then Ady and I both had baths, fed the children and got ready to go out.

Mum and Dad arrived to baby sit and I think they all had a nice evening together. Scarlett slept up in Davies’ bedroom and they watched dvds but I don’t think they went to bed til quite late and shared Mum and Dad’s fish and chips as a second dinner. They were certainly both tired and crotchety today.

Dad ran us to Mike and Rose’s as the rain was still raining most insistently and we were greeted with capari cocktails for their Italian themed dinner party extravaganza! They’d invited Kristiana, a German girl from our reading group and her partner but in the interim her and her partner have split up and yesterday was the day she actually moved out to a new flat. It’s all fairly amicable but obviously she came to Mike and Rose’s alone and was quite full on company due to the fairly emotional day she was having. She ended up staying there the night and Rose sent me a text today to say they’d been up talking for another 3 hours after we left!

It was a very nice evening, with lots of laughs and plenty of interesting discussion though. I do enjoy their company and Ady feels pretty much at ease there now, although I think he still suspects they may do some car key chucking in the middle at any given moment of course.

But the food.

Oh the food.

Ady tells me it is delicious. And the bits of it I do like, I do really like. It is beautifully cooked and presented. But it is not the hearty, flavourful fayre that we tend to eat – large portions, late at night, with plenty of herbs and spices. This is more your delicately, subtley flavoured, eaten at a respectable hour, cooked according to cook book instructions and served in appropriate dishes. And of course it’s vegetarian. Which means, let’s face it, it will either be vegetables or pulses really doesn’t it.

And this was a multi-coursed, ongoing saga of a meal I have to tell you. We kicked off with these cocktails which were very nice indeed. Bitter and shockingly red but very nice. I do like a good cocktail or three. And we had three! 😆 Served with olives and pistachios as nibbles. Then we took to the table for wine (white, dry, expensive) and anti-pasto. Marinated peppers (thankyou but no), courgettes (not for me really thanks) and mushrooms (the only thing I have never brought myself to eat, even out of a sense of shamed politeness). They were marinated with enough oil, red onion and garlic, and topped with sufficient toasted pinenuts and shaved parmesan for me to tolerate the peppers and the courgettes. Just. I thought that would surely be the worst I’d have to face.

But no it was broad beans with cream and egg. I’m not a huge fan of scrambled eggs really. I can tolerate them, as invalid food, cooked with melted cheese and served on lightly buttered toast. Maybe. But with broad beans? Broad fucking beans!!!! No

But I had to of course, didn’t I? Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Just me, an empty plate, fancy cutlery and a great big pot of beans and egg heading towards me to serve myself with while everyone looks at me. I took as few as I could possibly do without feeling incredibly rude. It was seven. And even then they looked pitifully small in comparison to how many everyone else piled on their plates. I can’t even claim to have a small appetite can I? I’m big and fat, there for dinner and have only eaten a tiny amount of peppers and courgettes. Ady gushed enthusiastically about how delicious they were while I ate them as quickly as possibly, slugging wine down with every mouthful to take away the taste and occassionally when noone was looking, holding my nose at the same time.

I was offered seconds. I said no and claimed to be saving myself for subsequent courses. Well aware that this could be erroneous as I’d still never be able to claim full-up-ed-ness as an excuse for later, even more awful offerings. At this stage I was considering suggesting swinging to them even if they weren’t previously of that nature simply to distract everyone from the beans and egg.

Next came the main course. I knew this was pasta as we’d seen it drying on a fancy pasta drying rack in the kitchen, while quaffing cocktails and exchanging home made pasta anecdotes. I love pasta, but that’s not to say it can’t be tainted of course…

Actually this wasn’t too bad at all. It was pasta (very nice) served with a tomatoey, oniony, garlicky, olive-y sauce. The tomtoes were far too big and lumpy and still looked like tomatoes which is not an incarnation I am keen on them in and it’s only since I was 34 I have liked olives but there was more shaved parmesan to conceal the tomatoeness of the tomatoes and this was a course I made friends with.

More wine may well have aided this benevelont attitude towards the pasta too.

It all got better from there on in really. I didn’t resort to suggesting we all adjourn to the bedroom together and bring the mushrooms and bean and eggs to smear on each other rather than eating them and given we will be hosting next and my parents only ever babysit about twice a year so we’re safe until the other side of Christmas the worst was now over.

The next course was pears, stilon and pinenuts. Not only did I like all of the things on the plate I could have kissed them for not being anything evil. I suspect my swinging tendancies had crossed to foodstuff at this point. I was certainly making love to my wine glass, the wonderful grape offering comfort in my hour of need. I think eating is a bit like companion planting which I’m learning about for the allotment. Swigging wine with beans makes them not nearly so bad, numbs the pain, blurs the shame.

Dessert was zabalione, which was divine. No vegetables at all, or if there were he had blended them so smoothly I couldn’t tell they were there. It was all Madeira wine soaked and gorgeous and I even had seconds.

Coffee for those who drank it – I’ve never yet felt obliged to say yes to coffee either and they brought out a dinky little teapot for one for me to have tea. We had chocolate mints, which we’d brought with us as last time we were there we all made little foil animals with the wrappers which was fun and got quite competitive. Rose said she kept them for about six months and actually felt quite sad when she finally chucked them out! 😆 We were not so good this time but did create a pterodactly, an elephant, a stoat (I think it was supposed to be something else but looked more like a stoat), a swallow, a crocodile and a butterfly which looked more like a stingray. Rose then tried to make a globe with all the countries on it using their circular slate table mats as a base and I covered all her countries with the relevant wildlife from our collection. It was practically the same as one of those Leappad globes, except it was a slate mat covered in deformed looking screwed up chocolate mint wrappers with five raucous drunken people who’d been eating beans and egg sitting around it.

Rose did suggest the mats would be ideal for writing on and that maybe she’d get some chalk in next time so we could all write messages to each other. I didn’t say anything in the hopes she forgets but that would be just my luck. Chalk, pulses, vegetables and their two dogs who get locked away while we’re there but I can feel the presence of in the house, waiting to spring out at me when everyone else is busy swinging with each other in the spare room!

We ended with liquers – limoncello and an amaretto type liquer which just smelt diving, like liquid alcoholic bakewell tarts and marizpan. Mmmm.

More chat, more wine drinking and plenty of laughing later we decided we’d better head for home. By then it had stopped raining and it’s downhill all the way so Ady and I walked home, getting in at about 1230am. We chatted to Mum and Dad awhile about plans for Dad’s birthday later this week. We also sat and watched the screensaver on my old laptop acting as a big digital photoframe with old pictures of us all from the last 10 years or so. We really have been to lots of cool places and lots of nice parties and holidays :). Mum and Dad left and exhausted from it all, we went to bed.

