One word? When seven would do…

Michael Jackson’s dead!

Davies and I stayed up til nearly 3am watching the news on Friday morning. So we didn’t get up too early on Friday morning and were slightly relieved to have an email from Tasha cancelling our weather dependent plans to meet up at the paddling pool at the park. Instead we had a quiet morning at home. Davies and Scarlett watched some Ray Mears dvds and I did various online-y things like tax my car and do the food shopping. How 21st century am I? And I first heard about Michael Jackson on facebook. True fact. I’m practically a young person, me 🙂

Ady came home at lunchtime to pick us up and dropped us off in Chichester for a couple of hours to wander round the shops. We had a lovely time looking in the posh charity shops (I bought a top, everything else was more expensive than at regular shops), we spent ages in the Lush shop as I owed the kids something each from last time we were in London and had to run past the Victoria branch as the train was at the platform but I’d promised them something each from there on the way home. Davies chose some wobbly bath jelly but Scarlett took ages, seriously we must have been in there nearly half an hour saying ‘but everything is just sooo lovely, I just can’t choose!’ 😆 She eventually selected some soap.

There were some young people from a church in Portsmouth giving out helium balloons and leaflets from their church so the kids each got a ‘balloon from Jesus’ :lol:They both popped though so who knows what celestial message someone was trying to send us 😉

We then went and pretended to be posh in Starbucks and had a frappucino each. They were cold enough to give us all brain freeze so we took them outside and walked along to the cathedral to sit outside in the sunshine and drink them. The balloons were still fine then so they ran around with them for a while and then asked to go inside the cathedral for a look round.

We were greeted at the entrance and given leaflets and guides and had a very peaceful half an hour or so looking at the beautiful stained glass windows, stone carvings and other gorgeous architecture. We out money in the box and lit candles and just enjoyed being in such a gorgeous, historical building.

Ady rang as we left there to say he would pick us up in half and hour so we walked slowly to where he was picking us up from and then we went to his work for the end of season barbecue. Because the workload is so huge during the ‘season’ they employ lots of foreign temps for the duration and every year they have a big barbecue to say thank you and good bye to them all before they leave. It’s also a celebration for the regular workers that they have survived another season :). In previous years Ady and I have gone without Davies and Scarlett or Ady has gone alone but this year they were extending the invitation to families too and had arranged a bouncy castle and other child friendly stuff so we all went.

I was very happily entertained by some of Ady’s colleagues – Tom, who supplies our game and who’s parents have the amazing house where we’ve done fishing and shooting, Brett who I behaved badly with at the wedding last year and lastly Fergie, who is my most favourite of Ady’s colleagues and I’m always happy to be in the company of :). There was wine and good food and crap music and a very good time was had by all.

Davies and Scarlett had a great time on the bouncy castle, especially when they worked out if they laid the power pack down the castle deflated enough for them to climb onto the middle strut and then an adult would put it back up again and it would reinflate taking them with it and hang upside down from it 😆 Scarlett went one better and managed to climb onto the roof while it was down which took her about 20 foot up on the roof when it went back up again. Ady looked a bit scared but she insisted it was fun! 😆

Ady and I both mastered some plate spinning sets which had been brought although neither of us were brave or stupid enough to try the unicycle 😆 We finally left about 1030pm and got home at 1130. Davies and Scarlett went straight to bed and I wasn’t far behind.

Today I was working so I left the house with only Ady up. There was a Community Fayre happening in Lancing to celebrate the opening of a new childrens and family centre on the site of an old school and the library had a stand there. I went over first thing to help set the stand up and then went back to the library. I did some work on some displays and spent some time on the counter. Ady, Davies and Scarlett came in on their way to the Fayre where several of the regular borrowers commented on how much like me Scarlett looks. I said I thought she was much more like Ady to look at but certainly has my temprament! 😉

I walked over to the fayre at 1pm to join them and walked round the various stands there.They had a fair trade food stall, a Love Food, Hate Waste stand giving away freebies of portion control measurers, a health awareness team for smoking, drinking and healthy eating which had some very powerful messages about the effect on lungs from smoking, a babies bottle filled with tar to show the effects of smoking parents and a pair of ‘beer goggles’ to try on to walk along a line wearing to see the effects. They were quite trippy!

Davies and Scarlett both decorated T shirts – Davies did a fab all over design of a chicken which got lots of compliments and then Davies went over to see Thesus who was there (from the drumming thing at the library the other day) who instantly recognised him, cleared the drums for him and introduced him to everyone as ‘this kid I met the other day who’s a genius!’. He and Davies spent ages playing together and he hoiked Ady over too to tell him what a cool kid he has :). Davies was very chuffed.

Sian, who I work with wandered over with her Dad and daughter too so we chatted to them for a while.I helped dismantle the stall and we had a quick wander round Lancing before coming home via Wicks for some sandpit sand.

Davies and Scarlett played in the sand and water in the garden, Ady tidied the garage, I sat in the garden with my book and a glass of cider for a while before being overcome with tiredness and coming back inside to fall asleep for an hour on the sofa 😳

Our shopping delivery came while the kids were in the bath so we put all that away and Ady cooked dinner along with a Michael Jackson tribute evening in the kitchen on his MP3 player.

We’ve had a spate of vandalism the last 2 weekends along our road so I’ve been sitting up slightly late and already banged on the window once at a group of kids who climbed over our wall and were about to go on the kids’ slide. They’ve walked past twice more since although it seems to have gone quiet now, so maybe another 10 minutes and then bedtime.

Scarlett didn’t want me to go to work this morning. She didn’t want to stay at Badgers last night either and every so often she does this faux clingy thing which always leaves me wondering if she genuinely feels a bit wobbly or is doing it for effect. Fortunately she was staying in her own home with her own Daddy so I didn’t feel too bad about leaving. I was late though.

Ady had got up early and been to the allotment to do some watering before the rest of us even got up and he made me lunch to take to work. He’s such a good wife ;).

Work was indeed hard work today. It was incredibly hot and airless, fairly busy and one of my colleague is having a very difficult time was was hard work to be with and worrying to be around 🙁 Without saying too much she suffers with dreadful anxiety and shares all her fears and woes with everyone incredibly openly asking for support and advice. She is not at all good at the jobs she does to the end that someone has to literally go round behind her correctly her errors but due to her own mental health issues and the fact that only 6 months or so ago we all attended the funeral of a colleague who took her own life thanks to depression everyone feels like they are tiptoeing around her while spending all our tea and lunchbreaks in her company counselling her 🙁

I spent some time with her today and found it utterly draining. I am not a good person to come to with worries that are not particularly rational at the best of times and while I do understand that depression is an illness and people can’t just ‘pull themselves together’ I still struggle to get my head round not being able to discount worries that are out of your control and simply taking control of any issues that you can deal with.

It’s very worrying to feel that you are being put in a position to have to offer advice and yet your advice might well not be at all the right solution for someone. I did ask her if she was feeling desperate or a danger to herself and checked she was going to be around other people all the time for the next 24 hours and when I left at 5 the senior librarian was on duty and planning to have a chat with her.

I did come home feeling very worn out and worried though. And not at all in the mood for my mother rolling her eyes dramatically at Scarlett running out of the house yelling ‘Mumma!!’ into my arms because she was pleased to see me. No, I don’t recall doing that to greet my Mum but I still think a full 9 hours away from the person you love most in the world when you are six possibly justifies a joyous reunion.

I’d spoken to the local paper who rang to clarify details of yesterdays litter walk and promised to email some more photos over from the previous library display Davies and Scarlett had done. I assume it will be in next week’s paper, if so I’ll link to it / photo it.

A huge parcel of resources from British Heart Foundation had arrived so we opened and explored that. It all looks excellent and something to be looked at in more detail when we next have a day at home. You can order stuff from this page and while I remember the link for the farming stuff was here ,here and here.

Davies and Scarlett went off to play with various bits from that before having a very late tea and some Mr Gum before bed. We had dinner and Ady went up to bed but I called him back down to watch the news about Michael Jackson who must be one of the most famous famous people of our lifetime. I watched quite a bit of the news coverage on that and dealt with Davies who had a bad dream and has been awake and bobbing about since about midnight (having probably only actually been asleep for about half an hour). Really must go to bed after just one more game…

Today was a much rearranged day with us having various plans that got variously changed. It all revolved around a litter picking activity which Davies and Scarlett wanted to do for their RSPB WAA stuff. They had long since decided to pick litter up along the alleyways that formed their artwork display at the library a while back. I’d been waiting for nicer weather but before the school holidays and started a very long and frustrating dialogue by email with the local council waste and recycling department who handle litter collection and street cleaning.

I’d noticed on their website that there is an education officer who does school visits and supplies educational packs about waste and recycling so i thought she would be a good first point of contact and emailed asking if she had any resources that would be suitable for us to use at home such as posters and leaflets and whether she could offer any support / suggestions for the litter walk we were intending to do.

I never did get a reply from her about any of the educational stuff but did get an email from the Waste manager asking when I was doing the walk and where. I carefully worked out the route for him and replied, once again asking for any support the council may be able to offer (I was thinking of litter pickers, sacks, gloves etc.). I got no reply to that so I picked a date to suit us and emailed him again to say we were doing it today. I got a reply to that one asking if I had the correct insurance and had done risk assessments and got protective equipment and telling me that I didn’t need permission as it was public highways we’d been collecting litter from.

At that point I lost patience with both the ignoring what I was actually asking for and the defensive tone of the emails – I assume he was imaginging we were wanting to make a point about the council not keeping the streets clean when in actual fact we were trying to raise awareness about people not dropping litter in the first place. So I sent back a very blunt email explaining, again, that it was simply me and my two children, we would not be needing insurance and could he possible loan me some litter pickers? He replied he could and we collected them last week in preparation.

So, litter pickers at the ready I decided we’d do the walk at 10am this morning, had arranged to meet Julie, Jack,Maisie and Lorna at PYO at 2pm and arranged to pick Tasha, Toby and Vinnie up at 1130 to have a picnic at Highdown with them before all meeting Julie and co at PYO before coming home for Badgers. I emailed the local paper (partially becuase another of the tasks is to get in the local paper, partially because if they’re going to do something like a litter picking then I think they deserve the publicity and raised awareness to go with it and partially so they could be nice and ‘visible in the community’ – and another opportunity to wear their Home Ed T shirts :)). The reporter rang me yesterday to arrange for a ohotographer to meet us at the library but he wasn;t free til 2pm.

