One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday a copy of Unconditional Parenting arrived for me from Amazon Marketplace. I opened the parcel, put the book to one side and commenced with my ranty shouty day.

When we got home the book seems to have totally disappeared. Of course I know that what has actually happened it is has been a victim of one of Ady’s tidying up sessions and will appear in three months time in the lego box or other such area where stuff was piled up by him and stashed in the guise of clearing things up when all it is actually doing is stuffing things in (similar to landfill mentality).

But I just can’t help this little feeling that somehow one of Alfie Kohn’s agents was sent, in an undercover operation to take it away because clearly I wasn’t demonstrating the book’s principles.

It’s not been the best of days really. Which probably serves me right for being all drunken and smug about motherhood last night ;).

Ady did some outsidey stuff first thing which seemed to take bloody forever. I know he emptied his car out but I lost interest in what else was happening. The children were playing with plasticine and I was being bad tempered.

Finally we got ourselves together and it being practically lunchtime we decided to go and do a bit of a south coast charity shop run as both Davies and I need new coats. I genuinely need a decent coat due to not owning one and needing one for nature type endeavours during the winter and bloody cold weather conditions during the summer when camping. Davies doesn’t actually need one as he has one but it is soooo school coat style, doesn’t suit him and has these reflective stripes on the sleeves which wreck any photos with flash so clearly a new one is a priority 😆 Or perhaps I could craft him one from old jeans, or dead woodland creatures pelts or woven home baking or something ;).

This was a mistake.

Despite being told we were visiting shops with the express purpose of coat purchasing, we would not be buying any soft toys and that being giddy in charity shops would not be tolerated both children seemed incapable of processing this. Scarlett ended up in tears at least twice as a result of me bawling her out. Davies did fairly well until we stopped following a lorry with incovered haybales which were shedding bits of hay and amusing him. He then cried. Not just gentle weeping either, full on wailing and sobbing with blotchy eyes and everything. Ady irritated me by simply breathing and I was a paragon of calm and peacefulness.

Don’t believe me? Ok then I am on day one of mooncupness and a totally irrational irritable bitch from hell. But crying over bloody haybale trucks? Not listening when told not to ask for a soft toy puppy at £1.50 carrying stains from three previous owners? Breathing? Criminal activities fully deserving of rantiness I’m sure you’ll agree!

We came home and I sat not talking to anyone for a while, popped out to send a book sold on amazon marketplace and faithfully promised would be sent on Saturday and then ordered a replacement clock mechanism for my clock which is still not working.

Davies went off to Beavers, Ady took him and within ten minutes I’d had a phonecall from them to say he’d hit his head and wanted to come home. I ran round there – well actually I ran to the end of the road, required artificial respiration before I could continue any further and then walked sedately to the church hall to collect him. It turned out he had been tripped up then pushed over by Matthew, terrorist of first Sompting Beavers. I asked in a rather cold tone if it had been dealt with and was assured he’d been told off and his father had still been there when it happened. Davies had left his coat in there so we went in and I’d slipped into full on wanting to kill the six year old boy mode (some of you may have witnessed this in me before, at Kessingland for example last year, or at Magical Mondays with certain individuals) and this seemed to have been sensed by the other adults who’d formed a sort of protective circle around Matthew. The leader came over to apologise to me and I asked again if it had been dealt with and was told yes Matthew had been given his final warning. This is clearly bollocks as I was present and eavesdropping last week when Matthew’s mum was told he’d been given his final warning. For me, if his dad was still there when this happened he should have been directed home with his father, but still…

Davies and I walked home with me in full on rant about ‘Noone NO ONE hurts my children and gets away with it’ mode – clearly this was not the right day for Matthew to have messed with someone I care about, they were right to form a human forcefield around the little shit! Ady was far more rational, telling Davies we should feel sorry for Matthew and that clearly he isn’t loved enough otherwise he would have a higher self opinion and feel like he should be liked and act like someone who should be liked rather than acting like someone who no one should like because he probably felt like he didn’t deserve to be liked. Davies was confused saying how he always is nice to Matthew, I was angry saying what Matthew needs is a @*@!”£ good hiding and Ady was being all sensitive and new-man about the whole thing. Scarlett, who takes more after me was asking to go round there and sort Matthew out herself 😆 Oh I’d be crap at dealing with the playground politics at school :lol:.

Davies appeared not seriously hurt anyway, he recovered fairly quickly and I think was just in a poor frame of mind for being hurt. Ady made hot chocolate for both the children, which Scarlett managed to drop, over her, me, the sofa and the floor. I imagine you can already picture the tolerance, understanding, patience and great sense of humour I demonstrated at this :oops:. After Ady had Ady-machined, I’d washed off the sofa cover in the bath, stripped off my hot chocolated clothes and calmed down we managed a nice end to the day with a bit of Relax Max and some of the tv show with Chester Zoo in it (no idea what it’s called).

Tomorrow we have Sunday of our deferred weekend and the aim is to get out bright and early and do something nice. Hopefully I’ll be in the right mental state for such things and it will all work out.

Are on the verge of cockiness what with all their fame and celebrity ;).

Ady’s on telly, Davies is a locally celebrated artist (with exhibitions lined up in two further locations in the next month) and the cockerel. Well he really is getting above himself!

In fairness he is gorgeous, bloody good at his job (shagging hens and crowing at regular intervals) and I secretly have maximum respect for him and all his attitude, but he has started getting a bit pecky. We either need to be handling the bantams more or appreciate that they are not pets and as such need to be given a wider berth. In order to let them out each morning we have to pull across the wedging bit of wood from their coop and then lift up the flap of thinner wood directly across their doorway. He has obviously learned the sound of the sliding across bit and is ready waiting, with a pecky beak for you to move the lifty bit which involves having your fingers in the run and he is there to have a go. Cos he clearly thinks he’s hard enough!

The first time he went to peck me I did the chicken textbook reaction of making myself big, looming large over him and shouting. Clearly he doesn’t understand english but I shouted in it anyway and gave him a bit of a ‘Don’t you DARE peck at me’ type lecture. To which he listened, cocked his head and with more attitude than Catherine Tate’s Lauren did a full on ‘cockadoodle DOOOOOOO am I bovvered?’ at me :lol:.

I’m watching Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory at the moment. My current book on the go is Scenes from a Smallholding and I’ve just finished It’s Not Easy Being Green. And I’m finding all these pioneering crazy folk very inspirational and almost envying them their hard times stories let alone their ‘and it all turned out okay in the end’ bits. Which if nothing else was telling me the time is right to go and do something a bit mad is doing so very effectively 😆

Today has been a good day, which was slightly surprising as I was sort of anticipating it being tricky really. I was woken with cuddles and snuggles and then presented with handmade cards (Davies’ is utterly fab, it has a picture of him and I holding hands on the front and he’s swiped some of the snipped off hair we used for the puppets to make it a ‘feely card’. Scarlett’s is typically her, she does this sort of reverse Tony Hart thing where she starts off with something really impressive art-wise and then just as you think she is finished and are in awe of her talent she scribbles all over it, 2 year old stylee rather spoiling the conventional loveliness :lol:. They’d also chosen me some gorgeous champagne flutes (we had none and drinking fizz out of half pint wine glasses rather spoils that sophisticated effect ;)), some fizz to go with them and Davies had made me a little box at Beavers with a single ferraro roche inside which the three of us shared.

We talked about watching a film but decided not to and they played with the lego until we needed to pop out to fill my car up with petrol. Granny arrived here first, fairly closely followed by Mum and Dad. Frazer had cried off due to hangover (unsurprising) which meant we all fitted in my car (it should seat seven but one chair is out of action currently). So Dad sat in the very back, Mum sat in the middle with D and S and Granny sat next to me in the front while we drove to Brighton. I chose the road which takes us on a cut through the downs with rather glorious panoramic views of the sea, south downs, Lewes and Shoreham which Granny insisted she’d never been on before and enthused about the beauty of. Davies and Scarlett are currently both on a bit of an environment kick and so were lecturing everyone about not destroying the countryside. I’m proud of their morals on this issue as although information about it has come from me the passion and indignation is all their own.

We arrived at the restaurant slightly late but still had to wait for a table. Experiences differered rather; Davies and Scarlett ate all their food, enjoyed it, loved the freebie colouring in stuff / activity book and behaved like dreams. My food was fine, it was a free lunch and I sat next to Scarlett and opposite Dad so away from the twin potential annoyances of Mum and Granny. Granny seemed to enjoy her meal too but Mum and Dad chose something that they’d run out of and then both said their main meal with crap. To be honest I don’t recall the last time I ate out anywhere and it wasn’t crap really. I think eating in restaurant chains is always going to provide you with food that is basically McDonalds by any other name, it’s hardly about individual chefs producing signature dishes! Dad was brow beaten into driving home so I could have a couple of glasses of wine which meant I sat inbetween Davies and Scarlett on the way home.

Mum and I hung back when everyone else had gone in and sat in the car saying all the worst insults we could come up with about Granny who’d been annoying all the way home. Then laughed lots before going in the house after them. We had a fairly pleasant couple of hours doing some DSing, observing the chickens and finishing off the activities in the kids’ books from the restaurant. Everyone left at about 7pm which was great as I’d had visions of them all kicking around til Ady got home.

