One word? When seven would do…

I managed to reserve a pink DSlite at Argos last night. Well actually I reserved two as the first one didn’t send a confirming email so I didn’t have the reservation number. That isn’t the first time it’s happened from something from Argos and I can never decide if it’s because actually you haven’t reserved one after all or something has gone wrong in the email part of the process. And I never remember to write the reservation number down from the website . So there may well be one reserved in Crawley for me too but it will get dropped tomorrow and the Brighton one was nearer anyway. So all that remained was to get Woolworths to give us a cash refund instead of the credit not gift card thing they gave us yesterday so we could go and get the one from Argos. Easy yes? No!

First thing Ady got telephone numbers for all the Woolworths stores in Sussex, Hampshire and up into Surrey and as soon as they opened started ringing round to see if any of them had a pink DS in stock. None of them did and none of them had any idea when they might have any either. Woolworths head office is closed today but there was a customer service line open from 10am so he rang that. After a lengthy explanation of the problem they rang the Lancing branch where we’d taken the DS back to yesterday where the manager refused to give a refund. Ady employed a tactic he’s used before where he said he’d simply stay on the phone until either a DS we could collect today was found, or one was located and would be sent to a store we could collect it from as we had got one reserved elsewhere til the end of today and didn’t want to risk losing that if Woolworths couldn’t guarantee they could supply us with one given they were only offering us credit to use in their stores rather than a refund. It took about 20 minutes before the customer service advisor eventually came back and said he’d spoken to ‘Anthony at Lancing’ and he would refund us cash after all.

This was always suspicious so with Ady being the tenacious one on the phone but me being the scarier one in person I went to Woolworths to collect the refund. Sure enough Anthony was about 12 and looked like he’d already had a bollocking from the manager for agreeing to something that had previously been refused. All the staff seemed to be aware of ‘that’ refund and I was immediately faced with the same issue as yesterday – no they couldn’t give a cash refund as it had been purchased on a card, no it wasn’t our card and yes we did need the refund today so I could go and get the reserved DS from Argos. He was on the verge of refusing outright so I employed my well used tactic of assuring him I knew it wasn’t his fault, empathising with his frustration and then making my problem his problem by explaining about the young child at home, devastated about the loss of her Christmas present while there was one waiting for me to collect elsewhere if only Woolworths would give me back my money. I was calm and rational, saying how much I’d love to get the replacement from Woolworths excect they didn’t have any, or any idea of when they might have any and that is hard to explain to a small, upset child. He cracked, said that if it was his child he’d feel just the same, told me to ‘come with me’ and led me out of the shop, across the road, to the Natwest cashpoint opposite and took £100 out of his own account, gave it to me and assured me he’d sort out a way to get his money back but at least my daughter would have her DS back today!!! Probably the least conventional, most above and beyond the call of duty approach to Customer Service I’ve ever witnessed and certainly worthy of letters of praise to his head office (although I might not detail all the story, I’m not entirely sure how much they’d be impressed by such a deviation from text book methods :lol:) – but who cares, I got the money back!

So I whizzed over to Brighton, paid for and collected the DS from Argos and was back within the hour to deliver it to a very delighted Scarlett who we’d prepared for the possibility of a couple of weeks wait for a replacement and was being brave and stoic but really quite upset at being without it while Davies was pulling off sympathetic and caring and sharing his with her in half hour installments (totally off his own bat, bless him :)).

So hurrah – drama over!

I had the very odd experience of waking up in an empty house this morning. Ady had taken the children with him to go and collect his car at about 745am and somehow they’d failed to make enough noise to wake me before they went so I remained fast asleep until the alarm went off at 8am. Very strange to be getting up, dressed and leave the house without anyone to say goodbye to. I left them a note instead :).

Work was fine, Saturday mornings are fairly busy. I spent some time chatting to the new Saturday girl who is 16 and wants to be an actress about performing arts – it’s odd to think I actually am old enough to be the mother of these mini-adults and realise how little I relate to them in many ways. I’m in a sort of limbo of being a parent and responsibilities so certainly not on their wavelength, but also not considering myself written off yet in the way that they so clearly percieve people over 30 (and indeed I did too in my teens). I had my teabreak with Tom, the other Saturday Assistant who is about to have his 18th birthday and attend his interview for London College of Fashion which he is very nervous and excited about, so we chatted about 18th birthday celebrations (how can mine have been *so* long ago when it feels like mere moments? :lol:) and university and interviews. I can’t offer uni anecdotes but I do have a fair few Very Scary Interview Tales to tell. I’ve been thinking about uni a lot this last week after one of the exercises at writing group, chatting to Caz and Bid and then again to Tom today…. interesting stuff.

I did another display, this time a very small one behind the kiddie pc in the junior section. So I pulled out some picture books with actions songs, nursery rhymes and ‘can you roar like a tiger?’ type themes, colour photocopied and reduced the front covers, copied some of the pictures of children doing actions from inside them and then displayed them all under the big heading ‘Picture Books – not just for sitting down quietly with…’ and put all the books on top so people can borrow them from the display. I went round and filled up the various displays I’ve done around the library and put a few more little ones up and moved a couple of shelves. I’m utterly in my element having free rein to do stuff like that as I know from retail days how receptive people are to suggestion and the power of ‘selling a book by it’s cover’ so to spend time doing all the twiddly bits of display and then see the gaps where people have been attracted by them and borrowed them is fab :). The Children’s Librarian was on duty today so we chatted a bit about chapter books and non illustrated children’s books which was interesting. She has two boys of very similar age to Davies and Scarlett but also very strong links to the schools locally and various other educational links so is an interesting person to talk to about children and literacy as she has both personal experience and the ‘official line’.

I finished at 1pm and came home to find twilight zone of an empty house fully flushed away and all three of my family home and in their rightful noisy places :). D and S were watching The Simpson Movie and playing with geomags, Ady was about to go and chop up wood. I had some lunch and then did some baking. Scarlett and I made flapjacks – she did most of it and then I’d offered to just supervise and read out the recipe for Snickerdoodles and for D and S to actually bake them themselves but Davies got caught up doing something with Ady instead so Scarlett and I did those too. She was great – and way better than me at remembering to take them out of the oven :lol:. We talked about catalysts and melting temperatures and speeds when she noted that the sugar melted far quicker than the butter, but the butter melted faster when you stirred it round than when you left it alone. It’s interesting to watch the differences of a second child as I often hear Davies answering questions for her or telling her stuff and of course she is present for almost all of his rather more sophisticated questions and my answers anyway so doesn’t always get the chance to ask her own or make clever observations. Also she is more self contained anyway and quite likes to work things out for herself and then just clarify she’s right rather than ask in the first place. But today she asked me about how the first people got made and why people might commit suicide so she’s still right up there with her share of thorny ones when the mood takes her! I talked a bit about creationism and evolution theories and promised to read her ‘Life Story‘ which I’ll do tomorrow, and probably get out Earth Story to go along with it.

Scarlett’s DS has had a non continuous line on the upper screen for the last week or so which I noticed is getting worse. I’ve certainly seen no signs of abuse, if anything she is more careful with hers than Davies is with his and the outer casing and screen surface were still totally as new. I googled it last night and found a probable cause listed as it being dropped or otherwise impacted but particularly as it is on the top screen where she doesn’t touch anyway I really think it is more likely to be a fault with the DS rather than mishandling. So given it is not even a month old andwas £100 and is only likely to get worse we decided to take it back to Woolworths. Now I hadn’t realised that the pre-Christmas DS sold out everywhere hysteria hadn’t finished at Christmas and actually they still seem to be pretty hard to get hold of. Woolworths were fine about swapping it over but they don’t have any to swap it with, it was bought on one of Ady’s workmates’ credit cards as she collected it for us when we were worrying about the shortage and paid for it so it couldn’t be refunded onto her card as we don’t have it, they wouldn’t give us cash as we didn’t pay cash for it and so they created a gift card with £100 credit on it for us instead. Which would be fine if any of the six Woolworths stores we subsequently drove to had one in stock. But not only do none of them seem to have any, in any colour (and Scarlett, fairly enough, is insisting on a pink replacement again) and cannot tell us when they might be likely to get any more. 🙁

I’ve managed to track a pink one down at Argos in Brighton which I’ve reserved until Monday night but unless Woolworths are prepared to give us the cash back we can’t go and get it anyway. Hopefully as they are unable to actually offer us a replacement or a timescale for one we can get them to agree to the cash tomorrow so we can go and get it from Argos. Meanwhile Tarly is being very brave and understanding about it but is also pretty sad at her DS-less state :(. More on that saga no doubt tomorrow…

As we were still right over in Bognor long after the children’s tea time we got them McDonalds for tea and then came home for them to watch Primeval before bed. I’d developed a headache over the course of the afternoon and attempted to lay down quietly on the sofa but got clambered all over by very pointy jointed little people so had a long bath instead (which I had constant visitors too :roll:). The headache did abate a bit but is starting to return with a vengence so hopefully it is just tiredness and I’m off to bed to see if I can see it off.

I imagine she’ll be called worse in her time, and she’s certainly had tribute paid to her in more conventional terms before but tonight that’s what she decided she was :).

But in classic Julie Andrews style we’ll start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start) – sorry if that puts the song in anyone’s head but I now have it in mine so we can be needles pulling thread together :).

I had to set my alarm for 8am this morning as Dad was dropping my car back and he generally considers me a lazy slattern who neglects my children horribly cos I can’t be arsed to get myself up in time to take them to school – and other flattering things as well of course ;), so I wanted to be up and about when he arrived. So I was :). We drank tea / coffee and chatted, he stayed with D&S while I dashed round the shop for milk having given myself a huge fright when going into the semi darkness of the garage to try and get a six pinter out of the freezer to defrost only to be smacked in the face by a brace of pheasant and a brace of partridge hanging by their necks from one of the garage rafters :shock:. I did venture further but we were out of milk anyway :rolls:.

Dad left and we made birthday cards for T and then I begged half an hour peace on my laptop while they entertained themselves so they got the brio out and made an elaborate track to play trains on. We had crumpets at about 1130 as the last time we’d gone to E’s Scarlett had only eaten carrots and Davies hadn’t eaten anything from the wholemeal, vegan food on offer 😳 – and erm, although I’m sure it is delicious fayre I’d only picked at it out of politeness too. Everyone else was very complementary so I know it is just me and my kids fussy eating habits rather than a slur on the homecooked refreshments but I’d rather they were able to quietly refuse than exclaim loudly about whether they like it or not and then moan about being hungry. Then they tidied up the traintrack while I customised some paper tablecloth bought and not used for Scarlett’s birthday party to make wrapping paper for T’s pressie – a paint your own bird feeder with paints and brush and a big bag of wild bird food. He seemed to really like it :).

