One word? When seven would do…

After a night of really dreadful weather (will concede a minor benefit of sand here, the wetter it gets the firmer it seems to grip tent pegs, unlike hard ground turning to mud) and with the promise of yet more rain meaning the sand dunes wouldn’t be being ‘enjoyed’ by the children we decided to head out for the day. We didn’t really have a plan so I gathered some leaflets from the reception and wanted to go to some copper mines. When we put it in the sat nav though it was nearly 2 hours away and not knowing how much there would be to do there it seemed silly to drive all that way for just a couple of hours before they closed if it would mean we couldn’t see everything.

We did some aimless driving around for a bit before deciding to go to Porthmadog which was the nearest proper town to find a supermarket for lunch and dinner provisions. We found a Tourist Information Office too where I gathered more leaflets including one for boat tours so I managed to arrange a boat trip for Wednesday to hopefully see dolphins. We went to Tesco for food for now and later and sat in the car eating and feeling much better about the world again :). I found a leaflet for some slate mine caverns on the way back to the campsite and despite Ady resisting it managed to get us there for 4pm (they closed at 5pm) which was just enough time to thoroughly explore the 9 caverns.

It was Llanfair Slate Caverns and I’d recommend it. An hour was about right although if you were there for longer you could spend time in the gift shop, cafe or just drinking in the view as it was up a hill overlooking Shell Island. We’ve talked a lot about mines and rocks and minerals and I really did want to show Davies and Scarlett some mines while we were in Wales so I was pleased to have done that. It was a self-guided tour round following the signs which were pitched just right for me to read aloud giving information about the mines, some facts to help you imagine how it may have felt to work there aswell as the amazing tunnels and chambers themselves. Boys would have started work there aged 12 and on their first day been cut on the nose with a piece of slate. If they cried they’d be deemed ‘too soft to be miners’. They worked long days for pretty poor wages and had to buy their own dynamite out of their wages.

It was cold, damp, musty smelling and even after an hour you were relieved to get back into the open air again afterwards. We enjoyed it and learnt quite a bit. My Dad’s cousin worked on the pit face when he was a boy (Dad is from that area and lots of his cousins worked in pits and mines). He’s dead now but I do remember him well and Dad told me stories Derek had told him about working in the pit so it was quite shocking to realise just what condidions someone only one generation older than me worked in.

We got back to the campsite and it was gorgeous and sunny. The children went off to play, Ady cooked a really nice meal , I drank lots of wine and the world seemed a good place once more 🙂

We had a campfire (started by me with my firesteel – go me!) and I managed a great moment of comedy parenting by bending down to help Scarlett toast her marshmallows, forgetting I was clutching a full wine glass which I tipped all over her, turning to sort that out and forgetting I was holding burning hot marshmallows in my hand which I wiped all over Davies and then laughing uproariously at the whole thing! 😆 I’d done educatin’ now it was drinkin’ time 😉

It was a lovely evening, just what camping is all about and when Michelle wanted Baileys and there was none to be had Ady whipped up some toffee hot chocolate laced with brandy and squirty cream which was a very worthy substitute!

There had been some rain in the night but the morning dawned bright and sunny. The children went off exploring and soon came back to say they’d discovered the sea and could they go in. After suncreaming and swimsuit finding all the children headed off and Michelle, Suzy and I went with them. Suzy went in the water while Mich and I sat and watched them all having fun and wading out far too deep (Scarlett!). Eventually some wandered back to sit with us and we realised Davies and Ben had mananged to miss us sitting on the beach and go back. Davies had made it all the way to the campsite but Ben had sat down, upset and feeling lost on the sand dunes. Scarlett was cold anyway so I went back with her and caught Davies up.

Eventually we decided enough people should have packed up and left to make it worth looking round for a new pitch so Babs, Marcus, Ady and I set off to look while the others stayed with the children. We found a couple of potential spaces – one was deemed too small and too rocky and not near the sand, the other was deemed too near the road and tantalisingly close to the sea enough for the children to want to go there but without a safe route down there. Everywhere else was either too sloping or not right for various other reasons. After much debate we decided to stay in the sand dunes and move down to a larger, flatter area adjacent to where we were already camped as the people there had now moved on.

