One word? When seven would do…

We’d decided to go to the Sustainability Centre today to have a look round and see how it’s all looking for camping in two weeks time. It seemed to take forever to actually get out of the house but we finally set off about 11am ish after Davies and Scarlett had spent more time in the garden playing cavemen. Davies has decided for his birthday he wants a penknife and a fire steel and various other camping-y things – and this after just one session of Forest school ;).

We parked up and had a wander round the woods, checked out the new graves and benches and birdboxes since we were last there in September, paused a while at Sue’s bench (forgot to take a flask, will remedy the cup of tea omission in 2 weeks time). We didn’t manage to spot any adders and were very disappointed at the lack of bluebells but it was lovely and leafy and sundappled anyway.

We stopped at the visitor centre for a tea and coffee and a cake each for the children. The cakes were apparently delicious but Ady and I were a bit put out at the price of the tea and coffee but we sat on the grass and got all excited about being there camping in two weeks time :). Can’t wait 🙂 We looked at the solar panels on the buildings, checked out the solar powered shower strawbale block which still isn’t finished and admired the pizza oven area which is finished. We also peeped in the new yurts which have been put up since we were last there.

Davies made us laugh as we were laying around in the sun chatting when he asked Ady to pass him the water out of the rucksack. Ady asked why he didn’t do it himself and he said ‘I’m saving energy!’ like he was some sort of ecowarrier rather than just lazy. I did explain energy saving doesn’t apply to 8 year old boys! 😆

We were there for a couple of hours and then came home. Davies and Scarlett went straight out into the garden to carry on with their cavemen game, Ady started cooking a roast beef dinner and I got on my bike and cycled up to the allotment. It was fine, I did it surprisingly quickly and didn’t fall off and cycled up most of the uphill bits rather than getting off and walking. Most of the way there is uphill and so most of the way home is downhill which is the right way round really – get the hard work out of the way while you are fresh and enthusiastic!

I did some weeding – filled a bucket which if I managed every time we went up there would mean we were pretty much weed free and some watering. There was someone else waiting for the tap so I just did a quick water but it looked like it was clouding over to rain anyway. Basically I stayed until I was starting to reach the point of thinking ‘oh shit and I’ve got to cycle home again’ and then finished.

I managed to slip over on the wet patch near the tap right infront of two other allotment holders which was embarrassing :blush: and then cycled home without incident. Guess I’d rather fall off my feet than my bike!

Ady had run me a bath so I enjoyed a glass of cider and my bath before dinner :).

We had a lovely dinner chatting about camping and then the kids were late to bed again as the evening sort of ran away with us.

A lazy start to the day and we planned to go shopping in the morning but while I was having one more cup of tea and the children were already playing cavemen outside (latest game) my Dad arrived so he stayed for a couple of hours instead.

Ady changed the blade on his chainsaw for him and we chatted and drank even more tea and coffee while the children continued to play cavemen. This involved making a camp, building a fire, gathering flints from the garden and creating tools and finding sticks to use as spears. They are really keen to learn more about cavemen so I’ll try and track down some books for us to read. A combination of Stig of the Dump and Forest School along with much talk of the camping season nearly upon us seems to have been the catalyst for this latest interest.

Dad left, the children had lunch and we set off to Magic Lantern. We’d thought there was a car boot sale at a nearby rec. to the theatre so had allowed loads of time as the traffic always builds up there when the car boot sale is on but it wasn’t there so we had half an hour before they were due to be at film club. To kill the time we had a quick wander round a couple of charity shops where Scarlett found a china dog and a resin bush which she thinks is lavender in the 10p basket. Davies happened to have a pocketful of 10p pieces from his lucky dip scheme yesterday so he bought them for her :).

We dropped them off and they watched Singin in the Rain which they said they really enjoyed although when we arrived slightly early to collect them and went in to sit at the back and watch the end of the film Scarlett was a bit restless and fidgety. 2 hours is a long time for her to sit still though.

Ady and I went off to Tesco for the various things we needed and arrived back in Shoreham with time to look round the other charity shops we’d missed earlier. Didn’t buy anything though.

Back home Davies and Scarlett carried on with their game, came in for tea and went back outside to play some more before coming in the house to have showers in time to sit down and watch Primeval.

I got my bike out of the garage – I got it last year off freecycle and it’s my intention to ride up to the allotment on it in the evening to do the watering to save using the car all the time. Aside from hiring bikes at Centerparcs I’ve not been on a bike since I was 17 and got my first car and I didn’t do a great deal of cycling even before that really but it was fine. I did a circuit round the block and then a bigger circuit, probably only about 20 minutes cycling but quite enjoyable and definitely enough of a confidence booster that I’d happily cycle to the allotment on it now. I might even do so tomorrow evening 🙂

The kids and I watched Primeval and Britain’s Got Talent which they like to sit and watch as judges with pieces of paper to mark people as hit or miss before the judges on TV comment and then see if they were right.

Ady cooked a lovely curry and Davies came back downstairs to show me the lastest two stories he’s ‘written’. He has come up with a load of characters based on rubbish at a tip and is writing all the back stories for each character about how they came to be there before writing about their adventures. I say writing, what he’s really doing is drawing a series of pictures (about 20 per story) and then using them to tell the story but he’s up for either narrating them to me or trying to write them himself.

Work for me today all day. Due to my cough I didn’t do baby rhymetime, I think the risk of them all having to carry on singing without me while I PMSC in the corner was too great. I did the banking first thing, followed by spending some time coming up with a proposal of a new system for reading group accounts and then some time on the enquiry desk. Aswell as the usual book orders I also helped a man identify some war medals he’d forgotten the specific reason for being awarded and found contact details for another elderly man who wanted to speak to his energy supplier on the phone or write to them rather than email them or go via their website.

It was pretty quiet today and S and I had a bit of a moan about how we get bored on days like today. I love the job when it is busy and challenging and bustling, I get resentful of being away from home and the kids on days when I am standing around with very little to do.

Back at home Ady was here in the morning and the big excitement of the morning was spotting a buzzard flying low over the house and garden,presumably after our chickens. It was chased off by a gang of seagulls (Bird Wars now showing at The Goddards) so Ady and the children were digging out bird and nature books to find out more information about buzzards. The RSPB magazines for the kids had also arrived so they were looking through them at various competitions and things too.

Mum was here for a couple of hours, not sure what they all got up to although Davies had drawn and coloured in a fantastic picture for my Mum of her at work window dressing a charity shop window which she was off to do in the afternoon. He’s starting to colour in his pictures more with very impresssive results. Scarlett also had a load of drawing stuff out and had been doing various pictures. Davies had also made an alien spaceship from MvA with a cardboard box, will get a picture of it tomorrow.

I got home and having been shown all their creations assisted in the tidying up, made Tarly’s tea and unpacked Scarlett’s ds case she’d left at Liza’s (thanks Liza 🙂 x) and a pair of gorgeous green shoes I won off ebay. Davies took the shoe box straight away and wrote on it ’10p for a lucky dip’ all by himself and then proceeded to take money off Scarlett for various things which quite possibly already belonged to her anyway. He did assure her ‘there’s no tat in here’ which made me laugh 😆

Davies and I walked Tarly round to Rainbows where she had a fab time. Not really sure what she did but she seems to love it there and will hopefully really enjoy these last two terms there before deciding whether to start Brownies next year.

Back at home I made Davies’ tea and then Ady arrived home. I walked round to collect Tarly and Davies came running up the road to meet us. They stayed in the garden with Ady til gone 8pm (he was gardening) and gathered up various things from around the garden to create a cavemen scene complete with shelter of sticks and animal skins (plastic sheeting), a fire and a spit roast over it made of lavendar leaves wrapped in bay leaves and skewered with sticks


They are so going to LOVE camping this year 🙂

They finally came in and we read the pre-meeting leaflet for tomorrows Magic Lantern where they are watching Singin in the Rain. The leaflet gives a very brief outline of the story and talks loads about genre so we tried to think of as many musicals as we could and actually came up with loads as so many of the family films we have seen have been musicals.

Davies came and chatted to me while I was in the bath and we had a very late dinner but fortunately noone needs to be up in the morning :). We have an amazingly free weekend aside from Magic Lantern tomorrow afternoon which we may well end up filling or we may just keep nice and free and relaxed.

is probably too much even for me 😉

So I’ll direct you here for this years photoblog, here for what we did at the allotment this afternoon and just fill in a couple of additional bits which are:

A massive THANKYOU to Ali for my fab birthday treat which I redeemed the voucher for today to go and see Monsters Vs Aliens which we really, really enjoyed 🙂

Davies came downstairs earlier to say ‘you know on Kung Fu Panda his name is Po? Well why isn’t it spelt with an ‘e’ at the end?’ He’s spent about 2 hours tonight making a MvA playset which is just fantastic 🙂

I’m very reassured by Joyce’s comment as I’ve found some very odd things while googling for pelvic floor solutions! 😆

Early start this morning as Davies and Scarlett were off to Liza and Andrew’s for the morning while I worked. Ady took them so everyone had left the house by about 8am leaving me nearly an hour home alone before work. I finished flickring from yesterday and enjoyed the peace of the house to myself :).