Today I slept in til about 1030am. Ady had been clearing the patio of stuff growing in pots which means I’ve got all my washing line space back again :). I packed up some lunch and we headed to the allotment for a few hours. That was nice and successful and we cleared lots of space and came home with more produce, plenty of which we used for tonight’s dinner of roast beef – potatoes, peas and sweetcorn were all our own :).

The afternoon sort of meandered away really. We all had dinner together, everyone had baths and I read a chaper of a book to the children before bed.

Work all day for me today and every minute dragged today 🙁

There is a new roof being put on the library which has already run over it’s schedule by about 4 weeks (and counting) and has been blighted by very heavy rain which has leaked through in places where it wasn’t waterproofed, ruined 100s of £s worth of books, soaked flooring and shelving and generally made it a rather chaotic place to be working for the last month or so. Coupled with one colleague leaving and another being incredibly hard work to be around it’s not proving the calming, me-time opportunity is usually is. Scarlett is also having a particularly clingy phase (I’m guessing to do with Davies’ Badger camp on some level) so about half the time I head off to work in the morning it’s leaving a crying daughter behind me. Hard and heartwrenching, even if I am leaving her with her own Daddy… 🙁

Today started in the back office cashing up tills and doing the banking and the office stank of tar from the roof. I actually quite like the chemically smell but I started to feel quite queasy and was then feeling like I may have a temperature too. I went to the bank and came back and sat quietly in the staff room for a few minutes to recover and seriously considered asking to go home. A cup of tea at breaktime restored me somewhat and aside from sneezing a lot and a mild sore throat (which could be hot environment / fumes) and feeling very tired I seem to be okay now.

I did Baby Rhyme time which I have to confess to being very bored with now and trying to find ways to entertain and amuse myself during it. Last week I took requests from the small children and we sang Jingle Bells. Today one of the little boys brought me a book about a magical pet shop so I used it as a prop to sing Old McDonald with the animals within it – we had a monkey, snake, mouse, crocodile and a couple of other random and very non-farmyardy animals, much to the amusement of my colleagues who quite like to join in from the counter on the other side of the wall :).

I had my usual wander round the charity shops in my lunch break but refrained from purchasing today. Then the afternoon just seemed to drag and drag. I did manage to get a free copy of Mika’s album and a copy of as ex stock which I was very pleased with – Willy Nilly has long been a favourite story to tell here so it’s nice to have our own copy :).

I came home to find Tarly and my Mum in the garden while Davies was hamabeading. All seemed well but after Mum had gone they moaned that she hadn’t played with them and when they’d gone out (walked to the park) she’d been trying to tell them they didn”t need suncream but they’d insisted 😯 Wish she wouldn’t be so crap about things like that and am very glad the children are consciencious even in the face of argument from the so called responsible adult! 🙁

I did the kids some tea and then got on with the last assignment of an online course I took on and have been ignorning but the deadline for was midnight tonight. I’d already pled swine flu as a reason for an extension ;). I managed to get it all done and submitted so assuming if it needs resubmitting that will still be allowed to be done out of time I think I scraped through that one.

I took a break to read the children a couple of chapters of Mr Gum. I’ve been trying to find dates for seeing Andy Stanton, either at a book signing or at one of the various festivals around the country. He’d doing Edinburgh and also a very interesting looking Kids Litfest in Bath in September but his date for that clashes with Davies’ YAC meeting which he’s really looking forward to which is a shame as I had half a plan to have a weekend away with just Davies which would have been lovely. I was also cross to see Andy Stanton had been in Portsmouth earlier this month and we could have seen him there. Grr.

I also stopped working for a bath, which Davies and Scarlett both joined me in the bathroom for and did comedy dancing to Ady’s music from the kitchen, which seemed to be mostly Barry Manilow tonight, while he cooked dinner. It was amusing and charming, not really restful and relaxing though ;). Ady cooked a lovely dinner and we watched Seven Pounds, well Ady watched most of it then went to bed and I kept half an eye on most of it and then avidly watched the end, crying as I went. Don’t know that I’d recommend it as such but I do think Will Smith is a fine actor.

If you are Em or Michelle please feel free to consider this blog post a piece of creative writing. For the rest of you simply feel envious that we got to see Joyce 🙂

I woke up this morning and with a lazy stretch thought happily to myself ‘Joyce is coming today’ :). Then I realised just what the implications of this were and leapt out of bed with a ‘JOYCE IS COMING TODAY!!!!!’ feeling. I recalled with a sense of nostalgia (and mounting panic) the last time she was here way back….(you may want to do that Scooby Doo going back in time whooshy thing before you click here)

So I did much the same as that time really and focussed on clearing a surface in the downstairs bathroom.

We then nipped to Sainsburys for various supplies and I was still emptying the ashtrays on the Titanic when Joyce and Bob arrived. And Maisie, mustn’t forget Maisie :).

Bob took Maisie off for a long walk along the downs, Davies did the honourable thing and also left us to it but Scarlett was less good at taking the hint, or even the very specific demand and insisted on hanging around for much of the afternoon ‘But I don’t want to go in the other room, I want to stay here and listen to your conversation!’ 😆

Had a lovely, lovely few hours catching up on all sorts. Joyce spent a good while talking to Davies about hypnosis which he has long been interested in and had recalled from a long while back that Joyce knew about. 🙂

Bob returned and noted that the last time we met in the flesh he’d not ever have expected me to be a Professor of Chickens (title bestowed on me by my friend’s son :)) in the future. In those days I was far too busy shopping! 😉

Ady came home from work, wine o’clock was declared and he produced a very nice, fit for twice the amount of people dinner including a trough of garlic bread ;). Davies and Scarlett took the opportunity to play out in the garden til it was nearly dark and then we waved them off with hankies on their way to get back to the campsite before the curfew of gatelocking time 😆

Due to me being rubbish at planning childcare past the end of our hoildays we ended up with noone to look after Davies and Scarlett this morning. I did do some attempting to sort it with various asks but didn’t manage anything. In the end, predictably, two different people could have happily helped if I’d asked but I hate asking. Either I will learn to ask and that actually it’s not the HUGE favour I think it is for someone to have Davies and Scarlett round to play for a few hours (word is that people actually enjoy their company and find them a pleasure to be around;)) or I’ll keep finding myself in this situation…

In the end Ady and I discussed various options for dealing with it (i) one of us invented a swine flu type condition and ring in to work sick (ii) we flip a coin for who gets to ring in to work and explain due to childcare issues we won’t be in this morning (iii) we bribe the children to never tell anyone, lock them in the house, both go to work and hope for the best (iv) Ady puts his workphone to voice mail for as long as he thinks he can get away with and at the point he finally gets tracked down by someone from his work asking ‘where the hell are you?’ he drops them off at the library to me.