After they’d all gone we started ‘Relax Max’ the last in the series of Max books (first is Dear Max which is about story writing, next is Bravo Max about play writing and finally is Relax Max about poetry – and all of this tied in with a very clever storyline and clever idea too). I had a bath and we all watched Ady on telly together. Davies sits with me, watching intently and listening to Ady’s every word, commenting on things like camera angles and whether they’ve applied enough powder to Ady’s head in make up to bring the shine down ;). Scarlett briefly looks up from whatever she’s doing, sort of smiles indulgently at Daddy and then carries on with her drawing or playing 😆 – so blase! Ady did really well again last night, the show was outside (which meant the short sleeved shirt I’d told him he should wear to look spring-like, it being March and Mothers Day and all, was totally unsuitable. And his coat has a big B&Q logo on it so he couldn’t wear that either. He quickly changed into the shirt he’d worn on last night’s show. He was offered the chance of selling someone else’s product but refused as he was exhausted and currently hasn’t cleared with his work to do so, infact two out of the three products he’s sold this weekend are nothing to do with his company anyway, they are sub-contracting him out and charging out his expenses (yes, this does mean everyone seems to be gaining out of the arrangement but him, but it’s all good in terms of our Masterplan of him getting as much exposure and experience at the presenting until he wants to do it freelance and can then negotiate seperately with each company to sell their stuff.).

Davies and Scarlett went to bed and I waited up for Ady who arrived home around 11pm with chinese takeaway – courtesy of the last of his weekend’s expenses.

I didn’t get to bed til gone 2am as I watched Ady’s QVC appearance at about 130am and then waited up for him to ring me afterwards. Bizarrely given I am often awake til the early hours I really struggled and was nodding off on the sofa. The children bounded in to me in bed at around 7am with Mothers Day greetings aplenty and snuggled in bed with me for an hour. They are dreadful bedfellows, wriggly, constantly chatting and with poking limbs. Davies gave me a constant update of the time as I’d said I’d get out of bed at 830 and Scarlett talked an endless stream of nonsense. Positively nowhere I’d rather be very early on Mothering Sunday though.

I know I do sentimental rather a lot and I know a lot of people are anti Mothers Day. From a commercial, yet another excuse to spend money on cards and other ornamental plastic tat or cuddly toys I can completely appreciate where they’re coming from. However, having children was never something that factored in my life plan, infact I was always fairly adamant that I didn’t want to be a mother. It wasn’t an accidental or ‘it just happened’ type state for me. It was the result of literally years of mulling over the pros and cons. I almost came at it from a scientific point of view and will openly admit it was entirely to do with Ady. I’d known from day one of being with Ady that fatherhood was not just something he wanted and dreamt of, it was practically something he was born to do. I watched him with children – strangers and the children of friends, over the years and saw how he came alive in their presence, how he just ‘got’ them in ways other adults so rarely did. He was always totally upfront about the fact that children were very much on his agenda. We never really talked about it but I think privately we’d both decided that we would be prepared to run with the other one’s dream for the sake of being with them. For Ady that meant accepting he wouldn’t have children if he chose to spend his life with me. For me it was the opposite, I felt it wouldn’t be fair to stay with Ady and not have his children. Which still didn’t mean it was something I actively wanted to do.

My Dad will openly admit that having children would be something he’d advise people against. Frazer and I are his life, he adores us and I watch him come alive in the presence of Davies and Scarlett, his adored grandchildren, but still he will say that whilst he wouldn’t now be without Frazer and I as individuals he feels he would have had a different, and perhaps better life without children. Certainly I don’t think he’d have stayed with my Mum… I think I agree to an extent. I don’t believe I would ever have hankered after children if I’d not had any, I don’t believe I’d have felt that physical need for babies that many women seem to feel. I’ve never experienced broodiness or baby-hunger in my life, infact the very reverse, babies are totally not my thing. Despite having two of my own I remain faintly scared of children generally. I didn’t particularly get on with them when I was one myself and I still really struggle when faced with a child who doesn’t respond to my particular brand of dealing with them as people rather than a seperate species (which sadly the ones more used to being dealt with as a seperate species don’t really get). I don’t think I will ever in my life be described by anyone as ‘good with children’ :lol:. I think if I’d never had children I probably wouldn’t have missed them. I think I would still be on the path I was treading, probaby financially better off, better travelled, less tired, blissfully ignorant of all sorts of issues and ideals and generally a completely different person.

Motherhood has changed me in myriad ways. It has grabbed my self image by the balls, shaken it all around, turned it upside down, spat at it, jumped on it and then stuffed it back in my face. All that I thought I was I have discovered in the last seven years to be untrue. All that I thought I could never in a billion years be I have found to be precisely who I am. Motherhood tests you on every single level, challenges everything you believe in, finds you both more lacking and yet more competant than you ever expected to be, pushes you daily to your very limits and then some. I think I am very defined by my children, something to myself at least I resisted for a long time. I accept that I have been changed forever by the process of giving birth and then spending time with Davies and Scarlett.

There are a billion little things every day that just amaze me about motherhood – today I was sitting in a restaurant next to Scarlett who was eating ice cream with one hand and holding my hand with the other. I was looking down at her little hand, chubby and soft skinned, with it’s grubby little nails with scuffs of long since worn off nail varnish and was just overwhelmed by the amazingness that once her whole body was small enough to be inside mine, six years ago she was just starting out as a collection of cells somewhere deep inside me, in parts of my own body that I’ll never see but she was familiar with for months. Now she’s here, a whole complete person with views and ideas and potential, capable of pushing more of my buttons than anyone I’ve ever met before or will ever meet again. It’s bloody amazing.

Davies couldn’t contain his excitement at Mothers Day. He’s been wanting to tell me about the present he chose for me, the card he made for me and bursting with the idea of it for days. He snuck out of his bedroom this morning and decorated the lounge with streamers. Noone else will ever love me more completely, look at me like I am the most beautiful woman in the world, hang off my every word, believe everything I say, be more influenced by me, have their happiness quote raised by massive amounts just by being in the same room as me, getting a smile or a ruffle of the hair. Once I was his whole world, now I am less so and that influence will lessen over the years but I will remain a reference point for him forever. I know my Dad was thinking of his mother today, my Granny was thinking of hers, woman both dead for some 20 odd years but still called to mind whenever they hear the word ‘mother’.

Do I worry about getting it wrong, cocking it up? Ish is probably my best answer. I have this idea that loving them will lead to wanting the best for them, I think for Davies and Scarlett I manage to be about as unselfish as I can be for anyone and that while there will inevitably be things that could have been done better there will be relatively few that *I* could have done better. 99% of the time I am confident that like most other things I do I am doing motherhood to the best of my ability. Davies and Scarlett truly know me, probably better than anyone else ever has. So they know all my faults and weaknesses, they get the warts and all side of me that no one else has ever seen but if the only evidence of how it’s going is them and I think they are pretty amazing then I have to conclude that some of my greatest ‘work’ to date is there in them.

So, motherhood. Best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

So far 😉

Directly opposite us across the main road lives Dragon Lady. She’s not really called Dragon Lady, infact yesterday I found out she is actually called Rita but in the style of having given most of our neighbours names before we cunningly exchanged Christmas cards with them to find out what they are actually called (or indeed the selection of names some of them have to go with their selection of personalities) she has long been Dragon Lady to us.

This is because when we first moved here some 14 years ago she was always nagging at the man she lived with. Back then they were both clearly of retirement-ish age but fairly sprightly and had a car they went out in most days. We would see her navigating his driving and reversing in and out of their drive with exagerrated arm movements and shouted instructions. For a while we speculated that they might actually be brother and sister rather than husband and wife – I found out yesterday they are indeed husband and wife though.

So he always seemed to have the role of henpecked meek man and she the role of overbearing bossy woman to the casual (and indeed not so casual ;)) observer. We never really had much direct contact with them until she was the person who came hammering on our front door one Sunday evening to tell us our cat had just been run over by a van. I was utterly devastated, doing the whole weeping and wailing over the cat in the middle of the road with a big audience so I still didn’t talk to her much but Ady did exchange a few words with her and she seemed very nice. Since then we’ve been at the exchanging smiles, ‘how are you?’ type greetings and the occassional cat anecdote – she has nine.

When we moved home although we’d only been away for 3.5 years both Dragon Lady and her husband / brother had aged a lot. She is now hunched right over and walks any great distance with the aid of a frame. He appears physically fitter but is collected every weekday morning by a bus which takes him off to a day care centre. For a long period prior to that a carer arrived every morning to their house. He does walk with a stick but seems otherwise well so I had assumed his health problems were more of the mental debilitation variety, perhaps alzheimers or similar. (Hey I have a lot of time on my hands to gaze out the window and build up complete lives for the people I see including illnesses, dietary preferences, relationships with the people they are with and other details such as their favourite song, colour and tv show. I have a catalogue in my mind of what I think they would introduce as their first law if they became monarch for the day, what they think about Margaret Thatcher and where they were when they heard Kennedy was dead!).

So anyway, yesterday when I got in from work and was making lunch for me, Dad, Davies and Scarlett I could hear Dad and the children giving a running commentary on Much-Berated-Man (or MBM as we will now call him). He was trying to get into his house and failing and then walking around to the back, then looking up and down the road a bit and generally looking more and more agitated. Dad said he’d seen Dragon Lady (or DL as we will now refer to her) earlier that morning when some men had been round there clearing out her gutters and he’d not seen her go out since – yes I do get my nosey-neighbourness from my Dad, he loves sitting here looking out of my windows, you can see so much more from them that his more private house 😆 MBM had a paper under his arm and was looking more and more confused and upset, knocked on the doors of both his next door and next door but one neighbours but couldn’t get any reply. He seemed fairly sure that DL was in the house too and I started to wonder if either he was confused or she had perhaps fallen or something and was unable to answer the door. So I went over to see if I could help.

