One word? When seven would do…

Ady was off to Birmingham today to a gardening trade show so he left the house at stupid o’clock. He didn’t get back home again til stupid o’clock either but at least he’s already now worked his hours to have Friday morning off. And he’s taking Davies and Scarlett over to Liza’s for me in the morning too – hurrah :).
Davies spent some time on Fantastic Contraptions this morning. He got past a couple more levels. I’ve not real idea what he’s doing with it and have to confess to not having got anywhere with it the couple of times I’ve looked – my brain just doesn’t seem to work in that way. His does though and whilst I’ve not idea if there is only one right or wrong way to get through each level he was doing things like building rolling platforms to carry the ball across earlier, then managing to explain precisely how he’d experimented and come up with the ideas for them all. Amazing – and slightly shaming 😳 .

Scarlett was playing with a yoyo and messing about with some needles and threads. I so need to get some binka for her to play with so she can actually do some proper sewing.

We had to pop out for bread and petrol and in the car on the way Davies managed to delete all his progress so far on the DS game Ali got him which he’s been playing solidly all weekend – Viva Pinata. He was devastated and it took lots of jollying along from me to get him to be accepting of it and start again. He’s fine now and has already made inroads into catching back up again, poor boy 🙁 .

We’d arranged for a new HEor and her two boys to come round for lunch. She was one of several people who emailed me while we were away camping to say she was thinking of / was about to / had already started HEing a child within a week of it being back to school. She is local (very, just along the road from my parents) and has a 7yo boy who did reception and Y1 and Y2 before finishing and July and not going back and a 1yo boy too. We’d exchanged a few emails and along they came today.

She arrived on the doorstep bearing cake which is always a good start, with her very small 7yo (another very good sign, I can’t be doing with children towering over D ;)) and her dreadlocks and facial piercing all of which had me thinking ‘oh great, she’s normal’ rather than the ‘oh god, she’s a weirdo!’ like it might have done 10 years ago! The children disappeared off together and aside from dashing past between playing inside and out and coming back for sandwiches we didn’t see them for the whole 3 hours they were here. Her and I sat and chatted and had loads in common; she was delighted with the chickens when she saw them through the window and enthused about the idea of an allotment, has very similar ideas on parenting and indeed education to me and we generally had lots of ‘really? me too!’ type conversations.

Of course you never really know what someone else is secretly thinking about you but when I mentioned a meet up at the local soft play later this week for a few HE folk she was quick to agree to come along so I’m very hopeful this could be a regular meet up for us as Davies loved having another similar aged boy to play with. It also firmed up for me that it is perfectly possible to have other children over that they can play so happily with that there is no need at all for adult intervention every five minutes – and how nice that is. 🙂

They left and we had to go to swimming. Scarlett’s lesson is first and when I told Davies that he is officially old enough to go in the pool alone now he stripped straight off and headed for the big pool on his own while Scarlett had her lesson. He spent most of the half an hour jumping in, swimming to the side and climbing out but appeared to be loving it. He did look very small out there all alone but also what a fab feeling that was to let him go off and do it :). Scarlett did well in her lesson; I am hopeful she will get moved up for next term so they are in the same group again.

Davies’ lesson went well too. Scarlett sat and played with my phone while I watched Davies. There is a sliding puzzle game on there she likes and we worked out how to make the puzzle a picture of something from the camera so she was doing sliding puzzles on pictures of herself which kept her nice and quiet 🙂 .

Home for their tea, a bath to get all the chlorine out of their hair and then a load of bedtime stories. Ady collected my new bike from a lovely freecycler on his way home so I’m looking forward to testing that out tomorrow – and also hopeful it will spur both children onto wanting to ride their bikes too. We have got a new one for Davies for Christmas and would get one for Tarly too if we could get her interested in the idea. I’m sure we could pick up a freecycle one for Ady fairly easily and then it would be something we could all do together. There is an excellent cycle path all along the seafont which is of course safe and traffic free so it would be a nice thing to do.

Tomorrow is pay day and also work for me in the morning with a whole list of things to get sorted in the afternoon before Badgers.

I had a quiet day at home planned today as I had various things I needed to get done and I thought we could do some snuggling with books too. I spent some time online applying for passport renewals for us all which led to a long conversation about passports and travelling abroad. I found a container suitable for a kitchen compost material gatherer and set that up, then talked to D&S about compost and showed them where it was and talked about what could go in it. Davies had lots of questions so I got out a book I’d uncovered by happy coincidence yesterday called Create Compost which is a soil association book that we picked up either at the South of England Show or Open Farm Sunday earlier this year. We read bits of that and chatted about various stuff around it. All interesting stuff we’re learning together.

Next we had to go out briefly as I’d arranged to collect a couple of bags of rags from a freecycler for rug making. Unfortunately she’d forgotten to get them ready or tell her poor husband who was most confused to open the door to a strange woman claiming to have been promised rags! 😆 I’m collecting them later in the week now, she assures me she’s got it organised now.

When we got home the children insisted they wanted to go out again this afternoon so I suggested we walk to the allotment to see how far it is on foot and how long it takes. They were both really up for it but I suspected they might change their minds after lunch.

We ate and they got engrossed in playing something with the toy animals but then they started to get restless and wanted to go and gather composting materials from the garden so we decided to go for that walk. I took my old phone which has a pedometer on it so we could measure the distance and decided to dust off my DMs for the occassion. I’ve been in flip flops all summer aside from my week of welly-wearing while camping so my feet protested rather at being all enclosed.

The route on foot should be shorter than that by car I’d have thought, particularly as the way we went isn’t possible by car due to a one way system. But I measured it as 1.8 miles when we drove the other day and it was 2 miles exactly to walk there. I put this down to the footbridge over the main road that we used which has 3 slopes on each side of the road. But we’ve never walked over it before so it was interesting to do. On the way back I used the steps while the kids used the slopes again and I was far quicker than them. It took just over 40 minutes at their pace although I was hurrying them a little as they are prone to meandering. It was nice to glance back over my shoulder every so often to watch them walking, shoulder to shoulder, deep in conversation about all sorts of things though. I sort of envy them their relationship sometimes; it’s very uncomplicated, honest and affectionate :). We spotted conkers on the way and Scarlett found 50pence so plusses on top of the whole exercise and fresh air thing going on there! 🙂

Once there we had nothing specific to do so peeped in to see how many people are around on a weekday afternoon (quite a few actually) and then went back to the park. The allotments are at the top of a very big park, playground and leisure centre. I think they are still a bit too little now but it probably won’t be long before Davies and Scarlett could be in the park while we’re in the allotment. For now there is a big field right next to the fence our plot lies along where they can run around if they have enough of digging and planting which is bordered by woods and footpaths to Lancing Ring.

We had a play in the playground – I went on the giant swing while Davies and Scarlett went on the see saw thing for awhile. There was just a couple of older women and very small children in there. Then the kids had a few gos each on the zipwire before we realised it was getting close to school chucking out time and started to head for home. We stopped at the shops for some sweets and found ourselves on the footbridge facing hundreds of school children coming out of the college. It is a huge school which has a nursery on site, a family centre, the senior school and sixth form college so probably well over 1000 children. When I was a kid it had a very bad reputation although I think it is supposed to be okay now. Scarlett was horrified at how many of the kids came out and lit up cigarettes including the ones in school uniform so we talked about that a bit. Then they overheard some swearing so we talked about that too. It’s no good preaching at Davies and Scarlett about stuff like that – quite apart from the fact I remember doing both of those things at that age I am fairly sure they will reach an age where they want to experiment with various things and I see far more point in talking to them openly about stuff and trying to explain properly why teens want to try stuff like smoking and drinking and swearing than in trying to pretend they are all stupid and that I hope D and S will never do that. Bizarre environment I am pleased to never have to go back to myself though – just in the few minutes we were in the thick of the crowd we witnessed various low level name calling and nastiness, various kids being excluded from the crowd and plenty of generally undesireable behaviour such as graffitti and petty stuff like kicking people’s walls etc.

Back at home I drank lots of tea, made the children their tea and they watched Raven. Ady arrived home and we read 3 longish stories before bed; The Lion & The Unicorn by Shirley Hughes, The Wild Swans (Barefoot books) and Big Blue Whale (another Nicola Davies one) which all led to much additional conversation, especially Lion and Unicorn about an evacuee.

Bedtime for D and S and curry and Jumper for me and Ady which we thought was ‘ok’. I lost interest a bit and got on with some of my ragrugging which has slowed down rather but is over halfway done on the latest blue and green creation which will be a bath mat.

Candle (our cat) appears to have gone blind, all but overnight. She has been a bit odd for a while now I think of it but seems to be struggling with very limited eyesight, particularly at night. She is very old – we have had her for 14 years and the RSPCA said she was 2 when we got her. I suspect she was even older than that. If we had pet insurance or money I guess we could take her to the vets but as we most definitely wouldn’t be able to afford treatment or an operation and she appears to be in no pain and managing just fine,if a little slower than normal I guess we’ll just wait it out and see what happens. Odd to watch a blind cat stumbling around the place again though, 2 years after Malice :(.

I had a lie in this morning and then spent ages and ages sorting out all the washing into piles and putting it away or drafting the children into helping put their stuff away.I supervised (read micro managed) Davies sorting his room out for the second time this week and then spent ages in the playroom sorting that out a bit too. It needs more attention as there is stuff in there which just doesn’t get played with so we need to either decide to get rid of it or get some use out of it. There is also a book mountain that needs dealing with as I think we have bypassed the correct book and bookshelf ratio again so action is needed there.

Ady was cleaning out his car while all this was going on and the children were getting up to various things including playing inside and outside, coming to assist every so often and then doing some drawing.

I then asked Davies if he wanted to come and read to me for a while. He’s at this frustrating point of technically being able to read but not doing it often enough in practise to improve. We have had long discussions about how there is nothing more I can do to assist him other than sit and listen to him reading and carry on reading to him while he tries to follow the words on the page as I read them. It really is a practice makes perfect situation that he is not going to wake up one morning able to do. It is still not coming naturally to him and whilst I would say striving to do something that he finds difficult is a skill that Davies does have for many things clearly reading isn’t pushing enough buttons for him to find it worthwhile doing just now, despite him really wanting the end result. He read a couple of pages but was tired and it just wasn’t happening for him so we had a long cuddle and chat instead.

Ady then asked if he wanted to go on his computer and I showed him the link to Fanastic Contraption which I’d followed from Bob’s blog last night and not done very well on myself. I read the tutorial for him as he clicked through it and then left him to it – for nearly 1.5 hours! He was loving it and doing loads of experimenting, talking aloud, calling Scarlett over to show her and worked his way up a couple of levels. :).

Meanwhile I was reading a book about allotments and doing some mental planning, Ady was cooking late lunch / early dinner and Scarlett was doing a load of puzzles and activities in a pile of comics I’d found in the playroom.

We had lunch / dinner and then Ady and I vegged out for a while and the children set up a toy circus we’ve had for years and they go through phases of playing with lots. They were coming up with every more outlandish ideas for acts in the circus which was amusing us. Then I decided we needed to go out for a walk to work off dinner and get some fresh air so we gathered their scooters and headed down to the beach.

We never actually got as far as the beach but stopped at Brooklands, the big laked park on the other side of the road to the beach and walked round that for an hour or so in the sunshine. It was nice :). Scarlett and I had a fit of the giggles when I called her a pillock for not being sensible about crossing the road. She went all quiet and I’d forgotten it until I went to take her hand and she said to me ‘actually I’m still cross with you for calling me a pillock!’ which made me giggle. She said ‘It’s not funny Mummy!’ and then broke into giggles herself saying ‘well actually maybe it is!’ 😆 I suspect it may become the new family insult. My Dad’s insult of choice was ‘pleb’ when we were children. I’d rather not teach them insults at all but given some of the words I’ve heard from the mouths of children I’m guessing pillock isn’t too dreadful.