We went for (iv). And Ady managed until about midday which I thought was pretty good going, whereupon they joined the many other children milling about the library for the last hour and then came home with me. It was fine, worked well and was not an issue at all, Ady managed to do work on his computer from home so didn’t feel he was swindelling his work out of anything and the children were quite happy with the arrangement all round.

Back at home we had lunch, Davies and Scarlett continued with hama and aqua beading, I swapped some washing about (wet for dry, that sort of thing) and made a couple of phonecalls. Then we were off the park, yes another one, yes again for the second day running, yes during school holidays, to meet up with Caz and her youngest, Elliot.

Davies and Scarlett were disappointed not to see Archie, who is the one they get on best with but the 3 of them played very happily for over 2 hours. They spent a brief time in the actual playpark before heading out to explore the trees, grass and the holes in the walls which lead out on to alleyways and roads. Caz and I sat and chatted at great length which was just lovely. So nice to catch up properly with her and so sad to realise in just a couple of months time they’ll be off permanently to the other side of the world although of course we wish them well and hope all their dreams come true.

We parted at about 5pm and as Davies and Scarlett claimed to be ravenous and I’d not even thought about their dinner we called in a nearby fish and chip shop for a large adult cod and chips for them to share. They demolished that, Ady came home and we all caught up with each others days before I read them the rest of which we enjoyed but isn’t a patch on the Mr Gum books we’ve all loved. Might be to do with the school heavy content in the setting and the bullying theme which was faintly depressing rather than amusing. A good strong message in there I guess but that’s not really what we’re after from Andy Stanton. Bring on the stupidly named unlikely heroes and their Tourettes we say! 😆

A couple of made me laugh moments from D and S over the last week or so.

S noticed a dog wearing some panniers at FoH who also happened to be a breed with no tail. She said to me ‘Look Mummy, that dog’s got no tail!’ I replied ‘oh yes’ and was trying to think of a spin on the ‘how does he smell?’ type punchline when she said, almost to herself ‘I expect that’s what he’s carrying in his rucksack!’ 😆

S and D in the tent, very tired on the last night. S said ‘Life is so confusing sometimes, I just don’t understand it’. I agreed it was indeed confusing and that in many cases there are no answers. I did offer to try and clear up any specific pondering she was struggling with at the time and then Davies chipped in with ‘Life is a bit like a sat nav I think. Sometimes you go the wrong way but if you keep going far enough eventually it gets back on track to the same place, just by a different route’…. bit deep that one!

Scarlett’s been playing with her aquabeads / bindeez / whatever they’re called the last couple of days creating her own designs and sometimes using the idea cards that came with the pack. She made a few this morning and then had to wait while they dried before she could use the boards again so I suggested she do some hama beading instead. We bought hama beads when we first became Home Educators, along with some workbooks, a laminator, 100 easy lessons, our EO membership and various rainbow coloured articles of clothing 😆 Like most of the above list they have languished about unused but get the occassional bout of use.

In the end both Davies and Scarlett made various things – Scarlett made a teddy and a picture of a lion in the sunshine, which at my suggestion she filled in the gaps around to make a square which is now my coaster. Davies made a maxi bead Gromit and a selection of midi bead Wallace and Gromit things. I ironed them all for once :).

Inbetween all this proper HE activity I also did several loads of laundry, made some flapjacks, efficiently sorted out inviting some people to the Butser day and working out the final balances for Christmas camp. I did a little bit of work on my Healthy Eating course too which I have had an extension to the end of July to complete and will probably still struggle to manage.

We had lunch and then headed off to the park to meet Mel, Liam and Lily. We’ve managed to arrange two dates during the whole of the six week summer school holidays that we could both make and today was the first. Thankfully the weather was on our side and we had a lovely couple of sunny hours in the park. The children took a fair while to warm up to each other, made worse by Liam falling off a ride in the playpark and hurting his wrist. Davies and Scarlett were being a bit too self-sufficient in their playing together while waiting for Liam and Lily to join in but eventually they all got there and played together. I was appalled at the levels of violence other children in the park were showing towards each other – there was so much physical contact and really nasty pushing, pulling, thumping and kicking. There were probably about 100 children there and at any one time there must have been about 10 crying and another 25 fighting 🙁

We came out of the park area to the cafe for icecreams and then sat on the grass chatting. Liam is very sporty and does football, karate, badminton, cricket and more and was unsuccessfully trying to interest Davies in playing any of them with him at some future time. He’d brought his cricket ball and did manage to get Davies to play catch with him for a while but it didn’t last long. They all ended up enjoying what looked like quite a boisterous game but was much enjoyed of doing stuff with sticks and fallen branches.

We were there for over 3 hours before we needed to get home in time to eat dinner and Davies and I to head out again. Ady got home slightly later than I’d hoped and then we hit loads of traffic on the way to Eastbourne to go and see Rhythmfest 2009. I’d initially read about it when googling for drumsticks for Davies a couple of weeks ago, made a note to look back and find out more about dates etc and never did. I remembered this morning and checked it only to find it was tonight! After a text exchange with Ros about ticket availability Davies and I decided to go.

Unfortunately I’d not done all my research and assumed it was at Bonners shop, arrived half an hour late to find the shop all closed and locked up and a poster about it being at a theatre I’d never heard of. I rang home and Ros and got no reply so sadly told Davies we’d drive once around the town centre to see if we could spot any brown signs for the theatre before giving up and coming home :(. Fortunately Ros returned my call and guided us in, persuaded me to park somewhere naughty and pulled us through the security :).

Davies had a whale of a time, really enjoyed seeing Adam, loved playing on the electronic drumkits, chatted to one of the guys about bass drums and was given a free thingy that the guy had opened up to show him, really enjoyed seeing the various catergories of people drumming in the competition and of course liked being out at night just him and I too :). Ros and I managed the briefest of chats but I quite enjoyed watching and listening to the drummers although it showed how little I know when none of the contestants I’d most liked won their sections 😆

On the way home Davies wanted to chat about dreadful teenage things I’d done, how Ady and I came to be a couple and why we moved to Manchester and back again. Funnily enough the story of how Ady and I met came up with Scarlett the other day when just her and I were driving somewhere so it was odd to be retelling it for childrens’ ears again so soon afterwards :).