He was shaken and visibly upset and not particularly coherant but I managed to get out of him that he’d gone out for the paper leaving the door on the latch but now couldn’t get in. He could hear his wife shouting but she couldn’t open the door to let him in. I asked what his phone number was so we could ring her to see what was wrong but he couldn’t remember and wanted to ring the police. Having ascertained that no window were open and we couldn’t get in the back door I ran back to my house to get my phone and my Dad to come and assist too – Davies and Scarlett were hanging out of the window watching. Dad tried to get more sense out of him and just as we were about to ring the police two police cars pulled up. Having helped explain what Dad and I were doing there one of the policemen knocked on the door which was immediately opened by DL saying ‘take him away, I don’t want him here!’ at which point Dad and I beat a hasty retreat. 😯 Clearly rather more to that story than we’d thought. He had said that she’d been away on holiday last week and he’d been in a care home for the week.

The policeman was inside the house for a good ten minutes while two other officers stayed outside with MBM who got increasingly upset throwing down his paper, banging his stick around (which was eventually taken off him by one of the officers) and finally the policeman came out of the house and they took MBM off in the car with them.

The whole saga fascinated Davies and particularly Scarlett who was coming up with ever more imaginative reasons why she might not have wanted to let him in the house casting each of them in turn as the ‘baddy’. Clearly we’ve no idea what was going on or indeed what might have been going on for years but it was a sad sight to see an old, watery eyed, shaken man taken off in a police car looking in utter confusion at his house while his wife looked sadly out of the window as the car pulled away :(.

In honour of which I picked a bunch of daffodils from the garden and allowed my welsh father to look after my children for the morning, enveloping them in Welsh culture and er, what not!

I worked this morning, while I was there Ady had a QVC appearance – two products, both of which sold out :). I watched it on the website when I got home and he did well, is getting increasingly confident and at ease with it and when I talked to him just after he came off air he was buzzing with it :).

I had a good morning, it was quite busy and I did a long stint on the enquiry desk where among other things I helped someone work out what line they needed on the underground to get to Greenwich and ordering a load of science related story books for a local school to have on their display for Science week. Varied and interesting, if you have to be working while missing your husband on telly better to be doing something enjoyable.

I beat Ady home thanks to him getting caught in the traffic produced by three football clubs playing at home between QVC and our house. We spent the afternoon getting his various props ready for the show at 1am. He eventually headed off at 7pm by which time the children had had tea, got into pjs, listened to the end of Bravo Max (we have Relax Max ready to start tomorrow, really enjoying them :)).

I predict tomorrow will be ‘trying’ but I will attempt to meet it with positive attitude and will come back to report on just how that went.

so far!

We like Kaiser Chiefs – it’s a Nic, Davies and Scarlett singalong regular in the Nicmobile. This is out current fave by virtue of being on the current mix cd we’re listening too – Lily Allen did a good cover too. But Davies (no idea where he gets it from ;)) likes to add bits to songs, so whenever we listen to it (currently 3.42 times a day) he adds the ‘so far’ (a la Homer in The Simpsons Movie).

This morning we had to go into town first thing to pay the mortgage so I got up very early and was super organised about getting all sorts of stuff (ok it was laundry :oops:) sorted before we left the house. The bank our wages get paid into and I therefore have to withdraw cash from is the opposite end of town to the bank the mortgage gets paid into so I managed to park outside the first bank and run in to get money out and then drive round to the second bank and get a parking space outside that too. As we were so super efficient we had half an hour to kill so I got a parking ticket and we had a quick whizz round a few shops too. In both banks I was given the hard sell about transferring our mortgage across – I always feel like wearing a T shirt to the bank saying ‘I’ve got bad credit, you really don’t want me as a customer’ to try and prevent the barrage of selling techniques for mortgages, loans, credit cards, different bank accounts and everything else that I get every single month. They barely stop short of actually saying ‘you don’t even need to pay the money you borrow back!’ except of course you do – twice over!

We went to a cheap card shop to get some mothers day cards for my Mum and Granny and enjoyed looking at all the various names on the fronts – mother, mum, mummy, stepmother, aunt, gran, granny, nan, nanna, nanny and then all the ‘just like a mother to me’ type ones which surprisingly haven’t stretched yet to things like ‘foster carer’, ‘woman at the supermarket who looks kindly’ and ‘that bird wot used to be hooked up with me dad but isn’t any more’. Davies read ‘I love you Mum’ on the front of a giant teddy bear’s T shirt. We checked out the cheap shoe shop for pretendy crocs as I had a dream last night that the weather was so lovely the kids wanted to wear shorts but couldn’t cos they only have winter boots to wear and they’ve both said they want crocs for summer shoes again this year. No joy though, which is probably sensible given it is February :lol:.

Then we drove over to Brighton where we’d arranged to meet EOFFs at a soft play place called Funplex. This entertained me and the kids and we’d been googling the word ‘plex’ this morning to find out what it meant. We decided it must be short for ‘complex’ as in sports complex, leisure complex etc. and decided it meant a complex of fun, fun or all sorts, a plethora of fun. We re-christened it the ‘Plex of Fun’ – interesting how soft play places need to have quirky and wacky names. I’d scribbled down googlemap directions from their website this morning but got distracted by the fact that the road there was the same one I used to travel on every day when I worked at B&Q Brighton and haven’t infact been down since. Blimey that was 12 years ago! So I was telling D and S about it and the landmarks along the way, the pub on the corner where my heart used to sink every morning because it meant I was Very Close to Work and I bloody hated that job. Then I had to explain why I’d hated the job (I was the department manager of the kitchens and bathrooms department – just 22 and trying to manage a team of 7 staff all old enough to be my parents. Two were utterly crap and incompetant, two were very good and knew it and 3 were just jaded and had seen the likes of me with my youth and upstart attitude come and go many times over the years. The store is in the middle of two of the most notorious council estates in the country, very close to the park where two schoolgirls were kidnapped and murdered from in my childhood and every single order for a new kitchen or bathroom invaribly ended up with me taking irrate phonecalls from customers demanding to know where their ‘fucking worktops are?’. Nightmare job – I lasted six months). And then I realised we’d long gone past the turn off where we were supposed to head as I was far too busy pointing out landmarks to the children.

We drove up and turned round which gave us a fab view over Brighton so we paused a minute to look at that and speculate on the layout of the city. There were a few rows of houses that were built arena style in a semi circle, rising in height and we wondered what they had been built around initially. We did manage to get back on track and quickly found the Plex of Fun. And because all the EOFFers are Home Educatin’ folk they were all Very Late and we were the first there despite being late ourselves. Which meant I got to sit and drink tea and read my book while Davies and Scarlett explored, with the help of the very friendly staff member who came out from behind her desk to ‘show them round’ :).

Eira, Lucy and Mel eventually all arrived and we had a very nice few hours there. Scarlett managed to find £1.30 – a pound, a 10p and a 20p fallen down the side of some of the slides. She did get her arm stuck twice doing so though and had to be rescued by Eira the second time :lol:. She was very pleased with her finds though and even took them to Rainbows for show and tell tonight :lol:. Adults managed chatting and it was a good day.

We left to get home to meet Ady who’d gone off to work without keys so couldn’t get back into the house. We had tea and a brief play before heading back out again. We needed to pay our monthly visit to the butchers so Ady got to come too (funny moment when Mick the butcher asked how the steaks would be cooked (eg fry or grill) and I just pointed to Ady and said ‘by him!’ which amused the couple of people queuing behind us :lol:. Then we headed to Tesco to get Ady a new shirt to wear on telly this weekend :).

Home for a quick dash back out again for Tarly and I to Rainbows. We’d been gearing up for her to stay by herself this week as Ady was anticipating leaving for London earlier but she really had got quite worked up about it and he decided to arrive later and stay to be with Davies so I could stay with Tarly instead. I paid her subs tonight and for her Rainbow t shirt too and she is being enrolled next week. Davies and Ady can come along too and we’ve talked about her maybe staying alone the week after. We’ll see. In the same way as we gave her back her dummies after two weeks of torture a couple of years ago having realised that something making one of them so unhappy is simply not the right thing to be doing, nor in line with our parenting philosophies I think leaving her for the sake of leaving her rather than because I don’t have another option is not something I’d be comfortable with, much though I think we all know she *would* be fine.

They did colouring in cardboard dolls and cutting them out, then colouring in rainbows uniforms from other places in the world and cutting them out to go on, in the style of the dress up dolls you used to get in Twinkle comics :). One of the little girls clearly had made it her mission to befriend Scarlett tonight and she is seeming to fit in well there, growing in confidence and being more herself. I chatted to the leader for a while tonight too – she was telling me that she is in the middle of the application process to be a foster carer. She has no children of her own but has been a guide / rainbow / brownie leader for 12 years and clearly has a lot to give.

We got home and Ady headed off – he’s QVCing at 9am tomorrow morning, 1am Sunday morning and again at 8pm on Sunday night, so he’s away tonight, back tomorrow morning and then off again tomorrow evening and back late Sunday. The trade off is that he is off Monday and Tuesday. I’m working in the morning so Dad is coming over to look after Davies and Scarlett til Ady gets home, which means I won’t be able to watch him on air. He’s on again both days next weekend but currently we’re planning to go up with him.

I was only slightly hungover this morning and headed off to work to be greeted with ‘could you do storytime today please Nicola, Yvonne’s off?’.