We came home and they had a bath followed by Extreme Animals which we have read before but ages ago. Davies suddenly remember it about halfway through though.

Tomorrow is planned to be very low key, what with having virtually no petrol in my car or money to spend. I feel a day reading lots of books out loud coming on :).

I was woken at 4am by Ady hissing ‘Nic! Nic! There’s a fox!’ at me and then dashing, naked out of our bedroom down the stairs. I hung (also naked) out of the bedroom window and sure enough although I couldn’t see it (dark and no contact lenses) I could hear all sorts of screeching and scuffling around the chicken houses. Really weird noises – something being seriously attacked which at the time we thought was one of the chickens. I leant right of the window, naked bits a-wobbling and yelled ‘OI! NO!!!’ very loudly which caused an end to all the noise. By then Ady had rushed outside, still naked and came face to face with a fox in the hedgerow. After a brief stand off the fox ran off. Ady opened the first chicken house and the 3 chickens who live in there all clucked at him in a sleepy fashion and when he checked the other henhouse there was no signs of entry there either.

He came back upstairs and we discussed what could have happened and decided it must have been the fox being very excited and making according noises as it tried to dig into one of the houses. Of course such excitement means it is all but impossible to get back to sleep, Davies also woke up and asked for a drink (although he claims not to recall that today) and it was a good hour before I think I eventually fell asleep again.

This morning a look around the area shows signs of a big scuffle and we assume that the fox was attacking some other intruder such as a rat which was what did all the screaming. An odd sort of irony there in nighttime battles being played out between two unwelcome visitors – hopefully neither will return tonight for a rematch.

I went off to work this morning where it was very busy and my four hour shift went very quickly.

Back at home the children made birthday cards for Jack and Maisie and Ady did about 6 loads of washing which means we now have not a single item of dirty laundry in the house but three towering mountains of clean stuff to go away. Bah! I came home and we headed off to Jack and Maisie’s party.

Chris and Julie got married when Julie was pregnant with Jack and Maisie (and I was pregnant with Scarlett) and we came down for their wedding reception from Manchester, which was held in their huge garden. Hard to believe that was over six years ago now as we stood in their garden today and we’ve gone from having just the one child between us (Davies) to the five we have now.

There was a good turn out of people there, most of whom I know from Home Ed circles. The children all went off and did their thing, Ady caught up with Chris and I flitted between groups of people chatting – all very nice and sociable in the sunshine :). There was a pass the parcel which Chris and Julie asked Ady and I to run (Chris is very social-phobic, Julie was tending to Lorna and also feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all) so we rounded all the children up (I think there were 16) and I micromanaged the pass the parcel while Ady was in charge of the music. It was one of those prize in every wrapper, perfect number of wrappers for every child to win once parcels which I personally have huge ranty issues over and was very vocal about – to my amusement I was not alone and several of the parents were joining in with the fun :). We liked the idea of autonomous pass the parcel where you just chucked the paper, pressies and sellotape in the middle, gave them the components to make a cd player or some instruments to play the music and left the children to it 😆

I got to put a couple of faces to names that I’d not met before and Julie had mentioned and Davies got on really well with George (the annoying one from Butser) and I had a really good chat with Katy too who was saying that she struggles to find same age boys for George to spend time with and maybe we should get them together more often. Having spoken to Davies he seems to be up for that idea so perhaps we’ll give it a go and see if George being a git was one of those situations that Davies sometimes finds himself in where he gets pushed into a role that does him no favours and isn’t really how he normally would act.

There was a bouncy castle at the bottom of the garden where Ady tried to assemble the children for a group shot and just as he had them all lined up and smiling beautifully the front collapsed under the weight of so many little bodies – it was very funny and probably made for a better photo opportunity than the posed one 🙂

We left there around 5pm and on the way home called up to the allotments so Ady could have a peep at our plot through the fence as he’d not seen it yet. We can’t wait to get started 🙂

Home for tea for the children, X Factor watching and a late dinner for us.

Tomorrow we have blissfully nothing to do – and indeed no money to do anything with! Guess that washing mountain might get dealt with after all!

All a bit ‘through a haze’ today really thanks to hormones and this I can’t believe it’s not a cold (Ali that made me remember not quite your knee wellies which made me laugh 😆 ). I tried to have a lie in and catch up on some sleep but the children had other ideas and were doing lots of shrieking elephant impressions and thudding about from about 7am so I eventually gave up and got up.

I’d been putting off a phonecall to the CCCS for the last month, for no real reason other than being scared of phonecalls about financial stuff but this morning I decided to get it done and stop it hanging over me. It took about 15mins and was all very positive. I’ve blogged it over on buymelove for anyone interested in the more minor details – and indeed anyone wanting to celebrate with me having an ego stroking moment about turning things round :).

The allotment paperwork came this morning so that all feels nicely official and in hand. I’ve already got one book from the library which I’m dipping in and out of and we want to build up a proper plan of what the allotment calendar should look like which I’d like to get sorted before we actually take it over on October 1st.

So phonecall made and post arrived we headed off to Ali and Freya’s for the day. Davies got his last birthday present of a DS game he’d enjoyed playing of Freya’s that Ali had said she would get for him. He is utterly thrilled with it and proclaimed it his ‘best present!’ :). Thanks again Ali xxx

Freya had made him a fab birthday card of a dalek, all gold glittered with a little soundbox that says ‘Exterminate!’ to press – very impressive 🙂 and drove me mad all the way home listening to it ;).

The DS game meant we sort of lost Davies straight away and Scarlett, who is often as happy spectating whilst others DS as she is playing herself snuggled into his shoulder and watched as he played. Freya bimbled about outside while Ali and I hung out in the kitchen and then sat outside drinking tea and chatting. The children played Wii which Scarlett seemed pretty good at and it was all very sunny and lovely and relaxing 🙂 .

We left around 4ish as Scarlett had Rainbows tonight so we came home and she had tea – Davies has taken to eating later when Tarly and I are out on a Friday. She got changed and as we’d already discussed what she was taking for show and tell last night and decided on her scooter there was no big fuss tonight. We met Lucy and the Rs at the top of the road (Richard was coming along to see what he misses out on by staying home with Daddy for the evening while Rebecca goes to Rainbows – I think it was sufficiently boring that he won’t bother again). There are quite a few new girls this term and several of the other girls have gone up to Brownies so Scarlett feels like much more of an old timer now which is nice.

The activity tonight was cutting and sticking with old argos catalogues to create a ‘room in a house’. Most of them decided to create a bedroom and most of them went for the pink option. Scarlett did a bedroom for her and Davies and had a load of Doctor Who and Ben 10 stuff with one token pink duvet set with cats on, a pink rug like I’ve already made for her and wrote her name beautifully on the front while all the other schooled children wrote their names on the back of their work :).

At show and tell she was giddy and struggled but then so many of the others do. She then recovered and rode her scooter to show everyone. They handed out letters about the Rainbows sleepover which had Scarlett frozen with terror and loudly saying she didn’t want to go to that – bless her.

Home and Ady told them a made up on the spot bedtime story while I got dinner sorted, then we let them come back down from bed to watch Gardeners World as it had a bit about allotments on it. Scarlett had been in the bathroom with me washing my feet and hair for me in the bath and then she brushed my hair for me while we watched the TV. She is very affectionate at the moment, it’s lovely 🙂 .

Work day for me today. My cold that doesn’t seem to be a cold after all but might yet progress into being a cold seemed to go into remission a bit today which was good.

We have a new member of staff who only started 2 weeks ago and was off sick last week. She is sweet but rather wet and I suspect won’t be working with us by about November, but we’ll see. It was my last shift with Jody today before he leaves for his new job next week so much fond farewelling was done with plenty of nonsense including him writing me notes in german and french which were very funny.

In the morning I did storytime so spent the first hour choosing some books and drawing some pictures for the children to colour in from the books. I only actually read two of of the three books I’d chosen as although we had a good turn out of 20 children they were all so tiny they were not really capable of sitting and listening for very long so we did lots of action songs instead. There is that annual September oddness of the Missing 3 year olds again who have all gone off to preschool or nursery with noone over 2 foot tall anywhere to be seen during the day. 🙁

In the afternoon I had my 6months review of my PDR (personal development record) which was done in February and is reviewed every 3 months. I was told I am doing well still and that there is general frustration that there is so much more they feel they could give me to do but can’t because I am not there enough. I confessed that I feel I could still do more anyway and that I do often feel unchallenged which although not a problem for 11 hours a week and certainly not something any of us should worry about does indicate to me that I could have more to do. This was imediately taken on board and another 2 regular responsibilities allocated to me – which is good :). I also put across an idea I’ve been toying with for a little while which was well received and I am seeing the children’s librarian about sometime soon to discus further. No idea if that will go any further than an initial discussion but I’ll blog about it if it does.

I spent some time on the enquiry desk then and had intended to babelfish my notes from Jody but I was so bust joining two new members and helping someone with a computer, emailing the senior librarian about an upcoming display and generally enjoying my new increased job list that Jody had to translate them himself for me. It was very quickly 5pm and the end of my working day at work.

At home Ady had been off this morning and done stuff out in the garden, not sure if the children joined him or not. Dad was here this afternoon and when I got home Scarlett and Dad were out in the garden with Tarly digging up an area to excavate it and find bits of pottery etc in it (the archeaology has been a bit of a recurring theme here thanks to Butser :)) and Davies inside making ‘presents’ for me with glitter. He was recovering various things with paper and then decorating them such as toy cars with quite artistic results.They’d also done some painting and drawing during the day.

At their request I made french toast for tea and then we had nearly an hour snuggled up reading books which included ‘what’s eating you?’ another Nicola Davies one, a Greyfriars Bobby retelling and Ellie takes a chance which I’d found catalogued at work under the ‘childrens books covering OCD’. I’ll come back to that whole thing another time. There were a couple more in the pile too and we read until Ady got home.

In other news Scarlett had a win on the premium bonds (£50 but all the kids winnings get transfered straight into more premium bonds for them) and my parents have offered to pay for all our passports to be renewed as an early Christmas present after we mentioned (and yes I was hinting but it’s the first time in my living memory that they’ve even been aware of a hint let alone responded to it :lol:) which is rather good and means we are able to try and arrange a day trip to France we’d been talking about with Em sometime soon :).

I was in bed at around midnight last night which is becoming early for me. I don’t want to be in bed much later but as I don’t seem to need any more than about 7 hours sleep I don’t want to be in bed much earlier either as I’d rather be around late at night than early in the morning given the choice.

Anyway, it meant I laid semi-awake for a good 15 minutes before checking the clock to realise it was still before 8am this morning, which was a pleasant surprise. So I got up and dressed and came downstairs to find the children were both already up too. So we had breakfasted (them), drunk tea (me), hung out laundry, let out and fed the chickens all before 830am. We then read a couple of books including Nicola Davies’ most excellent ‘Poo’ with Davies reading a fair few of the words.

Today’s mission was to get black shoes for Davies for Badgers. We had a Grand trying on session of their Badger clothes and Scarlett has gone into trousers rather than the skirt she wore last term as it means she doesn’t have to wear socks with her shoes. It also makes her look much older and taller somehow but I’m ignoring that ;). I removed badges from Davies’ too-small jumper (I assume it’s shrunk in the wash I’m so used to him not growing now!) and sewed one onto Scarlett’s jumper and then we headed out.

Davies got a £5 Woolworths voucher in a birthday card yesterday and I had a skirt I’d bought for Scarlett that is too big to return so Woolies was our first stop. We went to the Lancing branch but they had nothing Davies wanted, no black shoes and a big queue at the returns desk so we decided to go to Shoreham instead as there is a bigger branch there. While in Lancing we saw Anne and 3 of her children (local HE family who we used to see at groups, and I now see fairly regularly as they are very frequent library users) and Kate and her 2 children (another local HE family) to wave to. The children commented on the coincidence but we decided it was just that we were suddenly visible again now everyone else is back at school!