So a hasty rearrangement with Julie and Tasha saw us picking Tasha and co up at 930am, heading straight to PYO where Julie joined us at 1030am and 90 minutes strawberry picking ensued. In fairness it was mostly me who picked strawberries as I got a full 3 baskets worth for jam making. The kids all had a ball though. Lorna sat in her pushchair, parked next to a blackcurrant bush so she could pick from the comfort of her chair 😆 Vinnie enjoyed crushing berries and getting to know Lorna, while Davies, Scarlett, Maisie, Jack and Toby all ran around together doing not very much picking but having a lot of fun :). There was a great photo opportunity of the five of them walking along in a row chatting away together in the sunshine with strawberry fields all around but although I’d brought my camera it didn’t have the battery replaced from when I’d taken it out to charge it so you’ll just have to imagine that one please :).

We bid goodbye to Julie and kids who were staying awhile longer for a ride round on the tractor (we’d already done that) and some pea picking and dropped Tasha and the boys off before coming home for a speedy lunch. We pulled up to find my Dad’s van in our drive with him sitting in it listening to the radio. He’d popped round on the offchange and decided to sit for 10 minutes to see if we arrived home and low and behold we had. He did say on Sunday ‘haven’t seen you for ages’ so I guessed he might pop round this week.

Dad came in and had lunch with us and a bit of a chat before we had to head back out again. Davies and Scarlett were keen for him to join us on the litter walk but unsurprisingly he declined ;).

So armed with litter pickers and plenty of enthusiasm (them) and a bag full of black plastic sacks and antibacterial handwash (me) off we went. The idea was that I would hold the bag open and carry them but everything else was up to them. I quickly vetoed dog poo even if in bags and broken glass. I eventually also vetoed cigarette ends of which there were probably thousands just because we were time pressured but I suspect this is an excercise they may want to repeat anyway.

We chatted to several people along the way, all with positive things to say although one woman said she’d done litter collecting before and got loads of verbal abuse. That made me slightly more wary about the fact we were in alleyways and therefore slightly vulnerable if someone took against us and our do-gooding work. We didn’t encounter anyone negative though fortunately.

It took us nearly an hour to walk the mile or so which usually takes about 15-20 minutes and we ended up with four black sacks full. One was sweet wrappers, crisp packets and general litter but the bulk of it was tin cans and bottles. Loads of them were cider or beer and plenty of those were up to half full when we found them.

We arrived at the library and the photographer was a few minutes behind us. He got the kids to strike various poses, took their full names and proper spellings, commended them on their efforts (I was quick to refuse to be in the picture and insist this was all their own work, not mine) and then disappeared again.

We left the bags piled up next to the bin while we walked home again and then came back with my car to collect them. They were very heavy and I didn’t fancy walking all the way home with them again. Once home we emptied them all out on the lawn, put the one bag of landfill rubbish in our wheelie bin and tried to be creative with the tins and bottles. Unfortunately it was too windy to build a pyramid of them which we thought would be creative (and way taller than D and S) so instead we made a rubbish man which they posed lying next to:


and wrote the word ‘litter’ in tin cans too

Then we put them all into our recycling bin. We had over 50 tins 🙁 Davies was particularly sad to note on the walk back home again someone had dropped a coke can in an alleyway in the half an hour since we’d walked through picking up rubbish. We said when we first did the walk for the library artwork that if their efforts stopped one person from dropping one bit of rubbish then it had been worth it so they consoled themselves with the thought that thanks to them there are now 4 bin bags less rubbish than there were before.

I need to write some words to send to the paper, Davies and Scarlett need to create another display for the library for Monday and also write to our MP about the rubbish for their next few tasks so they have plenty to be getting on with.

I’m really proud of them for this, they have approached it really well, are keen to make a difference and talk to people about what they’re doing. It’s been a really good thing to do for lots of reasons :).

Scarlett and I made pancakes for their tea and then it was off to Badgers. Unfortunately neither of them had put their Badger uniforms away properly last week so there was much last minute stressing about clothes, shoes and hair which had me lecturing them all the way there. Ady met us there and then Scarlett had a bit of a moment about me leaving. This did mean I got to listen to the first 10 minutes when they sat in a circle and talked about what they’d been up to since last week so I got to hear them both talk about litter picking :).

Ady and I went for a walk and then he headed off as he needed to drop some plants at my parents while I stayed to get the children. I got chatting to a couple of the new parents, both of whom have to wait around for the hour as they don’t live close enough for it to be worth going home, just like me. We talked about a Badgers Parents Group meeting at the pub for the hour :). It feels odd to be chatting to parents as I don’t normally do it but I’m sure when they find out about our weird ways they’ll not be so friendly ;).

Back home I made some jam with some berries I’d picked and frozen but had defrosted too mushy to do anything much else with. I made summerfruits and lavender and it’s come out very well :). I’ll make some strawberry and chili maybe tomorrow. Tasha was telling me about marrow and ginger jam but I’m not at all sure I’m convinced by such mad ideas ;).

We read the second half of Mr Gum (just as good with a second read :)) and then the children went off to bed while I wasted yet more hours of my life playing bejeweled blitz. I’d like to pretend I can take it or leave it and walk away any time but the truth is I’m even eating into my wine drinking time for playing it so I probably need help weaning off it! 😆

Today we’ve had another perfect Home Ed day. One where all of us realise just why we’ve made an active choice to live our lives the way we do. One that makes the sacrifices and the compromises worthwhile and reminds us that this is precisely where we want to be, who we want to be with and what we want to be doing :).

It was the penultimate Forest School today. I actually think, despite having frustrations with it over the course of the 10 weeks we will end on a high and look back at it as worth having done. Davies particularly would like to take the whole bushcraft stuff further and it’s definitely something we’ll look into more for him.

They had a good session and thanks to Liza and I giving some (possibly rather overdue) feedback it was fairly fast paced and structured which was good. They have been inclined to allow way too much free play and running wild in the forest which is great for their schoolchildren sessions where being outside and having freedom is a novelty but less worth-the-money for our kids who get to do that whenever they want.

First they lit the fire communally and then were given a small branch / leaves from a tree which they had to go off into the woods and match to a living tree. When they’d all done so they then walked the group to their tree and Millie told them all about the trees they’d identified. I didn’t overhear all of them but I heard her talking about the elder and giving lots of information about it.

Next they stopped for hot chocolate after a melting kettle handle drama and Steve told a story while they drank. Then they all drew a letter from Millie’s ‘magic bag’ and set about becomming a tree as a group. There was one person (H) being the heartwood and standing tall and strong, then a couple of sapwoods (which included both Davies and Scarlett) surrounding the heartwood which draw water up at 100mph, there was bark, roots and leaves all doing different tasks and the group was working together to create a model of a tree.

Finally they made some beads from elder to create bracelets. Elder has a very big pith which means it is easily hollowed out so there was some cutting small lengths from twigs and then using tent pegs to hollow them out and threading them onto string. They decorated them either with artful peeling off of the bark or crayons. I wasn’t required to help much at all with either of my children so I invested my time in making my own bracelet instead :).

We walked down the hill doing a good PR job on Millie to HE her own daughter, Davies and Scarlett passed on our phone number to the mother of a friend they have made at Forest School to try and arrange to meet up again as they’ve got on well and then we headed for home.

We had a short time to eat lunch before heading off again as I had an appointment to give blood booked. We parked up and walked to the church hall where we passed the time waiting by playing rock, paper, scissors. Unfortunately my finger prick test showed low hb levels which meant I needed another test with blood from my arm. The levels need to be 125 or above and I was 124 so I was ruled out of donating today :(. Not the first time it’s happened and as Ady reminded me earlier it seems to be the case at a certain time of the month so maybe I should try and coordinate not donating then in future. The doctor who did the arm blood collection managed to ping a vein though so I have a nasty bruise for me efforts nonetheless.

Davies and Scarlett were wearing their new Home Ed tshirts by Liza so Scarlett was proclaiming ‘The world is my classroom and life is my curriculum’ while Davies was telling the world ‘I can’t go to school, I’m autodidactic’ which the doctor immediately picked up on and having ascertained what autodidactic meant asked if I was home schooling them then? On a bit of a roll from talking about HE at Forest School I answered some of his questions too before the kids enjoyed some crisps and we left.

Next stop the library, *my* library this time for a music session with Theseus Gerard, the creator of Stomp. It was incredibly cool and Davies loved every minute of it. Sadly it was under attended and a few fairly small kids who were not being parented impacted negatively on the overall experience, as did a couple of older kids who just wanted to make as much noise as possible. Both kids got to play on his drumkit set up but he took a real shine to Davies and reckoned he had real talent for rhythm telling me if he could play like that at 8 just off the cuff then he could be amazing with some practise.

Davies made a couple of his own instruments with empty plastic bottles and Thesues spent some time coaching him on playing some beats, said he was a really cool kid and commended me on being an ‘excellent parent’ for so clearly fostering and encouraging his creativity – he loved the idea of Home Ed :). He made sure to learn Davies’ name and said he’d love to see him again so maybe we’ll try and get to one of his workshops or other events. He said he loved the way Davies listened and paid attention, like he could see his ears and eyes getting bigger to take everything in and how he was open to everything. He claimed to also be autodicdatic 😉

Scarlett enjoyed it but lost interest in trying to create beats so took herself off to look at some books instead.

We left the library really buzzed up and came home for dinner. Ady arrived home as they were finishing eating so we nipped to Halfords to look at roof boxes to visualise the sizes better before looking online. They dropped me at the allotment to do some watering and I walked home again.

We’ve borrowed the second Mr Gum book again so we read some of that and Davies took it to bed to carry on trying to read himself.

Thanks to a phonecall earlier tomorrow is looking to be equally out of the ordinary but completely normal for us so I really should go to bed and get some sleep in preparation for it.

A much needed lazier start to the morning and as the children were happily engrossed in their DSs and I had plenty of things to be getting on with we decided to stay home this morning.

I managed to process some laundry, send some emails that were overdue and plough through a towering pile of paperwork most of which is now in the recycling.

We had lunch and enjoyed a retro 90 minutes or so watching Cbeebies taking in Bits n Bobs, Balamory, The Birthday Song and cards (which I still smart over never having managed to get a card on or a child wished Happy Birthday despite some truly outstanding efforts when they were 2, 3 and 4).

I found myself rather hankering for the days when I set my watch by Miss Hooley and which song was being sung on Tikkabilla. It’s all sleepovers and expensive extra stuff nowadays. I never did believe people who said their childhood would pass in a flash but those early days did and life really was simpler when people expected and commended you for being a SAHM rather than a weird Home Educator.

We left slightly later than I’d planned thanks to David the Thank you Neighbour lurking around when we headed off and me forgetting my car needed petrol. I also realised on the way that I wasn’t entirely sure where Hove library actually was which was where we were heading. After some random driving about we spotted the library on the opposite side of the road to where I’d assumed it was, managed to get a parking space in the Tesco opposite and ran across the road to arrive just on time. We needn’t have worried as although the event was supposed to start at 330pm in actuality this was very ambitious given how many of the attendees were school children.