So that would be 15 children, 17 adults, half an hour of singing, stories and coloring then. No problem! 😆

The benefit of doing Storytime is you get the whole morning off to prepare, so from 9am to 11am I just mooned around choosing some books, read them through a couple of times to ensure I’d be able to read them upside down okay by just needing prompts, thought about a couple of songs and then as there were no suitable colouring in pictures in our stash of mastercopies I freehand drew the outlines of a cat from one of the stories I’d chosen and a parrot from one of the others, photocopied them and then coloured in one of each as examples. Then I had a cup of tea before I faced my audience :lol:.

It actually went fine. I think I prefer storytime to rhymetime as you get more back and are geninely talking to the children rather than their parents. I am less comfortable with the fact that children faced with an adult reading them stories are very keen to get as physically close to that adult as possible. My own children’s snotty noses I can handle, snot not genetically related to me I have rather more problems with :lol:. I read Too Loud, Love like this, Have you seen the crocodile? and Don’t say that Willy Nilly! and I managed to get them all joining in with all the books. I had them making snapping crocodiles every time I said the word ‘crocodile’, I had them making animals noises in Too Loud, repeating the phrases that Willy Nilly wasn’t supposed to say and miming out some of the elephants actions from Love like this. And somehow manage to link in ‘the elephant moves from side to side’, Twinkle twinkle little star, if you’re happy and you know it, wheels on the bus and then took requests and we did Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose. It went well :).

At lunchtime I had a bit of a charity shop fest and managed to get 6 items for Tarly for £6 including some Next, Gap and Boden tops 🙂 And then went into another charity shop and found two cardigans in my size. I tried them on and one is lovely, big, snuggly and single button, perfect for slobbing at home or wearing to work. The other I spent about ten minutes in the changing room trying to work out how to wear! It is mohair and silk and a lovely colour and feel and in the end I was so intrigued by it that I bought it just to bring home and try and work out. I said the volunteer behind the counter that I wasn’t quite sure how to wear it and she said they’d all been looking at it when it came in and trying to work it out! I got it back to work and Wendy and I tried it on again in the staffroom and tried to work it out and then Ady and I have been looking at it tonight. It is one single button with a totally asymmetric neckline and hemline and odd seams at the back but what is very perplexing is a sort of extra wedge of knitting sewn in on one side which I sort of thought must be supposed to be draping somewhere but couldn’t work out where. Having googled the make inside I discovered it to be some German designer who’s stuff sells on ebay for in excess of £100 and is indeed all quirky and odd with different drapey bits here and there. I paid a fiver for it and actually really like it so will keep it until such times as I decide I’m not actually going to wear it and could do with the money and then flog it :).

The afternoon was uneventful, it felt l o n g. I arrived home about five minutes before Ady and thanks to a bit of my famous scheduling we managed to get Davies and Scarlett’s tea cooked and fed to them, dinner on for us, baths had, large chunk of current bedtime story read to children and then in bed all with time to spare before the Masterchef final at 8pm.

I spent some time later in Davies’ room telling him about storytime and managing to remember all of have tou seen crocodile and don’t say that willy nilly which he enjoyed hearing and telling him which bits I got everyone to join in with. Then he wanted pictures drawn of the characters I did for colouring in so I drew them for him too. I think it feels slightly odd for him to hear about me reading to and drawing for other children, as indeed it feels odd for me to be doing it. Nice to still share it with him in some way though.

Tomorrow we’re EOFFing and I need to fit in a visit into town to the bank and be home to wave my famous husband off for his weekend of TV appearances ;).

Thought I could have them instead of Winter Walks – what do you reckon? 😉

Yesterday we met up with Julie, Jack and Maisie this morning at the stables for a Honey riding session. It was a beautiful day, really mild, sunny and still. The bridleways and woodland were full of daffodils, violets, snowdrops. The children played around the farm while Julie got Honey ready although Scarlett came over to have a go at grooming her, fed her some carrots and came over to watch Julie cleaning out Honey’s hoofs and also to see when her chestnuts fell off (and if you have no idea what that is, don’t feel bad cos I didn’t either!).

Davies rode first, again really enjoyed it and learnt a bit more about various things while he was riding

Maisie had next ride so Davies, Scarlett and Jack enjoyed running and playing in the woods while Julie and I walked alongside Honey and Maisie. Davies found some very interesting looking fungi

Then it was Tarly’s turn. Now if Davies loves riding Honey then Scarlett LOVES riding Honey, check out the smile on this child’s face

also check out the fact that she is riding ‘with no hands’. She started doing this mid-walk and was balancing up and down hill, while Honey went over logs and holding her arms out to the side. I was not remotely surprised as if Scarlett was going to be into horse riding then it was always more likely to be dare devil stunt riding where she went bare back on wild mustangs and did handstands on their backs than perfectly groomed gymkhana stuff with braided manes and shiny riding boots :lol:. Julie said that actually riding with no hands is a very important part of learning to ride a horse and getting your balance and centre of gravity in line with the horse’s though and was very impressed with Scarlett. :).

Once back at the stables Davies spent some time clambering on straw bales and muck heaps


before coming to give Julie a hand with muck shovelling in Honey’s paddock

While Tarly disappeared and with the aid of camera zoom I was able to find her spending some time with a new lamb in it’s little enclosure

They really do love it there, the whole package; the animals, the freedom, the variety of things to explore and just the being outside. 🙂

We came home listening to a Mika version of the Police song ‘Can’t stand losing you’ so we talked a bit about suicide and why losing someone you loved might make you feel sucidal and why so many songs are written about sad things. Home for lunch and what must have been about the fourth viewing of Little Shop of Horrors in the last couple of days. When we got home we moved a mattress downstairs. Davies sleeps, Princess and the pea stylee, on two mattresses. Just because someone gave us a spare single bed last year which we kept for accomodating guests for Davies’ party weekend and then got rid of the bed base but kept the mattress as it might be useful. I told Davies and Scarlett about a school trip to France when I was 13 where we’d slept in groups of four in little self contained chalets – two storey with one two bed room on the ground floor and one on the first floor, with a little bathroom in the entrance hall. By fluke I’d been in with some of the ‘cool’ girls that year and had ended up sharing with my best friend Emma and two of the wildest girls in our year – Julie and Paula. We worked out that our staircase was the exact same width as the mattresses and the exact same length as two of them end to end, so put two on the stairs and converted it into a slide. We’d later worked out we could climb out of the shuttered windows and Paula had improved Anglo-French relations in all sorts of ways with some local lads but I didn’t share that bit of the anecdote!

So we put one of Davies’ mattresses on our stairs and although it was slightly too wide it did make a very effective slide that we played on for a while 😆

The shopping arrived, as blogged below and then after tea I took Davies and Scarlett off to Badgers. They made bird food in yogurt pots – our tree is rather groaning under the weight of bird food in yoghurt pots to be honest so I think the bantams might be the recipients of this batch. Lovely to see how accepted Scarlett is into the Badger group of children after just half a term. And even more lovely was on the way out when I started talking about where Scarlett was going to sleep and she wanted to sleep in Davies’ room and he put his arm round her as they walked down the steps together. Bless!

While I’d been sat in the car (in the cold and the dark, playing DS and then reading some of my book) I’d had a phone call from Ady to say that he wouldn’t be staying away from home after all. This threw all the evening plans, not to mention sleeping arrangements out the window, but it all worked out ok in the end.

Davies, Scarlett and I went to collect Ali and Freya from the station and Ady had just beaten us home and took charge of settling children in bedrooms watching dvds, inflating air beds (not quite enough!) and providing just the right level of input into Ali and I’s conversation and then buggering off to bed so we could carry on afterwards. 😆 We had a very pleasant evening with pizza, snacks, wine, chatter and chocolate :).

Like buying Sainsburys for example. In fairness I can’t claim that one liner for my own, I have to give full due credit to the delivery driver. Of course he isn’t just a delivery driver, nosireebob! He is merely doing that to bring in a bit of extra cash while he works nights as a stand up comedian. Infact maybe he’s not even doing it to bring in the cash, maybe it is a valuable dual source of both new material (what could possibly be funnier than delivering someone else’s muller light yoghurt, organic pineapples and flash bathroom wipes?) and the chance to test out his jokes on that harshest and most discerning demographic of standup comedy critics – the bored housewife?! Hey if you can make them smile along with delivering the very shackles that keep them in the kitchen – their ingredients for cooking and their household products for cleaning, then surely you know you’re in business!

So having greeted me with ‘Hello, I’ve brought Sainsburys! Seriously, I have a food mountain out here, you bought the whole shop!’ he went on to further develop his act by talking about ‘we are a well oiled machine we’ve really got it goin’ on now’ when we set up a production line of he brings the boxes, I unload the boxes, Davies and Scarlett scatter the contents of the boxes into the relevant rooms ‘chiller! upstairs bathroom, downstairs bathroom, next to back door to go in garage’ (which put me in mind of Neil’s monologue in Young Ones – ‘we sow the seed, nature grows the seed, we eat the seed’ which shockingly I can’t find a youtube clip of). He sort of gave it up there – doesn’t do to overkill, maybe he’s one of those stand ups who lets the audience do the work themselves, just interjecting comedy ideas and letting the viewer run with them and find the laughs themselves. Or maybe he’s just not that funny. Or perhaps he was having an off day. Or something.

He arrived at 3pm precisely, I signed for the delivery at 3.10pm and by 3.50pm I’d got all the shopping put away. 60 bottles of Stella, 15 bottles of wine, 60 pints of milk and a whole load of tins, packets and jars (I like to keep the recycling van busy, just incase they don’t have secondary careers in the entertainment business and dealing with tins and bottles is their lifes work).