Work was fine, the morning went quick. I did some tidying while chatting – one colleague is training to be a driving instructor and has just passed one chunk of her exams for it so she was on a high and another colleague is learning to drive herself and had just passed part of her test too. Amazing how much more comprehensive driving tests are now than when I passed the 20 minute driving test 18 years ago (can it really be that long?). A good thing though I reckon given how irresponsible me and so many of my 17 year old friends were behind the wheel in our early weeks and months of driving.

Next I had an off hour when I am supposed to get on with any of my own tasks (we all have a few allotted jobs that we each do) but I didn’t have much to do (I am very efficient ;)) and so spent most of it chatting about The Apprentice and looking at the bbc website instead. I had tea with several colleague where we had a grown up conversation about food shopping and what things you would and wouldn’t change if you won the lottery. I admired a colleague’s new shoes and discovered they were the same brand as a pair I have been bidding on ebay on (and have won this evening, yay!).

I was on the counter next and finally the enquiry desk where aside from a brief chat with a young Home Educated girl about dog training books I didn’t have much else to do.

I left work and collected Davies and Scarlett from Liza. Davies was very pale and cold and saying he felt ill :(. We drove home and he agreed we’d go to the allotment briefly as I had a couple of things including watering that really needed doing. He seemed to perk up in the sunshine and fresh air (although he’d started feeling ill at the park so was getting sunshine and fresh air anyway ?) but we only stayed around an hour anyway. I’m hoping to get back up there tomorrow as there is some serious weeding to do and I now have some canes and netting for the peas to sort out.

Back at home they settled down to watch and got the plasticine out to make some stuff while they watched.

They had tea and then got ready for Badgers. This term they are doing Safety Badger and are planning a visit to the fire station, several of us have volunteered to go along and help with that trip ;). On the way we drove along the coast road with the windows open in the sunshine listening to Coldplay really loud. None of us knew the words but wanted to sing along so we made up words instead 😆

I dropped Davies and Scarlett in and walked to the beach with my MP3 player on. I do love listening to music but I really struggled not to sing along and often catch myself jigging to the beat a bit which I suspect gives me a very mad looking walk. Ah well :blush:

The beach was gorgeous, tide out, blue, blue sky and low sun. I do love it 🙂

Ady rang me after I’d been down there about 15 minutes to say he was just parking up to come and meet me so I walked back to him and we did a circuitous route around the town stopping at a cashpoint to get some money out to pay for Badgers for the term.

Back at home we were on one of my famous schedules to get everything done so I could watch The Apprentice. And we managed it 🙂

I peeled potatoes and got them simmering in cream and milk and garlic for potato gratin while the kids got their pjs on and cleaned their teeth (a later use of disclosing tablets showed they needed to repeat the teeth brushing mind you), then we sat down and read the first few chapters of which really appealed to Davies and I and our sense of humour and nonsense. Tarly was less engaged with it although several bits made her laugh.

They went to bed (well that’s not strictly true. Davies went to bed but came downstairs again several times aferwards to show us a story he’d created in a book called ‘The Friday O Leary Show’ based on the dectective from the Mr Gum books. Mostly told with illustrations with the odd word chucked in here and there.It’s good :). He also came to tell me about the different ways to spell to / too /two. I’m really enjoying the organic voyage of discovery approach he seems to be taking to reading, not just enjoying the words and being able to read them but all the interesting stuff about language and spelling and stuff he is finding out too :). Scarlett came and lurked in the bathroom and chatted to me while I had a bath). I had a bath and then finished cooking dinner (pork chops, beans and baby corn cooked in garlic, butter, black pepper and lemon juice with the potato gratin) and we were sitting down to The Apprentice pretty much on time :).

I’ve had a couple of fairly spectacular public coughing fits today making my eyes water and testing my pelvic floor not to mention giving me a sore throat and headache. Hoping tomorrow it will finally go away and leave me alone.

I had a really bad night awake loads with my cough again and poor Ady was disturbed by it too. When his alarm went off at 6am I felt like I’d hardly had any sleep. He brought me up a cup of tea which is the surefire way usually of getting me back to sleep again (not in drinking it you understand, in falling asleep so it goes cold sitting there untouched) and it worked it’s usual magic.

Tarly came and got into bed with me just before my alarm went off and we laid there dozily chatting until we got up. Davies got up too and we had a quick eat breakfast /get dressed / get out of the house turnaround which is so not something we are much good at.

I knew where the park was as we have been to it loads of times for Springwatch and the kite festival but we’ve only ever parked at the university (it’s within the same grounds as Sussex uni) so I wasn’t sure how to get into the park and where the carpark was where we were meeting. I did work it out and we were there well on time though.

I have to confess that I had been having reservations about the other families I knew were attending as I have experienced some of the children being quite disruptive at other events and indeed several of the families were ones I knew from Magical Mondays and whilst I quite liked the parents differing opinions on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour had been instrumental in us not going there any more.So I was a bit nervous about how they would be towards me, how their kids would be generally and what the dynamic would be between the children. I was also very concerned that I was parting with £150 in a carpark for a bit of an unknown quantity and I didn’t want it ruined at the hands of someone else. Davies, Scarlett and I had had a chat beforehand about what I wanted them to get out of it: fun, learn something, enjoy it, stick together, be respectful of others and the rangers leading it which is kind of all I ever expect from them anywhere really I guess.

I was probably right to fret slightly about the other kids, there was an element of the rowdy ones distracting the group and the rangers were all rather peaceful folk who weren’t great at pulling everyone’s attention back. I have to admit that Scarlett was often to be heard wanting to chat to the rangers (like she did at the Wildlife Centre) rather than let them talk though. I have talked to her about it. I also think that although one of them was my own child the inclusion of the younger ones (it had originally been an 8-10 year olds session but a lack of take up meant they extended it both ways so there were a couple of littler ones including Tarly and a couple of older ones too) meant they were needing to appeal to a broader range of abilities and possibly took something away from what the older ones could have been doing without the younger ones there.

So we all gathered and walked up an incredibly steep hill and along into the woods. A campfire was lit and the children all sat round it on logs. This imediately marked the kids into several distinct groups – the ones who were used to such things and loved it, the ones who were coughing and waving the smoke away in a dramatic fashion and probably didnt really want to sit down on the logs incase there were bugs on them and the ones who saw fire and got an pyromaniacal gleam in their eyes! 😆

They all had to introduce themselves and also to include a descriptive and alliterative word infront of their names. Davies was ‘dynamic Davies’ just as he’d been for the Salmon’s superheros party last year. Scarlett said she couldn’t think of one and was a bit shy but was bolstered with ‘Super Scarlett’ :). They handed round various fire making things including flint and iron pyrite and then watched some hay caught alight with some char-cloth (burnt cloth) and a firesteel spark maker. They were then split into 3 teams and all had a go at making fire.

Davies and Scarlett were in seperate teams and both ended up last to have a go which meant I was hopping from one to the other to make sure I didn’t miss it. In the end Scarlett did hers far quicker than Davies. The ranger may have been just being kind but she did keep saying to Davies that he was making good sparks and she didn’t know why it wasn’t taking. She offered to do it for him but he was adamant he wanted to do it himself and he did in the end.

Both kids want a now! 😆

They deemed that thirsty work and made hot chocolate from the boiling kettle over the fire, then toasted some bread over the fire and spread it with butter using a very cool butter knife made from a stick.

There was a rather too long pause for everyone to eat and drink which I thought a shame they didn’t fill with some ‘ranger talk’ of some sort. Next they drew a pattern on everyone’s hand which they had to go off into the woods and find recreated in nature. I thought this was quite good but possibly a bit of a timefiller / bonding exercise for the children. Most of them found it quite quickly and then seemed to wander about a bit aimlessly for a while.

Scarlett was very happy as there were two dogs there to play with so she was in her element. Davies came over to me with a stick so I sent him over to the ranger to ask about it and he came back to tell me it was ash. He also chatted to the rangers about the butter knife and one of them had a very cool wooden mug too.

They came back to the circle and were given a postcard with a strip of double sided tape down the middle to fix various forest bits to. Scarlett found acorns and a snail shell, Davies found a feather, some small leaves, twigs and flowers. All very pretty but again not much in the way of engagement from the rangers about things like identifying what they’d found.

They were gathered back together round the fire again for a story by one of the rangers and then finished with some games – hide and seek type stuff I think.

For me I thought it was a lot of sitting around, quite a bit of just running around the woods which is great but needn’t cost any money and the kids didn’t get as much out of being with the rangers as I’d have hoped (kids generally, not specifically Davies and Scarlett as they both chatted to the rangers quite a bit but that was them actively seeking them out rather than being enaged by them).