I suspect we really skewed the numbers actually as not only did I provide 2 HE children we also met Liza and Andrew (who had told us about the event) and Dani and Leo there, bringing the ratio of home ed to schooled kids up to about 1:3.

The event was a stop animation workshop for 90 minutes in the childrens library.

It was pretty good actually although there were slightly too many children for the space available and the computers allocated but it was very well run and all the kids got to do all the bits I think and four very good films were created by the children working in groups of 3s.

Davies worked with Andrew and Leo and they seemed to collaborate well with a mix of ideas that all three of them seemed happy with. Scarlett was less cooperative I suspect but made a very good plasticine cat and egg and had good storyline ideas. I don’t think either of my children are great at wokring with others to create something as they are both far keener to make their own vision. I really understand that as I hate working with someone else on a project like that. I’m sure if it’s a skill they need to develop to work in whatever they choose to do they will see the merit of it and learn to cope, or they’ll decide like I have that it’s not imperative to learn and will find stuff to do that they can continue to work alone on.

We nipped into Tesco for a few bits which also justified using their free carpark and then headed for home. Both children had been alllowed to bring home the lumps of plasticine they’d been using so they played in the back of the car with their creations.

Ady pulled up moments after us so we caught up with each others day while the kids had tea of eggs on toast. I read several chapters of the Giants and the Joneses which is being enjoyed and then it was bedtime.

Davies reappeared downstairs and chatted to me in the bath and then set the table for Ady and I complete with beautifully written placenames and flowers.

Fathers Day and my Granny’s birthday here today. Davies and Scarlett were up early with Ady to give him some paintings they’d done for him and a little cardboard tool box (marked ‘torl box’) Davies had made and filled with chocolates. No idea where he bought into the Dad’s tool box stereotype mind you as Ady is not of the tool-toting Dad type ;).

They’d also chosen a film (Night at the musuem which they’d all watched together and enjoyed when it first came out on dvd from the library and we found for £3 and a Toblerone which he loves) so they handed those over too.

Not sure where the morning went really; Davies spent some time outside and Scarlett has been quite engrossed in a new DS game – Puffin Island.

Then we headed off to Granny’s where we were meeting Mum, Dad and Frazer and between us bringing all the food for a lunch there. My uncle Tony lives next door so he was there too. It’s the first time we’ve all been together in years (well ever actually in the case of Davies and Scarlett) although it was a shame not to see my cousin, Dan who I’ve not seen in many years but also lives next door but wouldn’t attend as he and my Granny (who is also his Granny of course) had a big falling out about 3 years ago and have not spoken since.

Cards and presents were given to Dad (Fathers Day) and Granny (birthday), tea was drunk, lunch was eaten and the children mostly amused themselves in the garden with the odd bit of attention from various grown ups. During the 4 hours we were there a friend of my Granny’s called in to bring a cake. She knew Mum but had not met the rest of us before but was annoyingly gushing and over-friendly which I was not feeling very receptive to. Later another friend of Granny’s arrived. She used to work for my Granny (who was a florist and had several flower shops over the years) and I do sort of remember her from my childhood although I had no idea just how old she was (89). She looked amazingly young with either an excellent wig or hairdyed to my colour, a low cut top and full make up and was very alert and alive.

Unfortunately she also managed to put my back up by not listening to Davies properly when he answered her about school and insisting that ‘Everyone has to go to school. If you don’t go to school you’ll never learn anything or get anywhere in life’. I do think someone else might have stepped in and been more diplomatic but they didn’t so I gave a rather spiky correction to that and then equally didn’t respond very well to her questions on whether you could do that and how on earth I managed to find any time for myself and what a big responsibility it must be 🙁

It was one of those being a bitch and knowing you’re being one type moments which I hate and was feeling generally hormonal and unattractive anyway and knowing I was giving a really bad impression to everyone of both me and Home Education. Ah well, never mind.

We did have a few laughs and a mostly pleasant time though and when it became apparent that Davies and Scarlett had had enough and were on the verge of getting squabbly and really letting us all down we left them all to it. I’m imagining they used that as their cue to talk unfavourably about me! 😉

Back home Ady offered to cook dinner so I could go and water the allotment before rather than after dinner so I headed up there on my bike. I picked some more broad beans and peas to have with our dinner, gave it a good watering and rode home again. It’s definitely getting easier to cycle, I should probably up it to at least twice a week now really.

Back home I sat in the garden and shelled the peas and beans and plaited some of the garlic we picked last week so it can be hung up to dry out and the skins go papery. Ady brought me a glass of cider and I felt much cheerier sitting in the sunshine with a drink and some peas to shell :).

Dinner was lovely and we watched Night at the Musem while we ate, which we don’t normally do. Scarlett and I weren’t all that interested in the film so we went and did the washing up and walked round to the shop to get some cream so we could make chocolate cake in a cup for Ady for pudding which he loves.

Once the film was over the kids went to bed and I had a bath. Davies came to chat to me about various things including hormones, what actually happens when you have a period and why it makes me stroppy, what physical and mental changes the body undergoes due to hormones and puberty and menopause and then moved on to Badger camp. We talked about the conversation earlier about Home Ed and he said he’d tried to make sure he chatted to me lots and asked lots of interesting questions infront of the woman to demonstrate how Home Ed works for us. Bless him :). He is still of the opinion he wants to try Badger camp but has firm reservations. I am torn between letting him work it out all by himself and ensuring he is up for it properly before paying the balance! 😆

Tomorrow I will be cheerier!

Back before Davies hit me with the week long Badger camp I was stressing about Scarlett going on a day trip to Drusillas with Rainbows. I sort of shelved that anxiety but this morning it all came flooding back as we dropped her off at the Guide Hall.

She suddenly looked really tiny, practically newborn and as she grabbed at me for ‘just one more cuddle Mummy’ while I attempted to be all cool about it I was picturing coach crashes, travel sickness, getting lost at Drusillas, being eaten by the meerkats, having a previously unknown and undiagnosed serious allergy to Dairylee triangles given to her for lunch, falling off something high onto something sharp and other such hysterical thoughts as I breathed in her smell of candyfloss, mud, the faintest trace of shampoo and rose petals while getting a mouthful of tangled hair with weetabix in it that is all characteristic of a fiercely given Scarlett-cuddle.

At that point I caught the eye of the Rainbow leader, suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to cry and had to leave immediately before everyone else pointed and laughed at me. Of course all the other parents dropping off have been doing so for at least a year or more at school five mornings a week so whilst they might have experienced all those feelings before (maybe not the tangled hair and weetabix)they’d have gotten over such things by now.

I was already tired (last two nights I’ve not got to bed til 2am, to sleep til 3am and then been awake at 8am), hormonal and also anticipating how dreadful I’ll be and how well I’ll have to hide it when Davies goes to camp so when I got back in the car and Ady asked ‘is she alright?’ to which I replied ‘yes’ and he then asked ‘are you alright?’ I of course had to say ‘NO!’ and shed a small tear 🙁

Then,as if it weren’t bad enough shedding one of my appendages we drove to Brighton to get rid of the other one for three hours. Davies was off to YACs for a proper real archaeological dig. We were slightly early so Ady and Davies went off to walk round a church while I sat in the car and sniffed and distracted myself by re-organising my bag and taking all the keys off my keyring that I couldn’t identify a lock we own for.

I imagine many readers are shaking their heads at me and tsking about my lunacy and indeed you may well do so. I’ve always been adamant I won’t be defined by my children, I won’t be some sad case suffering from empty nest syndrome in the future, unable to let go. I know this is the natural order of things, they are supposed to spread their wings and fly and go off in their own time and be independant and not have me hanging over them all the while. I know I should have enjoyed the unencumbered time with Ady and not tormented myself with harrowing thoughts of all the awful things that could be happening, but I am mostly quite together about most things and I’m sure as this happens more regularly I will get used to it and get over myself. I do know Davies and Scarlett have stayed close way longer than most other kids and I am very comforted and proud that they are now ready to start pulling away but I can’t deny I struggled with it this morning. I wonder if the leaders of Rainbows and YACs were there telling Davies and Scarlett ‘she’s only doing it for your benefit you know, as soon as she gets round the corner she’ll be fine. You’ve got to break the bonds sometime.’ 😆

So, children duly dispatched with people who can’t possibly have looked after them as well as I do but who did manage to return them both to me later in the day fully intact (well Davies did have a cut from some flint but he’d been given a plaster and seems to be fine ;)) and claiming to have only missed me a bit and only then when I insisted they must have done and to have enjoyed themselves Ady and I had some time to ourselves.

We were just round the corner from Brighton Marina so we went there. We parked up and had a wander round Asda to get popcorn, fizzy drinks and sweets for a cinema trip later. We looked round a very sparse market and the Fiery Foods shopwhere we tried some samples of the chili sauces. I really liked the chili chocolate and a couple of the other fairly hot ones but I tried two of the extreme ones – one was called ‘Hotter than Hell’ and it made my eyes water, lips swell and it felt like the top of my head should have flipped open for a cuckoo to come out with steam coming out of it’s ears! 😆

We wandered round some of the shops and I suddenly felt really ill. No idea whether it was a reaction to the chili, hormones, tiredness or all round wobbliness but I had to sit down for a few minutes to recover. How dramatic am I?!

We decided to get a drink and McDonalds was the only place we’d get tea and coffee and change from a tenner so we sat in there and Ady did a fine job of chatting to me and distracting me so I actually calmed down.

Then it was all but time to collect Davies so we drove back to the site and sat in the car for a bit playing with his phone to check brightkite before walking up the hill to see what they’d all found. They’d had a successful dig and Davies had been involved in some of the finds. He absolutely loves YACs and looks really happy and at home there :). He told me later that they’d been chatting about Home Ed and the couple of children near him and several adults were really interested and thought it sounded excellent.I asked him what he’d said about it and he spoke really eloquently about how he gets to learn what he is interested in and asks questions about, all the groups they go to like Badgers and Wildlife Explorers and Magic Lantern and Forest School, how he has lots of friends we see regularly and he does lots of visits to museums etc. I love hearing my children now able to put forward a good case for Home Ed, it somehow sounds more convincing coming from them :).

Back to the Marina and to the cinema to see Coraline for Ady, Davies and I. This was well planned actually as the screening was about 10 minutes after we arrived allowing time to settle in and the film is one Davies and I wanted to see but Scarlett didn’t and Ady got to see a 3d film too which he was keen to do. I was in complete shock at the price though – £23.50 for the 3 of us!!! 😯 Makes dvds at about a tenner seem very good value. I think we must be spoilt by all those free filmeducation screenings we go to!