When we lived in Manchester and the children were tiny I often did internet food shops but we had Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys all really close to us and there were so many delivery slots you could often get a same day one booked, doing the shop in the morning and getting it delivered in the evening. I’ve not really done it since we moved back to Sussex as when we first came home you were lucky to book a delivery slot in the next three weeks (similar principle to doctors appointments) so I’m something of an amateur at it really. Of course with the next Olympics this close I’d be foolish to give up my amateur status anyway so there were a couple of glaring omissions from my delivery such as butter (I’d got the value stuff for using in baking but none of the decent stuff for spreading on toast), cashew nuts (essential ingredient in several of our meals) and cheese (staple diet here when we’re not drinking milk, wine or beer!) which I’ll have to pick up later in the week but otherwise it was a success. The only out of stock items were substitued with sensible things clearly selected by a person with a brain so it was a good first foray into the world of interent food shopping. The children were helpful and pleased not to have had to tramp round a real supermarket for the best part of two hours, so I guess we’ll be doing that again. Best part was as the order was over £70 and delivered Tuesday – Thursday it was just £2.50 delivery charge so I didn’t even begrudge that. 🙂

Ady has yet another little extra role at work of being the nominated ‘green’ person meaning he is trying to help the company be more environmentally friendly in any possible ways. He is also tasked with finding new products suitable for selling on QVC so is registered with all sorts of places under that hat. Yesterday he got through his visitor pass for Ecobuild a 3 day event at Earls Court. The only day he could go was today so he asked if we wanted to go along too. It was free to attend and having spend fruitless time trying to ring and email them to ask if we could bring children I found some feedback from exhibitors at last years show talking about how visitors had brought children with them so decided it would be fine and registered them as visitors too.

Back in the days of Dreamieland both Ady and I did various Trade Fairs – mostly at NEC, Birmingham but a few smaller ones at Manchester GMEX and other London venues. My most memorable one was a toy fair in March 2003 where I was away from a 4 month old Scarlett for 12 hours after snow delayed all the trains and had a queue of 100 people at the train station all asking down the queue who was going where and coordinating our own taxi sharing home so we all got home that night (friendly place, Manchester :)). I’d been in agony for hours without a baby feeding from me every couple of hours, started leaking on the train and practically exploded when I got home 😆 My overriding memory other than that of trade fairs is that your feet hurt, the food is overpriced and you get lots and lots of free stuff. We did take Davies and Scarlett to a toy and gift fair at NEC when they were smaller on the way home from a visit down south – Scarlett was still pushchair age and they’d not been the only children there. Our plan was to see how they found it and if it proved unenjoyable or difficult then I would take them off and we’d meet back up with Ady again later today.

So we were out early, parked at the library and caught the 839am train, changed at Gatwick and were at Earls Court just after 10am when it opened. As I was printing off mine and the children’s passes one of the doorpeople came over to say they didn’t really allow children in and that it did say that on the poster outside. I was gearing up to ask just what use a poster outside the venue is when 99% of the visitors will have travelled bloody miles especially to attend and to start ranting about how I’d attempted to check whether it was ok yesterday but been unable to get a reply (still no response to my email even now!) when she very patronisingly said that they wouldn’t turn us away now but we would have to ‘keep the children under control’ and that ‘we couldn’t have them running about or screaming’. I agreed that that wouldn’t be acceptable indeed and in we went.

Davies and Scarlett were utter stars, but to be honest no better than I would expect – and know I am confident to expect of them. They were really interested in the stands and exhibits, being both knowledgable and interested in green issues and also aware that self-building is something we might one day think about doing. For Davies, particularly the idea of learning about environmentally friendly ways of building is of great interest with his passion for architecture. They were, aside from a tiny baby in a sling, the only children there and while I would be lying if I said they didn’t attract the odd glance or even tut (totally unwarranted!) they were far more of a novelty and treated very well by 99% of the people we talked to. We stopped for drinks, lunch, ice cream (oh, the ice cream!) and were there for about 4 hours. They came away with a stress ball each – which they are currently retelling each other and anyone who will listen anecdotes about how I had one when I was in labour with Davies and when it failed to ease any of the labour pains got bitten by me instead! They got two similar rubbery material to stress ball little houses each (great for chucking at people without hurting them much, according to the man who gave them to them), a little gel handwarmer each which we timed the heat output for (35 minutes) and have since reactivated and have ready for use tomorrow, discussed other uses for such technology (smaller ones to fit in gloves, insole shaped ones to fit in wellies made of more flexible and stronger material) and googled to find out exactly how they work, having done a fair explanation in the middle of Earl’s Court which was clearly being listened to by a greater audience than just D and S :lol:. They also got a variety of pens, fuzzy bugs, a very nice rucksack each (which will come in very handy for all those future moments when they want to bring toys, moan that they are hungry or thirsty or ask me to carry things for them – evil cackle!) and loads of sweeties along the way.

Ady talked to loads of people about various things for work – most interestingly some solar powered aircon which is so simple but would be massively effective in the nursery greenhouses (me and the children looked at the solar lighting that bounces light round corners in a reflective tube from a panel in the roof out through light units into rooms in a house – again very simple but effective). He also talked to some of the many, many companies there selling living roofs which was easily the most common product there today. It was interesting to discover that all the companies he spoke to buy in their plants from abroad for the roofs so potentially a market for his company. Finally we were very impressed with a brick company which among other clever ideas have designed bricks which are bat boxes and swift nesting boxes to be incorporated into new builds. Some great ideas :).

We spent a while looking at a very interesting area where they were doing demonstrations of straw bale building, making bricks from straw and mud, making pegs with old fashioned manual wood turning tools and more. Davies and I were really interested in the timber house frame made of shaped wood of cam and dowel style fixings held in place with pegs. We all commented several times on how ‘back to basics’ some of the ideas were, taking inspiration from age old techniques and ideas about construction, insulation, heating and so on that we seemed to have lost somewhere along the way and are now rediscovering. Davies has been very fascinated by the Roman arch building we saw at Fishbourne last week and was explaining the whole idea to Ady when we saw some bridges along the train journey this morning and I was telling him about dry stone walling. We also liked the wool roof insulation and the rain water harvesting systems we saw.

Kevin McCloud was there earlier today speaking although we didn’t see him and we were approached by Five Production company with leaflets incase we were doing anything they might want to make films of and some people from Dragon’s Den came over too to ask if we were looking for investment! Fame and fortune were within our grasp – but of course Ady brushes such things away now with a weary air about him :lol:. There was also a food stand run by River Cottage but Hugh wasn’t there himself and the food was all a bit lentil-y so we ate at the Pizza Express stand instead :).

The most exciting bit for Ady was definitely when he was invited to have a go on the exercise bike and light up four lights to enter a prize draw for a fold up bike. He was unfortunate enough to do directly after a guy who was actually carrying a cycle helmet with him (having probably cycled down from Scotland or something) but did really well and only had to sit down for a while and stop wheezing afterwards. I was most entertained by the fact they didn’t even bother asking me if I wanted a go! 😆 He got a free energy drink for doing it though, and the kids were thrilled.

We were keen to get back for swimming lessons if at all possible and by 2pm reckoned we’d had a good enough walk round to take in anything really interesting or important so went to the station. The best route back seemed to be to Clapham Junction and then direct to Lancing so we did that. The first bit of the journey Davies sat with me and Scarlett sat with Ady and we played two seperate games of ‘one day I went to the supermarket and I bought…’ Davies has my leaning toward the ridiculous though and ours had us coming out of the supermarket, going to B&Q to buy two planks of wood then going back to the supermarket to buy… type twists. Then we played train window scenery bingo (trampoline, horse, plane, road type stuff) and finally what does that cloud look like to you? Once we’d moved and were all sitting together with a little plastic table I got out a bag of little 3cm x 3cm rubber squares I’d collected from one of the stands. It is brighly coloured rubber to be used for flooring and comes in about 70 different colours and loads of different textures and they had all these little colour samples to take. I thought it would be great for mosaic picture type playing so gathered as much as I could without looking very odd and they played with that on the table making pictures. Then we build a tower to see how high we could go before the train movement knocked it down and which was the most stable method of placing the squares (ie not a single stack).

Once we got off the train at Lancing we walked past Woolworths and right at the front of the store was a huge end of Doctor Who figures on BOGOF at £6.99, making them £3.50 each. Davies chose a Sycorax that he’s been after for a while and Tarly chose a Rose so that was an unexpected surprise for them :). We got home with just enough time for them to get changed and me to plait Tarly’s hair before heading back out again for swimming lessons.

They both had a really good lesson – Tarly is really coming along and I can see such a change in her in just half a term, Carolyn the instructor said she just wants to see a little bit more evidence that she can swim across with floats without putting her feet down and she will get her first badge. Davies has definitely passed into being a swimmer and now just needs all that practise on perfecting strokes, building up strength and getting his techniques and things like breathing sorted out. Best £60 each a term my Dad ever spent ;).

Home for tea for them and then bed where they both fell straight asleep after a long and tiring day. They both said they really enjoyed the Ecobuild and were really glad they’d come. I know it wasn’t an event for children particularly but I think sometimes events not designed to be ‘child friendly’ are actually far more interesting and appealing to children than the ones tailor made for them.

We’ve had a very laid back and relaxed day at home today. Davies and Scarlett have been utterly self-directed and spent some time on x box finding a graffitti design extra on some racing game my brother lent Davies where you choose the spray size on the paint and draw stuff. They collaborated on that to create a night sky complete with planets and Orion’s belt. Ady emailed me to say he is going to a very interesting looking trade show tomorrow and did we want to go too, so a quick rearrange of online shopping delivery schedulded for tomorrow and a quick registration of me and the children online to attend and that is all sorted to tomorrow :).