We drove around for nearly 20 minutes trying to find a parking space in Shoreham which was very frustrating. We pulled into a car park but then realised I had no change so couldn’t get a pay and display ticket then Davies discovered a pound in his door so we went to another carpark and paid to park. Woolworths came up trumps with a pair of shoes for a fiver, a Ben 10 figure that Davies wanted and with the returned skirt the shoes only cost me £1.50 :). Davies hates them btw, says they are comfortable but look ‘horrible, all schooly’ said with a shudder! 😆 He is happy to wear them for his one hour a week and even insisted I bought the cheaper pair in favour of the slightly nicer ones that he prefered the look of as ‘it’s not worth the money Mummy when I won’t like them anyway!’.

I rang Lucy as arranged to see if they were up for getting together and we called round there for lunch. It was not one of our better visits and we really should learn that once a week is enough to force the childrens’ company on each other 🙁 .We managed to leave on a high though and came home for early tea. We remembered our planned experiment which we recreated with a piece of paper and a plastic ball and managed to find the distance each had to be held above ground so that they hit the floor at the same time – I had to stand on the sofa with the plastic held above my head, Davies had to hold the paper at his knee level. Then we looked at two identical pieces of paper and screwed one up, folded one, tore one in half etc. Unfortunately I don’t know enough to be able to decide quite what we were proving with our experiments but both children were great at knowing which would be fastest. I think we’d all be pretty resistent to me trying to ‘teach’ them anything but I would like to find some ideas / experiments / resources that at the very least educated me about what’s happening so I can explain it better when it happens. I’ll see if there are any suitable books to borrow from work.

Then it was time for Badgers and I commented that they both looked smart in their uniforms (they did) and we had an interesting discussion about uniforms and what we thought of them. Neither of them are in favour of looking like everyone else or indeed being told how to look but agree that it is worth it for Badgers but would prefer to wear their own clothes to express themselves more. It’s the second such conversation we’ve had this week as it inevitably led to school uniforms and we’d talked about different people’s experience of school on Monday. I never know whether I have indoctrinated Davies and Scarlett with my ideas or whether in the environment of talking openly about ideas and different things they are just more open to coming to their own conclusions but I do feel proud when they talk about wanting to be indivdiuals and themselves rather than crowd followers.

Scarlett was wobbly about Badgers for most of the day although I wasn’t really sure what element of it she was not happy about so I’d said she had to come along with me to drop off Davies and she might as well wear her uniform incase she changed her mind and wanted to stay. When we pulled up and the leaders waved through the window at us they were both wobbly and given the change would have turned round and come home again. Davies was fine as soon as his friend Kallum arrived and when I explained to Julie that Scarlett was feeling a little unsure about whether she wanted to be a Badger this term Julie started telling Scarlett about all the things they have planned for the term and she quickly changed her mind. I would have happily brought her home with me again if she’d been genuinely sure she didn’t want to stay but as I suspected it was more that the 8 week break has been a long one and for a 5 year old is just too big to step straight back into without a bit of feeling nervous.

Ady pulled up as I walked out of the door so he and I went for a long walk around town which was nice – we get so little time just the two of us it is lovely to walk along holding hands, not being interupted and have the luxury of finishing every sentence. Unfortunately I have felt increasingly coldy throughout the day and was not so good at getting to the end of a sentence without forgetting what had been at the beginning of it anyway so wasn’t talking a lot of sense (and my sentences can be quite long and unwieldy anyway and don’t always make sense so poor Ady was onto a loser!).

When we went in to collect them they were both buzzing and Scarlett went home with Ady and Davies with me so I got some exclusive Davies-time which is always nice :). They both went to sleep fairly quickly and we watched The Bucket List which we both thought was excellent.

I had my list to work through this morning and with the exception of a couple of things I got everything done including laundry, baking and a couple of emails. I should get the rest of the stuff done tomorrow and I also managed an additional task of clearing out the shoeboxes in our hall of all outgrown or not worn any more shoes, moved all the summer shoes to the bottom and got the children to do a big trying on session of shoes. Davies has DMs that fit but needs black shoes for Badgers, Scarlett can still wear her Badger shoes but needs new winter shoes (boots) which I suspect will not be an easy or straightforward purchase. A job well done though :).

Just as I was finishing that and had shoes piled up infront of the front door Lucy and The Rs arrived so I had to keep them waiting on the doorstep while I finished putting everything away 😳 The children seemed to do well after a break and Davies was presented with presents which were very gratefully recieved and they all played, without misadventure for about 3 hours :). Lucy and I caught up on a weeks worth of gossip and chat while I threaded my pegloom and started my next rug – a blue, green and white creation I’ll be using for a bathmat. I want to create a blanket / throw for snuggling up in but need to really up my material stash for such a venture.

Then it was off to swimming. We parked right outside (there is a free carpark but it is often full and has lots of tricky pillars and low bits so my big car is a bit of a nightmare to negotiate round it and to be avoided if possible) and headed in past a glut of schoolchildren in the foyer. Scarlett stripped off and headed down to the poolside with not a quibble about her swimming cap and proceeded to have a fairly good lesson. Davies and I chatted about velocity, speed and weight and discussed an experiment to find how much higher you’d have to hold a marble than a leaf to drop them simultaneously and have them reach the ground at the same time. My physics isn’t great and as it seems to be something he frequently asks about maybe I should brush up on it a bit.

Then it was all change time as Scarlett came out of the pool and Davies got in. I may have to fine tune the whole process but this week Tarly sat on my lap in the spectators area and got dried and dressed. She still got restless though and it was a tiring hour trying to watch one child while keeping the other engaged. Might have to resort to DSs for next week. Another mum was reading to a sibling which is a good idea but actually I quite enjoy watching the lessons.

It was nice to be home before rush hour and have the children fed and bathed at a sensible time though. Ady got home and I headed off to reading group.

I was running it alone tonight and had gone in with plenty of time to spare incase things were not organised. Sure enough there was an email saying ‘please can you try and sell some tickets to the murder mystery event at Shoreham library on October 1st. There should be some posters there and you can google the host who an actress and crime writer. And there is only half a bottle of wine left’. Oh great! 🙁

The half a bottle was red and was in the fridge and there were no nibbles so I headed off to the supermarket for a bottle of white and some crisps with the change in my pocket while someone else did some wikipedia print offs for me of said actress. As I returned so the Very Important Library Woman for the whole area appeared with red and white wine and three boxes of nibbles :rolls:Not very high marks for communication then!

We had a fairly small attendance – there were 8 of us and all but me had read the book and thought it was ‘ok’ which always makes for not very much discussion – you want passionate reactions, either loved it or hated it to really get the conversation going really. As I’d not read it (I missed last month’s group and was told we’d had two books to choose from and I chose and read the other one, which noone else who came last night had read :rolls:) I wasn’t able to jump in and keep it rolling with ‘but what did you think about this bit?’ type prompts. So we were sort of done with the book by about 720pm. So we turned to chatting about possible books for the future and got onto the subject of horror and crime stories and TV adaptations. We talked about Stephen King, Dean Koontz and other such scary tales and then did that thing where you swap stories of the most terrifying thing you’ve ever read or seen. We were still done by 8pm so everyone else left and I was alone in the library.

I had to pop upstairs to return the kettle to the staffroom and generally tidy up which took about 10 minutes and because I don’t ever lock up usually I was inept with the complicated lighting system and threw myself into semi darkness for most of it. At which point all the horror stories we’d been talking about starting to play on my mind, along with the Doctor Who episode in the library and the fact that one of the other members of staff once told me she could feel an evil presence upstairs and never did shelving up there in the winter after it was dark as she didn’t like being up the alone. I decided it was more sensible to write all that off as nonsense and carry on in the dark as actually it being lit wouldn’t make me any less alone there and was only giving in to my own silliness so carried on with a ‘bring it on then’ type attitude. (But I was secretly a bit scared!). I cocked up the alarm setting by pressing the wrong button and it asking me if I wanted to change settings or code – NOOOOO!!! but sorted that out and managed to leave with the alarm set and everything looking as it should. I’m pretty sure a junior member of staff like me shouldn’t really be allowed in the library or indeed be locking up alone anyway but I managed it.

Home for bath, dinner, desperate trying to get Davies and Scarlett to go to sleep – there are still on HE time and sleeping in til 9am and not getting to sleep in the evening til about 10pm which is starting to be annoying. Watched Mutual Friends which we’re enjoying, we don’t normally watch series as we are crap at remembering to be infront of the tv at the right time to watch them each week so end up missing loads and giving up. We did miss last week’s by being away and not caring enough to record it but we don’t seem to have missed anything major happening and caught up again easily.

Stuff I need to do today:

Lots of laundry did as much as would fit on the line and already have first load washed ready to hang out in the morning.

Sort out finances to ring CCCS and update with them

Use up the cooking apples that need cooking 🙂 Blackberries already taken out for a crumble, possibly a toffee apple pie aswell? made a crumble and two toffee apple pies 🙂

Sort out something for dinner in hand – A bringing home missing ingredients

email Butser and Sustainability centres done!

Get kids’ swimming stuff in one place and persaude Scarlett into having her hair tied back for ease of swimming cap application sorted! She is actually quite happy with the swimming cap, D on the other hand hates it 🙁

Start work on the Grand Allotment Plan – not done but I feel a new blog coming on 😉

Thread up peg loom ready for next rug 🙂 threaded and rug about 1/6 done 🙂

if I type quickly enough :).

A slower start with Ady waking me at 9am when he rang and me then waking Davies and Scarlett. 😳
We breakfasted, they DS’d, I drank a full pot of tea, communed a bit with the chickens, got stuff out of the freezer, planned dinner, processed some laundry and ploughed through some of the emails. Only one week into the new term and I’ve already had two emails from local people deciding to HE and asking for information… I had a minor tantrum about paperwork, the bookcase being used as a dumping ground and then found what I was looking for so put off my intended grand tidy up of it 😆 .

We went into town so I could pay in £3 for a direct debit to get paid (money about to be very tight until I get paid next Wednesday) and Davies could cash his cheque from my Granny. He also got £5 in a birthday card in the post this morning so had £25 so spend and was keen to do so. In the queue at the Halifax we talked about words that were spelt differently and had different meanings but sounded the same when you had them. Davies came up with Hey / hay and to/too/two and I talked about complimentary / complementary when the children asked why some people sitting down had drinks of tea or coffee which was how we got started on it. At the counter there was a perspex sign that had shattered under the surface and we speculated on how (Davies reckoned it was when a screw was put through it and I think he was right). We called into a couple of charity shops as we passed, popped into Game where the children spotted and fell in love with a pack of stylusses shaped as crayons which we later went back to buy and they went halves on for one each.

In Woolworths Davies found a particular Ben 10 character which was amoung the ones he really wanted so despite them being more expensive (£5.29 as opposed to the £3.99 in Tesco and Asda) he weighed up the options and decided to buy it. I found a couple of pairs of trousers for Davies in the sale in there too so we paid for those. Woolies is now the only toy shop in town so we left and headed to Tescos to see if we could get more figures. On the way Scarlett got upset about the idea of spending her money (she had a £1 from the tooth fairy and £1 she had found) so Davies and I tried to explain the idea of swapping money for stuff. I think she is likely to be one of lifes savers really as she seems to enjoy the actual having of money rather than the spending of it. Totally alien concept to me of course but respect to her for it – aslong as she is not expecting me to spend money so she can keep her shiny pounds! 😆

Davies chose 3 more characters and kept £4 to buy a Ben 10 which was what he really wanted but Tesco didn’t have. Scarlett was finally convinced she would give Davies £1 towards the stylus she wanted (he was happy to pay the other £4 ) and spend her other £1 on a stationery kit she wanted in Tesco with kittens on it.