However I need to move away from my personal perception of value for money and think about what the children wanted / needed to get out of it and they both loved every minute of it. They said later than it has been their favourite activity so far and given how much they love Wildlife Explorers, Badgers, Rainbows, Magic Lantern, Young Archaeologists etc. that is praise indeed so from their point of view it was a huge success. I know when Tarly started Rainbows I had this whole other agenda to her about what I thought she should get out of it which didn’t mean a thing compared to what she wanted to get out of it. I also think they are both quite highly skilled at getting what they want from things anyway so i should trust their judgement a bit more and if they tell me it’s great I should believe them really. 🙂

We left there with them bubbling over with enthusiasm, they even rang Ady to tell him how fab it was, and popped into Asda for some bits for lunch and dinner. They wanted to look at the toys and as they have £10 each from Lynda still they chose something each to spend their money on. Davies found one of the Ben 10 characters he doesn’t have and Scarlett got some jungle in my pocket tat. I was pleased that they both chose to spend some of the money on one thing and keep some back still.

When we got to the till I felt in my pocket and realised my card wasn’t there. We left the basket and went back to the car although I was sure I remembered taking it out of my purse. Sure enough it wasn’t in my purse so I left the kids in the car and ran back to ask at the customer service desk if anyone had handed it in. I retraced my steps round the store and to the loo and started to wonder if the woman who’d bumped into me down one of the aisles had been an expert pickpocket. I had enough cash to pay for our stuff and when I got back to the car all harrassed I found the card under the seat so I had taken it out of the purse but not managed to actually put it in my pocket. Phew. Did mean the children got to learn about pickpockets though, so every cloud and all that! 😆

We had just over an hour at home and Davies got out his Ben 10 stuff and played with them and Scarlett introduced the jungle in my pocket characters to Humphrey the air drying clay hamster with his fabulous home from yesterday.

Back out again to swimming lessons. It is my intention to swim myself most weeks but this week I wanted to watch the lesson and check that my fussing about Tarly being moved up had been warranted and that she was okay in the new class. She was and she did really well. By accident they were both ‘dolphins’ so swam across together and I noticed them both aware of ‘racing’ the other one which spurred them both on. Nice healthy competition 🙂 It’s not often they are evenly matched in things as they have such different strengths usually and what Davies has in experience Scarlett has in stamina and determation so for short bursts at least they are well paced.

One of the swimming mums was in a chatty mood which was nice but I was coughing lots so that was hard work. Ady had rung to say he was home and had the kids’ dinner on so they showered and hairwashed at the pool to save needing a bath at home.

They were both full of Forest School chatter to Ady and then Tarly went to bed to play with some toys (Betty Spagetty I think) and Davies and I read as in he picked it up and read the first page and then I took over. Loving his new confidence to try reading 🙂

I have some Covonia at Mich’s recommendation which I have been swigging from the bottle Joyce-stylee and am hoping for a peaceful night as tomorrow is another early start.

And to celebrate I’d posted up that we’d be in a local park for a couple of hours today on the local Home Ed list. The only person who’d said they were coming along was Tasha and we’d arranged to collect them. Tasha sent me a text to say she’d forgotten to get the boys’ car seats out of her partner’s car so they’d meet us there and then another text a while later to say she’d realised just how far it was to walk and wouldn’t make it after all.

I felt obliged to go just incase anyone else came along so we went via the shoeshop to get some shoes for Tarly. We found some denim canvas shoes which were what I wanted for her and when I paid for them at the till they were reduced from £10 to £3 so that was a bit of a result. Scarlett fell head over heels in love with a pair of clogs in there though. They were reduced from £15 to £10 and very pretty with a house on one shoe and a cupcake on the other. She was all dreamy about them and kept trying them on ‘one more time’ and stroking them. She so doesn’t need them but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so desperate for clothes or shoes so I said she could have them :). She’s worn them all round the house and only took them off to go to bed. I think she wants to wear them indoors first for as long as possible to get maximum wear out of them 🙂

The park was lovely – totally empty apart from the odd dog walker, sun shining, birds singing that sort thing. I sat on the bench and read my book, and even had a sneaky go on the swings and the slide while the kids played. They started on the swings but them moved onto using the roundabout, climbing frame and slide as props in their windmill game. They gathered up earth and grass as corn and took it all the way round the areas processing it and nominated the climbing frame as the windmills sails, the slide as the chutes and the roundabout as the millstones. It was really indepth and though I didn’t pay much attention as I was reading my book I was still amazed at how much of yesterday’s visit had clearly gone in. 🙂


We were there for an hour or so before we started to get hungry so we came home for lunch having allowed plenty of time for anyone else who might be coming to arrive. Noone did, which was fine, we enjoyed it and I’ve suggested various other events most weeks for the next month or so so hopefully we can go and enjoy places we like going to anyway and if anyone is keen to meet up there is the opportunity for them to do so.

At home we had lunch and I had said we’d text Tasha and see if they were still at the more local park (about midway between our house and theirs, walkable in 15 minutes) and walk down to join them. We’d been talking earlier about doing some more work on their wildlife action awards stuff and looked at the next couple of activities one of which is noting all journeys for the week and seeing whether you could have biked, bussed or walked instead of using the car so they were keen to walk somewhere I think.

We watched Earth on dvd while eating which we’d seen at the cinema as a filmeducation screening when it first came out. Then the children moved on to playing a complicated game based around Humphrey – an air drying clay hamster than Tarly made at Rainbows once. She was making her new shoe box into a home for him and Davies had set up a shop,complete with home made till and barcode scanner and a selection of Hamster accessories and food, all very reasonably priced. There was fruit and vegetables, an easter egg and a box of ‘nutri nibbles’ all beautifully drawn, coloured, cut out and labelled with prices. Scarlett went and got her money box full of coppers and silver change and was working out how much she had and what she could buy.

When Tasha text back to say they’d left the park but we were welcome to go round there neither of them were interested as they said they were too busy playing :).

Scarlett counted in 2s which amazed me and with only a bit of prompting managed to work out what was needed in each coin denomination to make piles of 10pence and then count 10 of the piles to get a pound. Davies decided business was slow in his shop so he introduced a promotion of Free kiwi fruit to get the punters in. We discussed various promotional giveaways and how it could be used for advertising purposes if branded with his logo. They collaborated to create a water bottle for Humphrey’s house and together made one and attached it.

I took advantage of the peace to get loads of laundry done, do some coughing and play on Davies’ DS for a while. Oh and some more coughing 🙁

They requested pancakes for tea and wanted to help make them so they tidied up the lounge while I dealt with some more laundry and then we made pancake mix. It was one of those times when for no apparent reason a recipe you could make without looking at a book with usually great results just wasn’t happening. No idea what went wrong but I suspect all three of us trying to do it together resulted in a mis-weighing somewhere so after several failed attempts I added some more flour and another eggs to the mix and we turned out a load of perfect pancakes in the end. They demolished the lot and I settled down to do some more coughing til Ady got home.

I cried off of reading stories on the basis it would just make me cough more so while Ady was shown all the things they’d made today I nipped out to the supermarket. Back home I had a bath and cooked dinner while Ady tidied up. It’s been a nice sunshiney day, the children have played together really nicely and been creative and imaginative and happy.

Didn’t feel the need to do any VR or NVR tests with them but you never know what tomorrow might bring 😉

I was enjoying a nice lay in this morning but Ady brought me a cup of tea and told me I had to get out of bed because he wanted to strip it and change the bedding! The cheek! 😆

Davies has been wearing his crocs but he does insist on wearing socks which quite apart from the ‘ewww’ ness I feel towards crocs and socks means the socks get filthy as we often seem to be in places where it is dusty / muddy / otherwise dirty. In short I think he needed some better shoes for the summer. So we whizzed along to a localish parade of shops and I managed to get him a couple of pairs of shoes for the summer. One is a sort of smart trainer type, the other is deck shoe style ones. Scarlett could do with something a bit more substantial than crocs too but there was nothing there that wasn’t either pink and sparkly, high heeled or branded with High School Musical. She considered some of the ‘boys’ shoes but nothing really appealed to her out of those either. Might try and get her something tomorrow and I suspect they both need new wellies too in readiness for the camping season ;).

We came home to collect the chicks and set off for Tom’s house. We’d only got a couple of miles from home, although it was taking ages due to loads of traffic when my phone rang and it was my Mum all panicky as my Dad had gone off 3 hours previously to collect logs (with a chainsaw) and not returned yet. He’d not taken his phone and she was imagining all sorts of dreadful possibilities. So we turned the car round and drove back to where he goes for logs. It is down a very long lane off of the main road which has a gate midway which is often locked. It was today so I started half running off down this lane as the car couldn’t go any further fretting that I’d find him, in a pool of blood with the chainsaw still revving away when my phone rang again and it was him. He’d just got home. He and Mum were arguing – her from relief I think, she said she’d had a really bad feeling about it,and he from me being called to go and look for him. I left them to their arguing, just relieved that he was okay.