We got in at 11pm to find Scarlett still up, dinner ready and Ady grring at having left his beers in his car which I’d driven off in! Persuaded children to bed, ate dinner, drank cider, had speedy bath and am now about to head to bed as I’m working in the morning.

In contrast to the previous week today has been *very* low key.

We all slept in and felt much the better for it (apart from poor Ady of course who was back to the real world again).

Once everyone was breakfasted and dressed we headed out to Boots and Sainsburys for bite treatment and food respectively. I got bitten on the back of my calf on Friday night and was aware of it being midly itchy on Saturday but yesterday morning I awoke scratching at it and it grew throughout the day until by last night it was a huge red, swollen patch with a really hard area in the middle.

This morning it had gotten worse and started weeping. I was quite concerned at the level of redness and swelling and the tight achey feeling so decided to get it looked at by the pharmacist first with a plan to get a doctors appointment if they thought I should. She actually didn’t seem that concerned and sold me some Benadryl cream (which hasn’t really done much it has to be said) and left it at that. It has slightly gone down through the day actually and has wept lots and the puncture area has gone black. I’m assuming the draining of it will be helping it and that it will be better still tomorrow.

Davies and Scarlett were bemoaning no roast dinner for the last two weeks and requested roast chicken so I bought two chickens – one to roast for them, one to do later for us and all the spare meat off the two to pick off for a curry. Ady was due home too late for me to cook and us to all eat together.

Back at home we had lunch, Davies did some xboxing, Scarlett looked through the Sky kids magazine that came in the post and her and I entered all the competitions in it online. They then both got busy with drawing and making stuff for each other and me including a note from Davies ‘To Nic, I love you, love Davies’ which he put in an envelope that he correctly addressed to me and stuck a used stamp on with sellotape before posting back through the front door to me :).

I did blogging and cooked two roast dinners – one for 5pm for children which included a choice of roast or mashed potatoes (from our allotment), peas for one, sweetcorn for the other, yorkshire puddings and chicken and stuffing balls for both. The second was served at 930pm with rather more choice of vegetables (carrots and parsnips) and gravy. Both were well received by their intended mouths :).

When Ady got home he did Mans Work in the garden securing the fence of the chickens area and putting up a corale for the new chicks to go outside. They are now fully feathered, smelly and noisy and need to be outside. There are two cockerels and five hens which is a fantastic ratio 🙂 and there are two , three and two of the various different types of breed. Sadly the 2 cockerels are the same type of fancy eggs we bought from a farm while the 5 hens are all from our own stock of cockerels and hens and therefore shouldn’t really be bred with by our cockerel I’m not sure what will become of them all yet. We could actually keep all the hens and one of the cockerels but we may decide to sell one cock and two hens as a trio (they sell well) and keep one cock and three hens ourselves. We’ll see.

Davies and Scarlett had a bath and I read them the first couple of chapters of The Story of Matthew Buzzington which is written by the Mr Gum books author, Andy Stanton. So far it’s keeping us giggling :).

I had a bath, finished cooking dinner and we watched The Day The Earth Stood Still which I think we would categorise as ‘just about ok’.

And now, fully caught up, I’m off to bed!

The weather started well which was a bonus and so I sat and painted my nails while drinking my first cup of tea instead of being more urgent about packing up. I’d said I’d be happy to get to FoH for midday and we were nearly a whole hour earlier than that so we still did very well.

The older four children went off to the playpark while the adults took down tents and Alison took BB there a while later leaving just Chris and Helen and Ady and I still taking down tents and packing up. Scarlett slept in late and only really woke once I’d packed everything else in the tent up around her. Taking down the tent works quite well if I do most of it while Ady loads it into the car and faffs around with the kitchen area. When Scarlett was up and dressed and realised she was the only remaining child she was understandably upset so I decided it would make sense for Ady to drive her to the park (too far for her to walk alone, twice as quick to drive there as it was quite a way to walk there and back) and take the shower key back to get our £10 deposit refunded at the same time while I carried on.

Unfortunately he was over half an hour when I’d expected it to take no more than 10 minutes. He had reasons – there was a car boot sale on which prevented parking so he’d had to go all the way out of the park, to a roundabout and queue to get back in, then take Tarly to the playpark. But in the meantime the sky had turned black and I’d reached a point where I could do nothing more for fear of the rain starting and me having nowhere to put all the stuff I’d taken down and packed up. Coupled with that the tent pegs were in so very hard that I was struggling to get them out too.

Ady finally returned and I took the whole tent down by myself including stuffing it into the bag. Anger can make one very strong I find ;).In the end we all left together and collected the children from the park and went almost in convoy to FoH. This time there was no traffic at all and we went straight in.

Our plan for the second day had been to get to the fool again, maybe a couple of the reenactments, particularly the WW2 one and maybe the jousting, which we’d enjoyed last year.

We ended up meandering about for a bit without really doing or seeing anything and both children were a bit hard work to try and engage in anything. Eventually we gave up and sat down infront of the Agincourt Battle area to eat some lunch. It was good timing as a few minutes later the Battle Part 2 started and we watched that. I’m not at all sure how much went in but it was high drama and plenty of noise so enjoyable regardless I think. It was time for Punch and Judy by then so we went back to the sandpit. I left Ady there to fetch my coat from the car as it was clearly not going to brighten up and get too hot and I wanted to use the loos in the carpark too. When I returned we saw Bob who kindly waited for Davies aswell as Libby to direct him over to us watching the Henry VIII play.

Neither Davies or Scarlett were interested in going up to participate but both enjoyed watching it and shouting along with the rest of the audience. We spent much of it all four of us under the umbrella as it rained throughout a lot of it but we stayed dry huddled together while I had a glass of wine and we all ate pistachio nuts so it didn’t seem so bad :).

The rain stopped so we bought the children an ice cream and bumped into Alison. Ady decided he needed coffee so he went and got that while the children and I bumbled about the EH gift shop, watched a Tudor Band (with a hey and a ho!) and then we all made our way over to the jester / fool.

From watching the show the day before I had some idea of what to expect and made sure we stood in what I’d thought would be a ‘safe’ place to watch. Wrong! He parted the crowd right next to us and selected a tall man to be part of his act. The man flatly refused and when he picked him up to carry him into the circle said to him in a very low and menacing tone ‘I recommend you put me down RIGHT NOW!’ so he did.