We came home for a late lunch and for them to play with the figures, do some DSing with their cool crayon styluses and Scarlett to do some drawing in her new pad. Her art is really coming along leaps and bounds at the moment; she did some painting with Ali’s paints while we were away and has totally got the hang of colour mixing and is drawing really quite recognisable pictures now. Today she drew a mole under the ground with good detail and some clouds way up in the sky 🙂 . She’ll be displaying at the library before you know it 😉 .

On the answerphone was a message from the council to say our name has come to the top of the allotment list and there was one vacant if we wanted it. A couple of quick phonecalls and I’d arranged to go and view it at 330pm. That made up for my washing machine dying again (Ady has since repaired it again but it is clearly on it’s last legs. It celebrated it’s ninth birthday this week having been a wedding present from my parents and is clearly counting that in washing machine years which must be similar to cat years). We headed up there checking two different routes with the mileometer – one was 1.8 miles, they other a shorter 1.3. I think you could walk it in even less, probably half an hour or so. It is on a big, locked patch at the back of a big local park. There are sea views and it is peaceful and at the edge of the downs. Our plot is number 113 and is the furthest corner of the area with just one neighbour. It becomes ours on October 1st and whilst it looks slightly uncared for it is certainly not overgrown. It’s just £24 for the year so a fairly cheap experiment to see if we can make it work and another small step closer to that Good Life lifestyle we thought we might want but are not in the right place to pull off right at the moment.

Home again and the children did some painting while I continued to battle with flickr uploadr before getting their tea ready. Ady arrived home, having called into a Sainsburys and found the Ben 10 character Davies had wanted, various news of the day was swapped and it was bedtime. I read a couple of books from the Barefoot Stories of the Sea and then the children stayed up for ages in their bedrooms with Davies playing with his Ben 10 stuff and Scarlett lying across her bed filling in a comic activity page. You can take a child to bed but you can’t make them sleep…

And now, because my fingers didn’t quite move fast enough it is actually Tuesday, but I am catching up. Slowly.

With a sneaky edited timestamp to get this on the right day.

I’ve done my eighth birthday post for those of you who like to wallow in sentimentality with me feel free to click the link to the page on the right, for those who don’t feel free to ignore it ;).

Davies all but saw in his birthday by staying awake until about 1145pm the night before and he more than saw it out by still being awake playing his DS until past 1am bless him. He does like to maximise his celebrating (chip right off the old block!).

I’d spoken to him the day before about how he was born at 435am and by about 7am he and I were back on the ward cuddling. Ady had gone home, most of the other people on the ward were asleep and I just sat there gazing at him and thinking ahead to all the September the 14th of the future. When I had Davies I had never even held a baby before let alone done any of the more tricky practical baby caring tasks but I always felt like he and I were in it together really – after all he’d never done any of it before either. I still view motherhood a bit like that really; a partnership between me and my children which is in our mutual best interests to get as right as we can with discussion, challenges, amendments and a whole lot of experimentation along the way. Davies is a bloody good partner to have dealt to me in that as he offers many a challenge and many a reward as we go, both of us learning all the time and mostly having a lot of fun together as we do it. So I asked him to come to our bed first thing in the morning on his birthday so he and I could have another early morning cuddle and I could get my fix of special Nic and Davies time and think to birthdays past and future while holding my baby in my arms while he is still small enough for it to be that way round rather than the other 😆 .

I’d not gotten to sleep until about 3am so my just after 7am wake up call was at about the same level of grogginess I’d been feeling at 7am on the ward 8 years ago but when his excitement could no longer be contained we came downstairs for grand present opening.

From us he had 2 DS games; Drawn to Life (which is just so very, very Davies) and Monkey Ball which is one of his favourite Xbox games and seems to translate well to DS. Various Doctor Who bits and pieces (several characters, remote control Dalek, Masters screwdriver) which Ady has been finding cheap and stockpiling – we have more set aside for Christmas and a scooter.

From Scarlett he got a Ben 10 t shirt that she’d found and insisted on getting for him last week but I’d made her hold off giving him until his birthday.

From Chris and Julie he’d got a watercolour paintbook and a very posh paintbrush that they’d sent in the post.

As is tradition in our family Scarlett got a present too – a Sarah Jane sonic lipstick and a scooter. This was a practise my parents always did with me and my brother – my birthday is just after Christmas and his is May so it worked well and eased the trickiness of a siblings birthday which I always recall as a slightly tough day on the non-birthday sibling. It frees Davies up to enjoy his presents without over-interest from Scarlett and means she is in a better frame of mind and we often manage to get something complementary to the birthday childs’ gifts too hence the scooters.

I drank serious quantities of tea to keep my upright, Scarlett scootered around the house crashing into things, Davies sat quietly and played with his DS games and then I got out the Kenwood chef to test it’s cake mixing abilities. I have to say I am impressed – the only washing up is the bowl and mixing accessory so no greater than if done by hand and it whisked the mixture beautifully 🙂 and the butter icing (a job I hate). The cake was at Davies’ request an omnitrix which handily looks a bit like an 8. He wanted buttercream icing which always gives a rather plastered on home made effect but he’s not so keen on royal icing so buttercream it was.

At midday we headed over to my parents for lunch. Davies got another 2 Ben 10 characters from my parents and Frazer (and his premium bonds which mean very little to him now but I imagine he’ll be grateful for one day) and a cheque from Great Granny which he cashed today to spend. We always used to put any birthday money recieved into the children’s bank accounts but now we are less financially able to get them everything they want we let them spend it and I think it helps their appreciation of money as a finite resource. We are not in a position to give them pocket money and I am not entirely convinved of it as a concept for teaching money management anyway. We tend to have all the family money pooled as one pot which if there is any spare gets spent on something we all enjoy really which tends to be holidays or trips rather than ‘stuff’ although when we do have spare cash they often get a chunk to spend on something rather than a trickle throughout the year.

We had a nice lunch; Davies was keen to get back to his DS game and sat in the lounge with Ady while Scarlett entertained Granny, Mum, Dad and I by leading us in a game of I spy with letters (we usually use colours) and being able to do it 😯 deciding who’s turn it was with eeny meeny miny mo and then getting us all to play a game where she’d mixed up everyone’s noses and we had to guess who’s we had which was hilarious and she was clearly keeping track so had all sorts of maths skills going on with her mental spreadsheet of which nose was on which person.

Scarlett and I took a walk round the block with her scooter using the alleyway I’d gone through on my bike as a child. I pointed out various things like houses where other children we’d played with had lived and various other Childhood of Mummy type trivia. We both really enjoyed it :).

When we got home we did the birthday cake

and then as that made us all feel quite sluggish Ady, Mum, Davies, Scarlett and I went on another scooter / walk. When we got back Mum and I rang to book a table in the Harvester where Davies had requested we go for an evening meal and then we headed home for a quiet couple of hours before meeting at the Harvester later.

The children mostly DS’d, Davies and I took it in turns to read words on his Drawn to Life game as he keeps saying he wants to be able to read but seems to want / need a bit of encouragement to actually practice – or maybe it’s just reminding he needs?

We met Mum, Dad and Frazer at the Harvester and there was a Happy Birthday balloon on the table which Davies was all chuffed about. We had a really nice meal (considering. It is just a slight step up from McDonalds IMO but Davies wanted steak and chips and loved the idea of the children’s menu having that). The children were thrilled to spend time with Frazer who they adore. They did very well considering they were at the bitter end of a very long week with birthday excitement and sugar levels way above average but we were completely ready to get home at 9pm. I fell asleep with my laptop on my lap and went to bed around midnight but Davies was still awake and I think woke Ady at 130am to ask what something on his DS said at which point Ady turned it off and told him to go to sleep. Yep, he certainly got every minute he could from his birthday :).

Sunday was a fairly slow start and we had a vague idea of a leaving the house time of 1130am which I think we still managed to miss so with a stop off at Asda along the way for first night provisions we arrived at the campsite around 3pm I think. We arrived on the slip road from the south as the same time as Em arrived from the north so pulled into the car park togther which was splendid timing :).

The centre lived up to it’s relaxed and laid back vibe by noone having the faintest idea where Hazel the hostel manager was so we could check in. We thought someone had gone off to find someone for us but they wandered back again a while later and looked surprised to see us still there. Eventually we got waved vaguely in ‘that’ direction and told Hazel was in her room although noone seemed sure where that was so we decided to walk up and down corridors calling ‘Hay-zelllll!’ until we got an answer. We heard voices behind one of the doors, knocked and were lucky. Hazel did her ‘whatever’ thing marvellously and we went back to gather Ady and the cars and head down to the camping field.

We knew which of the two tipis Ali was booked in to so we planned pitching around that and the fire pit and set the tents up. Em headed off to collect Eve and Rei while we took our first Autumn Walk of 2008. Davies collected armfuls of ‘stuff’ although we didn’t use it to make collages with so perhaps it didn’t deserve it’s capitals ;).

Em, Eve and Rei returned, the children played, we ate, the DS tent was errected, decorated and put to good use, darkness fell, I had consumed most of a bottle of wine and then remembered I’d not guyed the tent out so had to stumble back up to the carpark to find the peg bag that Ady insisted he’d put in the car, couldn’t find it, stumbled back down and discovered it back at the tent after all and then swayed round the tent guying and pegging while singing ‘Two Little Boys’ to myself. Was happy :).

Ady and I sat up a while after Em, mainly because Davies and Scarlett were pulling their usual stunt of being really hard to get to be quiet once they’d gone to bed due to the novelty of being in the same sleeping pod. I had a bad night’s sleep due to the noisyness of the owls and foxes who were really loud and very regular with their screeching all night long.

Monday Another walk in the woods taking in the green burial site and various other sites along the way with Em, Eve and Rei. We spotted some dens put up at one point which inspired us (me) to build our own back at the tents. I began with a band of willing helpers who all dropped off one by one but we did manage a fairly respectable attempt at a den and Hazel came and sat in it at one point :).

I went off to Asda to get food and took a wrong turning which meant a scenic if slightly less direct route to it but quite enjoyed being out on my own for a while even if it was just being lost in country lanes in Hampshire and then wandering up and down the aisles of Asda and pondering over which brand of fishfingers to get for Em :lol:. I got back expecting Marcus, Michelle and Chloe to have already arrived as I’d been gone a long time but I actually beat them back and was able to greet them with tea and glasses for their wine and beer when they did arrive.

Another nice evening round the campfire and the rain during the night seemed to quieten the owls so I slept much better.

Tuesday Was the day it rained pretty much all day long. It was also Ady and I’s ninth wedding anniversary. And rather a contrast to our wedding day in terms of weather, location and circumstance :). We spent some time in the tent reading books; Davies did some reading, I read a couple of stories and then some facts from a nice Rainforest book I’d got from work which was interesting.

The DS tent really came into it’s own that day with all 5 children squished in it for much of the day while the adults sat in the carpeted comfort of M&M’s tent drinking tea and chatting. I dragged Michelle, Em, Eve, Rei, Ady and Scarlett out on a walk during which we lost Ady and Scarlett and Em, Michelle, Eve, Rei and I had an interesting conversation on why we talk about other people so often. I love kids’ perspectives on things and chatting about more abstract concepts and sociological stuff with them.

When we got back Michelle and I headed off to Asda for more food including various pretend foodstuffs for Ali. I realised only after I’d lost sight of Michelle in what must surely be one of the largest supermarkets in the country that I don’t actually have her mobile phone number so resorted to a brightkite having also forgotten the prefix for a private message. I also had visions of a four way conversation between Ady, Marcus, Michelle and I in 3 different locations if I didn’t suceed with that as I thought I could ring Ady who could get Marcus to ring Michelle. Luckily I spotted her at that moment.

Meanwhile back at the tent Ady was doing his Ady’s Mobile Children’s Entertainment Routine while Em and Marcus were slightly at loose ends I think. We drank more tea in M&M’s tent and then it was time to collect Ali and Freya so Davies and I headed off to do that. We had interesting chats on the way although I now completely forget what about, found the station fairly easily and returned with our complete set of campers.