In the same way we have done at campsites in Newgale and Kessingland we simply walked our tents across the site and re-pitched. Well I say simply, it worked ok for our littler tent but just as Ady, Katy and I untethered Katy’s tent a gale force wind blew up and the heavens opened. We yelled for help and managed to get it over there (I was all tangled up in guy ropes and walking over thistles in bare feet, Michelle was getting smacked in the face by the sopping wet flappy tent and we all got drenched bracing ourselves and the tent against the wind and rain while Katy pegged it to secure it. It was one of (several) less fun moments of the holiday. But Ady did point out Katy’s pants which were slightly exposed said ‘Happy Pants’ all around the top which did a good job of cheering us all up ;).
Photo removed at request of subject

We bought sausages and rolls from the onsite shop (very well stocked and quite reasonable, they have a mini supermarket, camping shop and gift shop on site and you can buy take-out beers and wine from the pub) and I think we just about managed to eat before it started raining again. We were all in our tents before it was even dark and I was so pissed off with the world in general I went to bed!

Actually I don’t seem to have blogged Friday but it was far to far away ago now to do it any justice. I worked all day. It was fine, I did Baby Rhyme Time and was pleased to have an influx of new babies rather than the slightly too old toddlers we have been getting (it’s supposed to be for under twos). Ady spent the morning getting stuff ready to be loaded into the car, Mum was here in the afternoon. I took a couple of the chicks round to Rainbows for show and tell which always goes down well. Mum came with me to the allotment while Ady loaded the car up and I took the chicks round to Tasha’s as she was ChickSitting for the week. Mum stayed late with us, we drank lots of wine, she went home. Think that’s it.

So Saturday morning we packed the last few things and were off and away for 930am. We’d decided Davies and Scarlett should go to Wildlife Explorers as it was the last one of the school year and we know that actually if we’d not had that motivation to get out of the house we’d have easily been another hour faffing around anyway.

Dropped them off and was called in to see the woman who runs it. Really Davies should be in the next group up as he is 8 but she’d kept him in with Scarlett in the beginning and left him there. So from September he will go up to the older group. This means Tarly will be there from 10-11 and then Davies from 11-130 as they do loads more in depth stuff in the older group. This will cut it fine for days when Magic Lantern falls on the same day but Davies is pleased and looking forward to learning more stuff :).

While the kids were in there we nipped to the local town to the Somerfield for some supplies for lunch and a few other camping essentials for the first night. Unfortunately neither Ady or I bothered to read the massive amounts of text on the carpark entrance board and assumed it was free for supermarket customers. Turns out it isn’t and we have a £25 parking ticket for failing to display a parking disc. The warden advised we contest it when Ady complained about the signs so I will do so tomorrow but am assuming we will have to pay as even I don’t believe ignorance is a fair excuse.

Finally we were on our way. It’s six hours – 300 miles to Shell Island. We did the whole journey in one long, glorious hit without even a loo stop. We hit virtually no traffic and arrived within about 2 minutes of the satnavs original time which I thought was pretty impressive given the distance. The kids watched films, DS’d and we chatted a fair bit although it was so long ago I have no idea what about!

We arrived, checked in and paid and then rang Michelle who came to meet us to lead us to where they had pitched. Katy and Becca had already arrived but it was clear that the campsite was so busy the choice of pitches had been severely restricted and they had found the best available of a rather poor lot. Our tent actually pitched quite well being the smallest of the group and the children set off straight away to explore with Chloe and Becca. Wine o’clock was declared, The Babs and co arrived (should we be calling your sister The Suze?), were kindly offered overnight space with Katy and accepted, food was eaten, more wine was consumed, a fire was lit and all was well with the world with a plan to move tents tomorrow when as the man at reception had told me ‘80%of the people on site would be leaving’.

Scarlett had a bad cough and we quickly realised that ironically we seem to lacking quite a bit in our first aid kit. It’s very suitable for First Aid at Work, less suitable for Scarlett on a campsite. Luckily Barbara was to the rescue with calpol which Tarly had to swig from the bottle for want of a medicine spoon and although she coughed through the night and I kept waking to find myself in a heap at the bottom of my sleeping bag at the bottom of the camping mat at the bottom on our sleeping pod due to being on a steep slope it was a fairly stressfree errection and first night and good to be there with friends.

I suppose I should get on with my blogging really, what with all this catching up to be done. Rather than sitting around playing bejeweled blitz ;).

I was waiting for all my pictures to be on flickr before blogging but I guess I can just drop them in later. And actually the lack of photos of the things I actually wanted to see sort of sets the tone for the week really.

It was a Good Holiday. Sadly it wasn’t a Great Holiday as there were just too many things that were disappointing to elevate it to such status and have words such as ‘adore’ and ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’ bestowed upon it.