Lucy and The Rs arrived and we headed off to Brighton for the party – I managed to not only remember exactly where it was but also get a parking space right outside their house :). Already there were two other lots of friends and Ali and Freya (although I am still not convinced it was them, they were so prompt ;)) arrived shortly afterwards. T rather hero-worships Davies – apparently he has a special song he sings called ‘Davies is so cool’ which his mum E hears very often 😆 and Scarlett gets on well with his sister L and having been there before and knowing all the other children they disappeared straight off – particularly as expected they didn’t like the food on offer so that didn’t keep them sitting down. I was able to sit and chatter and only had a child of my own to deal with right at the end when Davies was involved in a set to and got bumped on the head (not unprovoked I don’t think). It did feel slightly odd but then I do have the oldest children and I assuaged my guilt by remembering all the times at D or S’s parties when I have glanced enviously at the other parents chatting while I barely manage to nip to the loo, so I decided running after the children was E’s role and actually she is not only bloody good at it anyway, she is also really enjoying it :). So I drank tea and chatted instead, it was great!

It was interesting to note that having removed Davies from the MM ‘set’ I’ve been pleased to note it was MM specific behaviour that he was demonstrating and that particularly having given him wider access to different children and older ones too since Christmas he has been happier and easier that he fell straight back into noisy, boisterous leader of the loony masses when back with that gang again. Not that it was dreadful behaviour or even terribly undesirable, just not who I think he *really* is, more who the persona he adopts in that company. So we all enjoyed it, I managed to let him get on with it and am safe in the knowledge we’ll do that fortnightly or so and he can be that Davies and then go back to being the real Davies again afterwards. Not at all sure that will make sense to everyone but I know at least one mother will be sitting reading this knowing what I mean ;). We managed to do some feminist ranting too which was good for the soul :).

Home again where Ady was waiting having left his keys in the house so been unable to get in til we got home. The children had tea and then Scarlett and I walked round to the church for Rainbows. She was nervous but in that excited dancing around sort of way. She is very good at going up to people, smiling and saying ‘Hello, I’m Scarlett, what’s your name?’ and has her brothers talent for suggesting games or activities and getting others to join in so she was flitting between trying that and clinging onto my hand. She wasn’t the only new girl tonight but all the other mothers crept off after ten minutes or so except me. There were 17 girls there tonight and that was with 2 regulars missing so it’s a busy old group of 5-7 year old girls. They started with a circle of holding hands which Scarlett kissed me and then ran into the middle of, happily grabbing the hands of her neighbours but looking slightly doubtful about announcing ‘I’m Rainbow Scarlett!’ and then sitting down like all the others so she just grinned in a rather embarrassed fashion and sat down. The first activity was a cutting out and sticking together paper owl making one so she was in her element with that, happily running off to sit down at the far end of the room, where she couldn’t see me without stretching round the girl sitting next to her. I could hear her asking people to pass the glue, share the scissors and talking to the adult helpers quite happily. I also watched her getting slightly fed up when people were taking too long and saying ‘can you hurry up with the glue please’. There was then a bit of ‘free play’ where the girls got out skipping ropes, hula hoops and various similar playgroundy things to play with while everyone finished. Scarlett tried really hard at that point to join a group of chatting girls, join in with a game already happening and start up a conversation with a couple of lone girls. She didn’t get very far with any of them which was a shame because she honestly tried and just couldn’t penetrate friendships clearly already made. One of the girls – dressed in very party type skirt and leggings and proper high heeled boots (at 6 FFS!) with elaborate plaits snarled at her to ‘Stop it!!!!’ when she tried to join in their game and did a sort of flounce. Scarlett sort of shrugged at wandered off to the next group (made me very proud of her that – I’d have been smarting for weeks, Davies would have come running to me in tears and flatly refused to ever go back again). The little girl with the fiesty one sort of hung back and really smiled at Scarlett though in a sort of apologetic way. Scarlett eventually made her way over to the box and dug out a hoopla board and some hoops and played that. She tried to engage three girls sitting on the seats (which always shocks me, it looks so odd to see small children sitting down when there are things to play with on offer) but although they were not unfriendly they didn’t want to play either. Then they all got herded into a smaller room while the helpers tidied up and they sat in a circle and had a Rainbow doll to pass round. It seemed to be some sort of show and tell type session where the person holding the doll got to talk and they all spoke about what they got for Christmas. I found that slightly offensive somehow although I’m sure that was the sort of thing we did back at school even in my day as there was plainly a real competitive element to it even with these really little children and much boasting about ‘going skiing this year’ etc. Scarlett was about halfway round the circle and said she couldn’t remember what she got but she did have a Fur Real cat at home after the person before her mentioned she’d got one of those. I deliberately didn’t correct her or jump in as actually it’s not really relevant what she got for Christmas anyway. They then did a sort of singing action game where they had to touch the knees of the girls either side of them which Scarlett declined to join in with on the basis it was ‘a bit mad’. This reminded me very strongly of Davies at exactly the same age when he moved up to Gym Bobs from Tumble Tots and flatly refused to play some of the games because he didn’t see the point to them and they were ‘a bit crazy’. Spontaneous lunacy goes down a storm here, organised fun grates on the children and they just opt out, which not only do I understand as I’d be the same I also respect, admire and applaud really. They finished with another song – similar to the starting one which encorporates the Rainbows promise and has a jazzy little dance routine (me and Em could do it no problem :lol:) which Scarlett looked equally bemused by and that was it.

We chatted about it as we walked home. Her summary was that it was ‘a bit good and a bit silly’. The good bits were ‘the cutting and sticking and all the children’ the silly bits were ‘the singing and clapping and that girl who was a bit horrible to me’. She didn’t realise I’d witnessed the whole thing as it was a very fast exchange so she recounted to me precisely what I’d seen including the other girl catching her eye and smiling. She said that she thought it might be a bit like at Davies’ Beavers where there are a couple of not so nice boys and that probably the girl wasn’t so happy about people joining in her game and that’s why she’d been unfriendly. I agreed that could be it but stated clearly that Scarlett had done nothing wrong and said she had two choices on how to deal with it; she could either keep trying to be friendly and try to win her over as a friend or she could decide that actually she probably isn’t a very nice girl and she’d rather not be friends with her anyway and try and make friends with someone else instead. Without hesitation Scarlett said she’d like to keep trying. I’m really proud of her for this as I know I wouldn’t manage to do that but best of all I know that Scarlett’s endeavours to win her over will never involve compromising Scarlett herself, just clever social tactics :). She is happy to go back, seemed pleased with it overall and I can see that if she makes friends (or actually even if she doesn’t) it will be a nice enough hour a week for her with fun activities in a big group where she might well make friends and at the very least will get a small taste each week of life without any other Goddards nearby. She says she’ll let me know when she is ready for me not to stay and I doubt it will take many sessions (which is good, it is not an environment I particularly enjoy, it brings back way too many unhappy memories of school and girls social set ups for me). The whole thing was also very demonstrative of Scarlett’s sunny nature and optimistic standpoint on most things, she was very quick to identify the things she had enjoyed and focus on them. 🙂

I whizzed off to the supermarket taking Ady’s current work car, a Golf which is very nippy but way too small, can’t quite believe we managed Kessingland and Melrose and The Goddard Tour Of The North (including Scotland) in one when we had one all the time. He gets the Touran back tomorrow :). I’m off to work in the morning and we seem to have a nothing planned weekend which will be nice before embarking back on yet another every day filled up week again on Monday.

the ultimate in school avoidance! 😆

I’ve been enjoying looking at these pictures this morning.

I was at work all day today. Ady stayed home in the morning with Davies and Scarlett and my Dad was here in the afternoon. Davies has got some display space booked at the library next month for a week after he asked about the paintings and artwork that was displayed there by someone else and I told him anyone could book it to put a display up. So before I left for work I reminded him that he needed to start planning for it. We talked about a few ideas such as a theme – eg space with all the pictures being related to the theme, or a storyboard with them deliberately laid out in order to tell a story and I gave him the suggestion of something library related as a subject matter. When I got home he’d worked with Ady to create a 9 page set of pictures of libraries ‘through the ages’ starting with cavemen drawing on cave walls for people to come and look at as the very first example of libraries. He had Renaissance libraries in fancy buildings, Viking library on board a viking ship, Roman libraries in a colleseum style building and Ancient Greek library too. In about number 5 he had a small tree growing which grew to be a big tree in the final, current day picture which is of Lancing library which is indeed next to a tree. They are fab :). He wants to do some labels to go alongside them talking about the periods and some of the details in the pictures but it was an excellent idea, all his, with Ady just supplying a book with some sort of timeline in it and some pictures of the sorts of costmes etc that would have been worn. Lovely to see the influence of the museum visit yesterday coming through in there too :).

I had a busy but enjoyable day. There were lots of staff in today – we currently have a full time vacancy and a 25 hour a week post that is being covered while the member of staff takes an extended leave of absense to care for her ill mother. And my direct boss is on compassionate leave as her mother passed away so it was a real mish-mash of staffing. And there had been a break in at the library earlier in the week so there was high drama and excitement to be caught up on too. I was also told of another of the perks of the job which I’d not known about before being that we don’t pay when we take books for sale – clearly that is subject to not wiping out the whole shelf for resale on ebay and amazon marketplace but I had a pile of about 15 books which I was about to pay £4 something for and was told I didn’t need to – so hurrah! :).

I had an interesting post-training chat with the senior supervisor and we touched on a few things in advance of my annual review which is happening next week, I really must give some proper thought to that and get some stuff written down prepared for it.

A librarian I’d not met before came over in the afternoon and I had teabreak with her and Abi, a younger librarian who works in the area and I see every couple of weeks. We got to talking about Home Ed (as you do!) and Abi mentioned that she’d met someone last week who HE’d when interviewing them for Brighton Ourstory, which turned out to be Dani and she said she is interviewing Allie aswell so that was a coincidence :). Small worlds…

I had an interesting conversation with someone joining the library about why you don’t just get to have one library ticket you can use anywhere in the UK and then another one with a family wanting to know all sorts of things to help with homework, sort out a replacement for a lost ticket, find some films and some other authors who write like one’s they already knew and liked – sometimes I pleasantly surprise myself with how much I do know and have learnt in my time there. I also went round and checked my displays and was very pleased to see several books had been taken off each and there were holes to fill up – that’s great given the stock on one had been utterly static for months and since I did the display I have filled at least 10 gaps :).