After a brief hiatus where I totally lost my temper with Scarlett, Ady and the world in general and bitterly regretted marriage let alone children I calmed back down and eventually once I’d stopped behaving completely irrationally we did indeed have our anniversary dinner if not the cava I’d bought to toast it.

Wednesday was the day that Em and Marcus & Michelle headed off from the campsite to visit Porchester castle. It was another soggy day at the campsite but it appears to be in some sort of micro climate as everywhere else, including Porchester had lovely weather. It didn’t daunt us though and we did some hanging around the campsite with Ali and Freya, Scarlett and Freya did some painting and then Ady, Davies, Scarlett and I went off on a penny walk. We’ve been meaning to do one for ages and ages but never had enough time or the right location to do it but armed with a penny we set off. With fairly minimal fiddling and a bit of interpretive decision making when the path was a three way choice we had a good long walk that was all but circular and took us past a new grave laden with flowers (RIP Joan) that we’d seen the procession for with a handdrawn cart the day before, lots of very touching messages engraved on plaques on benches, gave us a couple of self timer opportunities and Ady found a toad which he, Davies and Scarlett all had a go at holding.

After yet another grey and drizzly day we ended up with another clear and dry night for campfire sitting. Marcus and Michelle arrived back (much to Davies’ disappointment without Chloe ‘if Chloe’s mummy and daddy are here, why isn’t Chloe?!?’ ) followed by Em, Eve, Rei and Chloe along with Tom and Ingrid, Ady’s work friends who were keen to see the site, view a bit of Camping In Action and see Davies for his birthday all in one go. They came bearing beer, marshmallows and chocolate so were very welcome guests :). We’d decided in advance to get fish and chips that evening so Marcus who had Information at his Fingertips found the nearest place at 5 miles away and Tom, Ingrid and Ady were sent off with a complicated list and lots of Marcus’ money :). We later discovered a fish and chip shop stupidly named just in the village which hadn’t shown up on the fingertips information but actually they were very nice fish and chips (if a little stingy on the portions) so that was fine.

We had a lovely tableau of adults and children, in a circle round a campfire passing salt and vinegar and ketchup back and forth, I opened the cava and all was well with the world :). We attempted sky lanterns and they were lovely but unfortunately high trees and low gusts of wind meant we were in serious risk of setting fire to the woodland so we had to stop after about 5 :(. We moved on to marshmallows and sparklers though to ensure our requirement of danger for the day had been fulfilled ;).

Thursday was Butser Day. The weather looked very unfriendly but actually we had the whole day in the dry with occassional bursts of really very warm sunshine. The Educational Officer, Maureen took us round herself and very kindly, considering the rather high volume of drop outs from my booked number of attendees didn’t refuse to run it or insist that we pay for the minimum of 20 children that are really required for the educational visit. It did mean we lost our free adults places though so it was slightly more pricey per head than I’d expected :(.

We took Ali and Freya with us and on the car journey had a bit of storytelling which is always nice. Davies, Scarlett and I have a few fall back stories we can all tell with slight variations and enjoy both listening to and telling to each other.

That small issue aside it was a fab day, way better even than I’d anticipated :). We had a walk to the celtic roundhouse area with stops to point out things of interest along the way (such as their sheep and chickens) and then a 20 minute or so talk in the roundhouse about the house, Butser, how it all works, a brief timeline history bit and some question and answer stuff. Considering our original age band of 3 – 12 Maureen coped magnificently with the changed ages and I thought, managed to spark everyone’s interest with her talk. We lost some of the much younger ones (Tarly had glazed over and begun picking her nose 😳 ) towards the very end but she still kept them seated and quiet if not utterly engaged.

We then had a peep in a couple of other roundhouses before heading to the wattling area. I’d selected from a list of various activities and chosen 4 based on things I thought would appeal to the most children, were the most practical as in hands-on and the ones least possible to try at home or indeed at other venues. Wattling is the weaving in and out of upright posts long wooden rods (or branches) to create a wall; either to use as a fence or to be daubed to create a structure wall.

I think most children had a go at that, with satisfyingly speedy visual results :).

Next came Clunching. I happily confess I chose this simply because I’d never heard the word before, instantly liked it (try saying it aloud, it’s lovely :)) and having googled it to find out more about it the number one hit was for Butser itself refered to on a school’s website saying what a great time they’d had clunching at Butser :). I hadn’t appreciated that there would be such direct contact with chalk however…

I was coping really well with the free ranging, off the lead, ‘she won’t hurt you’ Moss the sheepdog and even stroked her a few times. I was managing to listen to the ‘pick up a lump of chalk and smash it to make powder’ although that was starting to make my skin crawl a little but when Maureen started to explain the test to ensure it was chalk you had and not flint before you started striking it and said the way to check was to dig your fingernail in my knees quite literally went to jelly, I came out in goosebumps all over and had to walk away from the group rather rapidly (in a jellylegged fashion).

The children all enjoyed it though and I could see how, chalk dust aside it would be quite theraputic. The next bit was to add the chalk dust to various other components including straw, water, animal poo and mud. This was equally popular and then great handfuls had to be placed in a sort of oversized brick shape mould to carry on building up the wall on a small building that is being entirely built by clunching children on educational visits and will eventually be a blacksmiths’ forge.

It was then time for lunch and we were very kindly offered use of the roundhouse to sit and eat in with a couple of minor provisos about safety and respect for the building. Unfortunately some of our party (by association rather than direct friends) didn’t listen to that very well which made me rather cross (clearly been mixing with Michelle too much ;)) but Maureen was back with precision timing to whisk us off to another activity.

This time it was excavation and in marked out plots the children were provided with trowels and set to digging out things. There were plenty of pottery fragments, rusty nails, some charcoal, a couple of gate hinges and the ultimate in ‘finds’ for Davies of a rams skull. 🙂

Once they’d all dug up stuff Maureen took them all to sit down and talked through all the various things they’d all found. She slipped over to me to check which of the ‘making something to take home’ activities I thought would be best and on the basis of people sleeping in tents for a couple more nights I went for the non messy option of jewellry making. I think all the children had a go, even the initially reluctant ones. Davies and Scarlett both really enjoyed it and I plan to get some wire and pliers for them to have a go at playing with some more. I think perhaps models are more their style than jewellry but they really enjoyed the pliability of wire as a material to work with.

We finished with a look round the roman villa, a few more tidbits of information as we went and finally a go on the tables filled with little mosaic tiles to make your own which was a suitably low key activity for the fairly exhausted children. We had a lovely variety of pictures, patterns, random gatherings of colour and very precise and planned results of mosaics which was interesting to see.

The visit ended in the shop, rather cunningly, where we all paid and most of the children seemed to select something to buy. Davies chose a beeswax tablet to be drawn or written on with an attached wooden stylus and erased with the blunt end. He had seen similar ones at Fishbourne before, and indeed had a go I think but not seen them for sale before so he was delighted with that (and so was I for three quid ;)) and it smells nice :). Scarlett agonised for ages and finally chose a fox charm pendant on a leather thong necklace which actually really suits her and she has not taken off since, for bath, bed or otherwise and a small robins egg made of wood (they had chicken, robin and wren to show the size difference but I said she could only have one) which Em kindly gave us some lavender oil to soak it in so is now beautifully scented too.

Alison and co. came back with us for a brief cup of tea / peek at the campsite / less structured 10 minute run around on the on site obstacle course.

We decided to feed Davies and Scarlett at Asda’s coffee shop that evening for hot, no fuss food so while Ady sat in there with them I dashed round for food for our dinner and various bit for Davies’ ‘birthday event – not a party‘ on the Friday.

It was Ali and Em’s last night and yet another good one round the campfire. I always think the mark of a good holiday with mates is easily measured by the amount of in-jokes you come back with and this holiday certainly spawned a fair few of those :). All the evenings were lovely but this was the particularly memorable one where I went to bed with my sides aching from laughing and a feeling of utter contentment and wellbeing. Ady and I likened it to our first ever Melrose where we felt instant connections with people and just loved the lifestyle – this week was very similar to that.

I think this was also the night of the birth of the Wonderous Banging Clanking Band (one of their many incarnations) which was most of the children, led by Chloe, banging on an assortments of stones, chalk, flint, logs, sticks, plates and spoons and singing a variety of songs including ‘Whats the time Mr Wolf’, ‘Jelly beans’, ‘Shouty Mummies’, ‘Bye Bye Bracken’ and a medley of all their hits. They were actually very good and as someone who is always up for a bit of a singsong I couldn’t help but admire and appreciate their work :).

The other on-site entertainment for us on Thursday was a group of lads who had the other tipi. They were uni mates who still get together annually for a weekend of laddishness. They’d been to the pub but returned fairly early, inexplicably with German accents they’d not had when they left and proceeded to play an unruly, chaotic and quite amusing game of glow in the dark boules, which rebounded off tents, logs round the fire and anything else in their way.

They were sobered up by the arrival of the Drama Gang – some young folk, possibly on gap years, who were attending a course at the centre and staying at the hostel on wet nights and in tiny tents on dry ones. They would weave their drunken way down to the camping field each night around 11pm, call out ‘goodnight fire people, we love you’ and be otherwise silent. The Lads were very keen to lure them into their tent and the conversation was most amusing to eavesdrop on, particularly as they were unsuccessful! 😆

Friday morning we were taken geocaching by Marcus and Michelle. Em, Eve and Rei came too and we had a very picturesque walk along part of the south downs way in the sunshine before entering a field full of cattle (all young males as it turned out) to find the cache under the water trough. Ady worked his trademark magic that he pulls out of the bag for all children, old ladies and animals and had the whole herd quite literally eating out of his hand while the children all swapped treasures for other treasures (in some cases each others :lol:).

Michelle and Chloe headed back while the rest of us went on to look for a second cache. Scarlett was particularly keen as she’d decided to leave something in the first cache and choose something from the second. Unfortunately we didn’t find the second one despite quite a full search of the area and I was very proud of her being able to feel (justifiably) sad when she realised she wouldn’t get something when everyone else had but keeping it together anyway :). We realised time had gone by quicker than we’d thought so headed back to the campsite. I ended up ahead of the others and enjoyed walking at my own faster than child speed in the sunshine for ten minutes or so :).

Back at the campsite Freya had organised a treasure hunt for Davies so they headed off to do that which he was thrilled with. He came back with a couple of paintings from Freya and a fantastic little water colour of him that Ali had done :). Julie had arrived with Jack, Maisie and Lorna so we had a mini party. Chloe gave Davies a fab bow and arrow and a Horrible Histories dvd, Eve and Rei gave him a Ben 10 figure each – all mightly appreciated (thanks again :)) and the children played some games with Ady including musical bumps, chinese whispers and the Banging Clanking Band made an appearance to sing Happy Birthday (bemusing Maisie but including Jack who quickly saw the appeal of banging things loudly ;)). We had a birthday cake and candles and much running around enjoying the freedom of the campsite and the woodland.

Em, Ali, Julie and I went to sit on Sue’s bench with a cup of tea – there is a particularly poignant plaque on a bench located at a high point above most of the woods with a view on a clear day of the lagoons and the sea which has the legend ‘A cup of tea and a view of the sea – for Sue’. Michelle learnt that Sue’s husband visits the bench weekly with a cup of tea and we’d half hoped to meet him. We didn’t, but we toasted Sue with our tea cups and enjoyed her wonderful view.

Em had gotten packed up during the course of the morning so Julie, Em, Ali and I all left the site together – me to run Ali and Freya to the station for their homeward journey. On the way back to the campsite I collected an Indian Takeaway menu from the local restaurant that delivered food to the campsite as we’d decided to go for that as a last night treat.

When I returned Ali and Em had already been replaced by two new families pitching their tents for a weekend stay. One of which was a very cool, home made tipi tent. It was the two Dads and one child each to begin with but the Mums and additional children arrived later on – one family with 3 boys and one with 2 girls. One of the men went off to do his nightshift as a nurse but the other man and two women joined us round the campfire; we broke out the marshmallows to share and had a lovely last night chatting, evangelicising about HE, sharing camping tales and generally making friends. It was really nice :).