And chose Ady instead 😆

Ady was a star, had to stand topless while he was laughed at, kissed by the fool and finally laid down and supported him while he did a handstand surrounded by a quartet of small children all laying on and around him 😆

Oh I was proud 🙂

As I said to Ady afterwards at least once that was over he could watch the remainder of the act knowing he was safe from being picked on any more 😉

We went to watch the jousting next but it was incredibly slow to start. Ady was itching to watch the WW2 stuff and in the end he and Davies went off to get good seats for it. Scarlett and I stayed with Alison and co, and then Bob and Katy aswell but the jousting took so long to get going and I was starting to feel really tired I finally persuaded Scarlett to watch just 10 minutes of it (it had started half an hour late) and then try to find Ady and Davies.

We didn’t find them as they had indeed got excellent seats right at the front but we saw all the good bits at the end and then found them when the crowds dispersed.

The heavens opened almost on cue and after a brief look around the stalls we decided that actually the weather wasn’t going to pick up and we were close enough to the end of the day to feel ready to head for home rather than try and eke out any more from the weekend.

I’m glad we did as it was another lengthier than expected journey with an original arrival time on the satnav of 738pm but we actually didn’t get home til 830pm. I felt quite ropey for most of the journey but it would appear to be solely down to tiredness as I’m fine today after a good nights sleep.

Once home we fed the children, I read them some story while they ate and Ady unpacked the car. I helped put stuff away and clear up and then had a bath. Dinner wasn’t ready til midnight by which point I’d gone past being ready for anything other than my bed so I ate a little and went to bed, where I fell straight asleep and didn’t know a thing until about 9am this morning.

It really was a fab weekend. Wicksteed park is a great campsite I think. It’s cheap, the facilities are basic but perfectly adequate. We have our portapotty anyway but actually the portaloos this time were really clean and fragrant. The showers are clean, hot and well worth the £2 a night charge (for all four of us!). It did fill right up on Saturday night and probably wouldnt be somewhere you’d want to be camping without a group to distract you from the proximity of neighbours, but pitched in our own little circle we were fine.

We love Wicksteed park and getting in on Tesco vouchers made it a real treat we couldn’t usually afford and made a real weekend out of it too. The FoH was great and I feel like we got so much out of it this year. Again Tesco vouchers paying for EH membership made that a real bargain at just £36 for the two days. It was great to see friends, both campers and day trippers and I thought the weather was mostly really on our side too. Really enjoyed it :).

We realised when we arrived at Wicksteed that neither Ady or I had charged our cameras up so we knew we’d be on limited photo supplies and were conscious of not running out before the end if possible. We ended up just using one camera a day, mostly Ady which means there are a lot less photos than usual and some that I would have taken which just aren’t there. It’s not serious but is a shame as I do like looking through them, both directly after the event and then again at a later stage. I suspect however that FoH is one of those places that you really do need a decent camera to capture the essence of all the action though, which we don’t have and even I had camera envy at all the people pointing their huge lenses at things.

We were away slightly earlier than the others but had to stop for teeth cleaning and water bottle filling on the way off the campsite and I think we all ended up arriving pretty much at the same time. The traffic (seeing a theme here?) was bad, as it was last year too actually and we took about an hour to get in despite leaving on time to arrive at 10am. Next year I think we’ll aim to get there for about 9am and just sit in the car outside instead, at least we’ll actually be there for some of the 10am start things. The gates open from 930am.

The queue to buy tickets wasn’t too bad (we are members of ET, thanks again to Clubcard vouchers). Scarlett spotted someone’s credit card on the floor so we handed that in,hope they realised they’d lost it and were able to retrieve it rather than the hassle of getting a new one but suspect the owner was already long gone as we watched people infront of us in the queue incase they realised at paying point that it was lost.

We started in The Pavillion, which has lots of activities of an archaeological variety. I’m always a bit torn at these sort of things as the activties are good and the children do enjoy them but there is always so much more going on than we ever get round to seeing I sort of resent ten minutes spent digging through a sandpit in search of broken pottery or scrubbing at a brick with a toothbrush to clean it up! We whizzed past the aerial photography jigsaws but did participate in vote for which era house would you most like to live in from the people who put those blue disc signs on houses where historical or noteworthy things happened (famous person was born here etc.). Both children then enjoyed doing a ‘what was this used for an in what period?’ type quiz on the Arcaeological Society stand. They were both excellent at it, lots of the stuff was Roman and they’ve seen it before at Fishbourne Roman Palace but it’s always nice to see a demonstration of these things going in :). I then realised that Davies’ YAC is the local offshoot of the YAC section of the society and the woman said they had a tent in the Family Zone where we could join the national group which I’ve been meaning to do for him for ages.

We talked to people in the Russian camp and learnt about the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death – I loved the way the ‘Russian soldier’ told it – it was set up to shame some of the resistant man into signing up to fight and they women managed to get past 3 German trenches. The men who were following found a stash of vodka and Russia having been dry for years took the opportunity to get drunk instead. The women managed to fight their way back, with minimal casualties despite being hugely outnumbered and with several hundred prisoners to boot. Go the women! 🙂

We talked to a German nurse about WW1 medical supplies and she showed us gruesome tools for locating and removing bullets and the size of the bullets they’d be removing. She talked about how everything would be reused after washing – somehow the idea of second hand bandages grossed me out more than syringes or scalpels! We looked at the kits laid out that soldiers would have carried on their backs and paused to watch some marching past carrying everything – made Ady’s rucksack look very lightweight ;).

We made our way to the Family Zone where we were hoping to hook up with people and were soon hailed by Jax who had found Kay. We’ve only actually met Kay (with Xanthe) once at Kessingland but I impressed myself with both recognising her and remembering her daughter’s name. Said daughter had grown somewhat though! 🙂

The children played in the sand, Chris and Helen and then Jo and Bill joined us and we ate lunch while the children watched Punch and Judy. All very pleasant 🙂

Lovely to catch up with Jo 🙂

The others all went off to watch one of the BZents storytelling shows. Davies did go with them but wandered back again. Scarlett was very reluctant to leave the sand :rolls: so I took Davies off to the YAC tent to sign up and mummify an orange. This is one of the places I would have taken photos but had no camera so you’ll just have to imagine it 😆 He also did some Egyptian writing and picked up some sheets for colouring and quizzes to bring away too.