I might as well get those out of the way first really. First of all Shell Island was a bit of a disappointment to me. I can’t even remember where I first heard about it but someone I know had been there and it sounded lovely. It does have the potential to be lovely but it is far too filled with groups of lads and teens out to get drunk, be noisy and surf down the sanddunes in the early hours of the morning to pull off lovely. It is strewn with litter, really, really strewn with litter. Several times we started to collect tins, bottles etc. and just gave up as we were so disheartened. I suspect it is a victim of it’s own success and also too cheap. Odd to be bemoaning that really but I think I’d rather have paid more and possible kept some people out as a result. It is so very sad that one of the things that should attract people to stay there is the natural beauty and wildlife and those are the very things that are suffering as a result of the people coming to stay there :(.

I think campsites are rather like books – there are just so many that it has to be a Very Very Special one to have me be prepared to revisit at the cost of not trying a new one. The Sustainability Centre is so far the only place to have me happy to rebook without fretting that in doing so I won’t be trying one of the thousands of other campsites I’ve not yet been to. Shell Island didn’t have that magic for me at all and in a part of the world (North Wales) that I love so much it would be my number one permanent relocation destination it fell way short of my expectations really.

Which brings me nicely to probably my biggest gripe of the week really. Now I felt I dealt with this in a humorous and self-deprecating way, poking fun at my own issues and working through my process at the same time without impacting too much on other people. Ady tells me I didn’t pull this off at all and possibly came across as petulant, moany and a nightmare holiday companion. Either way I probably wouldn’t have changed the way I acted so please feel free to use that information to back up any prior opinions you may have of me ;).

So, what I wanted from a camping holiday in North Wales, on Shell Island was the stunning views of the sea and the mountains. And Shell Island does have those. It also has sand dunes. Big, impressive, sci-fi film set style sand dunes that you can’t see over or get mobile phone signal in the middle of. And you can either choose to camp with that 360 degree view of mountains and ocean or in the middle of the giant sandpit. The group, collectively went for the sandpit. Not only did this mean we were denied the view it also meant there was bloody sand everywhere, still is, probably will be for weeks in our shoes, hair, clothes pockets, the washing machine etc. and possibly forever afterwards in our sleeping bags, tent and camping plastic wine glasses. It took Ady an hour to hoover it out of his car tonight, the patio below the washing line outside is strewn with the stuff from where I pegged out jeans and it fell from the pockets.

I don’t have an issue with sand as such. It’s not chalk or anything. And the kids did love it. When we moved and I had found what I deemed The Perfect Spot which took in the views and the group majority vote was to stay in the sand dunes I gave Davies and Scarlett the choice of staying pitched with their friends or moving to the view. They both prefered to stay with friends so that is what we did. I was never going to quietly accept it, I was always going to resent the week out of Ady and my holiday entitlement from work, the six hour drive, the 1000 mile round trip, frankly the not getting my own way. The kids both agreed if we’d been camped just the four of us the view would have won hands down over the sand dunes. Being with friends just about tipped the balance for me but it was a very close run thing and I reserve the right to go on about it forever after. 😉

The dolphins. Now this I take responsibility for totally. I didn’t manage my own and therefore Scarlett’s expectations properly on this one. Seeing dolphins was one of Scarlett’s ‘things’ I’d like to do this year’ list entries for 2009. Initially I was thinking ‘good luck with that one love, it’s not like we’ll be flying to Florida anytime soon!’ but a bit of research later and the whole thing fell into place with North Wales seeming to be a dolphin spotters paradise. A speedy few emails and phone calls later and I’d secured us a fab boat trip taking in some dolphin spotting and a bit of puffin perusal too. Job done.

Nope.

Turns out that company didn’t actually have an operational boat for the week we were there. Which is a bit of a prerequisite for boat tours really. So a trip to the Tourist Information Centre and a couple of phonecalls later I reach Tony, with a very strong Welsh accent and seafaring ways who books me onto his boat for Wednesday for a dolphin watching extravaganza. And for about 50 quid less than the first place. Result, thinks I.

Nope.

But we’ll get to that later. But to not keep you in suspense (not that you are, you all follow me on brightkite and know full well we didn’t see any dolphins) along with a view we didn’t see any dolphins.