Ady did ask why she’d rung me when both she and Frazer were home (we’d not long driven past their house and seen the cars there) and either of them could have gone and the truth is I don’t know, but in my family when emergencies happen the first port of call is always ringing me to see if I can deal with it. My Mum is a bit hysterical, Frazer isn’t really much use and Dad is usually the one either requiring help or the reason for the emergency really. It’s a shame we neither ask or indeed are offered the same level of rallying round when we’re in need (ie when our boiler broke down) but there you are. At least this was a false alarm.

So, somewhat delayed we rejoined the traffic we’d already sat in once and headed off to Tom’s again. I had to make a makeshift watering bowl for the chicks from a waterbottle lid as they were getting a bit dehydrated from the prolonged time in the car but they are now happily in Tom’s shed and the house is all the more peaceful for not having them here.

We had a really nice hour or so at Tom’s; it’s so Davies and Scarlett’s sort of place. One of his hens has chicks so we saw them, had a go at catching his cockerels which are not as friendly as ours, the kids ran and threw sticks for the dogs (a motley collection of labs, terriers, dalmations), we installed the chicks in their new home, looked at the housemartins which come every year and had just arrived there this morning and then walked down to the lakes to cut some bamboo. We need some canes for our peas at the allotment and having discovered they are selling for about 50 pence each in garden centres we went and cut down some of the abundance of the stuff growing round the lakes there.

It was really marshy and they are still working on the drainage issues there (man made lakes) but it does dry out in the summer. We took the bamboo back up and stripped the leaves and loaded it in the car. There is a huge pile of horse manure under a covered tarp where Tom had seen a nest of adders so we lifted the tarp.hoping to see some. We didn’t find any adders but did find two slow worms,one larger than the other. Both the kids held them and we all remembered quite a bit of what we knew about them although I had suspected one might be pregnant and on reading up on them again it would appear too early in the year for that to be possible. No photos of any of it as sadly we both left our cameras in the car. Grr.

We could have happily stayed there all day but I was really keen to visit a windmill so we said goodbye and headed off with our bamboo – a great swap for the chicks!

From there it was off to Salvington Windmill a very local windmill to us which despite having wanted to go probably since before we had children we’ve never quite managed to coordinate it’s open times with our getting there before. I’m quite fascinated with both windmills and watermills and have been since childhood although even more so now for the ingenuity of mechanics powered by nature and the ‘green’ ness of them.

We were very pleasantly surprised to only have to part with £2 for all four of us to get in and have a guided tour of the windmill. Even more surprised to get a cup of tea, a cup of coffee and a ice lolly each for the children for £1.50 in total! 😯

It is run by volunteers and we were guided round by a very knowledgeable man who told us all about the sails – they have two pairs of different sails; one is the original style of canvas covered ones which the miller would adjust the canvas according to the wind levels, the second set is a newer set of spring loaded ones which are adjustable from the ground without the need to clamber up the sail like the canvas ones require.

Next we were led into the roundhouse at the base of the mill. This would be used for storage and had the bottom of the post which supports the whole structure and the four trestle beams which in turn support that. The post is original – 300 years as a post and a 200 year old oak tree when it would have been cut down to be used so 500 years from being an acorn! The trestles had been replaced within the last 20 or so years.
” alt=”” />
Next we went to the back of the mill where the stairs were raised and the children helped to push the whole mill round. I had no idea that mills did that but it does make sense that they needed to be pushed to the right direction for the wind. It was moved again later while we were inside it which was a very odd sensation.
” alt=”” />

Then upstairs and into the first level. There are several trapdoors on each level and on this level you could see the two bedstones above and the chutes came down from above which would contain flour.

Up again to the top where a massive wheel was turned by the sails and in turn by a cog system turned the top wheel against the bottom wheel where corn went inbetween and was ground to flour. There were two wheels doing this. The trapdoors were explained as how the miller got the corn up to the top of the mill where the corn bins were (another level again but not open to us today) by opening the trapdoors and having the farmer delivering them to him tie them onto a pulley rope below at the ground then using the power of the sails turning to turn another spindle which reeled the sacks of corn up through the trapdoors to the top of the mill.

There was another trapdoor from the middle floor where milled corn would be returned back up to the top floor again to go through a sieveing process, also driven by a spindle turning a cog turning a cylindrical sieve with different grades of mesh through which white or wholemeal flour would fall. This was a newer addition and would not have been in the original mill.

In our little group was us, an older couple and a mother with three small girls so we didn’t have many questions over and above what he’d already told us. I took Davies and Scarlett over to the front of the top section again and we looked at the mechanism of the big wheel turning the cogs on the smaller wheel, which turned the spindle to turn the stone and so on as I don’t think they’d followed all that when the man had told us, partially because they were being distracted by the view out of the windows and the feeling of moving round as the whole mill was turned from below.

Coming down was slightly more daunting as the steps were steep and with rope handles. On the external steps coming out of the windmill Tarly misunderstood my telling her to put her hands on my shoulders for support and leapt on my back for a piggyback which could have been nasty if I’d lost my balance as I was not ready for that at all!
” alt=”” />
” alt=”” />
We came home via the allotment to drop off the bamboo canes which I’ll try and get to on Tuesday to install for the poeas. Once home I got dinner going (ham in coke) and made some brownies too. Scarlett spent some time with the chickens and then came in to play her DS, Ady did some stuff out in the garden and Davies brought me a pile of books and read a load of Dr Seuss stuff to me. He’s on a bit of a roll with the reading thing now, starting to recognise words he’s come across before and not need to spell everything out which is meaning he’s getting quicker and therefore more confident and of course is succeeding which is always a great motivator! 🙂

Dinner was a late one so the kids had a bath (Scarlett) and a shower (Davies) to wash various grime from various places off them and then we all sat down about 730pm and chatted about camping and taking it in turns to cook dinners while we ate. I finished reading which they both understood and enjoyed more than I expected them too.

Quick bath for me before watching Lost and whilst I’m not stiff today (plenty of not sitting around) I am heartily sick of my cough which is now giving me a sore throat. I am desperate for all of us not to be snotty and coughy any more, it’s been a very long two weeks.

Lovely day today though, plenty of sunshine, time together and learning new stuff 🙂

Work for me this morning. A very lazy day really; for the first half hour I did some tidying and chatted to S who usually runs the homework club and does some relief work so was covering someone on holiday today. She’s really interesting – ex-teacher who has an interesting take on stuff. We talked about holidays in third world countries and emigrating.

Next I spent an hour on the enquiry desk. I was twice complimented on my ‘pretty top’ by the lecherous old men who are regulars (it’s one my more cleavage-y work tops), sent a fax, ordered a couple of books for people and gave out the papers lots of times.

I then had tea break, with J, the Saturday assistant and we chatted about driving; he’s just started riding a scooter.

After that I had an hour of working in the workroom which mostly entailed having a nice long phone chat with E, the camp library assistant from Shoreham about this year’s summer reading challenge and what displays we might do and more chatting to J this time about Home Education. He had some interesting questions about actually. I don’t think I’ve ever really discussed it with someone so young before. He’s from a pretty academic background and is expected to do well in his A levels and go to uni. He’s a really nice kid and the sort of son you’d be really proud of with his clean cut image and intention of studying hard and getting a good well paid job but I suspect he’s never really met anyone before who’s challenged him about whether that is what life should be all about. When I left he thanked me for such an interesting chat though so I’m hoping his mum won’t be after me for being a bad influence and leading him astray from his planned out life course ;).

The last hour was spent planning displays. I felt like I had a really dossy morning actually.

Home for lunch where the others had spent most of the time in the garden doing paintings and drawings on the easel in the garden. Ady suggested a walk at Woods Mill nature reserve as it was such a nice sunny afternoon so that’s what we did. We had a really nice couple of hours walking round there in amongst the bluebells. I like it there lots. Davies read all of the bridge names including words like ‘kingfisher’ and ‘nightingale’. He’s still hesitant but he tells me he is often looking at books in bed and trying to work out what words say so he’s clearly getting the practise in now which is what he needs to progress. It’s nice to see him wanting to have a go and succeeding. 🙂

” alt=”from the front” />
” alt=”from the back” />

Back at home Davies and I watched last weeks Primeval on itvplayer just in time before this weeks was on. Ady made their tea and we watched Britains got Talent before they went to bed. I’m still coughing and it’s driving me mad, wish it would just go away now.

and stiff, in a bizarre all things at once sort of way!

Not sure where this morning went really although I did answer the phone twice – once to my Mum and once to Lynda, both of which were longish phonecalls. We finally got out of the house to go to Tasha’s but stopped for petrol and then nipped into a big warehouse near the local recycling centre which is a hugh charity shop on the way. I got a load of bags of the wool used for needle felting all priced at just 70 pence each – bargain! Tasha had sent me a text asking if I had any cocoa as she was baking and had run out and the garage hadn’t got any so we popped back to the local shop for some and I decided to nip home too and collect my needle felting stuff so I could show Tasha how to do it as she’d been interested last time we talked about it. All of which seemed to take ages so we didn’t get to hers till nearly midday.