I’d rung for our curry and the Merc delivering it (the owner himself as the usual driver hadn’t turned up) arrived with split second timing at the gates to the centre as Michelle and I arrived clutching our glasses of wine to collect it :). Very nice curry it was too.

Saturday was probably the best weather we’d had all week and bright sunshine with odd bursts of overcast which were actually quite welcome to keep us from getting too hot. We’d all had a bad night’s sleep thanks to owls, other more distant campers and specifically one of the daughters of our campfire buddies who seemed to spend a lot of the night awake and wailing :(. The campsite had filled up and was apparently fully booked for the weekend and was suddenly not quite so lovely as we’d enjoyed all week so it was a good day to go.

We packed up in the style of Chris French – very relaxed, with lots of tea breaks and sitting around in the sun. Davies, Scarlett and Chloe went off to chat with a man building a stone pizza oven who incredibly kindly chatted to them for a while and then gave them a barrow full of sand to play in :). It’s so that sort of campsite :). Ady and Marcus went off to get cash out, Hazel came down to sort out money with us (I think I’ve kept my Hazel-talk to a sensible level. I was very tempted merely to blog about what Hazel wore each day and every bit of our conversations over the week but I managed to restrain myself :lol:). I was proud to get the sleeping bags and the camping mats down to all new record levels of smallness in packing them away and even more proud to have completely dismantled the tent by myself including fitting it all into the bag :).

Meanwhile Davies had decided to be ‘An Archeologist’ and ‘do some excavating’ so he was digging out bits of pottery with a spoon. Scarlett and Chloe played for a while on the obstacle course and then went and joined him to do that. Both my children have adored spending time with all their friends this week but particularly Chloe. Scarlett has rechristened her ‘Glowy’ because I think for Scarlett she really does glow with coolness :).

We finally packed up the last few bits, took the cars back to the car park and then did the 1km Mobile Phone Walk which is a 8 destination information points that you ring a phone number to get a recorded commentary for. Davies and Scarlett were utterly at the end of pretty much all resources but at that stage of not wanting to call things a day either so we trudged around with Michelle and I particularly finding the sound effects and banter on the recordings hilarious 😆

On the way back past the camping field we said a final goodbye to our campfire buddies from the night before who had just caught a tail-less slow worm which they brought over to show us so the children all had a hold of that. It was only young but the first live one Davies has ever seen.

We finally parted ways and headed for home. Due to road closures in Arundel what should have been less than a hours’ drive was nearly 2 and a quarter though :(. I dashed to Sainsburys for essentials while Ady dunked very dirty children in a bath, I cooked their tea and they watched X Factor while we unloaded the car.

It was a very late night but we enjoyed a bath, real bed, meal you couldn’t cook camping etc. Ady blew up many balloons, Scarlett made a fab card and I wrapped up presents and finally I got to bed at about 230am. Davies had nearly seen his birthday in as it was about 1145pm when he eventually got to sleep.

Ady and I both said it was our favourite group camp so far. It is easily our favourite campsite, we love the seasonal changes and scenery of the woodland, it is close to home, cheap and friendly, open fires are not just allowed they are positively encouraged, we had a wonderful mix of friends with us and while the weather might not have been perfect we had dry evenings every night to sit round the campfire. For us it more than made up for crap weather this summer meaning all camping trips have been blighted by rain, no MP group camp and was one of the first group camps we’ve been able to genuinely call a Holiday :). Thank you so much to Ali, Em, Marcus and Michelle and children for such a fab week – missing you all already xxx

I went to bed at 1030pm last night which is simply unheard of. Even more shocking was that I left a glass of wine unfinished! 😯

I think the various 2am bedtimes this week from ragrugging finally caught up with me and as I had work this morning for once I did the sensible thing and went to bed early. Not something I’ll make a habit of though and I woke up around 2am and again at 6am and again at 7am so I possibly didn’t get much more sleep than in a normal night when I sleep through really.

Anyway, yesterday we were heading to Lucy’s so we had to pick up a few bits for lunch and the children both have odd sundries they need (S: pants, long sleeved tops and trousers for autumn / winter D: socks, black shoes for Badgers, trousers generally) so I decided to go to the CoOp which has an instore Ethel Austin concession which sells cheap clothes. We did get the socks and pants but nothing else, and the required bits of food for lunch and dinner later.

We had a mostly nice time at Lucy’s. We all had a very soggy walk to the shops to get a few more essential lunch items which took a while to dry out from but given the children were mostly confined to indoors they all rubbed along fairly well together with very minimal fallings out. Lucy and I managed to chat and drink tea which is always a winning way to spend an afternoon in my opinion. 🙂

We headed home to get Scarlett fed, changed and item to take to show and tell chosen ready for Rainbows, but despite gentle reminding, rather less patient prompting and finally shrieking at her from me we still ended up with her in tears when Rebecca rang the doorbell to call for us just before 6pm. She finally grabbed something and we walked round to the hall only to find that only other other Rainbow had turned up and only one of the adult helpers so everyone else hadn’t realised it restarted yesterday after summer break. 🙁 Scarlett was very disappointed, particularly as she’ll miss next week so we came home again.

I think we had stories although I can’t actually remember and then bed for D and S followed not that long afterwards by us.

Ooh and Davies learnt how to spell ‘Goddard’. He’d had a go and written ‘Davies Goodo’ before getting stuck and coming to ask. I wrote it out once, he copied it and then I gave him a blank sheet of paper and he wrote it out again straight away. That’s got to be the way to learn rather than agonising over it before he was 5 and went into reception when it wouldn’t actually have meant anything other than forming shapes I reckon.

Today I was off to work for the morning which went quickly amid much teasing from my workmates about weather conditions for next week (camping trips and weather are legendary now for me at work). I was most amused to see two girls from Rainbows (seperately) come in, both of whom I have chatted to at length at Rainbows over the last 2 terms having sat there every single week and then 3 siblings from Badgers come in, two of whom came to Davies Doctor Who party last year and I have known since Davies was at Lancing Badgers nearly 3 years ago. All of the children appeared not to recognise me despite me saying hello to them and one of the 3 siblings asked his mum ‘how does she know our names?’ 😆 clearly out of context adults are just adults to most children – either that or I need the accessories of Davies and Scarlett to make me recognisable!

Davies and Scarlett went to Young Wildlife Explorers at Pulborough Brooks which is a monthly kids meeting of RSPB members. I had cocked up the times and sent Ady there with them at 11am when they should have been there at 10am so they ended up missing their slot and very kindly they let them in for the first hour of the older childrens’ session instead for this month. Davies is actually old enough for that group as it is 8-11 rather than the 5-7 one he has been signed up for but the organiser felt it might be better to start him, with Scarlett for the first term at least and then see if he wanted to move up, which sounded sensible and the children are happier with. Eventually I think them being in different groups would be good though and give whoever takes them a chance to have an hour each with each child seperately while the other one is in their group. It’s the first Saturday of every month and looks to have a varied and interesting programme, and they can go right up to age 16 if they want so that should be another good activity to add to the things they do :).

Ady and the children beat me home so there was a cheese toastie waiting for me when I got in which was nice :).

This afternoon I have mostly loafed around on the sofa checking long term weather forecasts while the children played on laptops. Davies spent some time on the cartoon network website, Scarlett spent ages on a literacy and numeracy game disc that Davies used to love playing and seemed to be doing well whenever I glanced over. She is so resistant to being taught or even told anything and wants to ‘learn everything myself’ so games like she was playing where a process of elimination is possible to get the right answer are ideal for her.

Ady was being super efficient and packing the car up inbetween showers. He then remembered we needed some gas cannisters and a mantle for our gas lamp so Davies and I went off into town to get them from Millets. We had a bit of a wander round town too and then as we’d parked on the seafront and the sea was so impressively high and wild we went onto the pier. We used to often go to the beach on wet and windy days just because I think that’s when the sea is at it’s most awesome so I was very happy to take Davies to be awed by it today. It was all brown and churned up, really high waves breaking and spraying the pier, the rain was so hard it hurt your face and the wind whipped at you – it was ace :). We did some leaning into the wind, running against it and with it to see the difference and then hung over the pier where the waves were breaking listening to the stones getting dragged back and getting that odd feeling of moving backwards.

We came home, the kids had a bath and tea, we watched X Factor and now I’m waiting for Ady to cook a curry. There, I’ve been a real lazy cow today while Ady has been wonderful but he did have quite a weekend off last weekend so I don’t feel too guilty ;).

For next week:
Weather:
Sunday – cloudy
Monday – sunny intervals
Tuesday – light showers
Wednesday – sunny intervals
Thursday – sunny intervals
Friday – cloudy with showers
Butser information
The visit is booked for Thursday 11th September. Arrival at 10am with money please for educational visit. Bring a packed lunch as it’s planned to last all day. Wear old and weather suitable clothing.
Blog readers I have listed as attending are:
Alison
Ros
Michelle
Em
Ali
Please text me on 07810 666528 if there are any changes as I won’t be online after today.

Davies’ birthday
I’m planning on doing some sort of birthday event for Davies on Friday 12th at the campsite. Any and all readers are very welcome to come along. If you are public transporting let me know if you want us to pick you up from the station. Aim to arrive around midday and we’ll have some outdoorsy games, some food and so on. Wear old / weather suitable clothing as it’s likely to involve mess! 🙂

Work all day for me today. It was a really good day, very busy and with a good atmosphere. A combination of the rain driving people in off the street and a burst of back to school energy made for a lots of people milling about. I spent lots of time on the enquiry desk and was most complimented by my boss telling me she wished she could just have a ‘team of Nicolas’ to run the library. Not sure anyone else I’ve ever met would be anything other than faintly horrified at the notion of an army of mes but she meant it for all the right reasons :lol:.

Jody, the man who works at the library is moving on to Bognor library. The borrowers haven’t been told yet but we’re anticipating tears. He has been a huge hit with females of a certain age – notably the very young and the very old. The children adore him and the older women of Lancing have been sent into heart fluttering overdrive at his tall, dark and handsome-ness :lol:. We spent the morning discussing how best to deal with the inevitable fall out of his leaving Lancing and figure it will be in the league of Robbie Williams leaving Take That. We’re planning on leaving the Team Read table and chairs out and putting tissues and hot sweet tea out and offering counselling sessions. We thought maybe a life size cut out of Jody that we could accessorise according to the season and then came up with some revenue generating ideas such as a Jody calendar and maybe some Jody ringtones of him saying things like ‘would you like me to renew that for you?’ and ‘quiet in the library’ might be good sellers. We told him he’ll never know such love as he’s felt here at Lancing and will always remember the days when he was ‘Big In Lancing’ (a big like Big In Japan’).Happy days! :). He and I were sniggering over a quote in the back of a book describing Arnie as ‘thinking woman’s beefcake’ and we decided Jody was the ‘incontinent woman’s beefcake’ – a motto I feel he could put on his CV and would take him places for sure :lol:. Ah the fun we have working at the library…

Meanwhile back at home Davies spent the day in his pjs lapping up the sympathy of Ady in the morning and my Mum in the afternoon. Within ten minutes of me being home he was doing someraults off the sofa though so I’m not utterly convinced he is at deaths door :). He does seem to have (another) cold though and I’m sure the greyness of the day didn’t help.

Scarlett had big news to greet me with that her first tooth has fallen out 🙂

I felt quite irrationally choked to have missed it actually coming out having witnessed all the children’s firsts up to now; first crawl, first steps, first word, all of Davies’ teeth coming out. This was the last time I’ll have a first tooth come out in my children and I felt a bit sad to have been out at work when it happened :(. I guess I was going to not be present for a first somewhere along the line but I was thinking more of kisses and other first sexual milestones many years from now 😆

I read some bedtime stories and they both took ages to fall asleep. And I finished the rag rug 🙂 I’m really pleased with it for a first attempt and although I learnt loads and would do certain things differently next time (like not stretching material when threading it on the pegs as it just springs back again when you take it off the pegs and you end up with narrower strips in places) it is pretty regular shaped and has a fairly good random pattern going on. It is made entirely of Scarlett’s old clothes and has pyjamas, tops, trousers, tights, pants and even a couple of swimming costumes chopped up in there. I have various plans for future projects so will be frantically gathering rags and materials now to stash for making rugs.