Back at the sandpit we decided to head for one of the showgrounds and watched the Animals At War one. Ady went off to get a coffee (I’d had a couple of glasses of wine as part of my picnic so didn’t feel in need of tea) and then went off to the car to drop off the now mostly empty rucksack and the several carrier bags of stuff we’d got from the English Heritage clearance stand. We spent just £5 but got about £100 worth of tshirts, toys and gifts that will be perfect Christmas presents for several childen we know :). Scarlett went with him to use the loos in the parking field which we correctly guessed may have less queues. Infact that is my one single gripe with the whole FoH actually, not nearly enough loos. I’ve not been to many festivals really and I know it seems to be something that is a problem at all of them but I do think something that has such large ticket sales and is so well organised should have about double the amount of loos it does. There were constant queues, a good 50 people deep, so it was usually about 10 minutes and that is just too long when so many of the attendees are young children (or indeed the weak bladdered women who birthed them! :lol:).

Davies and I wandered over to catch the end of Peterkin the Fool. I don’t think we’d seen any of him last year other than his warming up the crowd for the jousting. We mangaed to wiggle to the front and both Davies and I thought he was hilarious. This could have had something to do with the wine I’d drunk and the easily pleased comedy nature of an 8 year old but we weren’t alone in enjoying his act very much. Ady and Scarlett caught the very end and we vowed to catch one of his shows again the following day.

We wandered over to a Tudor skinner and chatted to her for a long while. She did much of her chatting ‘in character’ and said she’d been at Kentwell and loved the lifestyle of travelling from one re-enactment to the next from May to October each year. The children were fascinated with what she had to show and tell and learnt all about rabbits, deer, hares, boars and various birds. Scarlett loved the idea of removing a birds wing, preserving it, spread out, and using it as a fan. Might try that with next batch of partridge or pheasant we get. She also talked about various uses for various other body parts – all game was first and foremost for food but the rest was all used with the exception of teeth. I know in cavemen times teeth were also used for decoration / jewellry too. She had skins and furs at various stages and was a really interesting woman to chat to, both in and out of character. I notice this afternoon she has also commented on one of my flickr pictures – nice to see D and S made an impression :).

We wandered back to the Family Zone and I joined the queue for the loos while Ady took Davies and Scarlett inside to do some of the many, many, mostly craft based activities in there. By the time I came out Scarlett was on her second peg doll and Davies was making a paper fortune teller (one of those folded up things you write answers to questions inside). It took ages to persuade them out of there and just as we did last year we missed the planes going over while they made stuff. They both made little felt purses which I wrote little notes for them to keep inside as traditionally they would contain a message from a parent to a child. I copied one of the examples in latin for each of them but quite liked both messages actually as I thought they suited both me and the individual child. Davies’ was ‘it is human to make mistakes’ which is almost one of my catchphrases to them and for Scarlett I wrote what translated as ‘the sun shines on everyone’. It was really hot in there and we finally got them to come out.

As we exited we were approached by a woman with a bag with four smaller bags in it ‘would you like some cream teas?’ asked she. The answer, obviously, was yes so she handed them over, apologising that it was 3 adult and 1 child rather than 2 and 2. As it happened that was about perfect as the child’s one contained a drink and a big bowl of fruit salad, while the adult ones contained two scones, a pat of butter, a miniature pot of jam and a tub of clotted cream. Scarlett was very happy with the fruit salad once we’d added a dollop of cream to it and Ady, Davies and I feasted on the scones with jam and cream. No idea why they were giving them away, Ady reckoned they were giveaways for some stall or other and had to be all gone by the end of the day. IMO worth missing the planes for :).

We caught the Grand Parade first through the main arena with a child each on our shoulders and then as we happened to be standing in just the right place we had a front row view of them walking back again to end. We gave loud cheers to all, most especially the suffragettes 🙂

I bought the kids an ice cream each (Davies was full after his cream tea so gave his to Ady) and the guy told me he’d sold nearly a thousand icecreams that day! 🙂

Once the parade had ended we had a wander round the stalls, of which there are just the right number to be a nice side part of the festival but not so many it all feels too commercial. Lots were for specialist items such as replica weapons, cooking utensils, clothing and footwear and I suspect over half of their trade is to fellow participants in the show rather than the paying public. I overheard a transaction for a spear where the purchaser clarified the 8foot long pole was made of ash, paid for it and then asked ‘you don’t have a bag for it do you?’ which made me and everyone else around him laugh 😆

Scarlett managed to get a freebie from one stallholder who was selling bracelets and beads when she pointed out a bracelet made of cat shaped beads had a cat with a broken ear. The stallholder said ‘oh I’ll have to sell that one cheap then. Actually would you like it?’ Scarlett’s thrilled reaction and effusive thanks would have been well worth the few pence it probably cost her :).

We looked round a US field hospital where we learnt that m&ms were used as placebos when they ran out of antibiotics and painkillers. Finally we got chatting to the man from Grymm Toom’s Travelling Museum who was utterly fascinating. I think we were there for well over half an hour as Scarlett asked him questions about every single one of the odd collection of things on his table. He was very engaging and entertaining and very happy to chatter away to us and shook all our hands at the end.


He even handed his merman over with the suggestion Davies and Scarlett might like their photo taken with it :).

We finally left at about 7pm, an hour after it had all officially closed. It was almost as interesting wandering around at the end watching the groups reconvene and start cooking, eating and drinking together than during the event.

Davies and Scarlett had eaten so well during the day they only needed a snack for dinner so we called into Tesco for bits for them and us to eat and a top up of picnic stuff for the following day and came back to the campsite via the showers.

Ady struck one of his deals with me about cooking dinner (he very often cooks in favour of something else he’d rather not do but I don’t mind, in this instance sorting the car out a bit and packing the picnic ready for the morning – a five minute job in place of a half an hours worth of cooking, seemed like a good deal to me :)). Alison, Lije and Lulah arrived and we had a mostly pleasant evening.

I say mostly because although all the right ingredients were there with people, wine and fine weather I lost my temper and waded into a situation between the children in a rather too heavy handed manner and poor Jax ended up doing a moonlit flit with an ill child in the early hours. We did a pretty good job of packing her all up and moving a sleeping child into the car to send her on her way and waited up to hear she arrived safely at the other end but it would have been a better evening without either of those two events.

We awoke to bright sunshine, but with threatening clouds on the horizon so got the tent up and sorted asap. Amazing how much difference already having the camping mats and sleeping bags ready to just bring across from C&H’s tent made somehow. We had some comedy windbreak errection moments but it was otherwise smooth.