The kids disappeared upstairs with DSs when we arrived and Tasha and I had a good chat about all sorts of things. They then all decided they were hungry so we had lunch. Scarlett came back downstairs and said the boys were leaving her out so she did some needle felting and made a cat and a daisy and showed Tasha how to do it. She did manage to break 2 needles by bending them so I stopped her after that as I need to get some more (and a handle I think, to protect them a bit longer!) so she spent the rest of the time sprawled across me playing her DS while Tasha and I carried on chatting.

Davies and Toby started watching a film and then played playstation for a while before going back upstairs.They did come back to see if Tarly wanted to play but she declined (good for her I thought! ;)) and then they seemed to get bored of each other. Davies said on the way home they’d both got bored of the game they were playing and couldn’t think of anything else to play. It was 4pm by then so we decided to head for home.

At home the kids put on Princes Quest which I’d brought home from work and has been here a couple of weeks. They put it on really reluctantly as I said I was taking it back to work tomorrow but it drew them both in really quickly and they both really enjoyed it. They had tea while watching it.

I read a fair chunk of Dear Mr Sprouts (Its True) at bedtime which captured them both far more than I’d have expected. I skipped over some of the language in the book – lots of bugger, shit, bloody and pricks, none of which I have massive problems with but didn’t really want to be peppering bedtime stories with when I wasn’t really wanting to get into a big conversation about why I don’t want to hear them saying those words. We probably read about half before I satrted coughing too much to continue.

My back is really stiff again and as I’m fairly sure it’s from sitting on the sofa with my laptop I’m trying to think of solutions which don’t simply involve never sitting on the sofa with my laptop again.

And the final news of the day, brought to you before she even knows herself is that Tarly will be doing Forest School from next week too! They didn’t have enough takers so have opened it out to younger children which she will no doubt be utterly thrilled about when I tell her in the morning :).

Work for me today. It’s been quite an enjoyable if slightly frustrating at times sort of day. I’ve spent all of it either on the counter or the enquiry desk with a wide range of enquiries including ‘how to spell unequivocal’ from my favourite drunk who was typing an email to someone. He said he ‘didn’t want to look like a twat’ by misspelling it so I fetched him a dictionary and then watched from afar as he struggled to focus on the keyboard and screen sufficiently to type unequivocal in the middle of a load of ranting swear words on his screen! 😆

I ‘helped’ an old lady – ’86 you know’ – who said she’d been sent to us by her GP as she’d gone to find out what help was available for elderley people in the way of being taken out for the day and taken somewhere for free meals. She was incredibly demanding and rather deaf so quite hard work. I found her details of two local volunteer services for old people and contact details for the local branch of Help the Aged but she wanted more from me and actually asked if I could ring them for her at which point I had to refuse and explain the library’s role as information givers rather than practical support offerers. I still don’t think she quite understood and I suspect her GP may have been partly responsible for her misunderstanding.

I had another woman who wanted details of who our local MPs are and how to contact them. She was very doubtful her letter would be read by a real MP and I assured her I’d had a reply recently from writing to our MP and explained about the surgeries they run where you can actually meet them. She really wanted to tell me what it was she was wanting to write to them about but I didn’t encourage her and she ended up telling me if she didn’t get any joy from the MP she would go to the Sun newspaper so I gave her contact details for them too! 😆

There were also the usual lost library cards, ordering in books for people, sending several faxes and it seemed today that every single person who came in to use the photocopier needed help with it so I spent a lot of time standing infront of that making things darker or bigger or smaller or double sided.

I chatted to J, the Saturday assistant this morning.I like him a lot; he’s 16, very charming and full of confidence. He is doing similar A levels to what I did at the same college I was at so we chatted about that and which tutors are still there and what he wants to be when he grows up. He asked my opinon of uni and then asked about what other jobs I’ve had so I gave him a potted career history of the last 20 (gulp) years and explained I am probably not likely to be the best advocate of formal education or educational institutions ;).

I had my lunch break with H, the new girl who is struggling a lot and spent a long time chatting to her. She has been officially told she’s not doing so well and given a time scale to improve which is terrifying her. We chatted about her trying to work out whether she thinks it is the right job for her and whether she wants to make it work and does enjoy it. I feel very strongly that fear of not having a job isn’t a good enough reason to stay in one you hate and I was saying to her that I don’t think there is any shame in realising something is not for you and walking away from it, but conversely if she feels she could do really well she shouldn’t give up at the first hurdle and that noone wants her to fail and she should take support from us all in getting better at the job if she wants to stay rather than falling into a self fulfilling prophesy of deciding she is crap at it and therefore being crap. That was a rather long sentence wasn’t it!? 😆

In the afternoon there was a lighter feel to the place and A, S and I spent a happy couple of hours between customers challenging each other with book titles to see if we could name the author. A is a real proper librarian and certainly knows her books although I was surprised at just how much my knowledge has come on from working at the library. S, who previously worked in Woolworths knew the barcode for a Cadburys Creme Egg and I impressed everyone by also knowing barcodes for B&Q growbags and T&G flooring. As S and I said, book knowledge is all well and good but it takes a good solid retail training to really shine! 😆

Back at home Ady had been home with Davies and Scarlett in the morning and they’d done a couple of runs to the tip. Ady had asked the guys working there if the kids could get out the car and see what was happening as it was fairly quiet and he chatted to them for a while about recycling and refuse which Ady said was interesting. I think they both slumped around lunchtime though and by the time I got home at 5 the house was a bit gloomy.

Mum was here for the afternoon and I think she’d been giving Tarly a hard time about everything while sitting with Davies on her lap.He had been playing up to it and appeared to be almost in need of an ambulance when I came home but amazingly fairly perky mere moments after she went home :rolls: – she even followed him to the toilet to ‘check he’s okay’ – arrghhh!!!

Scarlett was being princessy and stroppy and Davies was being pathetic so I finally got everyone sorted out, admired Davies’ Iron Man built from geomags and persuaded him to tidy them up and then when they were in their pjs we read some stories. I finished The Cat Who Got Carried Away from yesterday and then in an Ahlberg fest we also read The Woman Who Won Things and The Children Who Smelled a Rat all of which we enjoyed. We finished off with The Cow That Laid an Egg and then peace and love restored and with Ady arrived home they went off to bed and were both asleep really quickly.

Ady cooked toad in the hole which was delicious and I’ve been playing picpic on the DS. I’m now debating one last game before bed…

Everyone slept in this morning. I was vaguely aware of Ady bumbling around downstairs until later than normal and then Tarly came and got into bed with me. I woke again about 930am and had to wake both children at 10am. Neither of them had particularly late nights, just still really wiped out from The Bug Of Doom 🙁

Got everyone breakfasted and dressed and spent half an hour going through my diary planning various park visits, nature walks and other such stuff that we’ll enjoy alone anyway but I’ve opened out to local HEors if they want to come along. I like it when the schools go back after Easter and we have that whole summer term of nice weather and the parks and beaches to ourselves before schools break up, the weather changes and everywhere gets busy so I want to make the most of April and May. I’ve also had about 10 emails over the last month from potential new HEors and often these smaller park or walk meet ups are less daunting and more accessible than big groups I think so hopefully some of the will be encouraged to come along and have a nice introduction to local folk.

I spent much longer posting an email to the Worthing list, setting up reminders to go out automatically and trying to get them on the West Sussex HE group on facebook than I did writing them in my diary however and I’ve still not finished doing that.One thing arranging them with myself, quite another advertising them to the rest of the world! 😆

Then the doorbell rang and our very long awaited guests were here! Caz and Bid, with Archie and Elliot. These were the friends we met early last year and instantly connected with. They looked after Davies and Scarlett several times while I worked and the four kids get on like a house on fire. I really like both Caz and Bid and although Ady’s only met them a couple of times he got on well with them too. They went off on a big adventure WOOFing in the UK and then travelling abroad and have been in New Zealand for the last six months or so.

I’ve had regular envy-inspiring emails from them about what an amazing time they are having, all the interesting people they’ve met and what a life changing experience they are getting, then at Christmas they announced they were coming home via Australia. And they arrived back in the UK on Thursday last week.

The four children went straight out into the garden and stayed there for the full 3 hours they were with us. They were all barefoot, rather on the feral side and having a ball! We sat and chatted and they filled me in on their plans – they’ve sold their house here and bought a chunk of land in NZ and are going to be living fairly communally with another 2 families, also Brit HEors who have been out there for years. It all sounds utterly idyllic and the lifestyle they are planning is very in sync with what Ady and I would love except I don’t think I am prepared to move halfway round the world to achieve it really.

They are staying in the UK (although doing some more travelling and WOOFing here) for the next 5 months so we should see plenty of them while they’re here and I’m hoping long term that having two sets of very dear friends living in NZ will mean we will one day get there ourselves for a visit to see just what it is that has so captivated them all.

I love spending time with them as they are both great thinkers, very deep and spiritual and we always have really great conversations about stuff. I shared a couple of ideas I had about things with them including my life theory about decades, which Bid loved and it was just all positive and lovely :).