I’ll get some better pictures tomorrow in daylight but here is the finished item 🙂

I’ve been sorely neglecting my online duties in favour of ragrugging. I suspect this gives me many, many muffin points but the rug is lovely :). It’s past halfway point now and I hope to finish it tomorrow. I’ve put out a plea for rags or stuff to cut into rags on freecycle so I’m hoping for more material to continue indulging in it.

Of course given my short attention span and all what will probably happen is I’ll finish this one, get halfway into a second one, join loads of ragrugging forums, borrow stacks of books on it from work, start up a ragrugging blog and then lose interest :lol:.

So when I’ve not been cutting old pj tops of Scarlett’s into long strips, knotting them together and weaving them onto my peg loom we went out to brave the elements. We’d arranged to meet up with Julie, Jack,Maisie and Lorna at PYO and she had invited along her 2 best mates – they have a little trio going on and often look after each others’ children. One of them is hoping to buy a house in Julie’s road. I like them both and all their children (one has 3, the other has 2) are nice so it was good to catch up with them too. Davies was less pleased, I think he’d wanted to see just Jack and Maisie so he hung out with me for a lot of the time but that was nice. We had one of our surreal and ridiculous conversations at one point in the pouring rain as he was telling me what he could taste in the rain and using winebuff terminology (as interpreted by a 7yo) – it was hilarious! We had top notes and nose and qualities 😆

There was a classic photo opportunity moment when a dead rat was spotted and they all gathered round to offer ideas about how it died 🙂

Elaine and I amused ourselves by saying we’d not seen PYO rats up on the price list and pondered whether there would be a discount price if you bought in bulk like there was for sweetcorn 😆

We picked blackberries, raspberries, sweetcorn, apples (cookers and eaters) and some of the others picked squash and pumpkins. We had a couple of rides on the tractor, ate loads of fruit and got drenched in the rain and then totally blow dried by the wind and warmed by the sun.

We then went on to Highdown Gardens where due to various events Julie and I ended up with our children picnicking while Elaine and Katy ended up seperately, so Davies got his wish in the end and had some time with just Jack and Maisie. My hip was playing up and Davies was keen to get home so we left around 4pm. I carried on with my rug while Davies and Scarlett played ‘parties’ upstairs in his bedroom which involved talking loudly through the microphone on the karaoke machine and being very bouncy and exciteable. No idea where he gets the idea that constitutes a party ;).

They had tea, Ady arrived home and then at 630pm, as arranged the fire brigade arrived!

At the open day at the local fire station recently we’d signed up to have a free fire safety check. Now Ady is (unsurprisingly) very diligent about fire safety and not only do we have 2 wired in smoke alarms we also have 3 additional ones and normally (we hid them today) we have several fire extinguishers too. Thanks to the Safety Day earlier this year and the demonstrations at the open day Davies and Scarlett are both pretty fire aware too. But I thought it was worth having them round just for the novelty value and for the children to get to talk to them here at home.

One of them walked round the house to check our smoke alarm provision. He had brought two free ones with him to fit but there was no need. The other one sat and chatted to us and worked through a fire safety questionnaire with us. There was a section just for the children to answer which they did perfectly. They were here for half an hour or so and were very happy that we are doing all we need for fire prevention, evacuation plans and fire safety. Which is what one would hope given Ady and I spent nearly a year doing training sessions in offices on fire safety and his current role of H&S manager at work but nice to know anyway.

After they’d gone we chatted a bit more about the leaflet they’d left and discussed which was the best upstairs window to jump out of and how we’d do it. Then it was bedtime storytime and bed for D and S. I did more ragrugging, Ady cooked dinner and we watched ‘Over her dead body’ which was crap.

Work tomorrow.

Today I have mostly ignored my children and spent the day chopping up old clothes into strips and then weaving them on my peg loom to make a rather gorgeous (not finished yet) rag rug. Aside from a nasty blister on my finger and a very sore thumb (my scissors are big and heavy and my hands and fingers are one bit of me that is quite small so they’ve struggled) it has been very relaxing and theraputic. While doing it I had the music channels on the TV so Davies, Scarlett and I have been chatting about all sorts of things that were thrown up by that.

We’ve chatted about sampling music on songs (thanks to Kid Rock’s All Summer Long – infact I’ll pop the link to Sweet Home Alabama here while I think of it to show them as promised), we watched various music videos and they got the idea of some of them telling stories and rather perfectly Sledgehammer came on so Davies got to see that. Then we watched some dance videos including Run DMC vs Jason Nevins and it’s like that. Davies has been talking about break dancing ever since one of the Wellyboots boys showed him some ‘moves’ and he was also very impressed with Doug’s prancing about on Saturday and said he’d like to learn that sort of dancing. I’ve been wanting something for him to do aside from Badgers and swimming and he says he’d like to look at lessons so I’ll see what I can dig up for him to fit in with our other weeks worth of stuff. Could be good :).

Amidst all the musical stuff they played a long and convoluted game, tidied it all up, got a load more stuff out to play with, played with it, tidied it up and so on. They did a kit Davies got from the charity shop the other day with a balancing bird that drinks water then it flows down it to a bowl at the bottom and it was generally a fairly relaxed day.

It was the start of swimming lessons again today so having checked earlier in the day we had costumes, towels and goggles etc. all packed up we headed off at 345pm for the swimming pool. Scarlett remained in the 530pm lesson with Davies moving up into the 4pm lesson giving us a full hour inbetween lessons which it was my intention to fill each week by swimming myself with them inbetween but when we arrived Carollyn the instructor called me over to ask if we could make 330pm instead for Scarlett as there were still spaces in that. I dashed upstairs to the instructor manager woman and organised it from next week. Hurrah 🙂 That means Scarlett’s lesson is first with Davies’ straight afterwards and we’ll be home again for 5pm, miss all the traffic and they can have dinner at a normal time still :).

So Davies had his lesson which went well – he was about in the middle ability-wise so my worries about him being moved up too early and struggling were unfounded. He was fine with the new swimming hat and I think he will make some good progress this term :). We watched the diving lessons and he is really keen to do that so he has a proper goal to work towards with his swimming too. Scarlett was a complete nightmare while I was trying to watch his lesson, she just didn’t want to sit still, be quiet and watch. In fairness it was hot in there but I was still cross with her :(.

We all got in the water next and Davies did some jumping in and swimming, some underwater practise and then complained about a pain in his side. It took me a moment or two to realise he had a stitch – his first ever! He sat out for a while and Scarlett practised jumping in, then they both sat and watched me swim four lengths. I am a rubbish swimmer, really weak, no technique and cannot put my face in the water but I managed four lengths fairly easily and overtook the woman infront too. I would had done more but for the fact I felt uneasy about just leaving D and S sitting by the side. We had one last quick play and then got out to get Davies and changed. We all sat and watched more of the diving lessons and then Ady popped in to collect Davies on his way home and I stayed and watched Scarlett.

She did really well and I think she will make good progress this term too. She was fine with the swimming cap which had been the source of some concern initially and looked like she was not only enjoying the lesson but actually paying attention too. We’ll have to see what the mix of abilities is like in the earlier class next time but she seemed to be about in the middle of that class.

We got home, Ady had sorted their tea out and I did a bit more ragrugging while they ate. A couple of bedtime stories and then they were both spectacularly bad at getting to sleep while I made quiche for dinner tonight and one to freeze for later in the month.

Tomorrow the plan is PYO with Julie and a couple of friends but the weather may well force a change of plans.

I do like my life :). Pretty much most of the time I can think of little else I would rather be doing or people I would rather be doing it with :).

Today I had a bit of a recuperating lie in, cleared the laundry backlog, made a shopping list for the months food (the bits of the month we’re around for) and drank plenty of tea.

We had a brief trip out to local charity shops looking for rags for making a rag rug but had no luck. Eventually I remembered the several black sacks of outgrown clothes I’d failed to ebay and came home and started cutting them into strips instead though so that was for the best :). Davies and I – and consequently Scarlett – had an interesting discussion brought about by his question of why mostly older people work in charity shops. We talked about the nature of voluntary work, why you’d need to not have to spend your time earning money, how pensions work and the difference between state and private pensions. Then we noticed the people about in the town were either retirement age or people with small children and discussed why that was mostly mothers at home with babies instead of fathers. I love it when they make observations that lead to interesting discussions and how their ideas and opinions are forming. They have fascinating takes on things that I often take forgranted and they challenge plenty of my views and make me question myself which is a good thing.

They asked for something from the bakers for lunch so Davies chose a cream cake – he LOVES fresh cream cakes, really appreciates the treat of having one every so often :), Scarlett chose a shortbread penguin of which she only ate the chocolate dipped half, proclaiming the biscuit not very nice.

Once home I happily threaded up the peg loom, chopped up loads of old clothes and set about making my first rag rug – very theraputic and about 1/3 finished. I put on a documentary about evolution on which we all dipped in and out of. Davies and Scarlett spent about 2 hours making field guides having watched Spiderwick Chronicles yesterday. I’ve not watched all of it and what I did see went rather over my head but Davies has created an amazing 12 page book using paper than Ady brings home from work with plant images and information on one side. Davies has used that as the centrepiece for work all around the page including things gathered from the garden and stuck in with glue. There is information about life cycles of sprites and goblins, samples of various things including a goblin’s milk tooth and a griffin feather :). I am in awe and will try and photograph it tomorrow.

Scarlett also did a similar thing on a smaller scale and has made something equally fab; her drawing has really taken off suddenly, although she does have an excellent mentor ;). They tidied up, I made their tea and we had a visit from David and Je/Annette who had a birthday over the weekend and turned 50. I would have been surprised if she’d turned 40 as she looks really young so 50 was a real shock :shock:. They had brought us over some of the birthday cake as we’d missed the little party all the neighbours had been invited to as we were away (shame!). This does mean we have to make a card now, which we will no doubt have a thankyou card in return for and the whole saga may well continue into November!

Ady came home and he’d half heard something on the radio about extremely low tides today along the south coast at 7am and 7pm so we headed down to the beach to observe, but it was a not remotely interesting or extreme low tide so we came home again. With some coaxing from Ady I decided to go and get the food shopping done tonight instead of dragging children round with me during the day tomorrow so I went off to do that while he tidied up and put the children to bed.

He put the shopping away while I said goodnight to the children and had a bath, then I cooked a late dinner which we watched with recorded Dragons Den.

Swimming starts tomorrow and as we have to be at the pool for Davies’ lesson at 4pm I think that is going to mean Tuesdays become a not getting up to much sort of day for us now.

Friday morning was mostly taken up with gathering myself together to head up to The Beans for the weekend. I made some rice crispie cakes but was unable to muster ingredients or enthusiasm for further creativity in baking. And I ran out of paper cake cases which would have been needed if I’d moved on to cupcakes which would have been my next plan.

Davies and Scarlett gathered their own stuff together to take which I then filtered to remove things that were totally unnecessary and to suggest a few sensible additions. Somewhere in the whole getting them to get some stuff while I got the rest I managed to forget pjs for Tarly though :oops:. She was offered a pair from the stash of girls pjs that exist in a house with 2 girls but instead chose to wear Davies’ t shirt to bed on Friday and my top on Saturday. As with most of my tops it has a deep v neck on me it was positively indecent on her :lol:.

My Mum arrived just after midday to stay with Davies and Scarlett while I went into work. Due to them owing me hours for the bank holiday I was only working from 1230-5pm instead of all day as usual. I spent most of my shift on the enquiry desk and chatting to one of the relief staff who is 20 about whether we ever actually feel grown up or not.