Finally the weather. I’m not too fussy about that. We were after all camping in the Great British Summertime so rain pattering on the tent roof, soaking sleeping bags and making all that bloody sand wet and claggy and get trodden into the tent was a given really. As was the wind. The tent stood up to it all well, out of seven evenings there were only two wet ones and only one of them managed to drive us hardy folk into our tents so it didn’t actually interefere too much with the week, it’s just that a bit more sunshine would have been nice.

So, all that out of the way, let’s have a blow by blow daily account shall we?

Okay so technically it’s not a deckchair and it’s not actually up his nose. But we covered perspective, creative thinking, photography and brought our new curriculum to a wider audience 😉

The litter collection piece is now online 🙂
Link here

Shame on Lancing litter louts
Published Date: 07 July 2009
TWO children collected sacks of rubbish during a one-mile walk from their home to illustrate the dangers of litter.
Davies and Scarlett Goddard collected the rubbish as part of their RSPB Wildlife Action Awards.

Walking from their home in Osborne Drive, Sompting, to Lancing library, in Penstone Park, eight-year-old Davies and six-year-old Scarlett managed to fill four bin bags with litter.

Their mother, Nic Goddard, said: “It’s a lot of litter, it really is.

“I think we had something like 50-plus drinks cans from things like lager, beer and Coke.

“I stopped them from picking up cigarette butts, but there were hundreds of them and huge amounts of broken glass.”

Recycling

As part of their Wildlife Action Awards, Davies and Scarlett have to create displays, write to their local MPs and try to raise awareness of an environmental issue in the local press.

Earlier this year they created a display at Lancing library with pictures and drawings of litter and they created another display from this trip’s collection.

“We scattered the litter around our garden and they took a picture of it, and now it’s all in my recycling,” said Mrs Goddard.

“They’ve made a display telling people about what they found.”

Scarlett and Davies Goddard clear up the mess

Bins

She said part of the reason Davies and Scarlett wanted to do the litter collection was because they were concerned about wildlife.

“It’s just something they’re passionate about,” she said.

“We have walked to the library a lot and my son’s always said, ‘Why do people do that, mummy?’

“I think they’d want to do it again, but, on our way back, we saw a Coke can which had obviously been dropped in between our going and coming back.

“My son said he felt like he’d made a difference and there were four fewer bags of litter on the street. It’s sad to see it filling back up again.

“I just wish people would take it home with them or use bins.”

No, not Ady walking in on something he shouldn’t have, just us being home for the day when it wasn’t our plan. Both children ended up in bed with me this morning but it was so hot we were all up just after 8am. We had been planning to go to Paradise Park with Tasha and co but Toby wasn’t well and neither were either of my two really, both running temperatures and feeling generally floppy.

First thing I nipped round the shop to buy multiple copies of the local paper featuring them on page 5 with their litter picking endeavours. It doesn’t appear to be online yet although I’m guessing it will be at some point so I’ll link to it then. It’s all formed as quotes from me, which is good but not really what I was hoping for as it was very much their project rather than mine. I’d also asked if she could be sure to mention that they are Home Educated and she hasn’t which is a shame although they are both wearing their HE tshirts so that might help! The kids are very proud of it and Davies even asked if I thought they’d be on Newsround when it was on later today 😆 – first steps the local rag, tomorrow Sky news eh?! 😆

Davies spent some time under a blanket on the sofa playing his DS, while Scarlett painted my toes. She wanted to move into body art so I got out the henna we had from When Good Kessinglands Go Bad and we did some stuff with that. Scarlett wanted a cat on one arm so I did that for her then she wanted something on the other arm but didn’t know what. I suggested we do the hyroglyphics of her name from the museum the other day which she liked the idea of so I did that down her other arm.

We watched some Ray Mears and messed about reseaching jumbo jets to buy. We did genuinely talk about various jumbo jet related things too and all liked the house planned to be made from one.

In interspersed all this with some mindless facebook games but I notice several other people were doing the same under the guise of being Home Educators or even people with proper paid employment so I don’t feel too bad ;).