I came home, put away the chickens and my Dad went off with my car as he is going to collect my brother and his friends from Gatwick (they’ve been to Amsterdam) and none of them have suitable cars to do it in as Dad has a van, Mum has a sports car and Frazer’s car quite possibly wouldn’t be up to the journey. The plus side of this is that it was running on fumes and Dad will hopefully put more petrol in than it actually would take for that trip so I won’t need to fill it up again :). I sat with the children and admired their pictures (Scarlett had done lots of drawing too and created tickets for her and I to go somewhere although she hadn’t quite decided where :lol:). Ady came home and cooked them some tea while I lit a fire (I am so good at firelighting now, probably could call myself the firestarter on my CV and everything. I might make a certificate and laminate it for myself :lol:) and then we finished reading about Plop while Davies drew portraits of us all including posing Scarlett who managed to sit still in the twee litle position he’d got her in :lol:. I was heartened today to hear them both coming to report to me something nice about the other one – Davies brought me a picture of a chicken that Scarlett had done because he thought it was ‘brilliant, the best chicken drawing I’ve seen, loads better than I could have done’ which made her all glowy and then she was all full of praise for his portraits and his library pictures. I love the way their take pride in each other’s successes and strengths. I’ve brought home some Enid Blyton, some Dorothy Edwards, a Doctor Who choose what happens next in the adventure type book and a Sally Gardner to read aloud next so hopefully one or more will grab them. I’ve tried to choose things that I will actually enjoy reading too but will hopefully capture their attention and imagination. They are both keen to improve their reading at the moment so hopefully lots of reading aloud from me will aid that – I can see that the idea of being able to take the book off and carry on reading it themselves is very appealing to them both now – Davies for yet another reason not to go to sleep and Scarlett just because she loves books and knows what treasures they hold if you can only unlock them.

Tomorrow we’re off to T’s birthday party and Scarlett has her first session at Rainbows.

I was off to Worthing library this morning for training and so didn’t have to dash straight off as soon as Lucy and The Rs arrived. In some ways I guess this is more unsettling for D and S but I kind of rely on them being totally fine about me going to work now. I know they would rather I didn’t but we’ve talked about it lots (and actually we talked about it again this afternoon) and they know and understand all the reasons why I do go to work:
1. I enjoy it
2. It has good perks
3. I bring in more money to the house
4. It means that when they grow up and my chief ‘job’ stops being looking after them I will have maintained some career which I can expand or use the skills from.

Anyway today I pulled Davies up for something very minor just before I was about to leave and then he dissolved into tears when I went to say goodbye. He has missed Ady lots, more than I’d realised really. Scarlett has been content to chatter to him on the phone a couple of times each day and rather than miss her early morning hour or so with Ady she’s been getting up later as he’s not getting up and turning all the radios, tvs and lights on downstairs and disturbing her at 6am :lol:. Davies on the other hand probably spends a bit more time with Ady of an evening, on account of him not bloody going to sleep til 1030pm so has missed his physical presence more and did have a little weep and wail about missing Daddy on Monday night. So I think he was just fragile enough to not be prepared to let me go easily too this morning.

As Lucy assured me he would, and as of course I knew he would really, otherwise I wouldn’t have left he was fine within half an hour of me leaving, but Davies and I both still bear the scars emotionally of those early days of him crying before he could talk and me leaving him at nursery which set us on our whole path to Home Ed 6 years ago. One of the very reasons I do home educate and why I am so protective and precious about not having time away from my children is that I watched the damage it did. And I don’t have to be apart from them. And it is a finite period, relatively short, in their lives and mine when they will want me not to leave them. He won’t still be crying about me going in 5 years, in 10 he probably will only communicate by way of the grunt, in 15 he may well have left home himself and I bloody hope he will have done in 20! So I’m sure it was a combination of ‘stuff’ and luckily when I head off to work tomorrow and Saturday it will be leaving him with Ady so there won’t be a repeat performance but it left me slightly drained. Ironic as I was only recounting those nursery days to Caz and Bid yesterday (and no, Davies wasn’t in the room, he was busily and noisily playing out of earshot so he wasn’t pushing buttons deliberately) so I wonder if he picked up something from me feeling odd about it today perhaps?

Anyway, all that aside the training was good. It was only 3 hours long, on the subject of Reader Development and delivered by someone from the Surrey Library service. Lots of talk about marketing, some of which tied in with stuff we were talking about at Writing group at the weekend, USPs and stuff, so very ‘up my street’ and very discussion based so an enjoyable session to be in. I liked it a lot, got some fresh ideas which I’m looking forward to taking back to my library. I’ve now met a fairly high up member of staff for West Sussex library service a few times at these courses and chatted to her at tea break and a bit during the discussions, she is also going to be at an author talk event I’m attending next week so I’m starting to feel like I’m networking a bit outside of my own library too – it’s all good. I was frustrated to learn last week that there is free C&G training being offered in computer coaching so that a member of staff in every library is trained to delivery basic computer skills to people as part of the UKonline initiative. There is no one at Lancing would be interested in it particularly and I would dearly love to do it, both for now as something I would enjoy and for the future as another thing to add to my CV but 11 hours a week is deemed too few for it to be a workable possibility :(. Frustrations with the inability to clone myself and be in 3 places at once aside I am really pleased with the way the job is panning out. 🙂

I needed to transfer some money between bank accounts and the bank is on the next block to the library so nipped down there but having been unable to find the right card in the morning and getting sidetracked by Davies they refused to do it without so I had to come home again knowing I’d need to go back into town either this afternoon or in my lunchbreak tomorrow. I came home to find peace restored and Davies happily playing with the others – although they got a bit crazy when I got in and Scarlett got a badly bruised lip as a result of some sibling spat :(. Lucy and The Rs left and after a cup of tea for me I decided we’d combine the trip into town for the bank with a present buying for our friend T’s fifth birthday party on Friday and a visit to Worthing Museum which shockingly I don’t think I’ve visited since school trips aged under ten :oops:. So we parked, did the bank – where they had loads of little point of sale crabs from their latest (see how I resisted the ‘current’ pun :lol:) advert all moving their claws. The children speculated on how they moved and the cashier was only too happy to explain it was a magnet moving powered by a little solar panel so D and S liked that :). A quick peruse round a shop turned up a cute paint your own birdfeeder complete with paints for T so we got that and a big bag of bird food to go with it, hope he’ll like that :). Then on to the museum.

We were there over an hour and could have probably stayed longer. There were exhibits of all sorts of things but the ones which caught our eyes today were the taxidermy fox, hare, rabbit and birds from the South Downs, fossils in chalk, a shepherd in his smock, a model of Worthing in 1800s where we were able to pick out a few buildings including the church we’d been looking at moments before and speculating on the age of (so we were able to date it to pre then), loads of gifts from Worthing and details about the fishing trade and the idea of it being a place for ill people to recouperate, we looked at the costumes through the ages and talked about fashion, about changing body shapes, about bustles and hoops and petticoats, about woman clothed neck to ankle and then the revolution of miniskirts (‘where are her trousers Mummy?!), corsets and why women fainted, why people follow fashion at all when it is clearly uncomfortable, toys from years gone by (they have a doll, teddy, dollhouse, rocking horse, tin soldiers exhibited), why it wouldn’t have been the mummy in the nursery looking after the children and would have been a nanny / governess instead, a reconstruction of a skeleton at Highdown cemetary complete with brooch, ring, beads, knife and belt ring. Oh and loads more. There is an exhibition of some art; sculptures and paintings so we looked at them and discussed what they made us think of and then read the titles to see if they helped or agreed with our impressions. It was great 🙂 Davies and Scarlett were really engaged, interested, curious and excited at the things they recognised and could talk about. We were the only non-retired age people in there and got a variety of expressions made at us from indulged amusement to impressed to mildly disapproving (why?). They change the displays fairly regularly so we’ve promised to go again soon and look in greater detail at the things we skimmed over and see new stuff as it goes on exhibit.

On the way home we had an interesting conversation about reward and punishment. I’d noticed lately that reward and punishment were being used a lot as concepts in their imaginative play with toys threatening punishments to each other and using bribery etc. Lucy told me she’d noticed it happening in real life with the four children too and partly curious about it’s origins particularly as I have a fairly anti- stance so strive not to be giving the example of them and partly because 2,4,5 and 7 is a bit too wide a range of ages to make any sort of reward / punishment scheme anything other than unfairly weighted. We talked about what our motivation is for doing certain things and some examples of things we *have* to do – I was really gratified to hear them saying that work was fairly low down on the list of things we have to do and when I asked why we work they both answered ‘because you enjoy it’ – now I know that could start off a whole big debate with people disagreeing but my philosophy is that you should enjoy your job and is one of the big things I am hoping to get across to D and S, that they should first and foremost do something they love, hopefully if they love it they will be good at it, hopefully if they are good at it they will earn money from it. Simplistically put I know and I may well go into that more another time but that’s my ideal anyway. Then we talked about stuff we wouldn’t do and why – I asked them if I murdered people (cos I’m all about extreme examples me!) and they said no and I asked why and they came up with their list with ‘you would go to jail’ about number 4. We then talked about whether I would still go to work if I didn’t get paid and what the rewards would be and if I would still not murder people even if it wasn’t against the law anymore and what the punishments would be. So a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic stuff touched on in very basic terms. We talked again about why, in theory, I don’t believe in reward and punishment and why we don’t have star charts and naughty steps and how, most of the time at least, that works because Davies and Scarlett are able to do the ‘right thing’ by their own definition because that is their chosen behaviour rather than their controlled behaviour. We then talked about ways of getting empathy from others to try and persuade them to do things we’d like them to rather than bribes or threats and comitted together to try and do that from now on, and be positive about requests such as ‘it would make me happy if you’d do X’ rather than ‘if you don’t stop doing Y I will get really cross with you’ and I asked them to pull me up on it when I slip too. No idea if it will work but I think the idea of trying to interact with people in more positive way is a good one to try and adopt and might get them to challenge their own blind acceptance of societies reward and punishments system that I am slightly disturbed to see them buying into already. We’ll see…. all makes for very interesting discussions with children’s perspectives anyway.

Today’s abstract questions were ‘what is dignity?’ and ‘what is humane?’ – both from a single sentence in W&G Curse of the Were Rabbit :lol:.