Ady had hoped to get back in time to see them and just about managed to pull up as they were leaving so it was a brief hug and kiss and hello with a promise to see them soon for a proper catch up. Looking forward to having them around again if only for the brief time over the summer.

We all came back in and had some lunch before loading up the car with various stuff to head up to the allotment. I’ve blogged about all of that over on Self Suffish so I won’t bother saying it again here but it was a lovely couple of hours digging and weeding and chatting together. Scarlett and I had an interesting conversation about new things being scary but worth being scared for. I remember Davies at about the same age a couple of years ago suddenly actively seeking out these type of conversations and he’s never really stopped – it’s great that Tarly is now doing the same thing :).

Everyone was really worn out by the time we’d finished at nearly 7pm so we came home via McDs for a quick tea for the kids, followed by a bath for everyone – we were all filthy! I read a couple of bedtime stories as we’ve not had any for a few days due to them collapsing at bedtime rather than needing to be wound down and relaxed – How to Live Forever (Red Fox picture books) (which we loved just as much as Falling Angels which is one we actually own), Memorial – again beautifully illustrated where the pictures almost tell more of a story than the words and as they begged and pleaded I made a start on (ie the first five chapters which must be half the book!) The Cat Who Got Carried Away which they both really enjoyed. I’ve done a comprehensive weed out of the library items here as we were standing at 63 items out on loan and I wanted to reduce it a bit so there is a big bag to go back although I suspect there will be as many items waiting for me to collect when I go into work again tomorrow!

I watched the Apprentice which was real shouting at the telly stuff this week and now with my bones stiffening in a good ‘I have done exercise’ type way rather than an ‘I have felt ill and spent too much time on the sofa hunched over my laptop’ type way I am off to bed.

Davies and Scarlett have been at that stage of feeling well enough to want to play together but not quite well enough to pull it off without annoying each other today. 🙁

This morning was a round of letting out and feeding adult chickens, feeding children, checking on chicks, putting away washing, sorting more laundry and getting several loads washed and pegged out on the line.

Davies assisted me in moistening the remains of egg membrane to remove it from the chick still in the incubator. It’s still in there now, still in inside the egg position but still cheeping and alive. The other chick I didn’t expect to last the night is also still with us. It’s been adopted by Scarlett and spent much of the day inside her sleeve where it seems very happy. The rest are all going to Tom on Monday but if that one, which she’s called ‘Liberty’ survives them Tarly is going to keep it. I doubt it will survive but it’s certainly a fighter.

Scarlett and I took her stones out of the tumbler where they’ve finished their final rinse and are now polished. I’m really impressed with them and we’ll definitely do another load when we next go to the beach and can collect some. I think we’ll put the tumbler out in the garage though, it is *very* noisy.

I finally sat down with a cup of tea and my laptop and sent a couple of emails (one for Frazer to appeal against his parking ticket) and got our gas and electric bills online after our meters were read last week. I opened the first one and it was over £400 in credit. I suspected the other one might be the same in reverse but that was also in credit, by over £500. Two years ago we were over £500 in arrears and spent most of Ady’s annual bonus clearing that to get us back to a zero balance. The meters were last read in June last year and I seem to recall the monthly payments were increased slightly as a result so the overpayment must be in part at least to me nagging everyone about using less gas and electric, which feels good :). So we’ve reduced the monthly repayments on both by nearly half and will be getting rebate of the overpayment. Not sure what yet we’ll spend it on but we do intend spending it and enjoying it! 🙂

I spoke to Julie on the phone for half an hour catching up on news -mostly gloom and doom really; me whinging about us all having been ill and her telling me that Jack fell off his bike yesterday and has fractured his elbow and is in plaster 🙁 I think we managed to cheer each other up though and hopefully will actually catch up in person soon.

Ali and Freya arrived while I was finishing up my phone call and we had a nice afternoon. The children never really settled into playing very well together. Davies was being very full of mischief and boisterousness and Scarlett was being very delicate but they did have some periods of leaving us to chat including some DSing, some Xboxing, some eating ice lollies outside.

Scarlett slumped first and ended up sat back on the sofa, chick in her sleeve. We discussed at length the idea of introducing sticker charts with smilies and frownies and a nayughty spot. I said I was all in favour of 360 degree feedback and was prepared to also be judged with smilies and frownies. Freya immediately awarded me a million billion and thousand frownies, which Tarly took back and Davies re-awarded me (not sure why) so Tarly and I planned to run off together and start a new life with new names (Moon and Star) and make our living from busking and selling branded merchandise. Just another surreal afternoon! 😆

Ady came home and I ran Ali and Freya home. When I got back Scarlett was about to go to bed, Davies was eating dinner having had a bath and everyone was pretty tired and subdued, me included.

So, really happy about the bonus cash, really traumatised with all the chick angst and just really tired by all the convalesing.

I had a long and much needed lie in this morning. The first nights sleep in a week when I havent’ been sleeping on a floor or awake coughing for most of the night! I woke to the sounds of happy and noisy children so knew long before I made it downstairs that they were both feeling better too :).

The two eggs that were mid-hatch when I went to bed last night were still in the same state and the 6 chicks already in the brooder were all doing okay but 2 had badly splayed legs. One of them I’d already noticed soon after it hatched yesterday . Their legs should sit nicely below their bodies but when they splay one or both side out to the side and don’t take their weight properly when they walk. There are degrees of it and there seems to be debate as to what causes it but among other issues it was one of the problems Spatchcock had. One of the chicks seemed otherwise completely fine and the other although a bit feeble doesn’t have anything else obvious wrong with it. They would both of course be culled in most instances for this but I remembered having read something about splayed legs so checked up on it and decided to try and do something about it after looking online.

We’ve always said we won’t ever take the chickens to the vets – they are not pets and we won’t treat them as such but I am learning loads about poultry keeping and if nothing else it was a good way of learning more. I’ll blog about it in depth on Self Suffish.

My Mum rang and I said we’d go over there for lunch and planned on walking over. I thought the fresh air and exercise would do me and the children good and I could either get one of my parents to run me back to collect my car to go back for D and S or wait for Ady to pick us up on his way home from work so wouldn’t need to walk back with them. It’s only just over a mile and easily walkable in under 30 minutes but involves either walking along the main A27 or walking through the village which has a couple of areas with no pavement so isn’t ideal for walking.

We got dressed and left and spent some time on the grass verge outside as I told the children I’d been watching two foxes playing on there last night. They are out there most nights around 1am and if they are noisy, as they were last night, I am often alerted to them being there and watch them playing. Aside from the threat to our chickens I actually really like foxes, I think they are beautiful animals. Scarlett found a clump of fur she thought might be rabbit and Davies found some pollen that had been shaken off a flower when they jumped into our neighbours garden. Scarlett then found half an eggshell (blackbird I think) which was from a hatched chick but we couldn’t find the other half or any more of the shell.

Mum had walked to meet us about a third of the way from her house so we walked back with her. Scarlett was pointing out butterflies, beetles and flowers to her, quite a few of which Tarly knew the names of and my Mum didn’t. Someone said to me the other day ‘your children are really into nature’ which wasn’t something I’d particularly thought about them but I guess is true. It’s funny how my kids are having the childhood I read about in books and hankered after but never actually had myself.

Mum and I double-backed to the supermarket having left the children with my Dad and Frazer to get various bits for lunch. It was classic my family round there today. Frazer had had his car towed home from the town centre by my Dad yesterday after he’d broken down, left it parked on double yellow lines and got a parking ticket. They’d not been able to get the car started so Dad called the AA out. The AA man came, plugged the car into his fancy laptop to try and get a reading of what was wrong and it came up saying nothing was. Infact that was correct – using a high tech process of elimination he worked out that all that was actually wrong with it was that it had run out of petrol! Now I play petrol chicken fairly regularly myself so I won’t judge too much but that is very Frazer!

Mum was on one of her ‘my life is shit’ kicks wanting to moan about everything around her but not prepared to listen to any advice or solutions. Sometimes I think she quite enjoys wallowing in her own misery…

Dad was in one of his antagonistic moods, wanted to argue with me about why Home Educators should consider the ‘HE could be used as a cover for abuse’ in any way offensive ‘well it might!’ and totally didn’t get the welfare and education as seperate issues thing. At least he does these things with an element of self awareness and the knowledge that he is winding me up and that is partly why he says things.

The kids enjoyed being with Frazer while I sat and chatted with my parents in the kitchen. Dad tried to get me involved in one of their arguments but I said my years of mediating in their marital issues had long since passed which had them both looking slightly shamefaced. I lost track of the number of times Mum said to me today ‘well it’s alright for you, Ady does…x, y, z’

Ady, who as we have long since established is wonderful, finished work slightly earlier than normal which was good as the children were both more than ready to go home, and came to meet us there. He stayed for coffee and then we came home.

Ady and the kids spent time in the garden, I spent time performing medical procedures on chicks, cooked the kids’ tea and then had a bath before sorting out our dinner.