They got their DSs out next and played with them for a while. Scarlett has managed to delete all her progress on Cooking Mama so spent some time working through that to unlock recipes again. Davies played a bit of Simpsons and a bit of Harry Potter which he needed some help with reading on. I snuck off to do a bit of baking (we had some black bananas so I wanted to make cake with them) but Scarlett followed me so her and I made banana and chocolate chip cakes and at Davies’ request some chocolate chip rock cakes. While all this was happening I also did several loads of laundry and spent some time with the bantams.

We had lunch and Davies and Scarlett went off to play again. They got the plasticine out and made various things with that. Davies’ included a fortune teller complete with crystal ball and Scarlett made a rabbit. When they’d had enough of that they cleared it all away and got out the musical instrument box and set about a game where Davies played something and Scarlett had to act out how it made her feel. I wasn’t paying much attention but there was lots of prancing about being a unicorn to the twinkly xylophone banging and much being a mournful puppy to the harmonica 😆 Then they went back to the plasticine.

I spent some time online, drank equal ocean sized volumes of tea and water. It was my aim to increase the water I drink this month. I have certainly done that although it has not been entirely consistent. I’ll continue to keep it up though and be making another small change towards a healthier lifestyle for March alongside it. I sat and read It’s Not Easy Being Green which was very interesting, particularly the bit about keeping pigs. I also skim-read a book called A new you in 21 days which had caught my eye when shelving books the other day at work and looked interesting. It wasn’t! Having seen biggification mentioned by Sarah I googled it to find out what it was and played that for a while – the children moved over to observe and both want to have a play on that sometime soon too.

I made the children’s tea – Scarlett had one bantam egg and one duck egg with toast – very funny contrast between the two sizes 🙂 and having not had the tv on all day they decided to put Little Shop of Horrors on to watch while they ate. Then it was time for Davies to go to Beavers so we walked him round there. Ady arrived home and I went to collect Davies from Beavers. We were kept waiting ages while they finished off some Mothers Day present they were making :). I happened to be in earshot as the leader told the mother of the very disruptive little boy that he has been warned that unless his behaviour dramatically improves he will not be allowed to remain at Beavers any more. It was met with smirks from both her and her son so I imagine it is either not being taken seriously or they have been expecting it a while and have been surprised at how long he has been allowed to stay – I know I have overheard her almost bragging about threats to exclude him from school :shock:. I dropped Davies home and dashed to Sainsburys to get stuff for dinner which meant no stories tonight but they did get to watch Simpsons instead :roll:.

Life in Cold Blood and a lovely curry for us and I’m off to bed early as tomorrow will be a long day and the rest of the week is shaping up to be much the same.

Scarlett is developing some odd little ways. She has been stashing an old tube of kiddie toothpaste that has run out and I had told her to throw away when I bought a new tube a couple of weeks ago. She’s also started to claim to be scared of going into certain rooms on her own – this is totally inconsistent and generally seems to be as a way of avoiding doing something (getting pjs on to go to bed, cleaning teeth, putting toys away) but is accompanied by genuine tears and looks of real fear as though she is able to talk herself into something scary really existing to back up her desire not to do something.

Ady has tended to pander to this rather – when I told her to throw the toothpaste tube on the fire he would have let her either keep it or done the whole getting rid of it without her realising – I am much keener that she not only knows it’s gone, but that she’s been the one to dispose of it. He will also go into rooms with her when she claims to be scared whereas I’m more inclined to talk her through what’s worrying her and encourage (ok shout at her!) to get on with it on the basis that if I believed there was anything for her to be scared of then I promise I wouldn’t let her do something.

At this stage it all seems harmless enough and I recall fretting about Davies tics and twitches at almost the identical age (why do so many things seem to follow like this? I’m so glad I blog so much and can go back and check such things). He still does little things when tired or stressed but as his natural state of being seems to be tired he’d overcomming that and he so rarely gets stressed it doesn’t seem to notice. I often think that he would have been potentially a rather odd child if we’d not handled everything in the way he have along the way (formal learning, school, leaving him anywhere before he was ready etc.) but I wanted to record it in the same was as I did with Davies just because it is something we are dealing with daily at the moment and I am rather perplexed by it.

I’m sure the biggest part is avoidance techniques about certain things, next comes possibly a bit of attention seeking mixed in with watching things like Primeval and Doctor Who that I certainly wouldn’t have had Davies watching as young as she does, so exposure to more wildly scary things to set her imagination off. I do think that many phobias have their roots in minor events in childhood though and I’m keen to ensure we don’t allow unwarranted fright to develop into more than it should be.

We went to a car boot sale this morning. We need a new axe as Ady killed ours on Friday chopping up wood – clearly he’d be a shit axe murderer if he is more likely to kill the axe than kill with the axe! 😆 We didn’t find an axe, or anything else interesting for that matter, so via detours to Tesco for cream cakes and home for my laptop we went to my parents for lunch.

We’d not seen my Mum for over 2 weeks and my Dad only briefly in that time so it was nice to have a catch up. My parents have got all sorts of very odd and complicated stuff going on in their relationship just now, probably not all of which I am even aware of and I am staying as far removed from it as possible. I spent way too much time in my childhood getting sucked into some weird sort of marriage guidance counsellor role which I have no intention of ever happening again really. I think this coming year will be a hard one for them and while I’ll strive to be there for them both in what I think will be tough times ahead what I’d really like to be is *just* a daughter rather than friend or confidante.

All that said we had a nice time there today. We spent some time looking at houses on the internet and talking about our plans in a rather more calmer and rational way than last time. Dad had a minor rant but again realised that he was putting his ideas about ideal lifestyles onto us with our rather different ideals. He tried to pull the ‘well you won’t go anywhere without an ensuite bathroom!’ line on me but was reminded that yes, that was indeed me 3 years ago but I’ve been camping some six times in the last two years IN TENTS, using PORTA POTTIES and started in various youth hostels with no ensuite facilities too. So while that used to be me, people do change and I certainly have and what would have been my dream home a few years ago has vastly changed now. Anyway, like I said, mostly positive.

We came home and I got a roast pork dinner on, the kids played some convoluted game (loosely based on Primeval I think) and then practised a ‘Kung Fu Show’ for ages before coming and putting it on for us in the lounge. It was fairly violent but they seemed to enjoy it. I told then that you can have martial art lessons (although I think Tarly is still way too young) but they didn’t seem that interested at the moment. Davies has said he doesn’t want to move up to Cubs when he is 8 and would like to pick up something else instead so maybe that will be a possibility for then (adds it to mental list of stuff to bring out and think about at a later date sometime).

I spent some time looking at the various paperwork RSPB and National Trust have sent through with our membership and writing dates of various events in my diary. Ady and I coordinated diaries for the next month or so the other night so I have all his QVC appearances logged and we have all our childcare organised for the next while too, but we don’t seem to have managed to do much about holidays yet. We know we want to try a weeks camping in April in Wales to look round at properties, we have some time booked in August (which we could do with spreading to a full ten days or more), NicCamps in December and we are thinking about a camping trip to Cornwall in September too which we should probably book dates off work for – job for this week I think, organising that in work diaries and with each other.

Davies and Scarlett had a bath before dinner and then we all sat and ate and watched Simpsons. They went to bed, Ady and I had baths and watched Lost and then a new series called Being Human on BBCthree which was excellent :).

Tomorrow we amazingly, have nothing planned aside from D’s Beavers in the evening. I have a whole plan of things we could do, am fighting to urge to go out somewhere for the day and just take some time to be home.

We’ve been to Heathrow Airport today to the new Terminal 5 building. The terminal opens next month and they are running trials with volunteers to test it prior to opening. We registered as volunteers a few weeks back and applied for today’s trial and had a phone call to say we’d been accepted on it. We had to be at a hotel next to Heathrow for 845am which meant getting up before 7am. The only time I normally see before 7am is when I’ve not been to bed from the night before yet (normally with Alison :lol:). We made good time and arrived at the hotel where we were parking and then walked across to the hotel the meet and greet was happening in.

Security met everyone at the door – policemen with guns, sniffer dogs to check your bags (Scarlett loved them) and full emptying bag searches. I don’t know why it hadn’t occured to me before but the trials might well have been a magnet for terrorist attacks. We were issued with ID passes to wear round our necks and a profile. We were all on a flight to Delhi and had to check in one piece of luggage each. Davies loved the idea of ‘playing’ someone else for the day, Scarlett was less keen. We had coffee and pastries and then went in for a short presentation explaining what would be happening through the day and a dvd showing us some of the building background of Terminal 5. It was all quite glossy and PR material-like. The word ‘iconic’ was used three times during in and applied to everything including the air traffic control tower 😆

We were then directed back downstairs where we boarded coaches to take us to the airport. They let us off in phases to replicate the trickle of people arriving at an airport naturally. The building is enormous, very impressive; airy, light and quite minimalisitic. There was strictly no camera or filming allowed but I notice a flickr user called terminal5insider has a huge range of pictures of the place up.