Ady popped home for lunch in time to pull faces at Scarlett henna-ing my feet and lower legs with an assortment of flowers, bees and butterflies (her body art of choice). It does now look like I have an odd disease or nicotine stained ankles but she is very into decorating me at the moment and I’m quite happy to sit still and be primped and preened :). I may yet draw the line if she starts to consider piercings though 😆

Scarlett has spent quite a lot of time tending to the new chicks too – we have seven and they are very cute. Several have gorgeous markings and it is easily our most successful hatch ever. I’m hoping for at least a couple of hens in there…

Lunch was a bit hit and miss for the rest of us as neither of the children were hungry really today. In the end Scarlett and I went to do some baking and made some cheese scones and some lavender flapjacks (her suggestion) which came out really well :). Davies watched some CBBC and Scarlett spent some time pasting glue onto my arm and leg and then waiting for it to dry so she could peel it off. Oh and I put some henna on my hair and washed it off to show the children the effect of it. It’s rather more orange than usual but Ady didn’t notice so clearly not too shocking! 😉

Davies asked me to read to them so I read some Charlie Small and we all curled up together which was nice (if a little sticky) and watched the flying ants and subsequent seagulls filling the skies. Ady came home and I nipped off to Brighton to collect two drums and a cymbal via a convoluted contact of Michelle’s that we’ve bought for Davies. I was back within the hour before they’d even had their bath so we all had a play on the drums, they bathed and I read some Giants and Joneses for a bedtime story before they went to bed.

Both Davies and Scarlett seem better for a day at home being fairly quiet so I am hopeful more of the same tomorrow will have them ready for holiday on Saturday.

A new jumbo jet, depending on how it’s equipped can cost from £150 million to £260 million so it’s rather out of our budget. So we’ve checked on ebay but there don’t seem to be any for sale 🙁

I’ve researched the second hand market but it would appear there isn’t much call for them,although I’d be interested to know how this Calafornian woman’s house is coming along 😆

Scarlett raised the point that even if we did buy one we’d not have anywhere to keep it. Davies of course is all for making one from empty toilet rolls, lots of sellotape and one of the cider cans we collected on our litter walk. But that’s not buying is it?

I did remember something I learnt on QI though and shared that with the children about why large things are called ‘jumbo’ after Jumbo the elephant.

I worked this morning which was all quite busy. I had my quarterly review and updated my boss on my progress on various tasks, I spent some time sorting out fines for a nursery which has lost 22 books and dealing with the paperwork for various books borrowed and being sent to other libaries out of the county including one from the British Library.

I nipped home really quickly to get changed before heading over to Julie’s to collect Davies and Scarlett. Lorna was asleep upstairs and the other four children were strewn about the garden in the sunshine all looking very tired and spent. They’d had a lovely morning playing and watching Total Wipeout on TV.

Scarlett had been complaining of a sore throat and was very clingy. Some of Ady’s traditional pre-holiday doom has rubbed off on me this time and I’m convinced one or more of us will be ill before the weekend so I’m really hoping that isn’t pessimsim coming true 🙁

I stayed for a cup of tea and a chat with Julie for an hour and then we came home. Scarlett had some medicine which seemed to perk her up and then as they were both hungry I made their tea – Davies wanted pasta, Scarlett wanted french toast. We messed about as per the post below and then it was time for Badgers.

I went and sat on the beach in the sunshine with my book for most of the hour, returning to meet Ady who had been to collect The Cupboard part 2 from Jonathan’s parents and came to get the allotment key from me to go and do the watering.

Home for a bit of Charlie Small and then to bed for Davies and Scarlett who were both asleep before 8pm which is simply unheard of.

Davies, Scarlett and I have seen the error of our ways. We’ve come to terms with the fact that we’ve been doing this Home Ed lark all wrong. What with our non planning, no idea what we’ll be doing next week let alone next year, haphazzard approach to the whole thing. No broad and balanced, no ensuring every area is covered, just one big old free for all.

So we’re turning over a new leaf. We’ve decided to seek help, guidance and inspiration in the form of a curriculum. We thought about Sonlight, we looked at reading schemes, we’ve discussed workbooks and we’ve cogitated over the National Curriculum but finally decided we needed something with a hook to bring it to our level, to make it relevant to us.

So we’ve chosen something that was a bit influence to me in my younger years. Something which covers it all, allows for practical tasks alongside the more structured learning. It’s classical, penned by famous writers and has maybe an element of quirkiness about it. We’ve decided not to follow it in order but to mix it up a bit, give it a twist so to speak

Just today it meant we got some fresh air and exercise outside, some handling of livestock, some language, some IT watching youtube footage, some maths in the form of size ratios debating what would fit into where and some valuable forward planning tasks. There was some music, some poetry in the form of learning verse, certainly a little creativity and imagination and some drama and empathy is planned for tomorrow.

You might know Grant and Naylor better for their fine work in penning the Red Dwarf series and books but before that they were involved in the work we are choosing to study, when way back in the 1980s they wrote The Chicken Song.