Home for tea, getting changed for Badgers, a painful hairbrushing for Scarlett and then off to Badgers for them both. Scarlett was once again enthusiastic and full of it before and afterwards. I had a brief ‘is she doing ok?’ exchange with Julie the leader and a definite ‘she’s doing fine’ back so I expect we’ll be doing the payment and paperwork and uniform stuff next week to make her official. A small amount of sibling rivalry on the way home afterwards as they both told slightly different stories about what they’d been doing and were a bit competitive about things – I’m sure that is probably healthy rather than cause for concern but will ensure Davies isn’t feeling too crowded by Scarlett whirlwinding into his territory. I think he was rather expecting to play more of a big brother role than she’s been needing…

We got home and Ady was back – hurrah 🙂 so happy reunions all round there. We read another 2 chapters of Plop (it’s gone down really well, will definitely pick up some books tomorrow in a similar vein – hurrah for the big heavy piles of 10 words to a page books being all we read coming to an end. I don’t think we want to wash our hands of the beautifully illustrated hardbacks just yet altogether but it’ll be nice to have them mixed in with some lighter things with more words and more imagination required too :)) and they went off to bed. Ady and I ate a lovely beef stew and watched Torchwood – oh how I’ve missed it :).

So there were wobbles at the start, there were very interesting conversations in the middle and a few potential spat situations towards the end but we had an ace time at the museum and best of all ADY’S HOME! 🙂 🙂 🙂

I did my usual morning rounds of getting breakfast, letting chickens out and feeding them, feeding the cat and so on before finally sitting down with my tea – oh I could so be a farmer 😆

Davies and Scarlett were playing with plasticine which they carried on with pausing to eat, get dressed and then tidying up ready to go out. We were off round to visit Caz, the new friend we met last week with 7yo A and nearly 5yo E – both boys :). The four children had really hit it off last week and we’d been invited round to their house to play. When we arrived the children took their coats and shoes off and were spirited straight off into the house by A and E. They came back for food at lunchtime when we all sat and ate together and then they disappeared again til I ferreted them out at hometime. A very successful visit there :). They played a very lengthy game of Doctor Who and we could hear all four of them really enjoying themselves.

Caz and her husband Bid were both there and the three of us sat and chatted non stop too, exchanging basic and brief life stories and lengthy and indepth home education stories. They are both teachers by trade although both work part time at it and Caz is building up a gardening round and studying horticulture too. I’d felt like I’d clicked with Caz last week and continued to feel like that and really liked Bid too – I think Ady would get on well with them both too, they remind me a lot of friends of ours who emigrated away and despite having very different backgrounds there were lots of likeminded things and common dreams and aspirations too which was great. A really enjoyable few hours which we’ll hopefully repeat again soon :). And a constant supply of tea too! Funny how people seem to come into your life at times who you would have had nothing in common with previously but seem perfect to have around right now sometimes…

We left there at 330pm and came home – D and S DS’d and started watching the Simpsons Movie. Then it was time for swimming. They both had a good lesson – Scarlett must have drunk so much water from grinning all the way through the lesson. She’s rubbish at listening, keeps calling out to the instructor to get feedback on how she’s doing (which the instructor is handling really well by giving her the feedback patiently and listening to her without disrupting the lesson for everyone else – I can’t tell Scarlett off, it’s sheer delight and enthusiasm!) but is loving every minute of it and I know once she really gets into the swing of it the fact she is enjoying it so much will mean she gets it all so much quicker once the novelty of being there has worn off and she’s actually getting somewhere with the swimming side of things! Davies continues to do well – they are easily the two most water confident children in the pool even though they might be the least far along in actually learning to swim 😆 I reckon that’s a pretty good start.

Showers and hairwash there for them and then they both managed to do most of their dressing themselves as I’d told them they’d have to now they are both there with me passing clothes and dealing with keeping wet and dry stuff seperate for them – summer with less clothes and less fiddly shoes will make all the difference there I’m sure.

We were most entertained to note the bottom level (below ground level) of the car park had flooded to over a foot deep – wish I’d had the camera as it was really funny seeing a swimming pool in the car park of a swimming pool :lol:. We got blustered about – the pool is right on the seafront – running back to the car and got in for the children to have dinner while I prepared my dinner, clean teeth and get pjs on while I hoovered and then they watched me lay and light a fire before we snuggled up for a couple more chapters about Plop. We’ve had various conversations about ‘turns of phrase’ today including ‘off the hook’ and a couple of others I can’t recall now with them most interested in the origin of sayings. I suspect Davies watching QI with us the other night has led to him thinking about such things.

They went to bed, I had a bath and a delicious dinner (nigella recipe potato gratin, divine :)) and am about to head off to bed as I’m working in the morning at a training session in Worthing. And tomorrow Ady comes home. And also tomorrow Torchwood is back. Woo hoo! 🙂

I got up this morning to find Davies in the bathroom ‘dealing with broken glass here Mummy’. He’d been getting a drink and clunked the glass against the sink breaking it so was calming dealing with it in a very safe and non hysterical manner – guess he might be ready to teach to make tea very soon then :lol:. I got rid of the glass he’d carefully collected together for him and sorted out their breakfast before emptying the washing machine of one load, putting another one on and sorting a third ready to go in, letting out the bantams and then sitting down with a cup of tea.

We watched a bit of Something Special and talked a bit about sign language before flicking onto CBBC and finding whatever show it was on that channel also having the woman in the corner doing sign language so we watched that for a bit. I’ve never really known much about sign language (other than being able to do the alphabet which I learnt from someone at school) and was surprised when on a course for work last year about Equal Access to learn that BSL is a first language for many deaf people and isn’t just a straightforward translation of English and as such reading books in English wouldn’t necessarily be that straightforward. I wonder whether that hinders or helps with reading if you are not worrying about ‘sounding’ things out and simply recognising words on the page?

Davies and Scarlett played with the geomags and then tidied up and played with the x box. I did a third load of washing and just as it finished spinning and I was planning to go and hang a now ridiculously full basket out on the line it started raining. Then the sun came out. Then it rained again. It was a bit like that today :roll:. I did manage to hang it all out without getting rained on myself and bring in some of the stuff to dry indoors but the bulk of it is still out there getting rained on further. We debated various things to do today but the weather put us off anything outside-y (didn’t fancy a Wet Walk ;)) and they were actually quite content to just be home playing together so I left them to it mostly as we’re out and about all the rest of the week.

After lunch we did have to pop out – I had a couple of books to send and we needed a few bits from the shops including cat food. Davies found 20p on the floor infront of the cashpoint at Sainsburys which he was utterly delighted about and prompted all sorts of number stuff. It also prompted more chatter about old wives tales when he fell over smack on the floor in the fresh pasta aisle and was most indignant about finding money being supposed to bring good luck not bad. Then he reasoned that maybe the finding of the money was the good luck bit and you shouldn’t be expecting further offerings of luck and finally that perhaps finding 20 pennies all at once didn’t carry the same level of luck as just the one singular one. We also had chatted about the greatest and smallest number of coins needed to make various amounts, which is something I remember doing in workbooks way back in infant school myself, although of course we had halfpennies then and no 20 pence pieces (goes off into nostalgic memories of five pences being a proper size, pound notes and nice big chunky 50 pence pieces that felt like treasure, all against a soundtrack of Jamie and the Magic Torch , Angel Delight and other 70s nonsense :)).

On the way back we talked more about old wives tales and magpies as Scarlett spotted a single one and then more about money with Davies asking for ‘if you had X and you bought something costing Y how much change would you have?’ type stuff. He then floored me by counting in 10s up to 100 and once I’d clarified that 110 was the next one going off again. Either my Dad is doing sneaky maths lessons with him once a week or something mathematical is clicking and whirring away for him but it all seems to make sense to him too rather than be something he’s learnt, it is something he has discovered. 🙂 He also told me that there are 10 10s in 100 and that that meant there must be 5 20s.

At the post office I matched Davies’ 20p for Scarlett with coppers from the ashtray in my car and said they could get some penny sweets while I sent my parcels. The woman behind the newsagent counter bustled out to help them with smiles at their pleases and thankyous and chatter about various innane things. I came to assist Scarlett with keeping track of her penny sweets while Davies continued in his numeracy demonstration hour by telling me how much various things cost and how many of them he could have for his 20p, notably 2 of the 10p things and then 4 of the 5p things (because 5 and 5 is 10 and another 10 is 20 so you must need 2 and 2 which is 4 – yes, definitely all clicking into place cos he’s ‘got it’ then – woohoo!). Amazing to think in all that limited chatter coming from finding a 20p we covered addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, ratios, fractions oh and he asked me what a % sign meant in Sainsburys too so we talked about percent or out of one hundred too and put that into context for him. He also did lots of reading things like ‘half price’ and telling me what that meant – we’re getting leaps and bounds here again at the moment and it almost seems the more I step back the more he races forward. Watch how it all stops again now I’ve jinxed it by talking about it :lol:.

We came home just as it started to rain again and they ate their sweets while playing with DSs, watching each other and swapping round games. I’m so chuffed with the DSs for so many reasons – Scarlett is doing brilliantly on hers and is starting to recognise some of the words aswell as being very able with the stylus which is good for her as she still struggles rather with the X box controller and gets frustrated with herself and everyone around her. Davies is enjoying his and seems to be coping well with the Harry Potter one which seems to require a fair bit of reading. They played a game with some foam blocks and toy cars while I cooked some flapjacks and then did their tea (more bacon!) then we watched Newsround before it was time for Davies to get changed for Beavers.

One of the adult helpers at Beavers has left so they are asking all parents to go on a rota to help out otherwise they cannot run. I took the forms for Ady and I to fill out and we’d be prepared to do one evening each per term but no more. The biggest reason we send Davies and Scarlett to their various groups is to get time away from the rest of us, to be their own person, to have time in a group where they are not related to anyone and to let them make their own friends, not be under our scrutiny / control / influence. Neither Ady or I particularly like the Beaver group he is in, there are two really unpleasant boys there who the leader really struggles to deal with and it is only because Davies enjoys going that he is still there. To be honest there seems to be very little parental support or participation in that group and I’ll be very surprised if most of the parents are receptive or prepared to be put on a rota, so it will quite possibly spell the end of the group. Davies has already said he doesn’t want to move up to cubs when he’s 8 and I’ve said we can look at picking up another different activity then such as Sea Scouts or something like a sport or musical instrument then instead (I think 3 things a week is more than enough so he’s at his maximum with Beavers, Badgers and Swimming). Plus I would probably hate every single moment of being an adult helper :lol:.

Scarlett and I played Cooking Mama on her DS and I lit a fire while Davies was gone and then we walked back round to collect him. Ady rang to say goodnight to them and I read them the first chapter of The Owl who was afraid of the dark. We read Milly Molly Mandy when we were camping last August and they really enjoyed the chapter book idea then but when we got to the library we tend to choose books by their cover rather than me reading the back to them. I did borrow Famous Five with the intention of reading them that but we never did it so I must get that out again, I think that would really appeal to them both. I told them that Jill Tomlinson has written loads of books so if they like the stories about Plop we can get more books by her to read. They liked the fact there were seven chapters with Davies saying ‘so that’s exactly a weeks worth then!’