I don’t think I could honestly say any of us are 100% back to full health but I think we’re all on the right side of getting better at least.

We bought Davies and Scarlett one small Easter egg each, a couple of packets of small eggs to ‘hide’ around the lounge and a small present each for Easter. I hate all the excess packaging that comes with Easter eggs and refuse to get drawn into it being some sort of mini-Christmas type celebration but we started the egg hiding thing years ago and they enjoy it. Scarlett got a Fur Real duckling that she’d been wanting for ages and Ady finally found in Tescos about a month ago (she’d wanted it for Christmas but we’d not been able to find one).It turns out she was wanting a chick rather than a duckling and she is a bit cross that it has a bottle of milk to drink and even worse in her opinon, it burps once it’s drunk from it. She’s not at all happy at the idea that birds drink milk let alone out of bottles and dislikes the uncouthness of the belching! 😆 She’s so not a girl that would ever have wanted a weeing, wailing Baby Annabel or similar!

Davies got a ‘make your own comic’ set with a load of blank storyboard pages, some already filled in, a set of pens and loads of character stickers and speech bubbles – all Ben 10. He was delighted with it and spent ages this afternoon thinking up a storyline and colouring and drawing with it.

David and Jeanette /Annette had been over way back about 2 weeks ago with a bag of ‘easter presents’ which were revealed to be a toy car for Davies and a lurid lime green sparkly unicorn for Scarlett. Maureen left a bag on the doorstep earlier in the week with a chocolate bunny each for them and an Easter card so they’ve done well. I believe they have more eggs to come from Mum and Dad and Frazer and possibly my Granny too. We’ll no doubt be using excess chocolate to cook with a couple of weeks from now!

The big news this morning was not the presents or the chocolate however, it was that the first of the eggs in the incubator had hatched! It’s been followed through the day by five more and of the 6 eggs still in the incubator two have pips and look to be hatching too, so 8 / 12 may well be our best hatch yet. I guess it had to be on Easter day – real Easter chicks! 🙂

I insisted everyone got dressed today and had intentions of getting everyone out for some fresh air but it wasn’t to be. Scarlett and I did take a short walk to the local shop to try and get a light bulb as we discovered the brooder lamp had blown it’s bulb. The very local shop had a massive queue of about 20 people and only 40watt bulbs so we walked to the slightly less local but still quite local shop and they only had energy saving bulbs which are great but no use for giving out plenty of heat which is what we want it for. Scarlett slumped on the way home and had to have a piggy back though.

Ady and I are pretty much recovered from being ill, although we both have lingering coughs but the children are both still really knocked out by it. They both slept for a couple of hours again this afternoon – Scarlett went to bed and Davies on the sofa which is just unheard of for them. They both look washed out and energy-less. It really has been a horrible bug and I’m just glad we didnt have anything to cancel or miss out on this week.

I rang my Mum who was all for coming over to see us but I put her off and then she rang me back as my Granny had been ringing us (and being ignored) so had rung her. She wanted me to ring her back but I got really cross and refused. I can’t see why none of them could seem to accept that we are all ill, feel crap and antisocial and just want to be left alone. Surely family duty shouldn’t have to extend to making phonecalls and receiveing visitors (who would only sit around and expect to have tea and coffee made for them anyway!!!!) when you feel ill. I could understand if there were offers to bring over food / shopping / run the hoover round but that wouldn’t ever happen anyway. Or maybe I’m just extra grumpy and intolerant at the moment.

Ady made a lovely roast beef lunch which both children slept through but he and I enjoyed eating together. A couple with a young child in a pushchair were standing on the pavement outside watching our cockerel for ages and I was all for asking them if they’d like to see the chicks but Ady was having none of it! When the children woke up they had their dinner and both had baths and hairwashes although Scarlett’s hair needs a good brush as it is all tangled.

I had a go at the microwave cake in a mug recipe which turned out really well and we all had for pudding and eventually, because sleep patterns are all over the place round here at the moment, everyone has gone to bed and finally to sleep.

Looking forward to some sort of return to normality tomorrow although I suspect the children will be running at far from full capacity for a few more days yet.

Another day, another loads of blowing noses, coughing and feeling ill 🙁

Davies is all but back to normal, I feel pretty much okay and I think Ady inbetween being Superman is feeling on the up too. Poor Tarly is feeling rough today though and took herself off for a nap in the middle of the day and slept for several hours.

Dad came round this morning for an hour or so which was nice. After he’d gone Ady and I made a short shopping list of stuff we needed and I went off to Sainsburys with it. It felt so good to get out of the house!

Home again for lunch. The kids did some drawing. Davies and I watched last weeks Primeval. We watched Doctor Who (I never watched Eastenders but I still struggled with the girl not having an east end accent, and wasn’t the black clairvoyant woman in Eastenders once too?) and then Britains Got Talent.

Ady cooked a lovely curry which neither of us managed to eat very much of. Everyone went to bed.

See told you there was nothing to see!

I was woken by Tarly crying this morning. I knew as soon as I heard it that it meant she had gone down with The Bug Of Doom and sure enough she has. She came and got into bed with me for a while but we were both up early and Davies wasn’t far behind us. Ady had left home at stupid o’clock as he’d volunteered to go into London for something which everyone at his work thought was madness on Good Friday but his plan was to get there, get it done and get out again before the traffic built up. He managed it too and was home again by 930am and off for the rest of the day.

We did manage to get pictures of the kids eating breakfast at the table and me letting out and feeding the chickens. The children were dressed and we decided to melt some chocolate to make some easter shapes in some molds Ady had brought in the shapes of chicks and bunnies. It’s not worked quite as well as expected as they have stuck in the molds but we might have another go tomorrow, or bake cakes in the tray instead or something.

Next Scarlett and I put the rock tumbler onto it’s next phase which involved removing all the rocks and rinsing and drying them, cleaning out the tumbler barrel, checking all the rocks for damaged or chipped ones and discarding a couple which aren’t tumbling so well due to cracks and rough bits, then putting them back in with polishing compound, polishing pellets (I think the purpose of them to to soften the impact of the rocks against each other), water and a pinch of washing powder. Davies helped and has suddenly become quite interested in the whole process. We’ve all been pleasantly surprised at the results so far.

Scarlett and I spent some time looking online for more supplies of grit and polish and found some great websites with lovely images and rough gemstones you can buy to tumble. I think we’ll stick to collecting from the beach but we got some nice ideas from it. Meanwhile Ady and Davies played some Xbox together.

We all got a bit restless then and debated going to the circus which is on at Brooklands (the park by the beach just down the road) or for a walk but it was pouring with rain and Ady said he didn’t want to go and I didn’t want to go without him so we gave up on that idea. We half watched a film about a cat starring the children who played Jane and Michael Banks in Mary Poppins which led to looking them up online to see what they are doing now. The actress who played Jane is still acting although Mary Poppins was probably still the peak of her career, the actor who played Michael is now dead (sadly when he was still very young although the causes seem a little hazy – drink and drugs or some tropical illness?) and the only 3 films he was in were all co-starring ‘Jane’.

The children then both really slumped – which was when we stopped photoblogging – and both retired to our bed to watch cartoons in bed. Davies slept for about 2 hours and Tarly dozed a fair bit too. Ady did various things also including dozing and I worked through the whole of the first unit of an online course on Healthy Eating I’m doing. It’s very interesting and I’ve learnt loads about nutrition and food groups today. I vaguely recall being taught it at school in Home Economics, which seems to be the lesson I learnt the most useful stuff in when I look back. I do think the school I went to, although not particularly good as schools go, did have loads to offer, it’s just that I wasn’t in the right place to learn it. I know it was in pre national curriculum days and perhaps teacher then were still in the job as a vocation rather than because they didn’t know where else to go after uni but it does make me think that I had all those people on hand now who were passionate about their subject and knowledgable and actually wanted to share that information with me I’d probably be far better placed now to listen to it. But still not all of it and still only on my terms and still only when it seemed relevant or interesting to me. I guess that’s what I’m trying to offer Davies and Scarlett really – access to all those people and all that information as and when they want it without the structure, desks or school bells.

Scarlett and Ady planted some peas and then her and I did some Dsing together. Ady ran a bath for me and dug out the bubble mat as my back is very stiff again. He put a tiny amount of bubble bath in and it created a foam party in there worthy of an Ibizan nightclub which entertained us all lots!

Davies had a bath and then picked at a slice of pizza and we all watched an interesting programme on the Eden channel which I suspect is about to become our new favourite about cavemen and ice age.

They went to bed, we had dinner, and now I’m sitting waiting for Scarlett to stop calling out in her sleep so I can go to bed although I suspect we’re in for another broken night.

After a bizarre early morning conversation with Ady who woke up with me at 5am ish when I got up to go to the loo about why the cockerel hadn’t started crowing yet and then laying awake waiting until he did I went back to sleep til about 9am ish. I woke feeling better but not right by any means.