Today we did indeed hold a chicken in the air:

and we learnt to say ‘Heebe’ which is ‘Hello’ in Arapaho. We also learnt that the Arapaho tribe are Native Americans living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming..

We have discussed whether we should use a really small deck chair to stick inside our noses or whether we should just insert one small corner of a regular sized one.

We have talked a little about disembowlment and why we won’t be doing that section of the curriculum as a practical and just what other ingredients would make for a nice Gran Casserole.

Tomorrow we’re planning on pretending we are all called Keith and maybe breaking out the green paint for our left knees.

Bring on the annual inspections – we are *so* ready ;).

Yesterday was the tenth and last session of Forest School. Scarlett didn’t actually want me to go up there as I am mean and rather than allow her and Davies to spent the 3 hours running off in the woods I insist they sit down, learn from the rangers and do the activities. I’ve spent £7.50 each for those three hours and I want more from them that grassy knees and the secret passwords to their camps in the woods! 😉

After lots of badgering from the children and a couple of the parents they were doing some knife work for the last session and making a butter knife each. They all had snacks; two of the children had brought up cakes and brownies to share and then were shown how to make a knife and given a safety talk. Lots of the kids had difficulty focussing on the length of the talk, Scarlett being one of them. She often zones out when being told what to do and I actually watched her attention shut down. I personally think safety talks should be punchy, to the point and not too long otherwise you do tend to lose everyone’s interest.

First they all practised on sticks with potato peelers to see if they could assume safe working positions and get the knack of stripping the bark.

Scarlett was pretty good at this but she does do a fair bit of wielding a peeler as she eats a lot of carrots. Davies was slower and struggled a bit but he’s never been great with implements anyway – cutlery, scissors etc. never look comfortable and like an extension of his own hands but always clumsy and akward. He still manages to turn out creative stuff most of the time though and is always up for having a go.

All the children were given knives to use and all the adults were on high alert. I genuinely expected to see blood as they are quite a dizzy bunch of kids sometimes and I think the sharpness and dangerousness of the knives had gone over some of their heads. I stayed between Davies and Scarlett and tried to ignore the other children as there are a couple of fairly needy ones who would happily have had my sole attention if I’d given it and supervising my own two felt like enough of a responsibility ;).

They both did really well, both did well over half of their knives and the overall shape and finished objects reflected their work rather than the odd bit of helping out I did. I realised Davies’ knife was much blunter than Tarly’s having handled them both and so he swapped his towards the end for a sharper one to finish off. I think all the kids realised it was much harder work than they’d been expecting it to be, although I suspect the knives could well have been sharper which would have made it easier.

Everyone finished a knife and they all looked pretty good :). Afterwards they had a final circle time and cooked some toast over the fire to spread with butter using their new knives.

The final task was to take five or ten minutes to walk off into the woods and just take in their surroundings one last time, and bring back any ‘treasure’ they found. They returned to the circle and passed around a ‘speaking stick’ to tell of their treasure and talk about what they’d enjoyed most about Forest School.

I did find that bit all a bit like a mass eviction from the Big Brother house or the end of Brat Camp as there was much talk from the rangers about how they’d all been On a Journey and Grown and Changed during the sessions.I have to say I thought the kids who were brats were still brats, the annoying ones were still annoying (infact possibly more so for having spent ten weeks in their company ;)) and the okay kids were still okay really. They do work with young offenders and excluded kids and kids who probably never would see the forest otherwise though so I suspect it was something of a scripted last session thing which in many cases may well be true.

I did like one of the rangers who said he wanted to thank them all as he had learnt something from each and every one of them and actually I think that is true.

Davies, Scarlett and I chatted a bit about it on the way home and I think they both did learn a fair bit from the experience generally.They both did way more sitting and listening than in their day to day lives and although it was enjoyable they got a taste of being part of a class and the pitfalls of that. They had to be in the company of some kids they didn’t like, found annoying and in one case were actually a bit afraid of and developed some good skills for coping and dealing with that situation. I don’t think they got vast amounts from the crafty stuff as they are both pretty creative and imaginative anyway but I enjoyed watching those and got some ideas for nice things to sit and do in the woods next time we are camping. I think all 3 of us got more confident about campfires, cooking on them and handling tools. It was right that I attended most of the sessions as I think it maximised what they got from them although if they do another run of sessions maybe next year as they both want to do then I would stay away and let them do it themselves.

Was it worth the money? Hard to say really as I do think it was pricey and I don’t think there was a lot of value for money but it was a cool thing to do, inspired a liking for bushcrafty type stuff and was interesting to see what’s out there for when they’re a little older so I guess it was.