Scarlett was asleep fairly quickly but Davies reappeared just as I sat down with my dinner so he stayed up and watched Masterchef with me before going back up to bed and going to sleep fairly quickly. Tomorrow we’re off to visit the new friends we made last week which we’re all looking forward to with swimming lessons in the evening.

Today started with technology, Davies was Xboxing, Tarly was DSing and Ady and I were on our laptops. The children wanted bacon for breakfast (and again for lunch actually, pigs seem to be in favour :lol:) and then I insisted we put March of the penguins on that I’d borrowed from work. Loved Morgan Freeman narrating, especially as the last twice I’ve seen him in films he’s been playing God so it seemed very appropriate to hear him voicing the whole thing over :lol:. Davies and Scarlett dipped into it rather than watching avidly, with me sometimes drawing their attention to bits of it but they were playing with the plastic animals at the time and recreating lots of it as they went so plenty sunk in and was processed even though they were not hanging off it’s every scene. It’s funny I never think of either of them as having concentration problems or struggling to learn stuff but then they are never in ‘proper learning environments’ really, all of their questions are ones they ask in relation to something that is happening around them or as part of a naturally flowing conversation. They both sit very still to listen to a story from a book but I don’t expect them to ‘shut up and listen’ and we often talk about the illustrations or add our own comments as we go. They are both monkeys for talking during films – only the odd comment and worse if it’s a film they have already seen and want to draw your attention to a good bit coming up or explain something to you – something I actually find quite irritating and know other people would too but on thinking about it probably just means they struggle with not interacting. When Davies is xboxing and either of them are DSing it is never silently – they ‘talk to’ the characters in the game or sort of narrate as they go and Davies often talks his way through his drawings (something I remember doing, making up stories as I drew about them). I often hear of children who need to bounce about while learning something or be doing something else at the same time and wonder actually if far from being unusual this is perhaps a normal state? To get back to the film, they both speculated a bit on the making of it and we also talked about why reporters of nature don’t intervene with nature and then I stuck on the making of it bit of the dvd and left it to run while we all got on with other things.

We had lunch and the children made birthday cards for Liam and Lily. Davies has a sort of standard birthday card design of balloons with the birthday child’s initial and their age inside them. Scarlett drew a picture of Lily and then lots of carefully selected colours in stripes to make a sunset sky :). They both did lovely writing inside – Davies is notably fast with his letters now, I can dictate them to him as quick as I would expect to to an adult (not that I am often dictating indiviual letters to adults, or indeed dictating anything to adults really) and Scarlett is getting ever more confident of her letters (which we seem to be just naming rather than sounding, I realised today but somehow she is getting the gist of the sounds of them anyway – when I said we needed an L or a lllla to start the word Love she immediately looked at the word Lily she’d written and said ‘that one then’ pointing to the L) and forms them beautifully. I wrapped a present for Lily and then decided that the present I’d earmarked for Liam, which was a spare present I’d bought at Christmas to be given to anyone I found us needing to give a present to but having forgotten to buy for and then never needed to use, was not right. The box was slightly tatty from having been in the loft and the batteries which were in it for display purposes only had gone flat which meant the demo bit didn’t work so it just looked old and unwanted rather than new and purpose bought. So we nipped to Tesco on the way and got something else instead for him in the toy sale :).

Liam and Lily’s birthdays are just a week apart and as we are friends of them both we always get invited to both parties and select one to attend – last year we went to Lily’s, this year we went to Liam’s because Lily’s was on my birthday and call me selfish but that’s not how I wanted to celebrate being 34 :lol:. Actually I think we made the right choice anyway. Liam’s was a swimming party at a local swimming pool. I remember my mum going through a phase of taking Frazer and I swimming and this was one of the pools we liked the most but I was probably about Davies’ age last time I went – I certainly wasn’t swimming. It hadn’t changed a bit, and I was immediately transported back to my 7 year old self and wanted a banana milkshake from the coffee shop which I remember having back then :lol:. I’d sort of assumed we’d all go in but when Mel asked if she could put Ady down as one of the supervising adults I realised that was not the expectation (and sure enough there were three men and one woman in the pool, everyone else sat round the edge fully clothed) and although it looked fun it was very splashy and only about 2ft deep so I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway. The children all had a great time though – Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed themselves, playing with all the floats, playing a shark game with Ady and generally just loving being in the water. 🙂 I spent the whole hour smiling at them all. Mel came and chatted to me for a bit – she finds the children’s parties slightly awkward as her and Liam and Lily’s dad split up 2 years ago and she is with a new partner. Both of them attend the childrens’ parties and although it is all very amicable it is obviously slightly odd to all be together – and on show – like that with the children clearly slightly thrown by the dynamic of having all ‘their adults’ together when they are normally with one of the other at a time. Very strange when we left to say thankyou and have all three of them saying ‘it’s a pleasure, thanks for coming’ in chorus too :lol:.

They came out and we went up to a little side room for party food, singing Happy Birthday and being given goody bags – Liam had invited two girls from his class at school and about 8 boys – it was very interesting both in the pool and again afterwards in the party room to observe the very obvious politics of a group of children who spent so much time together even at age 8 and see them all assuming their roles in a way I’ve never observed in our group of HE kids, there was real pecking order, social standing and lots of fulfiling stereotypical roles at work.

The children were worn out after all the water fun so we came home, they had a bath to wash all the very strong swimming pool smell off them, followed by toast and bed. I’ve been hormonal today so have been a total cow to everyone at least three times each 🙁 (but I know they’ll all forgive me and I’ll try harder tomorrow (to be nicer, not to be more of a cow!). Ady is off tomorrow for his annual B&Q roadshow up in northern parts – he’ll be back Wednesday and is then away again at the beginning of next week and again the weekend after and aside from Beavers for Davies in the evening the children and I have nothing planned. I’ve promised a beach walk if the weather is not too dreadful and might do some baking. I’m planning to let them stay up a bit later too and want to start reading them a slightly longer book to carry on rather than a pile of shorter stories – we could really do with sorting out our bookshelves of childrens books as I’m sure we have treasures we are not making use on stashed on them and possibly things we have outgrown taking up valuable space on them too. Looks like I do have stuff planned after all then :lol:.

I’ve been off gallivanting today with Ali at a writing day. It was a good one too. I love the writing days, I have spent time in the company of a range of people I would never have otherwise crossed paths with and as well as the valuable writing exercises, the feedback on my own work and being impressed, inspired and awed by others I always get huge amounts out of just spending time with the group generally. I feel like I am very ‘me’ there without any need to temper myself and that’s nice :). Today we did writing on ‘the stuff we don’t know’ including a really good exercise in the style of Sliding Doors which I found very theraputic. I also got a vast message from the writing of one of the other attendees which was very pertinant to me and some things I’ve been thinking about and possibly came at almost precisely the right time. I have struggled with some of the exercises in the past due to not having quite the right sort of tortured soul that true creativity seems to require and being altogether too optimistic and sunny natured. I still struggled with that today but think I might have found the key to working through that, which is good. 🙂 As ever there were plenty of laughs and shared in jokes with the people who have been attending for a year now and some new faces who were nice to meet and added to the group, particularly the woman I sat next to who was funny, interesting, reminded me of Christina off last seasons Apprentice and brought BEEF sandwiches to what is usually a cous cous and hummous heavy table :lol:.

I got home around 6pm and heard all about Ady, Davies and Scarlett’s day which seems to have been good. They have done tidying, playing, drawing and been enhancing the bantams new run with perches and enrichment type stuff like cds to peck at and some cuttlefish from the beach. Dad had called round for an hour or so too. Davies and Scarlett got caught up watching Primeval and discussing the dinosaurs at length. We seem to have had something of a revival in interest in dinosaurs here lately with Davies refreshing his passion and Scarlett getting into them too, which is great, the one thing we’re not short of is resources to satisfy dinosaur interest 😆

Tomorrow afternoon we’re off to Liam’s birthday party and I think we’ll have a quiet morning followed by a quiet Monday. Ady goes away for two nights on Monday so I’m thinking of piloting my later nights, different eating patterns for the children ideas while he’s not around and my evenings will be different anyway.

processing a bottle of wine at the end of a week where I’ve only allowed orange juice and lemonade to pass my lips of an evening (of course I’ve still been drinking meths and cooking sherry during the day, but at night I have abstained ;)) and on a rant about the stuff I’ve watched this week courtesy of HFW and Jamie Oliver about chickens and stuff. Oh and loads of things I have been reading about green lifestyles from a new forum I’ve just joined. Well it’s all stuff for a more lucid moment really, so I’ll try and come back to it. Or save it for the forums. Or start a new blog. Or something :lol:.

I worked today. It was good. I spent some time in a fairly heavyweight – for the library service – discussion with my direct boss and the big boss about income generation, the direction the library should be headed in and stuff like that. When I’m at work I could so easily throw in the whole idea of Home Education and get stuck right in to what I’m doing while I’m there – the opportunities are huge, I could sweep in there with new ideas and thoughts and blow them away and really carve a career for myself. But then I come home and rediscover where my heart lays and remind myself once again that the time is not now, but it will come. It will come. Got some very positive feedback today though and was very chuffed to realise that for my 11 hours a week I am indeed valued and my potential is indeed recognised and there is an element of frustration from my employers that I can’t be there for more hours too. This is not the first time since I ‘chucked it all in to be a stay at home, Home Educating parent’ that I have had people talk to me with an air of ‘you’re wasted’ about them – my ex boss Miranda still regularly rings me up to ask if I am still insisting on not doing all the amazing things professionally and career wise that I could be doing in favour of answering my children’s ‘why?’ questions. However the one thing I do pride myself on is doing whatever it is I am doing at the time properly. And for me, with access to all the information, evidence and proof I have before me, for now, this is doing parenting properly. And currently that is first and foremost what I am, plenty of time for other stuff as and when.

Meanwhile back at home, this morning Julie, Jack and Maisie were here. They did lots of playing (in every room of the house, using every toy we possess judging by the state of the house when I got home :roll:) and they watched Madagascar which Jack and Maisie had caught a glimpse of somewhere yesterday and expressed an interest in seeing so Julie asked if we had it (well duh!) and Davies and Scarlett were thrilled to introduced J and M to the delights of. I prepared them in advance last night to ensure they dwelt on the ‘I like to move it move it’ bit as I am very confident that Chris will particularly appreciate that 😉 :lol:. My Dad was here in the afternoon. When I got home he said Scarlett had told him he was no fun because he’d not played with her enough and he’d then reminded her of all the playing they had done 😆 Love that my children are nagging my Dad to look after them in accordance with their high standards 😆 HFW and Jamie Oliver would be pleased that not only have they broken out of the battery-childhood mould they are free range to the extreme! 😆

As ever when I’ve been at work all day the children were super cuddly so after tea and Ady getting home they stayed up and we watched the double bill of Doctor Who that was on BBC3, which was the Family Of Blood two parter. So I sat with Davies strewn across my lap and Scarlett perched on my shoulders :lol:. I cried, obviously and we talked lots about very young men fighting in the war, telepathy (which led on to hypnosis again) and fortune telling with crystal balls, tarot cards and tea leaves.