The film was good, not the best I’ve ever seen. It was very Corpse Bride / Edward Scissorhands -esque I thought and whilst I’d rather see something a bit dark like that over a Disney Princess film any day of the week and would far prefer my kids to be watching that sort of stuff too it was pretty spooky. Scarlett definitely wouldn’t have liked it. The 3D was very good again although I don’t think they’d played with that element of the film as much as had been done in Monsters Vs Aliens.

We came home and had only been home about ten minutes when the phone rang to say the Rainbows had arrived back earlier than planned and were already at the hall waiting. I dashed straight there to collect Scarlett and when we got back Ady headed off to Portsmouth to collect part one of the cupboard from Jan and Jonathan (thank you 🙂 X).

Scarlett enjoyed the day although she didn’t want to hold hands with anyone and was a bit indignant about walking in formation 😆 She said they spent a long time playing in the park area and not enough time looking at the animals. She had an icecream and got a small toy penguin as a souvenier. She said she’d go again but would have prefered it if we’d (mostly Davies I think) been there with her. So it all turned out nicely uneventful in the end with it just being me and my nauseous turn (which I probably only did for attention) the only ill effect of the day ;).

I sorted the kids’ tea and as they were watching You’ve Been Framed and Animals Do Things On Camera That Only Small Children Find Amusing (or whatever it’s called) which are both programmes I would hastily turn off but they love I went and had a bath. Predictably Scarlett got bored of the TV and came and joined me in the bath and then when I got out Davies got in.

I was feeling utterly drained by then, especially as Ady had also arrived home and I suddenly could relax now we were all under the same roof again so I curled up on the sofa and went to sleep while the kids’ watched Simpsons in lieu of a bedtime story (see the rot has already set in! :lol:)

I woke up, they went to bed, Ady cooked a lovely steak dinner and suddenly it’s already tomorrow again.

God I couldn’t do that every day!

well Baby Rhyme time singer at least 😉

Work all day for me today. I found it hard to get up this morning as rather than going to bed when I finished blogging I got distracted by a commotion outside of something squeaking and looked out the window to see a fox chasing what I assumed was a bird all over the road and up and down walls into people’s gardens. I opened the window a bit and watched it for a while as it caught whatever it was.

The fox was aware I was there and kept looking at me, all Fox and the Child stylee and I was incredibly tempted to actually talk to it and see what it did but I felt a bit silly leaning out of a window in the dark at 130am saying ‘Fo-ox, Fo-ox’ so I just sort of smiled at it instead. I do like foxes :).

It then totally shocked me by coming closer and climbing onto the wall infront of our window and then taking a flying leap straight into a very densely covered tree. The tree is a good 10 foot at the base of the leafy bit and touches the telephone wires at the top so it’s pretty high. It’s actually a dead cherry tree that is now covered in ivy and has at least 2 sets of birds nesting in it every spring. Sadly that is what the fox was after and having been in the tree for a good few minutes with leaves falling and lots of noise and fuss I leapt down with a baby bird from one of the nests in it’s mouth, spent some more time gazing at me and then ran off.

I felt quite sad as we’ve watched the birds pair up, make nests, sit on eggs and go in and out of the tree feeding chicks but I’m guessing the fox equally has young nearby she/he is feeding. Plus I know foxes are very single minded and unless I’d been prepared to sit up all night she would have come back as soon as I wasn’t there even if I had tried to scare her off. Amazing to watch so close though, like my own personal Springwatch :).

So, back to today and work. It was Rhyme time in the morning and we had quite a crowd which was nice. We are about to lose them all after the summer as most of the bigger ones will be off to nursery, which will be nice as the babies will take over again and we’ll have less grabbing of instruments and wandering about while we’re singing and more mums with babies on laps jiggling them about to The Wheels on the bus.

I don’t think anything at all exceptional happened at work worthy of mention today really; I arranged to do a kids poetry event in October and spoke to one of the librarians about book groups for children, or storytelling sessions or something on a weekly / fortnightly basis and offered again to run them on a voluntary basis on the understanding Davies and Scarlett would be attending. She was very enthusiastic and wants to try and push something regular through. It would be good for me as I’d get to add something else to my CV, D and S would get the benefit of a group like that and I think I’d enjoy it too :).

Ady was home this morning and my Mum was here this afternoon. I know the kids did some painting as I was proudly shown all their work including some Fathers Day pictures for Ady when I got home, not sure what else they go up to though.

I’d brought home a couple of OS maps to show Davies following on from talking about coordinates and geocaching and grids at the weekend so we opened them up and had a good old look at them. Davies worked out all the little symbols on the various keys and looked to find places we go to that would be nature reserves, gardens and so on. We live right on the cusp of two maps so I need to get the other one to match up with this one so we can have the whole surrounding area of where we live to look at. We talked a bit about scale too.

Ady was home in time for me to leave Davies with him and walk Scarlett to Rainbows. She had decided to take some of our stag beetles with her for show and tell along with some information Ady had printed off for her about them. They went to the park and the only show and tell they had time for apparently was Scarlett’s 🙂 Not at all sure a room of 5-7 year old girls would have been that keen on a box of beetles but Scarlett claims they all liked them ;).

Davies and I sat and watched all the dvd extras on a double disc set of which I’d brought home for him and correctly assumed would be his sort of thing.He loved it and had already started watching the first episode when I came back from collecting Tarly.

Then we went off to give blood.Normally they are very organised and we get a letter or even a phonecall about 2 weeks before hand to arrange an appointment but this time the letters came through on Wednesday about a session today. Unfortunately when we got there they had been running late and already had more people waiting than they thoguht they could get through in the half an hour they had left 🙁 I got my free coaster for having given blood 3 times in a year last year and a keyring with my bloodgroup on and I’ve made an appointment for next week instead.

Back home I read the first few chapters of which we’re liking so far.

Things we learnt today included: stag beetles live as larvae for a few years but only a few weeks as beetles, they are now an endangered species, you can make excellent cordage from nettles, foxes can jump *really* well and a couple of other little gems.

Davies spent some time this morning realising he could play additional games to unlock little video clips on his W&G x box game including interviews with Nick Parks, clips of some of the films and ‘making of’ bits so he was very happily busy with that. Scarlett did some more ‘body art’ on my feet and legs, took some photos and then cleaned it all off. I asked her if she thought she might like to do something like that when she grows up but she looked at me with disdain and reminded me she is going to work with animals when she grows up 😆

Davies made a birthday card for Toby and then Scarlett wrapped the present up with supervision / guidance / interferance from me ;).

We had a very nice few hours round at Tasha’s. The children played; with lego, with Ben 10 figures and then outside while Tasha and I chatted and I did some of my knitting. I’ve not had enough time sitting around chatting lately clearly because I hadn’t done any for a few weeks and I only ever seem to do it when I’m chatting to someone.

Home again for tea and I spent some time making pastry for quiches and then the quiches themselves which were beautifully yellow from our eggs. I also harvested a sack of potatoes to go with them so it was a nice home-grown meal in places :).

We read a couple more chapters of Joey Pigza and then it was bedtime for D and S.

I’ve sat up far too late playing some stupid facebook game and I really should be in bed as I’ve got work in the morning. I’m sure there is more to say but I want to play just one more game before I go to bed! 😆

Ady and I have been together for 16 years today. I was a fairly regular diary-keeper back then, hey I was 19, it’s what we did before t’internet and facebook and blogs ;)and I’ve just dug out the diary entry for 16 years ago. I won’t type it out, it’s embarrassing and actually possibly not that promising relationship-wise but I’ve just found a slightly later entry for 6th June 1993 which says ‘if we survive the next six months then we can handle anything’. The ‘next six months’ entailed living with my ex boyfriend and despite various ups and downs we did indeed survive and given we’re still here 16 years later I guess we did handle a fair bit along the way. I’ve also found a proclamation on one page of the diary which says ‘I LOVE ADRIAN GODDARD and I want to marry him and have his children and grow old(er) with him and live with him forever and ever and ever’ and we seem to have made pretty good headway with that list so far :).

I asked Ady earlier if I’d changed much and he said not really. He said I’d grown up (bear in mind he was already 29 then and from reading a few more bits in my diary from that period I think that would be fair to say ;)) but my passion, fire and opinionatedness hasn’t changed. Given I spent about an hour ranting at him about the government and in reading my old diary I ranted about various other things in pretty much the same way I guess he did know what he was getting himself into 😆

I think Ady and I are a very good match, we challenge each other, make each other think and see the other side of things as we rarely think alike or come at things from the same angle. I think he softens my rough edges and I give some spikes to his softness, I think we’re a good team and above all we make each other laugh every single day. He’s always gone along with my crazy ideas and notions and cheered me on when they’ve worked and picked up the pieces and kissed me better when they haven’t. There are things about us which really piss the other one off and we’ve faced a few tests along the way but he’s always remained my very best friend, my biggest champion and when I look into his eyes I’ve always really liked the version of myself I see reflected back. And given how amazingly wonderful our combined genes have proven to be in Davies and Scarlett I’d say we’re a pretty good match :).

There, you’ve not had a good old fashioned sentimental Nic-post for ages. And I didn’t say awed or wonder even once 😉

So to today.

I worked this morning which entailed getting up at stupid o’clock and rousing reluctant children to do the same, inserting cereal into them, coating them in clothing and inserting them into the car all well before 8am. We discussed how simply dreadful this would be if we had to do it on a regular basis for school and Davies suggested they might get used to it at which I gave a hollow laugh and confessed I never did! Or maybe I’m just lazy 😉

Children duly dispatched at a welcomming and completely ready for their arrival Liza’s I headed back work-bound. I was early enough to nip home and change the top I’d managed to spill a large amount of my insulated mug of tea down when I tried to drink it in rush hour traffic jams and dribbled it down myself instead.

Work was fine, it went quickly and I spent some time thinking about ideas to tie in with all the poetry stuff currently happening. Must email someone important to run the ideas past them actually.

Back over to collect Davies and Scarlett and I stopped for a brief chat while Davies and Scarlett finished their ice lollies which they are still not very efficient at eating rather than dripping 😆 We came home via Toys R Us for a birthday present for a friend and Sainsburys for dynamo torches which they needed for Badger again.

Home again for a divided two hours of the time available with Davies playing xbox for the first hour while Scarlett drew an anniversary picture each for Ady and I. Mine was her and I at the aquarium with me wearing my favourite colour and a load of signs at the aquarium about what you are and aren’t allowed to do (eg stroking animals).She got me to spell out aquarium for her too. I think all Davies’ current writing is enough to spur her on to keep up.