I do think being a ranger would be a cool job 🙂

On the way home we stopped at Asda as having been through the kids’ wardrobes I knew neither of them were very well off for summer clothes and whilst it’s foolish to expect good weather camping next week it’s equally foolish not to be prepared for the possibility so we got a couple of summer dresses for Scarlett (I do like them and I do think they look pretty on me but they’re not really me Mumma!) having persuaded her jeans and t shirts might be what suits her but in very hot weather they are not comfortable and some shorts for Davies on the same basis. I’m pleased the pink frilly phase for Scarlett only lasted til she was about five at which point she realised they are not practical for climbing trees but sometimes it would be nice for her to look like a little girl ;). She tried on some black shoes for Badgers while we were in there which I vetoed as they were a tenner and too big but she was funny about the fact they had a slight wedge heel: ‘High heels! Ooh listen they make me sound like a horse!’ 😆

Back home for some lunch and they played with some Indiana Jones figures we’d picked up in Asda for £1.50 each which agreeing to buy apparently made me the best mummy in the world – how about that eh? You can give up a career to Home Educate, spend hours facilitating their education, looking for interesting activities and trips and opportunities, ways to make their childhood a golden, halcyon experience or you could just spent six quid on plastic tat and be done with it! 😆

Then it was swimming lessons. I’ve had a potential earache bubbling away in my right ear (which is prone to ear infections) for over a week and swimming last week definitely aggravated it and I must have done something odd at Forest School as on the way home my back starting twinging too so I decided swimming probably wasn’t a great idea for me on both counts. Which was a shame as it was incredibly hot and I’m sure the water would have been a nicer place to be than the spectators area but did mean I got to watch their lesson. Davies is a good little swimmer now and is starting to develop some sort of style which is nice. Scarlett is still a bit random but has oodles of confidence and loves being in the water which is a great start.

Back home again I cooked their tea and then when Ady got home I nipped up to the allotment. I had some kitchen waste which was attracting flies to take up there and also didn’t want to risk my bike with my back so drove up which gave me an extra half an hour to do a bit of weeding along with the watering.

When I got home Ady had started dinner (bless him and also curse him, he’d have been better spending the time with the kids 🙁 ) and the kids had had a bath after getting filthy playing outside. I read some Charlie Small and they went off to bed.

Hurrah caught up! The benefit of Ady taking Davies and Scarlett over to Julie’s for the morning while I’m off to work is that they leave at 730am giving me over an hour home alone. And I only spent about half of it on bejeweled blitz 😉

Ady woke me this morning before he left to say two chicks had hatched. We’ve had 11 eggs in the incbubator – six were from a farm we went to on Open Farm Sunday and are lovely little golden pekin bantams, the other five were from our own hens, a mix of speckedly and brown ones so the brown ones should be an interesting cross between our speckledy cockerel and brown hens.

We transfered the first two chicks to the brooder once they’d fluffed up and saw that several more eggs had pipped. All of this along with dealing with laundry and packing a picnic meant we were late to meet Tasha, Toby and Vinnie. Fortunately they were also late and we actually all pitched up at the same time 🙂 Hurrah for equally tardy friends!

Brooklands, which is the large laked park right on the seafront near us is having rather a face lift at the moment. There is already a train, bouncy castle, trampolines, pony rides, boats, pitch and putt and go-karts and they have just put in a paddling pool and are doing further work to improve it. I think the stuff is all rather overpriced and even the car park is NCP and very pricey so we either walk (it is only 15 minutes but it’s along a boring, straight, main road) or park two roads down on the road where it’s free.

Today we drove and situated ourselves at the paddling pool and there we stayed for over 3 hours :).For a while it did feel like Tasha and I were constantly calling out to the kids to stop them doing stuff as we were both really mindful that Davies, Scarlett and Toby looked liked giants among all the little toddlers there and I do feel a bit like it is their domain in school hours having been the parent of those teenies once myself and felt all protective of them around bigger kids. That said, our kids also have every right to be there and aslong as they are being mindful of the smaller ones around we didnt want to curtail their fun too much. Part of the fun of being in a paddling pool in the sunshine is splashing really! They all had a fab time; Scarlett teamed up with another little girl and they spent ages pulling each other round in her inflatable boat and they all got involved in a big splashing fight with loads of other kids which all seemed very fun and amicable.