I’ve been mightily pissed off by an email buyer today so am exercising supreme self control to not reply to an email in the manner my fingers are twitching to do and am going to bed instead!

Today was Tilgate Park day. I’ve decided to try and ensure we do a few more out and about home ed meets so want to plan one a month for local folk. Tilgate may well end up being the venue each time actually as people from Crawley, Horsham and further up into Sussex are able to come along as well as the more coastal folk. And we like it there. And it’s free. And it’s a wonderful location for taking pictures of us having Seasonal Walks (UK).

Today dawned very cloudy, grey, windy and threatening of rain but we set off anyway thinking we’d stick it as long as was tolerable. We had a pleasant ride up there listening to HSM songs followed by some Queen, parked just outside to avoid the £2.50 car park charge (which then justifies buying cakes and a cup of tea in the cafe instead :)) and walked up to the carpark where we’d arranged to meet any other attendees. I had a vague idea of a couple of all but definite attendees and a few more possibles so was pleased to see two families I knew and another two I didn’t. Lucy and The Rs also attended.

Julie had told me about a (very) local new HEor with a two boys aged 7 and nearly 5 who she’d told about me and I’ve been hoping to bump into her for a couple of months now but our paths hadn’t crossed as yet. She was one of the people who came along though so I was thrilled to meet her and kept shoving Davies in her sons’ direction. However call them over socialised, call them cold and wet, call them bloody miserable ingrates Davies and Scarlett announced in that spooky twinlike finishing each others sentences type way they sometimes talk that they didn’t want to play with any other children and they didn’t want me to talk to any adults, they ‘just want to spend time with you mumma’. Sigh, eye roll, stomp, huff. So I walked slightly ahead of the group, ever conscious that I looked maybe a bit aloof or shy or just slightly mental organising an event and then ignoring everyone. And equally conscious that if I’m going to be seperate from a group it’s more flattering for me to be behind them so they don’t have to look at my arse and get to see my cleavage instead 😆

So me and the children chatted about plants and trees and seasons and animals and stuff and then we got to the farm bit and they finally ran off and left me to talk to the adults 😆 Oh and Scarlett started trying to chat to one of the staff at the park who was trying to clear out the chickens about how once she’d caught one there and how she loves chickens and we have bantams but he looked slightly alarmed at this little blonde over friendly person so I distracted her with looking at the turkeys :lol:. We had a good walk round all the animals, pausing at the chickens, the peacocks, the pigs (speculated at length about where all the piglets had gone and indeed about why there were so fewer chickens that before. Scarlett’s theories that chickens might fly south or hibernate for the winter were probably quite intelligent even if they did just make me laugh :lol:). Finally we were all ready for refreshment so we went to the cafe. We’d all brought sandwiches but by virtue of buying hot drinks and some of us buying cakes we felt quite justified in sitting inside at their tables even if there were lots of big signs about ONLY CONSUMING FOOD AND DRINK PURCHASED ON THE PREMISES at them. I think the army of children, a couple of breastfeeding mothers and the fact we were probably their only customers all day meant the youth at the till turned a blind eye – either that or he was scared of us ;). Davies and Scarlett had finished eating and were starting to get on the restless (read rowdy) side so I sent them outside to play while I finished my tea and most of the children followed them.

I looked up to see Davies and Scarlett had started a game of tag with the two boys I’d been pushing them towards all by themselves and when we came out and headed to the maze for a play the friendship was cememted with them remaining a firm foursome for the rest of the afternoon. :). I managed a good proper chat with Caroline, their mum and when we called them to leave when it finally got just too wet and cold and windy to be standing there comfortably any longer Davies came over and said ‘Since you’ve made friends with their mummy and we like A and E can we see them again?’ Caroline and I laughed and said yes and he then wanted to know ‘can we see them again soon. And lots?’ so that was a result :). We walked slowly back to the car park with Caroline and her boys and Cintha and her girls before parting to go to seperate places we’d all left our cars. The rain had really set in by then and as we went down the final slope I slipped and took both children with me (they were holding my hands) so we all ended up coated in mud having flashbacks of Kessingland :lol:. We stripped off as much as we could before getting in the car (ever mindful of the implications of being involved in a car accident while in a state of undress :lol:) and headed for home.

Davies and Scarlett had some toys in the car (a soft toy rabbit of Davies’ that he calls The Velveteen Rabbit) and various horses and ponies of Scarlett’s) so they played together with them all the way home. Once home we stripped off out of remaining muddy clothes leaving them in a big pile (which I washed off in the shower in the end, no way bunging them in the washing machine would have got that amount of mud out of them!) and had a big bubbly bath followed by mugs of hot chocolate. I bunged some flapjack in the oven and the children had roast chicken and chips for their tea with still warm flapjack for pudding.

They had a DS fest followed by Simpsons movie before bed and for once I think they both went to sleep pretty quickly (although they did both reappear briefly and sniff the various spices I was using to cook our dinner and observe how much colour came out of a single strand of saffron – think we might do some natural dyeing sometime soon, maybe when the weather is better and we can do it outside) so I guess a full on week of activities followed by running around in the rain finally wore them out! 😆

I’ve had an email tonight from the Shoreham group to say we can go along to that on Thursdays, although we have actually got every Thursday for the rest of this month booked up already, which means all our Thursdays and Fridays are booked up now with me working one of the days each week and potentially going to Home Ed group (every other Thursday) or meeting up with a small circle of Home Ed friends (every other Friday) planned. With the early success of the various after school stuff this week too and a couple of potential new friends to see it all seems to be panning out nicely :).

Ah this morning feels a very long time ago!

I worked this morning and when I arrived Yvonne said to me ‘I just have a feeling it’s going to be one of those Wednesdays’. And it was. I was on the Enquiry Desk for the first hour and dealt with two queries I had to get help to deal with and then got shouted at by an elderly man over computers and whether we could teach him how to save documents. He went away sort of ok in the end but had been really irate with me which was just wearing. That said it was odd how I flipped back into dealing with customer complaint mode so efficiently when I’ve not had to do so for about 8 years now. I feared all my skills in that area had gone to be replaced by my threatening tones as used on wayward children instead, but I’m reassured to find I can still do it when required.

Lucy stuck around so after a catch up with Davies after which I started to get fed up with him constantly interupting me I had a chat with Lucy and the children carried on playing. They left around 3pm ish so Davies showed me all the many pictures he’d been drawing and after some toying with the idea I decided to go and sort the bantams out. We’d acquired a new home for them; a sort of kennel type structure with a flat, felted, removable roof. A better size than their current pallet made home and easier to clean out etc. Also their run needed moving as the grass it had been over had totally gone to mud. So I shut up the old house, set up the new one and moved the run over to where the new one was. This meant both ends of the run were open for the bantams to escape from although they are not particularly interested in escaping so I knew it wouldn’t be too tricky to catch them if they did get free. I’d just reached this point of no return when it started to piss down with rain and Candle appeared to sit close to me, eyeing the bantams menacingly and me mockingly as I slithered around in piles of chicken shit in the rain :roll:. I got it all sorted though, put hay in the new house, filled up both their waterers and their food, weighed down the roof to make it fox-proof and then left them to it to settle in. They were going mental over the new fresh grass (which they’ll decimate within a week) and I was worried they might not venture into the new house but when I went out half an hour later to check on them they were all cuddled up in there together looking snug, so I shut them up for the night. I am the chicken whisperer :lol:.

The children had an early tea (need to sort out their teas really as we are out four nights a week at what would normally be their tea time – I think an early tea and maybe a light snack before bedtime after groups would work best but we’ll have to see how it all pans out) and played with their DSs before getting into their Badger uniforms. Ady had managed to get home early again today in honour of it so we both took them down to Badgers. Ady waited in the car while I took them in and Davies took Scarlett off to put her coat away while I talked to the leader. She told me to just pay Davies’ subs for now and to give Scarlett a couple of weeks to settle in before paying (suits me, we’re broke this month!). Meanwhile D and S had come back into the room and Davies was teaching Scarlett the single most important focus of after school groups; how to slide on your knees across a polished floor :lol:. I think she may come to rethink her skirts over trousers stance ;). I called out a cheery ‘goodbye guys’ and left.

Ady and I sat in the cold dark car outside and had indepth chats about what we want to achieve this year, what holidays we have planned, stuff to do with Ady’s job, what I should talk about at my annual review at work and where we would really, really like to live. It was good :). From next week I’ll take D and S on my own and sit in the car and read. This is great because it is right next to the beach so as soon as the season changes I’ll be able to have beach walks all on my own while they do Badgers :).

I went in to collect them and they were out the room collecting their coats. They came back and Davies clocked me but Tarly didn’t so I was able to watch her without her knowing for a short while before she finally saw me and beamed at me :). She was chattering away to all the other children and just looked like she was really loving it :). Julie the leader said she’d been fine, just a bit ‘Tiggeresque!’ so that might need reining in a bit but at least no worries about her confidence eh?! They were both full of it all the way home with Tarly thrilled to have done it and made ‘loads of new friends’ and Davies seeming very pleased to have her there too. I was slightly concerned that he might feel ‘his’ stuff has been intruded on but actually he seems really pleased to be taking his little sister along to Badgers and Swimming so hopefully it will continue so smoothly. And hopefully Scarlett can tone down her bounciness and excitement and Badgers and Swimming enough to listen and know what’s going on :lol:. She seems to be really looking forward to Rainbows now having done these two things this week so successfully so that is good too. 🙂

Today has been most productive :).

First thing we all lazed about watching Cbeebies which we like to watch sometimes for it’s retro appeal 😆 I was telling Frankie at work on Saturday about how there was a time, way back when, I used to play fantasy shag or die with stars of Balamory, have a favourite Wiggle (yes I know that’s not Cbeebies) and idle away many a happy hour planning violent and evil deaths for Sarah Jane off Tikkabilla. She laughed at me and said that was yet another good reason for nursery and school as far as she was concerned, never having gotten as irate about Tico the Squirrel off Dora wearing a waistcoat because she was busy sewing on nametapes and packing her charges off with their lunchbox and bookbag while she got to watch Trisha instead of the three times a day repeats of children’s TV that us HE folk are subjected to 😆 I didn’t bother telling her that not all HE folk just watch kids tv all day and some of them follow curriculums and go out on seasonal walks and stuff, it would only make me look slovenly :lol:.