Scarlett then spent some time doing ‘body art’ on my foot which she turned into a beach scene with sky, sand, sea and multicoloured pebbles using make up, nail varnish and felt tips. It was very pretty 🙂

I got their tea sorted while they watched TV for the second hour – Horrible Histories I think, once I’d sorted tea I was reading

Then it was time for Badgers. Apparently the torches were for shining on different materials, presumably to see whether the light penetrated through or not. They also practised crossing the road which we inadvertantly stumbled across on our walk so had to hang back in order not to interfere with. On the drive to Badgers we were singing along to SmashMouth songs very loudly and being generally rowdy which always puts Davies and Scarlett in a good mood :).

Ady was already at Badgers waiting so once the children had gone in we went for a long walk and chitter chatter, mostly about the Home Ed review and governments in general. I decided the only answer was anarchy or emigration.

I brought D and S home for pjs and stories while Ady went to buy cava to celebrate our anniversary. We read a pile of storybooks that Tarly had got from the library last week and the first chapter of which has had excellent reviews and I stumbled across while looking at various kids ‘situation’ books at work and thought would be worth a glance.

Scarlett came and chatted to me while I was in the bath about some new children at Badgers who she had looked like a giant next to. She was telling me that they had princess torches and a packet of princess tissues and she thought that was silly as kids need torches and tissues without there being a princess on the front. I wonder how long we’ll be able to preserve her cynisism over branding ;).

Davies and I had a very interesting conversation earlier about choices and money. He had wanted one of the same toys we’d brought for a friend’s birthday and I said no as it was a tenner and we had a long chat about how buying one thing means you are making a decision not to buy something else and how making decisions about spending shape your lifestyle. We talked about not having a car and how that would change our lives, whether one big glossy holiday is worth more or less than 5 camping and youth hostel holidays with friends a year, whether working loads of hours to have lots of money to buy stuff is more important than having time to do whatever you want even if you have less money to do it with. I explained that for now they are bound by Ady and my choices to an extent although we’re always up for discussion about how the family finances are managed. I gave him the choice between a planned cinema trip on Saturday or the toy and unsurprisingly he chose the cinema. I’m glad as I’ve always gone for experiences over possessions, but I do understand that an 8 year old struggles with why we can’t just have both.

And I think that’s it. The cava has kicked in and I am feeling very mellow and at one with the world :).

Forest school this morning – today was week 8 of 10, so only two more after this. I wasn’t planning on staying although I didn’t have anything else to do so was intending to just sit in my car in the carpark and read my book. But I got chatting to a couple of the other parents about the review and stuff and felt like being with other Home Educators for a while so walked up the hill and stayed instead.

Actually we didn’t do much chatting, or talking further than that because it was a very hands on session and I ended up helping Scarlett with her activity, which was even nicer so I’m glad I stayed :).

There was a different ranger there today, in place of the older guy with the dog. I have to say not only did I not miss the dog I thought the other ranger was very good. He was very knowledgable about trees, excellent at engaging with the kids and for full comedy value looking like he’d been cloned from the other young ranger 😆

They started with firelighting, as always. All the children are really proficient with the fire steels now and I know I’ve seen at least two different methods of laying a campfire that I will try next time we’re camping. They paused for a snack break but for once seemed to be chatting as a group rather than splintering off, then they brought out the activity of the day which was making a musical instrument from wood. Millie the ranger had a selection including a kazoo and a whistle and Peter the ranger had various sized pieces of wood he laid in a xylophone formation. There were saws, string, palm drills, knives and all the wood you could gather.

Davies decided straight away he wanted to make a whistle, as did several other children despite them being told it was tricky. This was fine but did mean they spent lots of time waiting for the one to one required and also a lot of it they didn’t get to do themselves. But after a false start of it not working the Cloned Ranger (see what I did there?!) stepped up and took them off to look for some hazel and got them working :).

Scarlett looked a bit lost so I suggested to her we make a windchime type instrument like one she loves hanging in the woods at the green burial site over one of the graves there. She liked this idea so went off to gather wood. She came back with a big stick to use as the rod to hang them from, a selection of long and short sticks of different widths and together we drilled holes in all of them and threaded them along the rod through a row of holes we drilled in that. Scarlett did a bit of the drilling and a lot of the threading and all of the deciding what would go where. She couldn’t have done it by herself but it was certainly her creation 🙂 She also found a stick to be the banger/ chimer.

The session went on almost til the end so absorbed were all the children in what they were making. There was just time for hot chocolate and a quick go round the circle for everyone to play their instrument (the other popular choice was a clacker which were also really good).

It was definitely the best session I’ve sat in on and both children actually felt like they’d learnt something and got an experience we wouldn’t have just had walking through the woods on our own.

We left and headed for home for lunch. I discovered a book I’d ordered, Moving a Puddle, and Other Essays had arrived so read some of that. Very timely actually as although I’ve only read the first couple of essays I was sitting there feeling myself relax over someone writing so well and getting what we’re about.

Scarlett curled up next to me and we shared a coconut while Davies, with the aid of a gamefaq walkthrough got through a bit on the xbox he’d been battling with.

Then it was time for swimming. We left early as I needed to call in to the local council waste and recycling office to collect some litterpickers they are lending us for our litter collecting next week but I’d left more time than was needed so we had 15 minutes in the pool together before their lesson. Neither of them are amazing swimmers yet but their confidence is lovely. They both dive under and do somersalts under water and all sorts. I might be able to swim but I still don’t like getting my face wet so it’s lovely to see how much they’ve already eclipsed me :).

They went off to their lesson and I did my lengths.I have been doing breast stroke, front crawl, breast stroke, backstroke repetitons and last week got up to 24 lengths but wanted to make it harder so swapped to breast stroke, backstroke, front crawl, backstroke repetitions as backstroke is my best, the one I can put most efforts into and also my fastest stroke. I managed 24 again which I was really pleased with given how much harder I’d found it with the different strokes. Maybe next week it’ll be 26 🙂

I was all puffed out and wobbly legged when I got out but the kids wanted a go on the slide so I stood watching while they had 3 goes each on the slide, before persuading them out to get showered and dressed. We called into the chip shop for fish and chips for them for tea and headed up to the allotment to meet Ady.

The kids sat on the bench in the sunshine looking out at the seaview and then played on their plots while we did some weeding and some harvesting. I watered and we were there for a good 90 minutes before coming home again. Ady nipped off to get beers while I showered the kids, hung some washing out, brought some washing in and stuck the towels and swimsuits in the wash and dealt with a very stupid broody hen who keeps trying to lay eggs and sit on them in the middle of our logpile.

We finished and whilst we already have the next 2 waiting I think we might move onto something else for a while.I do like them and they are easy and enjoyable enough to read but it doesn’t feel enough like you’re getting stuck into a good story for me. Davies and Scarlett love them and they have inspired all sorts of adventure games so I’m sure we’ll plough through the rest at some point.

Ady cooked a lovely dinner which included eggs from our chickens and potaoes we’d just pulled out of the ground, hence the title. I don’t know, vegetable consumption and a table – what next I hear you cry! 😆

Davies wrote a note to Scarlett’s Duffy cat character which read ‘to Duffy Cat, I fink that the Mr Gum fing is cwl’ which I probably don’t even need to translate, particularly given it looks a bit like texttalk which is surely all our kids will need to know anyway ;).

We watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – well Ady dipped in and out and I got a bit lost in the middle but I thought it was very good. Quite ‘Time Travellers Wife’ in many ways. Not at all sure it needed to be 2.5 hours long though.

Ady was listening to the famous Tom Jones song in the kitchen earlier and as I walked past I said to him ‘so what is new Pussycat?’ and carried on back to the lounge.
Cue Davies a few minutes later delivering a handwritten note:
‘wel mummy the fining wirih is noo piseckat is tat Davies loves u’
which he tells me says:
‘well Mummy the thing which is new pussycat is that Davies loves you’
and you know what? It’s pretty close!

Last weekend when we picked D and S up from Magic Lantern I picked up a leaflet about a puppet show at the theatre as part of the Adur Festival. It’s a two week festival for the very local area we live in and the reason for the various library events I’ve been working at, attending and ranting about over the last couple of weeks. I’d missed this event in the programme but managed to book tickets for Davies, Scarlett and I and we went along to it this morning.

We went to a puppet show as part of the festival a couple of years ago (just dug out the blogpost and smiled at the similarities) but this was way better. There was some faffing around while they kept us in the foyer to get all the schoolchildren settled first which was annoying but worth it as they all had to sit cross legged on the floor while we got to sit behind them on chairs with an excellent view :). We spent the wait looking at some of the artwork and sculptures on display and reading about turtles on the marine display table set up there.

The show was done by Liz Lempen from Lempen Puppet Theatre and was just magical. It was a one woman show and she managed to integrate music, shadows, puppets, storytelling and using her small but very beautiful set and puppets to draw the whole audience in. It was both simple and complex and put me in mind of the childrens’ TV shows I loved as a child like Fingerbobs and the presenters on shows like Playschool who clearly loved children and paused frequently just to smile at the camera. I was entranced, as were Davies and Scarlett.

The show was very educational and I’d happily go and see it again as it weaved a beautiful story. At the end she brought out several puppets to show how they were made and operated and talked a little about the show. We actually went up to her to ask a couple more questions and I would have happily stayed chatting longer but she was preparing for the next show. I have emailed her to say how much we enjoyed the show.

After that we headed to Tesco for a few bits before coming home for lunch. Davies is very keen to finish the end of the xbox game he is playing so he spent some time on that and then we headed up to the allotment. I had planned to take some sausages and marshmallows and make an evening of it, cooking them on the washing machine drum we have up there as our new fire basket but having spoken to Ady on the phone who assured me there was a 100% chance of rain I didn’t bother and we spent 90 minutes up there weeding until I got bored. It’s a bit weedtastic up there actually so we’ve planned (weather permitting) to go up again tomorrow evening and do some more.

Davies spent the time creating an invention to water things based on a seesaw over his mini-pond using the ballcock idea from the rainwater harvesting system we saw at Open Farm Sunday last week. Scarlett helped me pull some more garlic and did some mud sculpting :).

Back home again Scarlett picked me some lavender and I made some more lavendoodles and the kids tea (Davies had salmon and new potatoes, Scarlett had freshly laid eggs and toast and Davies’ unwanted baby sweetcorn!) while they did some more xboxing. I do find baking very theraputic, lots of thinking time, busy hands, clean mess and delicious smells with the added bonus of baked goods at the end of it :).

Ady came home while I was still in the kitchen so we chatted out there while the kids had their tea. There is all sorts of politics happening in the chicken run at the moment so in an effort to sort that out and stop them from eating all the plants on the patio Ady made their roaming area a bit smaller. The kids spent some time out there with them until I called them in for pjs and storytime.