We got an ice cream as we left and came home at about 4pm to write some words to go with the pictures Ady was printing off at work for the kids’ library display of their litter walk. It was a fairly stressy half an hour as I have no patience and they are reluctant, which as all three of us agreed is why autonomy works for us and if we had to do writing every day they’d be far better off in school. What’s ironic is that both of them happily write a fair bit most days on their own artwork but the idea of sitting down and writing something for the display which was fairly boring text just didn’t inspire them.

We got that done and then they had their tea which I transferred more chicks to the brooder. We have six healthy chicks and one which is still fighting it’s way out of the egg but I am not overly hopeful about as it’s taking rather too long. The other 5 eggs with no signs of pips can stay in the ‘bator til Wednesday before being disposed of. Obviously I’m hoping the seventh will make it but six out of eleven is still a good hatch rate, especially all healthy birds.

Ady came home with the pictures so the children and I headed off to the library to put the display up. It was a simple one this time with a header of ‘Litter Walk’ cut out from red paper by Davies and the words ‘Last week we walked from our house to the library collecting litter. It is only one mile but we collected four sacks of rubbish. Over 50 cans, more than 10 bottles and loads of crisp packets and wrapper. By Davies and Scarlett Goddard’ and a load of photos of them on their walk and with the litter afterwards.

I dropped them back home and headed off to the alllotment on my bike to do some watering. While I was gone it emerged that Davies had caught the sun quite a lot on his legs despite two applications of sun cream. They are red and a bit stingy and as a sunburn veteran I know it is very minor but it’s his first experience and he is prone to drama so he is acting like he needs a wheelchair! I suspect it will have faded away entirely by morning but I think we both will be even more diligent about suncream in future :(.

I read the end of the Mr Gum we are re-reading and in theory the children went to bed. I say in theory as Davies is back sitting beside me on the sofa again now (grrr).

I attempted to have a lie in and catch up on sleep this morning. I didn’t really manage it as it was gone 3am before I was asleep and Tarly was in bed with me before 8am being bouncey and perky and Scarletty. Davies and Ady had gone to the allotment to do early morning watering and harvesting so it was just her and I. They were back by about 9ish but had clearly done some male bonding and were leaving her out so she kept coming back to me. I eventually gave up at 1030am (which I suppose does qualify as a lay in even if it didn’t feel like one) and got up. She did some drawing on my back with make up while I put some on my face which is her current big thing (she’s not at all keen on the idea of tattoos but she does love temporary body art, must dig the henna out and have a play with that actually, we have a stash from the ill fated henna activity from Kessingland).

Breakfast was a prolonged affair with me eating my croissants and lavender and summer fruit jam (it’s delicious) at midday. We debated modes of transport to Brighton and parking issues and with a bit of pressure from me Ady agreed we’d go on the train. It was a bargain £7.20 for all four of us, with just a 15 minute walk through the Laines which are a very interesting place to be wandering through anyway at the other end.

Thanks to being tired, hot and that tangent factor which Ady’s presence often gives the children were not at their best today which was a shame as it’s the sort of excursion they and I often do and get loads out of so should have been really nice to share with Ady. It was overall good but could have been nicer with less challengeing children at times.

We arrived early and collected our tickets from the box office then wandered off to find somewhere cheap to buy water and sweets before going back. We got front row seats at the Pavillion theatre which is quite small. Last time we were there was to see Richard Herring a few years ago. We were there to see Little Leap Forward which we only discovered from reading the programe is based on a Barefoot Book which we read loads of last year although I think we missed this one.

It was an amazing show using puppets, shadows, masks and music to haunting and beautiful effect. There were no words throughout the hour long show but somehow we all managed to follow the story thanks to the great acting. If it’s travelling near you I’d recommend seeing it.

We had a walk through the Pavillion Gardens afterwards where a band was playing ‘No business like show business’ which may well be some other more classical piece of music but that’s how I know it and it’s been in my head ever since. We watched that for a while and then had a brief look round some of Brighton Museum, in particular the fashion, body image and ancient Egypt areas.

We walked back through the Laines and caught a train home. I made Davies and Scarlett their tea and then Tarly helped Ady clean our cars while I did some baking (some bananas that were really only fit for the compost heap were nicely rescued to make chocolate and banana cupcakes) and made some jam (strawberry and chili – nice!).

I read some Mr Gum to the children and then they went off to bed, Ady and I had tacos for dinner as we decided it was too hot for a roast dinner and I am determined to be in bed before 1am tonight, or should that be tomorrow!

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!