The rides at Wicksteed opened at 1030am and we were there shortly afterwards. Davies and Scarlett love fairground rides so we were keen to maximise every minute of the day. We’d managed to get Tesco vouchers to pay for the wristbands so saved ourselves £50 which was great as it made the weekend feel very cheap.

There were 3 very heavy rain showers during the course of the day there – the first we were on the railway for, the second we sheltered from in the amusement arcade and the third we gave up on worrying about and just carried on with the rides through. Appropriately Scarlett, SB and I happened to be on the umbrellas which did actually offer some shelter 😆

We crossed paths with The Beans at various points and probably ended up spending about half the day with them. At one point we kept SB with us while the others went back to the tent for lunch – we’d decided breakfast had been late enough in the day to keep going with just an ice cream rather than take any time out of rides.

Last year Tarly was too short for the 1.2m height restriction on a lot of the rides but this year the only ride they were too little to go on was the mad dropping boat one. Ady was incredibly brave and went on the rollercoaster and even the pirate boat several times. I was very proud of him as he really doesn’t like them but the kids were urging him with lots of ‘Come on Daddy!’ s and he said he didn’t want them to remember him as someone who wasn’t prepared to try stuff when they grow up. I love the rides anyway so I was more than happy to go on everything as many times as we could but we spent the last 35 minutes going round the rollercoaster as many times as we could until it closed. I reckon we had at least 30 goes on it and by the end I was fairly rollecoaster’d out! I have bruises on my knees, thighs and shoulders to prove it 😆

Ady, Davies and I liked the lasertag which we’d not done last year and the ride for bringing on the most joyous laughter which even had people standing watching us laughing along too was the carousel. Last year Scarlett excelled herself on that ride by crying all the way round it because she wasn’t on the ‘right’ horse before getting off, spending ages selecting the right one and ending up sitting back on the one she’d been on before crying about 😆 This year we were the first to ride on it after the very heavy rainshower and the cover had filled with trapped water which all span off and cascaded down when it started going round. 🙂



Davies and Scarlett are a joy to take to places like that as they just get every pennies worth of fun out of the rides, screaming, laughing, running from ride to ride , being fearless with their hands in the air and just loving every moment. Really want to take them to Chessington or Alton Towers later this year if we can. Poor Ady! 😆 They both had a wobbly moment during the day – Davies wanted to sit with me on the rollercoaster and so did Scarlett, Ady got on again to prevent the fallout from that and then Davies sat in the place we’d agreed Scarlett would. I shouted at him which made him cry just as the coaster was about to go. All these people were frowning at me as I’d said to him ‘Just get on quickly and stop being so ridiculous!’ which made it look to all of them like I’d insisted he go on a rollercoaster against his will. He soon cheered up though when it got going. Scarlett had a moment about not having as many goes as Davies at one of the pick and grab machines in the arcade while we were sheltering from the rain. Actually she didn’t, because Ady had let Davies have several goes and use all the change up so she was right to be upset, but tiredness made her more upset than was reasonable…

We left when the rollercoaster finished, which was probably before some of the other rides but we felt we’d had every pennies worth of fun and were getting really hungry. We went to Tesco for dinner ingredients for Ady and I and picnic supplies for the following day, then McDonalds for dinner for Davies and Scarlett (have discovered that 3 Happy Meals between them is about right for dinner and still cheaper than moving onto their full size meals). I had some mozarella sticks and some of the kids’ drink and started to feel much better as I’d been quite light headed and faint feeling, but then a full day of rollercoastering and no food is probably all but guaranteed to have such an effect!

Back at the tents we found Helen running a creche for various waifs and strays – she had Big and Small (Jax and Chris were at Tesco) and four refugee children, their mother and dog all sheltering from the rain in her tent, while she was taking a break from cooking dinner for the masses due to a run out of petrol stove 🙁 I offered wine and moral support and eventually the rain stopped, so the folk and their dog left to continue putting their tent up and Jax and Chris returned along with petrol.

We had a nice evening with a fairly early night, conscious of a busy day on Saturday.

A mental day!

I worked all day and it felt very hardgoing with my sleep deficit. 5o’clock took a very long time to arrive.

In the morning Barbara and Chris took all five children to the beach. From feedback it was lots of fun and very seaweedy! 😆

My Mum came over in the afternoon and very kindly bathed and hairwashed Scarlett aswell as brushing her hair. She is apparently no harsher or gentler than me in that department according to Tarly. 😆

Ady had gotten home about an hour before me and got the car mostly loaded up ready to go. I got changed, packed up the few last minute things and we were away by about 545pm which I thought was pretty good going.

The journey to Wicksteed should take just over 2.5 hours so 830pm would have been about right, I had been privately hoping for 8pm but I guess that was never realistic during rush hour.

In the end we hit roadworks on both M25 and M1 which had the time slipping further and further away.Our hopes of getting the tent up in the daylight were gone and I began to fret that picking up fish and chips for dinner somewhere near the campsite were likely to not happen too so in the end we pulled off at Newport Pagnell services for some food. Scarlett had just fallen asleep so had to be woken up but coke perked them both up and although they didn’t actually eat a great deal it seemed to be enough to sustain them.

We arrived at 10pm and Chris and Helen very kindly offered use of their guest wing for the night. It was certainly a lot quicker than us errecting our whole tent. The children ran off to play with torches while we sorted out bedding and camp mats and within the hour we were drinking cider / beer / coke and eating crisps and chocolate and the children were in their sleeping bags. Thanks again for that C&H, it made what could have been a stressy arrival nicely welcoming instead :).

I slept really well, clearly the answer to that first night camping insomnia is a 10 sleep deficit spread over the previous 3 nights ;).

We’d had a plan to go to Paradise Park on Wednesday and meet up with Ali and Freya, but they couldn’t make it and in the end no-one (well certainly not Barbara and I anyway) was up that early!.

I made pancakes for a lateish lunch with the eggs that the girls had found in the garden in a new place one of the hens had found to lay in. I realised we’d run out of milk (mostly Scarlett I think who wasn’t eating at dinnertime and was then getting hungry due to being up so late and drinking loads of milk) so had to nip to the shops for more supplies.

We decided some fresh air and exercise would do everyone good so headed up to the allotment so Barbara and Chris could have a look and we walked up the hill from there into the woodlands for a play. Davies, Scarlett and Ben found a ‘secret’ pathway that had been created by fallen trees and Davies insisted on walking me round it. I say walking but actually a fair bit of it had to be negotiated on my hands and knees! Suitably fresh aired and exercised we headed back home again for pizza for dinner for kids.