A bit more Charlie Small and a bit of WWLT – both of them were Turtle related thanks to the puppet show – Davies’ was the word chelonian which was in the show and he’d made a point of going and asking her to repeat for him. Scarlett’s was about Lonesome George, also mentioned during the show and we looked up more information about him when we got home. Davies also reminded me about having learnt about grids and OS maps and coordinates yesterday as we were walking towards the geocache and I was explaining about how the GPS worked.

I slept in this morning, which was much needed 🙂 We didn’t have any plans for today so I happily spent the morning on the sofa online uploading photos and reading lots of blogs and forums and email lists about the review and stuff. Davies spent a couple of hours on the xbox and managed to get through 3 levels on a W&G to get him to the last level, which he is now desperate to complete.

Scarlett and Ady cooked the dinner – Scarlett did loads apparently including peeling and chopping and mashing, mixing and so on. She said Ady didn’t let her touch the oven which I normally do but in fairness most of the pans would have been too heavy for her anyway. They produced a delicious roast chicken, with homemade yorkshire puddings and gravy, 3 types of potatoes (roast, boiled and mashed), carrots, peas, suet pudding. It was very nice.

We decided to walk down to Brooklands for an ice cream for puddiing and try the geocache function on Ady’s new phone. We failed to find the first one and as we were all scrambling about in nettles and getting stung were happy to quickly give up but we found the second one 🙂 We filled in the log, decided against swapping anything and ummed and ahhed over the travelbug in there but couldn’t get online to geospeak easily to check what conditions there were attached to it. I still think we need to consider how to do it as the phone function is great and tells you all nearby caches, gives local info and coordinates and then guides you in with a compass feature, how many feet you are away and how many degrees left or right you need to turn but doesn’t give the sort of specific instructions and clues I’ve seen on others’ machines. But hey, we found it 🙂

We had a quick play in the park with Davies showing Ady how he walks over the top of the climbing frame by which time the cafe was closed. I’d been up for wandering over to the beach but we were getting tired so walked back home, calling at a shop on the way for ice creams / ice lollies.

Back at home Ady did some watering in the garden, Davies and Scarlett had a bath and hairwash and I cycled up to the allotment. It rained heavily here last night so I only gave the plot a quick water, picked some sweet peas, pulled some garlic and then realised I had to get it home on the bike so stopped pulling garlic! I managed a rough braid of the 10 or 12 I’d pulled and draped them across the front of the bike to get them home.

I brushed Tarly’s hair and we read some Charlie Small then it was bedtime for them and bathtime for me. I’m really pleased to have had some support over the review from non-HE friends and feel I should do some more research to know how to point them in the right direction to makes their voices heard too. Reading all the press today on it has made me a little more positive

Friday was our annual trip to Ardingly for the South of England Show. Davies, Scarlett and I have been every year for the last 4 or even 5 years and this year Ady took a day’s leave from work to join us which was really nice :).

I’d managed to consume a whole bottle of red wine while getting indignant, despairing and all sorts of other emotions over the Badman review so we were not perhaps up and about as early as Ady would have liked but we were there just after 1030am, parked up and ready to go.

Last year it was just D, S and I and we had a really good day following a bit of a pattern so we started with the hounds again this year. Scarlett just adores them, Davies is slightly more reticent, I feel like Jodie Foster in that scene in Silence of the Lambs where she walks down the corridor lined with prison cells on either side trying not to look left or right and pretending that there is noone locked the other side of the bars! 😆

Davies and Scarlett collected loads of freebies including stickers, badges, fuzzybugs, pens and more. We tried samples of loads of things including soft and alcoholic drinks (cider mmm, toffee vodka mmm, locally produced wine mmm. Oh and freshly pressed lemonade, ginger beer, apple juice…), cheeses, oils, cakes and pastries, breads and strawberries and cream :). The kids sat on police and fire motorbikes,

took part in a magic show,
watched Punch and Judy and a Tufty road safety show,
cycled a bike to pedal power a blender to make their own smoothies,
made masks at the wildlife stall, sat in first and third class carriages of a Victorian train and got to ask questions of the guard including ‘why isn’t there a second class?’.

There were cows, pigs, sheep, llamas, ducks, geese, chickens, birds of prey, bees, ferrets and many more animals to coo over (not forgetting all the dogs Scarlett got to stroke).

Ady and I got to go all misty eyed with nostalgia over a big screen showing old road safety adverts including Tufty, Green Cross Code with the GCC man (who came to our school!) and Kevin Keegan, had a really interesting chat with a woman who operates the mobile speed cameras and the static gatso cameras about the criteria for setting them up, the measures including road layout changes and other traffic calming approaches used alongside cameras, the actual speed at which they take action (10% plus 3 mph) and the other options alongside fines and licence points for what they call a ‘lapse’.

I chatted to the newly appointed Education Officer for a local animal sanctuary about setting up some group visits for HEors and arranged to contact her to talk about the idea further. Nice to network ;).

We watched some of the horse jumping, some of pig judging and by chance were at the front of the fence when they closed off an avenue to let loads and loads of cows and sheep move from the judging area back to their enclosures so we got a really close up view of them all including the enormous prize winning beef cattle.

Ady had the highlight of the day though in the bee tent. We’d sat down with our icecreams to wait for the next hourly bee demonstration and I’d told Ady how last year I’d been offered the chance to volunteer to go in with the bees but had to say no as I was on my own with the kids and they were too small to abandon. I left Ady and the kids sitting down and went to buy some beeswax moisturiser from one of the stands and Ady went past me saying ‘go back to the kids Nic, I’m off to do the bee thing!’ and re-emerged suited up to be part of the next show. Envious is not the word! 😆

We had a lovely picnic lunch, Ady had even packed a mini bottle of sparkling rose wine for me to have, ice creams and more and a really, really fab day out. I love it there :).

We enjoyed looking round the food fairs, craft tents, loved the chicken, duck and turkey tent -did I mention we’re thinking about getting turkey to fatten up for Christmas this year? and the NFU stand is always good with lots for the kids to do. Davies and Scarlett love it all so much Ady and I were saying it’s almost a given one or other of them will do something in farming or agriculture or nature somehow one day, clearly some farming throwback thing from generations past coming out in them! 😆

I really liked the flower tent and this year there were some excellent displays on themes with some really imaginative interpretations of ideas. My favourite were the ones called ‘can you eat it?’



and some fab displays by WI members on the theme ‘Dig for victory – a war time cottage garden’ which we really liked and might have a go at making ourselves 🙂

The only lowlight was probably me nipping off to get a tea and coffee for Ady and I while the others sat down for lunch and coming back to them to discover David and his mother (thank you neighbours) sat talking to Ady, Davies and Scarlett. They probably only lingered for 10 minutes but long enough to have me starting to grit my teeth.

It had been our intention to get back in time for Scarlett to go to Rainbows while we packed the car up ready for our evening adventure but when I looked at my watch expecting it to be about 330 to discover it was actually 530 we realised that wasn’t going to happen! Scarlett was philosophical about it though and shrugged it off okay.

We did get home at about 7pm and managed to pack overnight stuff, grab tent and sleeping mats / bags, put the protesting chickens away (very early for them, 930pm is bedtime at the moment normally) and head back out again to Ros’ to celebrate Ellie’s birthday.

We arrived stupidly late, but for once were staying the night so it didn’t matter :). We were utterly delighted to see Layla, Si, Claudie, Jasper and of course Nell there too so that was an added bonus 🙂 :). I got to have a lovely long cuddle with Nell who is perfect and beautiful and so tiny and delicate – at 3 weeks old she is only the size of my two at birth – Davies might not be doing much in the way of growing now but my babies have both been full size versions at birth! 😆 And most charmingly and endrearingly of all Nell appears to be showing signs of being a redhead – yay! 🙂

We all four had a truly lovely evening – Davies and Scarlett played with Claudie and made friends with another boy there we’d not met before, I got to chat to Ros and Layla, Ady got to have a beer for once as he’s usually driving home :).

Ady and Scarlett went to bed around midnight, I sat at the campfire with Ros a bit longer but mindful of needing to be at work this morning I went to bed just after 1am, collecting Davies from the TV on my way 😆 So happy with our little weekender tent again. It goes up really quickly and easily, is the perfect size for the four of us and goes down again just as efficiently :).

Saturday I woke at 530am and tried to work out why, registering it was noisy. It was a mixture of birdsong and preteens who I suspect hadn’t actually slept at all. I had a quick shower to wash the eau de campfire from my hair, the kids went straight from sleep to trampoline in under 2 nminutes, Ady and I took the tent down and Ros kindly supplied us with hot drinks. We were away at 8am and I was at work, bug eyed and a bit fuzzy well before 9am.

Thanks to Ros and Tony as always for a fantastic evening and fab hospitality 🙂 xxx

Work was a bit of a daze really. I spent the first hour in the workroom on ‘light duties’ thanks to my delicate state and my indulgent and amused colleagues 😆 I spent it looking through A Victorian County History, a reference book which one of my tasks for the coming year is to find out 3 facts I didn’t know before from along with Whittakers Almanac and The National Directory of Associations. I did Whittakers last week so today I was reading all about Sompting from 1066 onwards. Very interesting stuff.

I spent the next hour on the enquiry desk but the only enquiry I fielded was about a local lord from the 1800s and some of his antics. It’s been a local history-tastic morning :).

In the final hour I was on the counter and my colleague J and I were looking at an OED online quiz for library users which had us learning which fruits have been known as ‘bumblekites’ in the past among other things. That was my WWLT fact.

Meanwhile at home Ady and the kids did some gardening and then came to collect me from work at 1pm. Then it was over to Chris and Julie’s for a belated postponed birthday barbecue for Lorna who was 1 last Sunday. On the way over Ady learnt that telescope is also a word refering to the action of something telescopic aswell as the thing you look at the sky through.

We had a lovely afternoon with Chris and Julie. The four older children ran around the garden playing together while Lorna sat in the middle of the lawn just watching it all go on around her 🙂

I helped Julie change the settings on her laptop to keep up with having changed her ISP and struggling to send and recieve emails and then we came home. D and S had some toast and a few pages of Charlie Small before bed. Scarlett fell asleep on my lap almost as soon as she climbed up for a cuddle but Davies took longer as he was busy creating a time machine out of cardboard. I’ve no idea where his stamina levels come from :).

We’ve had pizza for dinner and now as I am falling asleep over my keyboard I need to go and make up some of my sleep deficit!

I worked all day today. I had a fairly frustrating day as I spent much of it chasing around trying to mop up after a very poorly executed attempt to run the Adur festival events had gone tits up and from the opposite extreme of events with barely anyone turning up we had an event for tonight scheduled that we’d managed to sell more tickets than actually existed for.