I did four loads of washing, wrote out postage labels for a load of ebay and amazon marketplace parcels I’ve sold and then sat and packaged them all up while Davies and Scarlett got dressed, turned the tv off and played DSs for a while.

Then we headed out. In the car Davies and Scarlett were discussing the sun and Davies explained, using props how the world turns and it looks like the sun is rising and setting and night and day happen. It was not only technically correct he also used jargon and demonstrated it and answered her questions as they went along 😯 Apparently some of it was stuff I’d told him and the rest he learnt at Badgers. As we drove along the seafront we observed how very high the tide was and agreed that in previous years before the sea defense rocks were put in the coast road would have been flooded and closed. It used to happen fairly regularly when I was younger and after high winds and high tides there would often be seaweed and pebbles strewn across the road. We moved on slightly to talk about why the poles were cold and the equator was hot and what the equator was and whether the middle of the planet is a ball of melted metal and why all the deserts are around the equator.

We needed to go into town to pay their Christmas cheques from my Granny into their bank accounts (she gets all anxious if the cheques haven’t been cashed within a few weeks and I didn’t have a trip into town planned for any other reason coming up so thought I’d get that done). We managed to park in the road outside the bank and as there was a lurking traffic warden I paid the minimum of 20pence for a 15 minute ticket. We dashed into the bank, discussed the evil bank pen thieves who might have stolen all the pens on chains and what their motivation might have been. I didn’t like to mention that when I was about 14 we all had pens nicked from the bank with as much of the chain still attached as you could manage to yank off 😆 We had a quick peep in the charity shops next to the bank, ever conscious of the time ticking by and counting down what we thought we might have left before returning to the car. On the way a huge great bee buzzed past us and I mentioned that people say the first bee of the year you spot is the sign that spring is on the way so something was not right with it only being January. Scarlett wanted to know if bees hibernate then and I said I didn’t know (I do now!) and actually I wasn’t sure how much truth was in the saying anyway. Which led us onto talking about hedgehogs and quite specifically the one we found in our garden and took to the vet a couple of years ago. Then Davies commented on the funny way conversations have of taking turnings and moving onto completely different subjects.

We went to the post office for me to post all my parcels and catch up on the latest gossip in the whole prospective closure of the branch – they’ll find out on 22nd January, which means that could have been my last visit there, hope not :(. Then we went to the libarary. I’m rubbish at taking Davies and Scarlett to the library these days just because I pick books up for them all the time when I’m at work and then we are too busy with other stuff for it to be somewhere I think of taking them when I’m not working. But they do love it there and actually choosing their own books is a real pleasure that I shouldn’t be denying them really. Plus they wanted to see my display :). So they started by choosing five books which stretched to seven and I think they ended up with about 20 between them 😆 Scarlett chose all story books, Davies chose mostly stories and a couple of non fiction including something about maps and mapping, something about water cycles and something about energy and forces. I tried to interest him in one about the earth and sun and equator and stuff but he was over that whole thing already :lol:.

At the counter Scarlett asked if she could ‘beep her own books’ so Frankie obliged with that. Scarlett said she’d like to work at the libary but only if she could work there with me. This sounds cute but actually is the whole dark side of libraries really isn’t it – spinster daughter not only never leaves home but works with mother at library where they take it in turns to make the packed lunches for work and devise ways of using the dewey decimal cataloguing system around the house on their tinned goods, dvds and bathroom cleaning products. Davies said he wouldn’t want to work there so Frankie tried to tempt him with the idea of all the sweets we have behind the counter and said she’d been so bored at work yesterday she’d wanted to carry out a challenge to find out how many maltesers she could fit in her mouth at once. She reckoned 10, Davies was keen to up the stakes to 20, so we left before he tried 😆 We did take a couple of chocolates from the tin behind the desk before we went though :).

Home for pancakes for lunch. I planned a late, big lunch to keep them going through swimming and a lighter tea afterwards (although they ended up with a big tea anyway, need to remedy and hone that plan for next week really – eating at 7pm and going to bed soon after isn’t a great idea). They watched the dvd extra disc from The Incredibles and then moved into a game which lasted a good couple of hours. I was fairly oblivious to it but it involved the blocks coming out and buildings being built. I was busy on the phone and the internet to YHA trying to organise some 2008 NicCamps.

Davies has been playing on brain training a bit. I showed him (and Scarlett) how to play suduko so he was doing some of them and he also worked through the 20 calculations one. He’s all still about working stuff out on his fingers and clarifying what ‘times’ means but he now recognises most 3 figure numbers written down and reckons he can count up to a thousand and from having no interest in numbers at all really he is suddenly doing lots of playing with them so that’s good. He’s really enjoying his DSing generally, doesn’t bother asking me for any help and is very confident at finding his way round games. Scarlett played her cooking mama for ages (she is great at it) and some purrpals too with equal amounts of confidence and ability, stuns me how they manage it, and without reading too – I struggle to navigate round the things even when I can read the instructions! 😆

We had a period of electrical related excitement when the fusebox tripped out and then kept tripping out. So by process of isolation and elimination I worked out it was something in the garage so kept that circuit turned off and having checked there was nothing on fire out there waited for Ady to come home and investigate further as I didn’t like the idea of messing around with electricity with just me and two children home incase something went wrong. It appears one of two chest freezers isn’t working and is tripping everything so we’ve emptied it out, eaten loads of frozen food for dinner and it’s defrosting and will hopefully be okay again after a defrost and clean out. If not we’ll be keeping an eye on freecycle for another as our two freezer status has been very instrumental in our frugal monthly shop so we’d struggle without it.

Then it was time to get ready for swimming. Scarlett has been beyond excited about swimming since I confirmed she was starting last week when she recieved the news by coming and giving me a spontaneous kiss and cuddle such was her delight. She has been desperate to go and show off her ‘diving tricks’ that she’s been practising in the bath for months, she also seemed to expect to be swimming by pretty much the end of the lesson. I talked to her about how in the swimming pool the instructor is in charge and she must listen and pay attention the whole time. I was exoecting her to enjoy it but also prepared for it to go wrong and for her to be disappointed at not being a swimmer straightaway. I was also prepared for a sudden last minute attack of nerves or shyness. Ady came with us as he managed to be home in time so he took Davies off to get changed and I took Scarlett and we met up again at the poolside. I think Ady was all prepared to stand next to her til she got in the water but I dragged him off to the seating area and by the time we’d sat down Scarlett was happily standing next to Davies and chattering away to a little girl and comparing the lengths of their plaits with each other :lol:. There was only six of them in the class today which I’m sure helped as we had 1/3 of the attention :). She put Scarlett at the shallowest end with Davies next to her and the lifeguard alerted to watch her closely. This had the negative effect of making Scarlett chatter away to the lifeguard 🙄 but she got straight in there with the first task of going underwater :). She actually did really well, made a good effort to listen, tried to do as she was asked, paid attention to the others and most importantly loved every minute of it :). She didn’t try and get my attention once, no waving or shouting which was something I worried she might do. She was great at tasks such as diving through a hula hoop underwater and so on. She wasn’t fantastically coordinated but looking at Davies tonight made me realise how far he has come in just two terms so I’m sure that will come together pretty quick. I had a quick chat with the instructor who said she was fine and clearly was ready and ok to be there which was good as she is about as young as you can be there, they start lessons only when they reach 5, only at the start of a term and the waiting list is so long I would imagine most new starters at 6+, infact Scarlett was only just tall enough to reach the bottom comfortably. So I was really proud of her. I was also really proud of Davies, he was really, properly swimming across the pool for a whole width with ease really, it’s all suddenly clicked for him. 🙂

We rang my parents when we left the pool so Tarly could update them on the lesson (well they are paying for them!) and then home for tea for the children. I sat and read them the whole pile of library books (which is good, it means they can all go back tomorrow) while they ate and then they headed off to bed. We watched the HFW Chicken Run show.

Tomorrow is another first – back to Badgers for Davies and the start of Badgers for Tarly. Once again she can’t wait and is bouncing with excitement about the whole thing. It’s so nice :).

I’ve posted to the list but will post here too.

I’m thinking about a Spring NicCamps at Borth hostel in Wales, which is planned for it’s nearness to CAT where we’d do a day trip. Provisional date of 7th-11th April although I need to check direct with the hostel. No idea on price yet, just wanted to gauge whether there is sufficient interest for me to bother making enquiries (or indeed cast around for alternative venue if that’s not available). A ‘yes X of us potentially’ would be helpful here :).

Helmsley Christmas NicCamp as discussed before. I’ve checked price and availability now and it will be about £30 pp for Monday 1st – Friday 5th December. A ‘yes we want to come and can pay our 25% deposit’ would be good here.

Back to the pattern of the week with a vengence today :).

We kicked off with a Winter Walk (UK). I initially forgot all about the (UK) bit but was reminded by Merry and will endeavour to remember to hug my country when talking about all future Winter Walks.

We went to Pulborough Brooks which is a RSPB site. A group of local HE folk meet there on the first Monday of every month and Julie has been attending for ages but we’ve always been Magical Mondaying so not gone before. I think if we aim to go every month we might as well get RSPB membership as it’s about the same price as a monthly trip there but today I had a coupon from the local paper giving me free entry anyway. It is a circular walk with 3 hides along the way and plenty of illustrated information about the wildlife you might see in each season and you can borrow binoculars, spotter sheets etc. too.

There was Katie and her two children – I’ve met her at various times and like her, she reminds me lots of HelenHaricot for lots of reasons, which sort of predisposes me to like her, so it was nice to catch up with her and her two. Fiona who I met once before at another walk back in the summer and clicked with straightaway so it was great to see again and talk some more; her two are 3 and nearly 5 so a bit behind me and mine but she is looking rather set to follow in autonomous footsteps so it was good to chat about that a bit. Julie was there with Jack and Maisie although they were late so caught us up about halfway round. There was a mother with a youngish boy (maybe 3, he spent a lot of time on her back) who I didn’t do much more than exchange smiles and hellos with and then a couple with a host of children from tinies to a 9 year old boy. I only realised after they had left that they are people I have been aware of online for about 6 years and never realised were local (actually something of HE heros of mine, almost up there with the F-Ws!) but apparentely they are regular attendees so I’ll make a beeline for them next time.