Ady had hoped to beat me home and get the children fed but he got caught in traffic so Mum was still here when I arrived home just after 5pm. Weird stuff going on with my parents again, none of which I have any desire to get entangled in and I was slightly pissed off that she said ‘they’ve been saying they’re hungry for the last half an hour or so’ but hadn’t fed them 🙄 so she left, I did feed them and gathered together the last few things (aside from Tarly’s pjs) and had everything gathered by the front door when Ady did arrive home.

I think we finally pulled away at about 610pm which was nearly an hour later than I’d been hoping to leave 🙁 Satnav said an ETA of just after 830pm but as we sat in traffic just after Dartford and then again at various points along the M11 I watched the ETA move to after 9pm in the end. It was an otherwise fine journey though, which I had privately been a little nervous about. Although I’ve been driving for years and drive most days locally Ady is always the one who does the driving when we are together so he does all the long haul driving. Consequently although I have been through the Dartford Tunnel and over the bridge many times I have never actually driven them myself. Plus it was in the courtesy car which was automatic (I’ve only ever driven one automatic car before and that was a courtesy car at least 10 years ago) and lacking the essential kid-distraction unit of in-car dvd player with headphones allowing them to watch their films and me to listen to music without interfering with each other.

As it went it was all fine. I’d picked up a handful of various cds from work so we listened to Billy Joel, the StTrinians soundtrack, The Monkees, Gabriella Cilmi, Duffy and the Juno soundtrack and all sang along together. The only slighty stressy moment was just after I’d made them turn their DSs off after they got louder and crosser with each other over a linked game of Big Brain Academy and was explaining why I’d done so, it was by now dark and the satnav told me to take the fourth exit on a roundabout that only had 3 exits. I found myself with a gear stick to grab, without an exit to take and without patience for children!

We arrived safely though and were welcomed by SB getting up to greet Davies and Scarlett and a glass of wine thrust into my hand :). After a brief play and sufficient alcohol to restore myself I set up beds and the children were packed off to bed. Neither of them went to bed well either night as they still have this novelty thing going on when they share a bedroom and consequently are dreadful at chatting, being giddy and then winding each other up which is very annoying but not something I can do anything about other than make them sleep in each others rooms more regularly so it becomes less of a novelty. I fear for my children that would take exposure of the situation for at least a year though so it’s not likely to happen! They did eventually go to sleep and we had a very pleasant, and quite late night chatting – Chris and Helen, Jax and Tim and I.

Saturday morning felt like it started too early with Scarlett clambering on top of me around 730am. I persuaded her to cuddle up with me for about 15 minutes before she asked if she could go downstairs. As I opened the door to release her Big walked past so off they went. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I laid and read my book for about an hour before following her downstairs – Davies had already joined her.

The children were all quite loud but we persuaded them outside while we drank tea, ate croissants and a list of stuff still to do was made. I love Chris and Helen’s lists :). Tim was dispatched to gather glasses and shopping, Chris continued his sterling work of turning the climbing frame into a pirate ship and Jax, Helen and I drank more tea, did tidying, moved food and drink around, chopped up swords, hung up balloons and got children changed into pirates. As we were working on normal time rather than Home Ed time we were ready before guests arrived which meant children were hungry and could see all the food long before we were ready for them to be hungry or eat any of the food but it all seemed to work out – or at least the mixing of a rather Nic-quality sangria was done by Helen and at that point we ceased to care so much. Sangria o’clock :).

People arrived throughout the afternoon – none of them in the order we’d placed bets on them coming in :lol:. The weather was ace, the company was fantastic and Babs even brought meat! :lol:There was sword fighting aplenty, pirate arr-ing in spades, eating, drinking, photo taking. Various adults (I suspect I may have been the first but I was making up for Ady not being there so had to be more child-friendly than normal ;))got involved in sword fighting and were made to walk the plank. Doug trumped us all with a marathon of swordfighting including quite possibly saving Anna’s life as he swiped her out of the way of some wild swinging by Kit and Scarlett which would most certainly have sent her flying. There was treasure hunting, flag making and a wonderful hook-a-duck game provided by Chloe which gave the second most popular pastime after beating each other with pipe lagging which was getting wet in the paddling pool. Some stripped off completely, others went in their pants, some said to hell with it and went in fully dressed and Beth carried on in her mothers’ tradition by needing to take her trousers off! 😆

Scarlett provided entertainment in the form of a spectacular tantrum with me for not removing the slide from the pool (BB wanted it in there still so it wasn’t going to happen) and then not holding her hand while she jumped with a polostick alike toy (dangerous enough with both hands on dry ground, utterly perilous in a paddling pool one handed while holding onto your mother!). When I refused she told me I was lazy, a bad mother and then ran off down the garden screaming. All about 15 minutes after I’d been commenting to Em how much different she was being without Ady around 😆

We stayed in the garden til long after it got dark with the boys splintering off to play with pipe lagging and the girls all playing in the pool. Eventually everyone not staying the night departed, hot chocolate was provided for little people and then they went off to bed and the remaining adults moved into the comfy chairs. It was another late night – Scarlett joining us for some of it, in an intially cute and engaging but fast becomming annoying and wearing manner as she was disturbed by the kareoke next door (and slightly fragile from the earlier fall out, she is often clingy afterwards, particularly when she has said something she regrets to me).

I have flickr’d but I didn’t take many pictures so I’m hoping other people’s will capture more of the day (and indeed me and the children!).

Sunday was a more acceptably timed start. I woke just after 830am, before either child :). Davies went down before me and I woke Scarlett to come down with me. They headed off to play while I sat with the adults in the kitchen drinking tea and watching Chris cook mammoth amounts of pancakes. At about midday we moved through into the dining room and had a very enjoyable brunch for 18 with much passing the chocolate sauce, sugar, lemon juice etc. up and down the big table – it was ace :).

Ady had said the forecast thunderstorms and heavy rain had already hit Sussex so I was keen not to leave too late incase the drive was bad with weather. We left about 1245pm and I managed to shave 20 minutes off the satnav ETA along the way and be home just before 3pm :). It was a very easy drive, and if I didn’t have a personal fear of going above 80 mph in the car with the children in it the empty roads and performance of the car would have probably had me home even quicker 😳 And we missed all the weather :).

Ady had a lovely roast dinner cooking ready half an hour after we arrived home. The children and I walked round the shop to get some wine (they are funny, they’ve been with me all weekend, both talked about missing Ady lots and five minutes after we get home I say I’m walking round the shop and they both insist on coming with me :lol:) and we had dinner. We watched The Spiderwick Chronicles on dvd while eating that I’d brought home from work and then they had a big, long bath before snuggling up with Ady to watch Earth while I had an even bigger, even longer bath (with added wine). They went to bed and we watched Fiona’s Story which was quite harrowing and had us both shouting at the tv but was very good we thought.

It’s been a lovely weekend – so nice to see friends we’ve not seen for too long and really made me realise how much we’ve missed Kessingland this year (not Kessingland itself, just the whole being together for a whole week). Thank you so much to Chris and Helen for an excellent party and their fab hospitality for the weekend. 🙂

Ady stayed home to go to the Shoreham Airshow with some friends from work and had a good day yesterday although he was very sorry to miss Pirate Day and was very much there in spirit sending me regular texts including the Captain Pugwash theme tune 😆 and of course having his spirit channeled through me during my brief periods of running wild with pipe lagging! 😆

Today we met up with Mel, Liam and Lily. Despite the school holidays being nearly over and us making arrangements right at the beginning today was the first – and only – day we could all manage during the whole 6 weeks they were off school. Busy lives and part time working mums make for full diaries :).

Ady arrived home just before we were about to leave to show off his courtesy car. His car may well take a couple of weeks to fix although he seems to get a different guestimate from each person he speaks to, so we’ll see. The courtesy car is another Touran, slightly higher spec as it has tinted rear windows, all electric windows and air con controls in the back seats. It is a lovely blue colour too, but of course that makes no difference to the driving experience. That will be different to normal as it’s an automatic which I have very little experience of driving only ever having driven two previous courtesy cars over the years that were automatic. Never mind, it’s motorway most of the way to Chris and Helen’s so it won’t make much difference! It is of course missing the built-in dvd player with wireless headphones which Ady’s car has so my musical choice won’t be as free as usual.

Ady left to go about his days work and we headed off to Mel’s. My new peg loom had arrived so we went via a charity shop which seems to specialise in materials and wools and threads for some cotton to thread it with. I wasn’t sure how much the big spools would be so selected three and was amazed that they were only 10pence each for miles of thread just perfect for the threading of the loom 🙂 I got white, pink and green. Scarlett picked up a toy lemur and Davies picked up a balance science experiment box thing both for 75pence and in the shops’ BOGOF offer on toys – bargains ahoy! 🙂

We arrived at Mel’s and were very enthusiastically greeted by their 3 dogs (shudder). Mel lives with her mum in the house she grew up in and moved back to with her (then) husband and children when her Dad died. It’s an arrangement that seems to work quite well for them and allows her mum to stay in the house she loves but would be too big for her alone and Mel to have a bigger house than she could afford to buy with a built in babysitter when required. They have just had a load of building work done to create an additional bedroom for Liam downstairs (it is 3 bedroomed upstairs and Mel had one room, her mum another and Liam and Lily were sharing one). It’s looking really nice and it’s a deceptively sprawling house behind a smallish looking frontage.

The last time we met up, which I think was in the February half term or maybe the Easter holidays the four children had struggled a little with Davies being a bit too boisterous and Lily feeling left out when Scarlett joined in with the boys games. Today they all rubbed along really well together. Scarlett and Lily actually found some common ground (it’s only taken them nearly 3 years :lol:) and bonded over their pet tortoise. We had an hour or so at their house and then walked to the local park for a play in the playground before heading to their nearby Emmaus centre. Mel has talked about Emmaus before so it was interesting to actually go there and see it. We had lunch in the cafe and then wandered round the stuff for sale. Mel had a full basket of stuff (mostly toys) which she got for a quid (A QUID!) and we got 3 soft toys for Scarlett which they just gave us and a stargazer thing for Davies which was marked up at £3 but he only took £2 for in the end. We had a walk round the gardens there and then went back to Mel’s for another cup of tea and further playing for the children.

The day went really quickly and I had to tear the children away at 430pm to come home as they were really enjoying themselves. Mel either gets HE or does a very good job of pretending she does and often shares with me her frustrations with school and the institutionalisation of her children although she does see the good side of school for them too. This makes her good company among my friends with children at school as it is neither a subject we both studiously avoid or one we are trying to convince the other of our own viewpoint on. So we had a good ‘never like that when we were young’ and ‘youth of today’ type chatter which was nice, if made me feel like a proper grown up :lol:.

Just before we left Davies and Scarlett had a go on Liam’s Dareway which was a Christmas present to him last year after weeks of begging for one, that he only ever went on once on Christmas morning. Both my two fell in love with it instantly and were whizzing around on it like pros. They were very taken with it but I don’t think we have a suitable house for such toys really. Shame, because it did look like lots of fun :).
Once home I threaded up the peg loom and had a try with it. The threading is quite slow and laborious but worth doing as the result of the little bit I did weave was very promising. I need to get my hands on a load of rags now to make a rag rug which I think is going to be the very best first project. I’ve found various websites with patterns to properly make stuff like clothing on peg looms but I don’t want to try anything too ambitious until I have made at least one basic thing that has worked well. Any suggestions of good free rag sources gratefully recieved :).

Davies and Scarlett had a bath which all the new soft toys joined them in for a good wash and then the stargazer thing was set up in Davies’ room. It is American so has ‘fall’ written on the autumn globe (it comes with four different globes) and comes with a 30 minute tape telling you all sorts of interesting star facts. Scarlett went up to listen to it with Davies and they both kept having to pause the tape and run to tell me what the tape had said about various things. A definite bargain that :).