Another of those times I wish for a cloning machine, as trumpet in a case with my name on it in hand, I know I could turn around the marketing and event management for the local group of libraries so easily and would love to do it, but I’m simply not in a position to pitch myself forward for the job at the moment…. unless of course those LA bods who are going to be talking to Davies and Scarlett without me being around are prepared to formalise the arrangement and have them every other Wednesday morning so I can skip off to work?…. 😉

I also spent some time planning the display for this years Summer Reading Game which seems to have meant I’ll be making a papier mache dragon…not at all sure how I managed ended up volunteering for that.

Ady was home in the morning and my Mum was here in the afternoon but as far as I can tell that was largely irrelevant as Davies and Scarlett spent the entire day in the garden. They harvested some potatoes (which they had for dinner with salmon), discovered yet another place hens have been laying eggs which means we have an egg glut and played Indiana Jones.

I got in and made their tea and then we watched Bedtime Stories which I’d brought home from work. By the end of that Ady was home so we had a group chat about the Badman review with me doing lots of ranting, Ady doing lots of anecdotes about social workers from his youth and the children swinging between indignant and outraged and rather nervous. My opinion is that it is about as bad as we fretted it might possibly be, I hope it’s one of those extreme ‘we’ll ask for everything to change and bargain down from there’ type things and that we’re ready to fight to the end and emigrate if all else fails really.

We watched Springwatch where we all got ‘what we learnt today’ (or hereafter called WWLT for brevity) facts about fledglings and leatherback turtles- although my WWLT was a new word – lenticular – which I learnt at work. I’ve somehow managed to drink a whole bottle of red wine while cooking and eating dinner but have bypassed drunk and gone straight to tired so I’m off to bed as we’ve, as usual, got a mad few days coming up.

We’d arranged to go to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum today with my Mum. We’ve been meaning to go for ages and had decided a while ago to get a ‘friends’ ticket which gives free entry for the year for the price of just two visits.

The weather was looking a bit on the dodgey side but we went for it anyway and actually although it was overcast most of the day it didn’t actually start to rain until we were driving home.

The museum itself is very good – a selection of historic buildings taken down from their original location and rebuilt within a big slice of Sussex countryside along with authentic interiors, gardens and in many cases volunteers in traditional dress talking about the relevant historic periods. There is a lake and millpond with water mill, various animals and lots of activities to do. Our main reason for joining though was the various events that run through the year at weekends and school holidays.

Davies and Scarlett have both been there a couple of times but not for a few years and I thought it would be a good place to have access to for a year and get familiar with. For that reason I was quite happy to have a wander round today and not be desperate to do the whole thing and milk every last educational drop out of the day. I think we did go in all of the buildings actually but we didn’t worry about reading all the posters or taking note of everything we saw, just found out more about the things that took our interest.

We liked the maypole and I’d love to see it in proper use with dancers. We had a bit of a go and were joined by another little girl and her mummy and granny in having a bit of dance round it which was fun. I remember having a maypole set up in infant school and being part of the team who danced round it to make patterns with the ribbon :).

We looked at a display about woodworm and woodbeetles and wood wasps and the damage they can do and learnt aboout heartwood and sapwood layers in tree trunks. Then we went into the building with activites and spent ages building a timber house frame with struts, braces and pegs.( As usual flickr is playing up so I’ll drop pictures in here when they are finally uploaded)

Davies and Mum did some experiementing with weights and measures while Scarlett and I looked at seperating grades of stones, gravel and sand and built some walls using miniature bricks in different bricklaying styles. Davies and I looked at using braces to tie building walls together and he showed me the arched bridge he and Mum had built.

The volunteer running that area told us the water mill was about to close for lunch so we headed over there to look at that. Davies remembered loads from our windmill visit but hadn’t realised what was powering the mill so went back outside to check for sails and realised it was a watermill :). They bought some duck food in there along with a cookie each made with flour from the mill.

We were then assaulted by the ducks 😆 loads of ducklings at various developmental stages from small and cute and fluffy to fully feathered but small and noisy. The children really enjoyed feeding them 🙂

We had a quick look at an area about plumbing and masonry but we were all getting hungry so retired to the cafe for lunch. We bought sandwiches and went back to the pond to sit and eat at a picnic bench. We spent the whole times with ducks under our table begging food, much to the kids’ delight and then both of them managed to catch and hold a duck 🙂

After lunch we went to walk round some of the buildings. Unfortunately we got tangled up in various school groups despite my best efforts to avoid them. I hate the way the teachers talk to the children and the way the kids don’t actually seem to get much out of these visits and are so bloody rude and oblivious to other people around. Way too much pushing, shoving and no respect for others 🙁

We managed to get away from the group and spent some time looking round the buildings. We all decided we really liked the simple lifestyles they suggested, particularly the gardens all planted up with fruit and vegetables. I was so impressed that Davies and Scarlett were able to name so many of the plants even the roots or those not yet showing fruits including onions, leek, carrot, potatoes, broad beans, peas. Actually, sod the kids I was impressed that I could identify them actually because I couldn’t have done six months ago! 😆

We had a good wander round before returning to the pond again where Mum and I sat on a bench while Davies and Scarlett went off to watch the ducks again. When we walked over to tell them it was time to go they were most perturbed about a small duckling that had jumped into the pond (I think they had chased it, non maliciously but were feeling bad) and then the mother duck had jumped in too followed by the other two ducklings and now none of the 3 ducklings could get out again. The volunteers were alerted and we watched their efforts to rescue them for a while (it was all very Springwatch) but had to get going and were assured they’d get them out even if they had to wade in to rescue them (it was fairly shallow knee height water).

As we started to drive home it began to rain so we’d definitely had the best of the day. We played the Yes and No game (where you mustn’t say yes or no) in the car on the way home. We dropped Mum home and just had time for Davies and Scarlett to have a quick tea and get changed before heading back out to Badgers again.

Ady pulled up behind us in the carpark so we both took them in and then we went off to Waitrose to get some milk and sat chatting in the car for a while before I headed off to Shoreham library for an author event with Andrew Crofts . I’d not been sure whether or not to go and had only told Ady about it on Monday and mentioned if he got home in time to collect the kids from Badgers I might quite like to go. He’s a ghost writer for celebrities, business men and lost of those white cover books about childhood abuse. I got in for free as my money was waved away by my boss who was on the door and it was a very enjoyable 90 minutes. He was an excellent speaker, very entertaining and amusing and I really enjoyed it.What a cool job he has! He gets to ask every single nosey question, write a book and get paid for it! I was by far the youngest person there, I imagine everyone else was of pensionable age but I’m really glad I went :).

There were more drinks, some of his books for sale that he would sign and quite possibly further questions and chat with him but I left then in an effort to get home to say goodnight to the kids and have dinner at a sensible hour.

I helped Davies plait and tie up some strips of leather he and Ady had cut to make an Indiana Jones whip and then D and S went to bed, I had a bath and Ady cooked a lovely steak dinner complete with our own potatoes :).

Off to Forest School this morning. I had thought I’d stay if one or both children asked me to but when we pulled up at the carpark they both leapt out and headed off to see the rangers, the dog and the other children. I stayed in the background tidying up the inside of my car which was a right state with jute bags, waterproofs, fleeces and spare clothes strewn all over the back seat, the very back seats and the passenger seat footwell. It’s all nicely organised now :). They waved me off happily when it was time for them to walk up the hill so I drove to Asda and had a happy hour wandering about in there getting a few bits for dinner, a new swimsuit for Tarly (age 7-8 gulp!) and generally enjoying being unencumbered :).

I got back to the park and sat in the car and read my book for nearly an hour before heading up the killer hill to where they all were.

This week they’d played a few games and the main activity had been using pre-sawn discs of wood to make things. They had made glue on the fire and used the mini handdrills to make holes and added bits they had gathered from the woods to create creatures and figures from the wood.

Scarlett had made a flower and a couple of slugs. Davies had made a snail and a couple of other things. I have to confess I am not overly impressed with Forest School really. There is way too much hanging about doing very little, way too much time to just play about in the woods, many of the activities are not relevant to being in the forest and I don’t feel there is enough of the sort of learning I was expecting there to be about wildlife, trees and flowers and well, you know, foresty stuff I guess. If it was a pay as you go, £15 a week thing we’d definitely have stopped going by about week 2. That said Davies and Scarlett really enjoy it and every so often something will come up that they learnt at Forest School so whilst we won’t be repeating it in a hurry and I’d possibly research something like this a bit more in future before committing to so much money if I were to ask them they’d say it has been worth it.

We walked back down the hill and came home. A parcel had arrived from Kirsty (thanks Kirsty, I love it. Can’t actually find my teapot at the moment to take a photo but it definitely looks like it will fit. As an aside, where the hell can my teapot have gone anyway?!) which contained a picture for Davies from Marcus and a bracelet for Scarlett from Alex so they set to making stuff and doing drawings to send off in return. I was checking my emails and eating a coconut direct from the shell using a knife to break bits out and the table was strewn with 6 cereal packets as Ady had got them all out, hotel breakfast stylee for the kids to choose and while they’d taken their dirty bowls out I’d not yet taken all the boxes back to the kitchen. So that was the perfect time for my Mum to ring on the doorbell!

I quickly cleared up and she spent some time chatting to Davies in the playroom while Scarlett insisted she couldn’t write anything in the lounge and I finished eating my coconut.

My Mum’s car was being MOTd so she’d walked to us and was feeling blue that it had failed and is going to be expensive. They’ve definitely spent more on their car in the last 12 months than it would be worth. We were heading back out again to swimming lessons so dropped her home on the way.

Davies and Scarlett tell me they had a good lesson but I was busy with my lengths and managed to up them to 24 today :). I ran out of time rather than energy too which is a good thing. I’ve no idea whether I’ll be able to much improve on that as I suspect I am now swimming about as fast as I’ll get, it’s just that I could swim for longer, which is time I don’t have. We got dressed and dried and nipped to the chip shop for fish and chips for the kids tea.

As we drove past our next door neighbour’s house Scarlett looked at the house and noticed our elderly neighbour was sitting on the floor holding her head with her wheelie bin knocked over on the floor next to her. She told me and I left the children in the car in the drive while I ran round to see what had happened. Sure enough she was sitting in her drive, looking very shaken having fallen over while trying to do something with the bins. She had a massive lump on her head and a clearly broken wrist :(. An across the road from her neighbour had just pulled into his drive and asked if we needed help and sent over his neighbours who are her friends. The woman called an ambulance while I sat on the ground with her rubbing her back and chatting to her. She was very shaken and started to mumble and shiver so I asked the neighbour to get her a coat or a blanket. She seemed really flustered but with no sense of urgency so I was getting a bit frustrated with her. Meanwhile Davies and Scarlett appeared over the hedge with the car keys having scrambled over from the back seats (can’t open back doors thanks to childlocks which I really must take off). They came round and then I told them to go on in the house and have their tea. They were so good and just went off to do that.