Davies and Scarlett ran off ahead, taking any other likely to run off ahead children with them which was nice. I was very fortunate in being the only mother who came away without having to tend to a wailing child even once. They didn’t fall over, slip in mud, complain about being tired or hungry, ask to be carried or clamber into places they couldn’t get out of again, which every other child seemed to managed. At one point I stopped to listen to some Canada Geese flying low overhead and honking madly only to realise I could hear four different children from our party all crying! 😆 This was solely due to the ages of D and S I think rather than anything else but it did make me wonder quite why parents are so desperate to drag their children into pursuits / games / toys / situations that are clearly too old for them. I have been more than guilty of this myself in some things, certainly D and S possess things that were bought for them way before they were ready or interested in them but I don’t think I’ve ever subjected them, or more selfishly and importantly me, to days out that have held nothing for them.

So they got loads out of it really. Scarlett was very into spotting as much as she could; she found a rabbit skeleton

and identifyed it as rabbit herself then speculated about how it might have died; fox dinner, old age, being too big to fit into it’s hole. Julie and I liked the idea that in any one of these given scenarios Bright Eyes would have been playing softly in the background. 😆

She also found a branch with very interesting looking poo on it. I thought it was probably owl poo

She was very impressed with the deer we managed to get pretty close to:

and she utterly charmed the seasoned ornathologists in the hide with their long lenses and hard country ways into pointing out all sorts of things to her while they tsked at lots of the other children for slamming the door to the hide shut and talking in too-loud voices in there

I have to be honest and concede that Davies was rather less enthused although he did like the weaved fences we saw and wants to give that idea a go. He is rather more of an instant gratification kind of person instead of the seeing the beauty all around him one like Tarly is :lol:. He did enjoy waving sticks around with Jack and splashing in puddles though :lol:.

and he liked the posters about what to look for at certain times of year, the explanation about hides and was very observant about the flooding, keeping water levels up and why and the flexi pipes in ditches. I think if he’d had one to one adult conversation all the way round explaining stuff that happens there conservation-wise and pointing stuff out to him he’d have loved it.

We left there and headed home, arriving with mere minutes to spare before Ali and Freya arrived.

A DS fest followed, with Freya bringing her DS and some games, which Davies and Scarlett both sampled the delights of on their DSs. Davies then carried on with that awhile as Scarlett and Freya experimented with some Barbies games, some pony games and then Scarlett offering a whole host of other ideas for Freya’s consideration 😆 With demonstrations :lol:. X box was decided to be the democratic choice so that happened for a while until I distracted them all by quoting lines from The Incredibles (“I tell you what we’re not going to do, we’re not going to panic”) which prompted that being put on instead. And there was chocolate consumption. And tea drinking. And a bit of singing. And maybe some stropping. And a lot of clambering. And Davies being wonderful. And Scarlett being just a bit crazy. And me remarking that it all felt rather like guest starring in an episode of The Muppet Show. You get the idea….

Ady arrived home in the middle of all this (although he did look rather like he wished he hadn’t!) and I took Ali and Freya home while he despatched Davies to Beavers and Scarlett to the bath, getting home in time to collect Davies from Beavers and do lots of cuddling with Scarlett.

The children went to bed, we had a lovely curry and watched Masterchef followed by the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall chicken run thing. Davies was still wide awake so we got him back downstairs to watch it with us which spawned lots of conversations about chickens, free range and battery, Feathers the deformed chick, Rhona and when we ate him and so on. Interesting stuff. Davies has a very non-hysterical attitude to things which is refreshing, he is of course touched by the idea of life and death but equally philosphical about things that are bred to be eaten and just generally very interested in the idea of farming and meat production etc.

So there you go, first MM free Monday and it still managed to be Magical in it’s own way :).

And in celebration of nearing middle age I plan to tell anyone and everyone I meet this fact. Old people seem to do it all the time, I’ve lost count (and not due to my increasingly years and failing memory!) of the times I’ve been told this by aged borrowers since I started work in the library just how old they are. It’s a phenomena my Dad and I have observed for a while now and whilst he is counting on me to rein him in when he starts doing it (he will be 70 this year :shock:) I’ve decided to start doing it now while it is still conscious and therefore ironic rather than wait for it to become the measuring stick by which me losing my marbles is gauged. I have far more outrageous and detailed plans for that to happen :lol:.

Yesterday at work one of the borrowers confided that she would celebrate her 94th birthday today so we wished each other Happy Birthday in advance and I have been thinking about her today – as I imagine she has been thinking about me. On the day I was born she was already 60, already a goodly portion through what most of us would be content to consider our life, already a mother (if she is one), very likely a grandmother and possibly even a great grandmother (this is Lancing, after all 😆 there are plenty of grannies in their 30s!) – and yet in those exact same 30 years I have had my whole, entire life. That’s a great feeling you know, that I can hope to be only about a third of the way through with plenty more to come. And of course I am entering the same year for me in which my Dad became a father so I already have a double head start on him there. It’s a funny old thing age isn’t it, all so very relative.

Anyway I’ve had a lovely, lovely day today – thanks for all the texts, twitters, facebook messages and growing gifts etc. 🙂 It started with a nice long lie in, followed with Davies and Scarlett bundling into bed for cuddles and tickles. I finally got up around 9am and was presented with gorgeous handmade cards from the children (and one from The Thank You Neighbours – signed by Annette on this occassion and addressed to ‘Nicohola’ which I quite like and may adopt as yet another persona, I think for when I am drinking tequilla, it has a nice Mexican sound to it :lol:). Ady, Davies and Scarlett had been on a secret shopping mission on the Friday after Christmas to Marks and Spencers to get my presents. Now this is a brave, brave thing. Taking two children to possibly the busiest shop during the after Christmas sales to purchase ladies underwear deserves more than a thank you card really ;). Apparently they’d spent nearly two hours in there with Scarlett ‘going low’ and looking at pants, Davies checking out the middle height racks for bras and Ady probably looking shifty and embarrassed! But they had done amazingly well and chosen two gorgeous sets of matching bras and pants, both in pink, in the right sizes and everything :).

They’d also happened upon my rainbow bag in the post Christmas tidy up so they’d wrapped that up too :lol:.

My parents arrived, as arranged at 10.10am which was the time I was born, coincidentally it was a Sunday that year too. My Mum did her customary speech about ’34 years ago right now…’ (see where I get it from ;)) and then her and I headed over to Brighton to the Lush shop for my birthday present. I’ve often moaned about a January birthday but the last 3 or 4 years have been pleased to celebrate it then as I have had Lush vouchers or this year and last year been taken there by my Mum and been able to make full and proper use of their fab January sale. This year was the same deal as last year – get a free gift for every £15 you spend of anything made prior to December 2007, which also included all their Christmas stock. So I spent £45 and got a good £30 worth of free stuff :).

We left there and as I am still on a black skirt hunt for Tarly we had a very quick whizz round some of the shops. We didn’t find a black skirt but I did get her a new pair of boots as hers are falling apart. The sole has come away from the boot and despite having fixed it three times it is not holding. So I found a lovely pair of brown boots for her for £6 which she is delighted with ‘because they make me look like a cowgirl!’ – and she doesn’t even read Pioneer Woman and know of my cattle ranch lifestyle envy. We came home via Tescos for some nice food for lunch.

We had a nice afternoon with DSing, The Incredibles watching, some drawing and playing, eating and general lazing around really. Scarlett tried on her swimsuit to check it still fits ok, tried on her googles before we put them very safely away in her swimming bag – also found Davies’ trunks and goggles and did the same with them to avoid the WHERE ARE YOUR GOGGLES?! tantrum by me five minutes before we need to leave for swimming on Tuesday. Of course that means I will lose a whole swimming bag, or my keys, or a child or something instead. I also sewed on Davies’ new Beaver and Badger badges, found a black skirt from the ebay pile that Scarlett can wear to Badger until I find a proper uniform one for her and unpicked the decorative pink ribbon attached to it, dug out Davies’ old outgrown Badger T shirt and she tried that all on with her new long socks and black shoes and found Davies’ new navy Beaver trousers and black Badger trousers, got him to try them on and then hemmed the too long black trousers for him. I’ve never neen so organised, this being 34 has really had a big effect on me :). Then to relieve the sensibleness we posed for lots of silly arms length portraits until I felt suitably silly and immature again, I’m only 34 you know!

My parents then left at a really very respectable 6pm ish. The children had a bath, I stroked, sniffed and organised all my new Lush stuff in the bathroom and then when they’d vacated the bath to go to bed I had a very long, very scented bath myself, with bubbles and a bath bomb and a face pack and nice shampoo. It was lovely 🙂 I also laid there with a new book (thanks to the library) and a glass of champagne (thanks to Ady’s boss for the Christmas gift we’d been saving) and got out to enjoy a beautifully cooked dinner of pheasant (thanks to Ady’s workmate Tom) – so it was a most giftilicious birthday :).

I bought a jumper at a NCT Nearly New Sale. It was a few years ago now but I *think* I paid about £2 for it way, way back in 2005.

You will all have seen Davies wearing it lots. It was officially his and my favourite jumper for the winter’s of 2005

and 2006

and 2007

We’ve taken it all round the country with us, it’s been to Melrose, to Sheffield, to Hunstanton, to Helmsley, to Okehampton, to Manchester, to Brighton, to Drusillas. And the Autumn and Winter Walks it has been sported on are too numerate to mention ;).

But as the weather grew warmer in the spring of 2007 I realised that it was finally coming to the end of it’s time for Davies. It was slightly short in the sleeve, slightly midriff revealing when he put his hands in the air. With an air of nostalgia, to the point I think I considered blogging about it, I folded it up and prepared to say goodbye to it.

Until I realised that all was not lost. Hey the jumper might be (finally) too small for that child but I had a smaller model waiting in the wings. The jumper might have to bide it’s time, it might have to be patient, it might know dark times, long months, days when it felt like it would never again be worn, but mark my words that jumper would once again have it’s day.

And today, dear reader, was that day.

I worked this morning. It was good, lots of laughs and banter with some of my favourite colleagues. It was quiet though, so many people seem to be ill and ailing.

Home for lunch where Ady and the children had been tidying and cake making and Dad had popped round to drop off a dog kennel that is the perfect new home for the bantams having a proper floor, sturdy lid and much smaller access hole. We’re going to get that set up tomorrow for them attached to the run. The existing one is fox proof but falling apart (it was only ever intended to be a temporary cobbled together thing and was built with altogether larger birds in mind).

We sat and watched The Incredibles together and then I popped round to my Dad’s to collect some oil / petrol / something or other for the chainsaw so Ady could saw up some logs for the fire. The children and I did some drawing (of The Incredibles), then they had dinner and went to bed.

That all sounds very bland and boring and actually it probably has been really. The highlight of the day is probably that it was David-Thank-You-neighbours birthday today!