We had a play with the boarding pass printing machines and then gathered our four pieces of luggage from the pile and got a trolley. We joined a queue to check our bags in but it appeared to be unmoving with the clerk disappearing every so often and people standing around with mobile phones looking harrassed around it. Eventually we moved queues and shortly afterwards someone did come and tell the people remaining in the queue that they would need to move elsewhere – teething troubles of precisely the sort they were hoping to cope with in trials rather than when they ‘go live’. We then went through security where to the children’s great excitement both Ady and I set the alarm off as we went through the gate and had to be body searched and have the handheld beeper passed over us. Mine was a tin of vaseline in my pocket, Ady’s was his steel toecaps in his boots which he had to take off and walk back through without. My bag got pulled to one side too so I had to wait while that was emptied and then rescanned by the xray machines. We gathered some lunch and then went to ‘board’ our flight to Delhi.

Once the other side of the boarding gates we were given new profiles. This time we had arrived in Heathrow from New York for a connecting flight to Manchester. There was no baggage to move about but security was rather different with us having digital fingerprints and digital photo images captured (all against our pretend profiles of course) then back through the gates again where I’d moved the vaseline into my bag so went through ok but Ady had to take his boots off again. We were at our gate about 15 minutes before boarding so sat and watched planes land and take off through the windows including a smaller plane which was parked right outside where we were sitting. On boarding we were directed through doors and realised we were actually in a tunnel onto a real plane 😯 – we hadn’t been prepared for that at all and if it weren’t for the fact everyone else looked equally shocked I’d have started to worry we were actually going to take off! We were all seated seperately but Ady swapped with someone to sit with Scarlett. Davies had a window seat but noone sat next to him so I moved over next to him too.

We had the full ‘welcome on board’ speech from the pilot, the whole safety demonstration from the cabin crew and had to fasten seatbelts so the plane could reverse out, turn round and then pull back in again :). Davies has only been on a flight (funnily enough from Heathrow to Manchester) when he was under a year old and Scarlett has never been on a plane so it was actually quite exciting for them. Our profiles were collected in (each profile had a questionnaire on the reverse for us to fill out and hand in – so we handed in our Dehli flight ones when we boarded that flight) and new ones allocated as arrivals passengers. This time we had arrived from Berlin and although I don’t remember any of the rest of the names we were given through the day I know I was called S Bone which amused me knowing a real life S Bone :). On the way out Ady asked if we could see the cockpit and the very friendly pilot and co-pilot installed Scarlett in the pilots seat, moved in it for her, let her press and pull things to land, climb and take off, pressed the button which lit up all the buttons and started a very American recorded voice giving DANGER LOW TERRAIN! messages which they didn’t play for long because they said they found it too alarming 😆 It was great :).

We were supposed to gather a trolley and a piece of luggage each but the children wouldn’t have been able to push trolleys (the profiles were randomly given out with no looking at gender let alone ages to see if they were appropriate) and in the event as we were the very last out due to our cockpit visit there were no trolleys left anyway. So Ady and I grabbed a bag each and we went to the TRAINS/UNDERGROUND exit as per our instructions sheets. And that was it. We filled in our last questionnaires which we exchanged for goody bags (nothing thrilling, a brushed metal luggage tag, pen, passport holder and universal plug in a T5 bag – there are some listed on ebay :lol:). Then onto coaches to take us back to the hotel where we were parked. That was a much posher hotel than the one the presentation was in so we stood in the foyer at gawped at the grandness of the floors, chandeliers and staircases while Ady gave in our pass to get a free exit ticket from the carpark.

It was a really interesting day out actually. We are unlikely to be using an airport any time soon but they are exciting places and this one is very new and shiny. It was odd to look around at a pretty busy airport (I think there was about 2200 volunteers today doing trials) and realise they were all pretending. The actually going on a plane and seeing the cockpit was a real added and unexpected bonus too. We had things to write on the questionnaires that were really good and others that were less good. You can apply for up to three trial dates, I don’t think we’d bother going up again but we all enjoyed the day – quite cool to have been among the first people in that terminal and to have been a little part of history too. 🙂

The journey home was lengthy, there had been an accident on the M25 and we were all pretty tired. The children watched films. We called into Asda on the way home for a few bits and were pleased to get home for tea and coffee (there had been plenty of water on offer all day but no hot drinks once we arrived at the airport). Primeval watching and straight to bed for tired children. I’m planning a bath and some wine for as long as I can keep awake!

Work for me today. It started off with banking, then I spent the whole morning sat in the staff room drinking tea and basically chatting to Wendy under the guise of doing my performance and development review. Which was clearly getting paid lots of money for doing very little really! During that time the rest of the staff all came up for their tea breaks so that was pleasant to sit and chat too. We discussed information sharing and LEA involvement in HE children which was interesting.

I was on lunch then so scoured the charity shops for a coat to no avail and then had a nice chat with Yvonne who was also on lunch at the same time. I’d told her about our Masterplan on Wednesday and she said she’d gone home thinking about me and feeling envious of my life still ahead of me and a clear plan and dreams which were achievable. She told me I simply MUST do what we want to do with our lives :). She’s lovely.

The afternoon passed fairly quickly. It was a good day :). I picked up Bravo Max – the next in the series of Dear Max books.

Ady and the children had had a good day. My Dad had arrived just before I left for work so he’d spent an hour or so with them here. They’d been testing some of the products Ady is selling on QVC for his next few shows (very exciting irrigation solutions ;)) and made Mothers Day cards and been to Sainsburys for various things where they’d been distracted by cuddly toys designed for Mothers Day gifts. I get a sort of perverse pleasure from noting that Ady is equally short tempered and impatient with Davies and Scarlett by the end of a whole day at home with them as I am, infact possibly more so. 13 hours in he has run out of excellent parenting skills too ;).

I read the end of Dear Max and by popular request (Ady was listening too :)) started on Bravo Max too. I’m loving reading proper stories to them instead of picture books, much though I loved the picture book stage too. I think this is finally starting to light a bit of a fire for Davies wrt reading too as he starts to see the magic of the written word in it’s own right rather than as a side dish to beautiful pictures. Scarlett is doing a lot of ‘what does that word say?’ stuff too, so it can’t be all coincidence that suddenly they are realising that all that wonderful storytelling is tucked away in a page full of print rather than from the pictures. I’m slightly torn between wanting to share with them the treasures of my own childhood such as Enid Blyton and being excited about all the new authors I know from work are popular and have a real buzz about them – avoiding Rainbow Fairies of course 😉

I think that’s probably all I have to say. Tomorrow we have to be up at crazy o’clock as we’re off to Heathrow to take part in the terminal five trials.

I totally overslept this morning, which I obviously needed but meant we didn’t get going until nearly 11am. Davies and Scarlett stayed in the car while I dashed into Tescos for lunchtime supplies and then we arrived at Fishbourne Roman palace. We went a couple of times last year – once with The Beans and once with The ScreamTeam and had a good time both times – with Chris and Helen there was nothing particularly laid on but the company and the novelty of it being our first visit meant it was a good day out. With Ros and co. we had a really good day working through the various tasks set to train the children to Roman Soldier standards, getting their first day’s wage of a Roman coin at the end. This week they have been advertising their Family Fun Day everywhere so as entry covers you for a year we went back today to see what it was all about.

There was plenty going on but it was *really* busy so we bypassed various displays including Roman beauty products (crushed flies mixed with bear fat instead of mascara, ground chalk as face powder!) and just had a quick glance at the Roman remedies of herbs and flowers. Scarlett inhaled a little too deeply when sniffing the lavendar and sneezed most it back out of the bowl :roll:. They both had a go at weaving and the woman running that was very interesting and explained it really well, talking about various patterns and how the stripes on Davies’ top would have been woven. She really listened to their questions and answered them properly.

There was an archaeologist sat at a table with various dug up artefacts from the palace but he was pitching his chat at a rather higher level so we didn’t linger there too long. In the mosaic bit of the main palace were various clay based activities including making pots on a potters wheel, making coil pots and making oil burning lamps – there were huge queues for all of those and Davies and Scarlett both decided not to bother queuing saying we can do clay stuff at home. They declined the chance to dress up in Roman clothes.

They had various activities going on in the additional buildings on the site which haven’t normally been open and they were quieter and rather more interesting. There was wax tablets to write on with stylus and the lad running that (they use volunteers from local schools / colleges for these events) was really interested in it too. Then they did some writing with pens and ink pots – Scarlett just wrote Scarlett but Davies used the roman letters key to write his in Roman

They tried some Roman food – predictably Scarlett liked the honey sweetened wine, they both liked the spelt bread and the chickpea fritters (traitors ;)) so we picked up a recipe sheet for that. Then into the last building where there was arch building to do. We had a go and then a volunteer came over and showed us what to do then asked me to answer some questionnaire questions while we had another go and did it this time. Very proud of ourselves 🙂

and yes Davies is hamming it up for the camera 😆

We sat in the car and had lunch and then as promised because we were over that way we went off to find the animal resuce place we’d been to at the weekend again so Tarly could see the kittens again. On the way back from there we’d seen a sign advertising a ‘wild bird hospital’ which I assumed was it so we tracked the sign down and followed it. We ended up at the wild bird hospital which we hadn’t known existed and was not it at all! So as it looked interesting we parked and had a wander round there too. There were quails who’d been too ill to migrate to Italy, gulls who’d been injured and rather hilariously had two other gulls landed on their roof who we decided were visiting the sick, various ducks and pigeons and most excitingly of all some owls. They had a 7 year old Eagle owl, a 37 year old Tawny owl, a snowy owl, which Davies knowledgably informed me was a snowy owl and must be a female as it had black markings and females have that to camouflage them on their nests and a smaller owl I couldn’t identify. Amazing 🙂

We were accompanied round by a very enthusiastic member of staff who wanted to point out all sorts of things to us. 🙂

We left there and more by luck than any idea of where we were we found the animal place again. We parked up, saw the kittens, Scarlett asked if she could go in and pet them but was told no :(, looked at the chickens, peacocks, ducks, sheep and goats and were then sidetracked by three puppies newly arrived there. Davies and Scarlett spent ages with them and then spent some time with the big rottweiller who lives there and you wouldn’t catch me going anywhere near. I could just about manage to talk to the puppies through their cage bars :oops:. On the way out we were most amused by the goat easily clearing his fence, the pig who came over to greet us and we bought six duck eggs and six large free range eggs from the birds there too.