We had a late breakfast which was then made worse by needing to have an early lunch as I was working this afternoon. Mum has no car as it is being serviced so I dropped the kids over to her which meant I spent the whole morning clock watching and then we still left later than I’d wanted to with me yelling that I was going to be late for work and then worrying that it was a real possibility as the traffic was hideous for the mile and a half to my parents house. We watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which is possibly the longest film in the world as it seemed to already be some way into it when I sat down and was still going when we left. Scarlett played Gardening mama and Davies who was feeling better spent some time being annoying to her before getting out one of the construction toys to play with.

I got to work fine and spent the first hour ordering books for a display on Gardening I’m doing next month. Then the next 2hours in the staffroom having my annual appraisal or PDR (personal development review) as they call them. I’ll let you look back at previous accounts of reviews or ask Chris to write it for me as it was the same old, same old really. Nice to hear the praise, pleasing to be good at something but slightly without real pride as a part time library assistant job really is something I should be able to do very easily and be very good at – I’d like to be being congratulated for something that is more challenging really. Possibly feeling hormonal and ill contributed to being a bit blah about it too.

As Ady would be passing my parents on his way home anyway and so he picked them up and rang me to say he was staying there for a coffee and then taking the kids to McDonalds for their tea (I’d promised Davies one when he was feeling better, he decided that was tonight!) so suggested I have a bath and enjoy the peace and quiet. I celebrated by having a very long bath, drinking a hot toddy and even turning the rock tumbler off to create perfect silence :). Ady also offered to cook dinner if I tidied up which seemed like a good deal to me :).

They all arrived home and I read some stories before bed – It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Into the Forest and Bob’s Best Ever Friend

Ady bought a cheap 4gb mp3 player so I’ve spent some time putting music onto that and will also put some audio books onto it for the kids too which means I can finally take the Mr Gum audiobook back to the library – we currently have 64 library items out between our tickets!

Tomorrow assuming Scarlett doesn’t come down with the lurgy in which case I imagine my day will mostly be spent on a sofa with her draped across me, I’m planning to melt some chocolate to use the cool easter egg molds we have while stropping about the fact Ady has to work.

Davies had a better night although I didn’t sleep very well as I kept waking to blow my nose. I was woken by Scarlett coming to tell me that Davies was being sick 🙁 He wasn’t, he was just coughing up flem but still not the most delightful start to the day.

I made breakfast for everyone and just about managed to remain cheerful and hostessy until 11am when Lynda and Stuart headed off for Manchester. It really has been lovely to see them and Scarlett particularly has loved every minute but it was just really poor timing that Davies was ill and Ady worked really late both nights too which didn’t really help when I was struggling to keep all the balls in the air and have my parents around lots adding to the burden rather than easing it.

Davies fell asleep on the sofa for pretty much the whole morning and while staying quite floppy for this afternoon he has managed a fairly good sized dinner, had a shower and clean pjs and was asleep peacefully in bed by the unheard of early hour of about 830pm! I’m hoping he’ll get a good nights sleep and wake tomorrow back to himself. And of course crossing my fingers, while fearing the worst, that Scarlett doesn’t go down with it next.

Scarlett really struggled with the lack of her playmate and the loss of two adults who she has had the lions share of the attention from and really wanted me to give her all my attention. I wasn’t really feeling up to it and wanted to get the house back in some sort of order so was rolling up sleeping bags, deflating camping mats, changing bed linen and processing laundry and was short tempered with her which caused her to sob at me ‘you just don’t want me around’ and flee to her room in a manner most befitting her name :(. So we sat in her room for about an hour and gave it a really good tidy up in there, chatting as we went, which placated her, poor thing 🙁

Davies then woke up and she set his DS up for him to play with her and they sat happily for a couple of hours doing that together on the sofa. I finished making the house look like ours again and then slumped. Ady came home and I very quickly realised I was being a bitch to everyone so took myself off to the bedroom to read my book and recover. I came back after about half an hour and tried to make a start on an online course I’m doing on healthy eating but it was refusing to work on firefox and I was getting increasingly cross with it. I eventually opened it in IE but then Ady and the children kept trying to talk to me about various inane things even though I’d asked them all just to leave me alone so I stropped off to bed again.

I wasn’t there very long before both kids appeared and we sat playing Gardening Mama on Tarly;s DS together until Ady called them for tea and me for a bath he’d very kindly run. I felt much better after that, have managed a bit of a start on the course, finally finished flickring, watched The Apprentice and had a nice dinner.

I’m working tomorrow afternoon but as I’m having my appraisal rather than actually working in the library unless I feel really dreadful or one of the children isn’t up to being left with my Mum I’m intending going in. I’ve got a hot cinnamon tea laced with honey, lemon and a large brandy after which I’m off to bed in the hopes of sleeping it all off and waking in my own bed in the morning to a house where everyone feels better.

Things did not improve after last night’s post. At Davies’ wobbly request I took my camping mat and sleeping bag up to his bedroom and slept on his floor. I spent the first hour or so reassuring him I was still there every five minutes or so and trying to read my book. He finally fell into a restless sleep about 130am so I went to sleep but was woken at 3am by him sobbing and then getting quite hysterical and virtually screaming for about 15 minutes. He was awake but delirious and shouting all sorts of things about our cat (presumably in reaction to my parent’s cat dying yesterday), not wanting me but wanting his Mummy, clutching at his head and pulling at his hair, turning away from the light and generally acting in a very weird way. He was burning hot but getting very upset at the suggestion of medicine and I daren’t leave him to fetch any anyway. I was mentally running through yelling for help from either Lynda in our bedroom next door or banging on the floor to rouse Ady sleeping in the playroom below or going straight for the ambulance if he carried on as he seemed in real pain (yet not in need of any of my first aid training! ;)) when he fell back against the pillow exhausted and seemed to accept I was Mummy after all and went back into a fitful sleep. I watched over him for quite a while and woke every time he murmmered or moved so had a very crap nights sleep whilst already running on sleep deficit 🙁

This morning he seemed brighter and whilst he has been running a temperature I’ve managed to get regular doses of medised into him which is helping with the spikes. He had a little breakfast and I’ve got him to drink plenty of water. He was adamant he wanted to get dressed so he and Stuart could build a trainset together so they did that this morning while Lynda and Scarlett played some farm life game on Tarly’s DS. I feel like I’ve spent the whole day washing up and making tea and coffee (which sounds really stroppy and I don’t mean it like that at all, we’ve loved having them and we are always equally well looked after at their house).

Stuart particularly was keen to see the allotment so we drove up there for a quick tour which took it out of Davies and he was shaking and pale and needing to come home again. He’s spent a lot of time flopped across my lap today. He was persuaded to have a little lunch and as we were finishing eating my parents arrived – cue more tea and coffee making. Lynda and Stuart are very diplomatic and friendly to my parents but are seeing a whole other side to the public face my Mum in particular likes to put across ;). The funniest moment of the whole couple of days was Stuart talking fondly about how they spend so much time with their 3yo granddaughter and albeit hard work sometimes they love every minute of it. My Mum smiled indulgently and said how lovely it was to hear a grandparent talk like that, quite forgetting she is one herself and not only never talks like that but was in company that know that about her! 😆

Mum was fawning all over Davies who just wanted me really and even managed to follow me outside while I was hanging out the washing to avoid it. Lynda and Stuart were keen to walk to the beach and offered to take Tarly. Initially Mum and Dad were going too but then when Davies got upset about not going Mum said they’d stay here to make it up to him. That wasn’t what was making him upset and I was quite short with her telling her to go with Tarly and that Davies would be fine with me and probably better without a houseful of people. He was desperate to go so in the end we set off about 10 minutes after them with me convinced he’d fail very quickly and want to turn back.

In the end we caught them up at the beach (we’d walked quicker than them – Scarlett and Lynda had held hands all the way chatting while the other 3 lagged behind chatting). Mum and Dad had walked over to us so they headed for home from the beach and we walked back across the road to the park for ice cream for the kids. Davies was shaking and pale again so they sat in the sunshine while I jogged / walked very quickly back home to collect the car and go and pick them all up.

That finished Davies off really and he fell asleep on my lap back at home.I made Tarly eggs and toast for tea, sat with her in the bathroom while she had a bath and hairwash and then Ady got home. Ady put Davies to bed but we’ve since had him downstairs most of the evening after another episode of hysterics about not wanting me to leave him and go to the allotment – not at all sure what’s going on in his little brain but I’m guessing it’s to do with the high temperature he’s running. He did eventually go back to bed but I’ve promised to sleep on his floor again tonight and am not expecting an unbroken night 🙁

Lynda and Stuart very kindly treated us to a takeaway for dinner which was lovely and meant noone had to cook. They all went to bed at 10pm – sea air seems to have knocked everyone out and they have the long drive home to Manchester tomorrow. My nose is streaming and I am wondering if I am suffering with rather more than just tiredness but at least we have nothing planned for the rest of the week once Lynda and Stuart leave tomorrow other than trying to catch up with flickring!