It being the last night they were all not at their best and didn’t manage to agree on a film to watch in bed collectively until it became clear that it was compromise over a film or have no film. Scarlett and Davies lasted longest and both were still awake long after the other three had crashed out. Grr.

I managed to pack clothes and stuff for the weekend and Barbara and I manhandled the tent back into it’s bag as it’d been draped around the playroom recovering from Shell Island. Still sand in the tent bag! 😆 I cleaned out the chicks who were very smelly and are about to be moved outside.

We also had pizza for dinner and as I was working the following day I insisted on an early night – 2am! Which we managed, just! Chris stayed up chatting with us and we had a really last evening.

A lazy start to the morning. We were all up before 10am . The children spent a fair bit of time in the garden. It was overall a very harmonious few days between the five children even though the dynamics have changed a lot in the nearly 5 years they’ve known each other, with some of the age gaps seeming to open and close more depending on how old the 5 of them are.

There was a request from Beth to go to the beach but time marched on and in the end it was time for Davies and Scarlett’s swimming lesson so we all headed to the pool, which is on the beach, together. Davies and Scarlett went for their last lesson. I did some lengths (28, new personal record :)) and The Raines had some time on the beach before it rained. Hard 🙁

Back home we managed a more successful attempt at food for children with pasta and garlic bread. Introduced Raines to pesto.

In the evening we had pasta bolognaise and stayed up even later than the night before. Barbara and I finally went to bed as it was getting light. I think Ady’s alarm went off for him to get up about 10 minutes after I got into bed! 😳

Blimey, that’s a catch up and a half. Will do individual days rather than one HUGE blogpost. Don’t expect the individual days to be small or anything though! 😆

Monday morning was lots of laundry and some online sorting out type stuff. Scarlett spent about 2.5 hours in her bedroom tidying up. I did offer to do it for her but was clear that my brand of tidying up wouldn’t be the same as hers. Mine involves most stuff being chucked and proper homes found for anything kept. Hers involves shoving as much stuff as possible into piles under the bed, various boxes and bags and very little actual sorting out. Infact although more floor space might result in truth there is more mess created by her method than mine. Both kids are real horders, as is Ady, whereas I do try to pare down what I keep and am fairly ruthless about general ‘stuff’.

We finally got that done and then popped out to get food supplies (especially breakfast cereal 😉 but as it turned out not enough milk) for the next few days. We came home for a late lunch and I’m not too sure where the afternoon went really.

Babs and co arrived at about 430pm I think, later than planned but we still got a full 12 hours in of each others company before we finally retired to bed! 🙂

Kids played, adults chatted. Ady did a lovely pheasant dinner, I cooked the kids hotdogs and chips, which was less popular than I’d hoped (I think only 2/5 actually wanted to eat the hotdogs!) and everyone went to sleep a good few hours later than they probably should have done with Barbara and I finally turning in at about 430am ish.

Not Goddards though, there were 7 of those (although there should have been 9, so perhaps rarer than planned!).

The Weald and Downland museum is somewhere both Ady and I remember going on school trips to as kids and somewhere we took Davies and Scarlett a few times when they were much smaller but it is quite pricey and one of those ‘on your doorstep things you don’t really appreciate or visit much’. They do have lots of events on there though including some good education workshops and weekend shows so when we had a bit of spare cash a few months ago it was one of the places on our list to get annual membership for.

So we became ‘Friends’ which is their version of membership on a nice day trip there with my Mum a few weeks back and today was the first event we’d planned to go to. Chris and Julie are friends too and had planned to go today to the Rare Breeds Show event too, particularly as they are wanting to start chicken keeping and were hoping to get some hens there. At the last minute Chris decided to stay home with Lorna instead so we hooked up with Julie, Jack and Maisie there.

The weather was rather against us and incredibly blustery with wind all day, much to the consternation of the stall holders with their tarps and marquees and gazebos. There were just two or three showers though rather than the threatened rainy day and we managed to be under cover for all of them luckily.

We’d taken a picnic and the queues for teas and coffees were long enough to discourage us so icecream (and very delicious ice cream it was too) was the only additional refreshment expense. Ady bought some flour ground at their water mill, Davies bought some mango scented soap, I bought a jar of lavender and chamomile gel and we did buy a set of bird whistles. They were being sold for £2 each or £5 for the set of three (cuckoo, duck and birdsong) with a free lesson on playing them, so we went for the set and the man showed all four of us how to play them :).

Davies and I had a demonstration from a very friendly lady on braid making and she gave Davies a little cardboard loom and some threads to carry on. It’s a bit like scoobidouing with 7 strands and he’s made a lovely friendship band to add to his wristful and Scarlett and I have made templates to make our own too – need to get some nice threads to do it with now.

We enjoyed looking at all the wool craft including the spinning (wheels and drop spindles), felting (wet and needle) and weaving. They had fleeces on show along with various wool crafts all having been judged.

We spent quite a bit of time looking at the bantams,chickens, ducks and turkeys and talking to the stallholders. We’ve decided to get some ducks and had been thinking of call ducks which are quite small. They are also very noisy and after spending some time near a cage of them I think we’ve decided against that! We then thought about mandarin ducks which are very pretty but not actually great as layers and realistically we probably want to be getting some eggs off them for their feed. After some chatting to a woman selling eggs for hatching I think we may go for runner ducks. The incubation is 28 days and they need at least another 28 days under the light before being ready to go outside so we need to wait until after our September holiday really to be sure we’ll be around for the whole thing, particularly as Scarlett is keen not to miss any of the hatching or early imprinting stage. She was in her element when a woman let her spend ages holding a couple of ducklings 🙂

We spent some time in the activity barn of the actual museum as Davies wanted to show Ady some of the bridge and house building things. Scarlett and I spent some time playing with cubes of various materials with the same volume but different weights on the balancing scales.We put them into weight order and then checked on the weighing scales.It took a while for her to grasp the idea of if something was heavier than the other thing then you could take it forgranted it would also be heavier than other things you knew were lighter than the lighter thing but we got there 🙂

We also spent some time playing with timber joints while Ady and Davies were tiling a roof with tiles and wooden pegs and playing with building materials of different sizes and weights.

We had a really good day out there and have written down all the other events with plans to get to as many as we can.

Back at home Davies and Scarlett spent ages up in Davies’ room watching a Michael Jackson dvd and singing and dancing along to it. They came downstairs and helped Ady with dinner while I was in the bath and then after some upset about just what I’d said about bedtime I read them some story before they headed off to bed.