We popped into Littlehampton on the way home as I am looking out for a proper really warm coat for myself. I have a vast selection of cardigans, jackets and other outerwear including a posh wool ‘funeral’ full length coat but nothing remotely suitable for wandering round Pulborough Brooks, sitting in Pavillion Gardens eating lunch or other such pursuits that I seem to have been shivering at these last few weeks. Didn’t find anything so the search continues for that one.

In the car we had all manner of interesting conversations including a lengthy one about environmental issues. We discussed roads, traffic, fuels, fires, greener energy, cutting down travel, ignorance and education and responsibilities. Interesting stuff :). We also listened to lots of Kaiser Chiefs very loudly. Oh and Davies made me laugh lots when we talked about the Roman Palace by asking if they only open in the school holidays? I explained that no, they are open all year but only run events in the school holidays which he proclaimed ‘rubbish timing – it will always be busy then!’ 😆 There speaks a true HE child pissed off with people everywhere in school holidays 😆

Davies had been telling me about an advert he’d seen for a new Dr Seuss film about an elephant – the one who hatches the egg – and how he hears voices. I said that must be Horton hears a who and that we have the book at home. He didn’t remember but when we got home managed to track the book down so we sat and read that. He is right, there is indeed a film coming out of it. I just adore Dr Seuss, the more you read his stories the more messages seem to come across from them. Some of the books from amazon marketplace arriving from the US had arrived today so we sat and read them too – Born with a bang and Tree of life. Both were good although I think I still prefer Earth Story and Life Story. I did like the style of writing in Born with a bang though and the illustrations were gorgeous. We have mammals who morph already and are waiting for the middle book before reading that – hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. For a bedtime story we had half of Dear Max which I happened to have handed back into me at work the day after Jax mentioned it on her blog so decided was something we were meant to read. Very good -cries of ‘oh-oh’ when I said I wasn’t going to finish reading the whole thing to them tonight, must order the next couple of Max books tomorrow ready.

Tomorrow I’m working all day – it’s Baby Rhyme Time and I have the rest of my annual review scheduled in. Ady is home with D and S and has some preparation for his next QVC appearance next weekend to do so he has brought the product home with play with with the kids to familiarise himself with it properly.

Wednesdays are an important night round here. Torchwood is on. And it’s on at 9pm. And before that Masterchef is on. So for just one night a week we try really hard to have dinner ready for 830pm so we’re sitting down to eat for Masterchef and noone has to miss any of either show because they’re still cooking. Except we never, never manage it. Ever.

Until tonight that is.

Buoyed up by the sorting of the childcare for next week, the moves towards healthy happy elective time away from each other and topping up of Masterplan energy at 515pm I set a schedule. Ady and the children were very on board with this idea. Ady because he got to echo everything I said in a comedy style way and the kids because it involved ice cream. And a bath. And a story.

1715hours eat toast and tidy up geomags

1730hours eat ice cream while a bath is run for junior Goddards

1745hours get in bath. Enjoy waterbased fun without soaking bathroom floor or arguing about mermaid barbie or who had the doctor who flannel last

1800hours exit bath. enter pjs. snuggle on sofa for stories while bath is run for senior Goddards.

1830hours – storytime ends. Prolonged bedtime commences with various demands to be carried to bed like a horsey / come and tuck you in / requests for hot water bottles / drinks of water / blankets etc. Also included in schedule is three dashes to the bathroom each, hopefully coinciding with each other so that despite the fact we do have two toilets you can squabble about who is using which one.

1900hours bath for me

1930hours cook dinner (potato gratin, pork chops, cider and mustard sauce and asparagus – lovely 🙂 Bath for Ady.

2030 sit down with dinner to enjoy televisual feast that is Masterchef followed by Torchwood followed by next weeks Torchwood on BBC3 as we won’t be around next Wednesday to watch it then.

And we stuck to it. And it worked. Am scheduling genuis.

A catalogue of reasons brought our family to our slightly unique situation of not spending any time away from each other. It has never been deliberate but in reaction to various situations along the way Davies, specifically had issues about being left without Ady or I. Because of this Scarlett never was left so she has similar issues now. Because of this, and because I remember all too clearly the traumas of when I did leave Davies I have issues with it all too. I know this isn’t particularly healthy or normal but I don’t think it is particularly damaging either – just slightly wearing and difficult to work round.

Anyway with careful management and lots of baby steps we had reached points where Davies was happy to be left at Beavers round the corner, was happy to be left at Badgers if I was in the car outside, was happy to be left at home with another adult provided he was at home – leaving him elsewhere was still an issue. Scarlett has managed to be left at Badgers with Davies but is still moved to tears at the prospect of staying at Rainbows by herself. We all of us know this is irrational and that she will be fine, it’s just that we went through many months of heartache being told Davies would ‘be fine’ being left at nursery and he wasn’t fine at all. By any stretch of the imagination. And a five year habit at feeling crap for leaving a child knowing that they are struggling with it unless I have a bloody good justification for leaving them is a hard one to break. And we all feed off each others’ anxiety which whips us all up even more.

So this week my couple of hours on Monday leaving them with a whole room full of people they’d never met before in a place they were totally unfamiliar with was a Big Deal. Which meant that today following hot on it’s heels was Another Big Deal in a Very Small Time Frame.

Caz, who I have met precisely five times had offered to look after Davies and Scarlett fortnightly while I work on Wednesday mornings. I’ve been to their house, they’ve been to our house, I’ve met her husband (who was also going to be there) and liked all of them. The children all get on really well. Caz and Bid are teachers so very used to children and all their quirks, they have two boys almost the identical age to Davies and Scarlett, are Home Educating and love our educational philosophy and approach. Caz went to the same school as me, her father used to be our doctor. In short they are qualified in every aspect to be perfect supervisory adults for Davies and Scarlett for what was in effect a four hour playdate at their house. Which most seven and five year olds have been doing for years with their friends.

But of course knowing all this rationally and being utterly comfortable with the prospect of it is one thing; taking two reluctant children at 830 in the morning somewhere after two very upheaval-y days was quite another.

We’d spoken at length about it all, Davies was armed with a list of phone numbers in his pocket and instructions to ask them to ring me or Ady if he wanted to talk to us about anything, they had planned to look after each other and we all three did a very effective job of being bright and fine about it this morning. We drove there, I saw them in, kissed them goodbye, thanked Caz most profusely for what must be about the 7 billionth time for what she assures me she considers a tiny and inconsequential favour and left to go to work.

I returned five hours later to have to practically drag Davies and Scarlett away, full of what a ‘cool’ time they’d had, how they want to go there to play every time I have to go to work, bursting with stories of the games they’d played and generally very happy, grubby and okay with everything children. 🙂

So I guess that could be considered a success really. On all levels. 🙂 And another milestone. We seem to be passing milestones at an astonishing rate this week. 😉

I had had a fairly good morning at work; very busy which helped and I spent my tea break telling Yvonne all about our masterplan to move which she was very enthusiastic and positive about which was nice. It’s funny how people who have come into our lives at different times see us. And how plans which possibly seem utterly out of character and not like us at all to people who have known us a while seem totally sensible and just the sort of thing we’d do. I’m known of at work as a diehard camper, sticking out tenting in all sorts of extreme conditions, pretty hippy and alternative on my outlook, very crafty and artistic with a fairly bohemian lifestyle – I know my own parents certainly wouldn’t recognise me from that description :lol:.

As we drove past my parents house I spotted my Dad in the garden so we drove round the block and went to see him for an hour. Davies and Scarlett got filthy with tree sap which Dad had to get white spirit out to clean off their hands, spotted Fred, Albert and Albert II in the fishpond and were generally wild and grubby. Dad and I chatted, mostly about my childcare nightmare for next week. I’m working Thursday all day and Saturday morning – Dad is doing Thursday afternoon but Ady was planning to do Thursday and Saturday mornings but is away for the night on Wednesday and not back til late Thursday and then up in London all day Saturday and Sunday at QVC. He’s also QVCing both days the following weekend (Mothers Day).

I came home feeling incredibly despondant after various phone conversations with Ady about the increasing number of nights away from home he’s got scheduled in and weekends working over the next few weeks, worried about childcare and not having any family time and wondering how the hell we’re going to coordinate any sort of housesearching with so little free time. And sat and drank endless cups of tea while the childen played with geomags and watched Happily N’ever After.

This evening I’ve managed to sort all my childcare out again for the next month or so and Ady and I have managed a long chat about long term masterplan goals and everything is feeling way more positive again. I will try and post on the other blog the latest plans wrt moving etc. maybe tomorrow as things are shaping up better than I’d hoped really. My Dad and I managed a sensible, calm conversation about the whole thing this afternoon too which made me feel much better. I don’t need his approval but his acceptance means a lot.

So there. It’s been a hell of a week so far, I’m still feeling crappy from my cold, as are D and S and it does feel rather like I’ve lurched from one low emotion to another with rage, worry, despair and general impatience, intolerance and frustration all in there putting in appearances. I couldn’t be anything other than positive and upbeat for very long I don’t think – it’s just too bloody tiring! 😆