I managed to galvanise the neighbour into getting a blanket and a coat for Peggy although she (the neighbour) seemed far more concerned with where Peggy’s purse was. Maybe that’s just an old person’s first concern but it seemed rather non-urgent in the scheme of things. The ambulance finally arrived and I helped them get Peggy on board before checking the neighbours were okay to lock up Peggy’s house etc and then came home.

Davies and Scarlett had been absolute stars, locking my car, working out which was the front door key and getting in the house. Climbing up to the cupboards to get salt, vinegar, ketchup and glasses for drinks and splitting the large piece of fish between them. I was so very proud of them for being calm, unflappable and allowing me to help Peggy when she needed it. A bit of a test for them and they really rose to the challenge 🙂 :).

Ady came home and while I read some Charlie Small he turned out the first of the potatoes in sacks from the patio. A really good haul of potatoes from all three so that was very good news :). The chickens were also thrilled to be getting all the green of the plants to peck away at. 🙂

I nipped up the allotment (I drove, swimming is enough exercise for one day at the moment and I’m conscious of my knees not being up to too much at once. This is one of those horrid catch 22 situations that they are weak because of the extra strain on them by my being overweight but in doing exercise to lose some of that weight I could do permanent damage and prevent myself from being able to exercise!) to gather a a few more broad beans, some sweet peas and check on everything as I’ve not been up there since Friday and although it’s not needed watering thanks to lots of rain I just wanted to check everything was in order.

I got home and the children were supposed to be in bed but as usual they were both in and out of their bedrooms while I was in the bath until they started watching Springwatch which kept them glued to the TV until it finished, begging to be allowed to watch it again tomorrow :).I think we could manage that :).

I cooked dinner and we watched Come Dine with Me, which we always enjoy.

We didn’t manage what we learnt today amidst all the other excitement so we’ll try and catch up tomorrow.

I’d booked us into a filmeducation showing today clashing with the monthly Pulborough Brooks meet up. I knew Davies and Scarlett would probably choose PB over the cinema particularly if there were likely to be friends or cousins there but I thought if the weather was bad then we’d get more out of the cinema.

I’d checked the weather forecast last night and pretty much decided we’d do PB so when we were up this morning and I checked with them and they both went for Pulborough Brooks I wasn’t surprised. We gathered up some food to take and headed off.

When we arrived there were only 3 families there – the husband and 2 older children of Katy who usually organises it (Katy and new baby were home resting after overdoing it a bit last week), another Katy and her 3 children who I have been unsuccessfully attempting to coordinate diaries with to get together so that was nice. We admitted we’re both a bit hard to pin down before August so it was good to catch up today 😆 and K and his 2 children who it was nice to see there again. Another couple arrived with a toddler, having found the group on facebook but not having made it along to anything before so we chatted to them for a bit and then all set off.

K (the man K, not the K who runs it and wasn’t there or the K who does’t run it but was there even though she’s very busy) watched Davies and Scarlett for a while before commenting to me on how close they seem and how self-contained they are and happy to be in each others company. He said he’s noticed it about them before and it was really nice to hear. It is true and something I consider to be one of the biggest plusses to HE for us but still nice to have mentioned :).

Initially we were near the front of the group but we kept stopping to look at things and mark stuff on D and S’s spotter sheets so we ended up right at the back. When we stopped to look for newts in the pond and then had a nightingale singing merrily away pointed out to us we lost the rest of the group completely.

This was fine and the three of us had a really nice walk round together chatting and spotting things. Davies learnt his thing of the day about dragonflies and we saw a nightingale again a bit later on aswell as loads of butterflies and rabbits and a heron which flew really low above our heads. They are such amazing birds herons, totally pre-historic looking in flight I think.

We didn’t manage to spot any adders and the water level in all the lakes and ponds was really low so there was a real lack of waterbirds too including ducks and lapwings which are normally in abundance. Lots of young deer to look at though and it was nice to be out and about and chatting.

We passed the rest of the group who had all stopped at a midway point so finished the walk first and had decided to head off home rather than wait for them all to come to the playground but as we went to the carpark so we saw Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna arriving, 2 and a half hours late along with Katy and co who hadn’t done the walk but had found Julie in the carpark just as they were leaving. So we went back in again too and ended up staying for another 90 minutes as everyone else trickled back to the park again.

It was really nice, I got to lay in the sunshine chatting to Julie, Katy and K while the kids all played in a big group together :).

We all started to drift off around 2pm although it took about half an hour to actually pack up picnics and get to the carpark. I suggested moving on to PYO but Julie was doing her weekly food shop and keen to go and get it done. Davies didn;t want to go without friends so we came home. We came via Sainsburys as we had no fruit or veg in the house so Scarlett and I went in while Davies waited in the car and we got loads of fruit reduced to clear.

Back home Davies and Scarlett spent a couple of hours connected on Lego Indiana Jones DS while I read my book and ate a load of pineapple, mango and coconut, faffed around with laundry and put some eggs in the incubator. We got 6 eggs from our bantams today which is pretty good (we’ve 7 hens but you only expect them to lay about 3 eggs a week according to books).

Ady arrived home just as I served up the kids’ tea. I read some Charlie Small and we did some googling and youtubing to answer one of Tarly’s questions before bed. Davies lost his 7th tooth and wrote an excellent note for the ‘toof fery’
‘TO TOOF FERY, IV LOST MY TOOF AND I NID A PAND PLES’ 😆

Davies and Scarlett really did the What I Learnt Today properly today with it being stuff that has genuinely crept up during the course of a normal day rather than a deliberate factoid as we’ve done some days. Davies learnt that dragonfly larvae are called nymphs. He also learnt (as did I) that the larval stage can be up to 5 years but as dragonflies they live around a month.

Scarlett learnt (from her Karen Carpenter curriculum ;)) that a bayou is a pond, lake or slow running stream.

I learnt that although tinned food has been around for nearly 200 years (first tinned food in 1810, common by 1846) tin openers have been around for a lot less time, with the design we use today not invented til 1925. I guess necessity really is the mother of invention 🙂

Ady learnt about Hitler’s alleged visit to Liverpool but after a bit of research I’ll be telling him in the morning that his fact source is dodgy again. He did learn about potato diseases though as the leaves on two of his plants are looking very sad so he was doing some reading on the net and in our veg books about that.

was today so I booked us into the two farms we visited last year again as we’d enjoyed them both. First was Brickpitts Organic farm which is an organic sheep farm with some arable organic farming too. It was nice to see how well they’re doing and that since last year they’ve bought another 25 acres of fields from a retiring neighbour and are adding to their business. I really like their ethics and ideas and it’s so nice to see someone succeeding given the gloom and doom about small businesses and what to many would be considered a luxury product.

They were more organised this year and we managed to have a chat with both husband and wife which was nice. We arrived and were greeted by the wife and spent some time stroking some orphaned lambs before having a chat with a woman from a woodland charity who recommended the field study council for more information – dropping link here to follow up for myself. Then we took the farm trail round some of their land that they’d marked out with regular signs giving information about what you could see.

We all learnt lots about hedges, crop rotation, organic farming and admired their new rainwater harvesting system. Scarlett found a pheasants egg which I correctly identified (Ady is loving his internet phone for checking to see if I’m right about things on the go ;)) and an ear tag from one of the sheep next to a fence. Davies had the best spot though of a baby deer, really tiny and still wobbly of leg lying in the long grass while all the crowds wandered past. The husband (farmer husband, not the deer husband) came along and we chatted to him for a bit about badger holes and mentioned the deer and he said it happens often when the doe gives birth in a field with gates and hedges and the baby can’t get out until it’s big enough to jump over the hedge so it stays in the field, hidden in the grass while it’s mother goes off for food each day and then returns to it again later until it is big enough to leap over the hedge.

We finished the trail and had another look at the orphaned lambs as they were letting the children go into their pen to cuddle them.

Scarlett took the ear tag and the egg to show the wife who was really good at chatting to her for ages about both and took the tag so she’d know which sheep needed a replacement and explained the code on one side was the farms’ number and the code on the other side was the indivdual sheep’s number and she even knew that one by name. When I got an email back to confirm we were going to that farm today she had remembered either my name or email address from last year and knew we were HEors and said they do educational visits etc if I wanted to arrange one. I will email her to thank her for today and see what sort of thing they offer and put it out to see who is interested in visiting. Having seen her in action today I think it could be really good :).

We then did some felting bracelets using merino wool and wet felting in soapy water. I got a bit roped in as the woman running it heard me comparing it to needle felting with Davies and Scarlett and talking about the different ways of felting and how they get the same results so I ended up with a small crowd too :). We’re all now sporting felted bracelets and I might have another go at them with some of my wool.

Finally we watched some sheep shearing before moving onto the next farm which was literally round the corner.

This one, The Old Dairy is much more commercial and ‘Day Trip to the Farm’y, which is still very good but not quite so charming somehow as meeting the real farmers who seriously farm and just open their doors once a year. There was a farm trail round their sheep, pigs, goats, ducks and chickens which we more or less followed. We admired their very pretty bantams and then got something to eat as we were all hungry. Davies and I went for a hog roast in a roll which was actually a bit disappointing as it was very fatty and bitty although it was after 2pm so coming to the end of lunchtime I guess. We ate that watching a woman with a spinning wheel and then Davies and Scarlett made paper sheep on a stall for a local agricultural college while Ady and I tried some cheeses and Ady (who is lovely :)) bought me a halfpint of local cider which was very welcome :). The ice cream seller had run out of icecreams so we went into the tiny farm shop there in search of some and found not only icecreams but also some fertilised bantams eggs for sale of the ones we’d been admiring. At £3 for 6 eggs we thought it was worth a go and have bought some home to put into the incubator tomorrow along with a few of our own eggs too :).

We came home and Ady got dinner on and the children had a very annoying half an hour of being needy when I just wanted to sit down and relax. Eventually they went off to have a bath so I got some peace 🙂 Dinner was lovely and I then read a bit more of the latest Charlie Small book before packing them off to bed so I could have a speedy bath before The Apprentice. It didn’t work and they were both still bobbing about til much later but the intention was there.

Today Davies learnt about silage (what it’s made from, what it’s used for) and that you shouldn’t release balloons off as they can be harmful to wildlife. He also liked one of the facts from the farm that there can be up to 10 million bacteria in one gram of soil.

Scarlett learnt how to identify a pheasant egg and about chimpanzee’s tea parties (after I ranted her over table manners :lol:).

Ady learnt a load of stuff about foxgloves including that they are poisonous to most wildlife, can be used to treat heart problems (I already knew that from Clan of the Cave Bear :lol:) but not why they are called foxgloves.

I learnt quite a bit about hedges and what papyrus is (Oh how I’ll miss Margaret!).