One word? When seven would do…

I’ve had a fairly stressy day today. Mostly because I’d set myself up with lots to do and then managed to not wake up until 1130. Yep, that’s right 1130 😯 😳 I’m still not altogether sure how that happened actually. I recall waking when Ady got up around 630am and then again when both children got into bed with me around7am where they stayed for a good hour chatting, the wriggling and finally being banished downstairs. Scarlett brought the post up (a brochure from Centerparcs, the evil tempters! :lol:) and I meant to get up them but simply couldn’t keep my eyes open so fell back asleep. Next thing I knew I woke all refreshed and ready to face the day expecting it to be about 830 / 9am and it was 1124am!!!!

Dashed downstairs and got the children to get dressed (they’d sorted out their own breakfast) and then got them to pick 2 library books each from the ENORMOUS pile in the corner as I realised the BWR finishes officially on Saturday which just left today free for us to get it done and I couldn’t face the shame of my own children being amoung the disappointing number talked about at work who start but do not complete 😆 Davies chose Me, All alone, at the end of the world which I thought was fabulous – we talked about it a bit and imagine we may come back to it. Lots of the language was above them as was some of the subtext but the message came through loud and clear 🙂 and The Pea and The Princess which was cool, putting a different spin on the princess and the pea story with the pea as the hero. We liked that too :). Scarlett chose a Charlie and Lola book which I love reading aloud and doing my best Lola impression for and then i chose Head full of stories for her which is a book of few words but excellent illustrations with plenty to talk about and we briefly whizzed through Hansel and Gretel as she claimed not to know the story. On to the library where they got their medals, certificates, well dones and lots of chatter from my work colleagues about Davies’ party etc. They love it there 🙂 and then home again for lunch.

I spent more time than I should have done getting involved in online debating of Home Education (when will I learn?! :roll:) and then Lucy and The Rs arrived for a while. The children played, Lucy ably assisted when I was being giddy about rolling out and moving icing and then they went away again. I finished the tardis cake and made cheese scones, dalek biscuits, cybermen biscuits and lots of mess 😆 it seems like a lot of work and clearing up for not very much food but it was all fiddly stuff. I want to make some rice crispie cakes too but had run out of paper cake cases – this was a common and very frustrating theme to the day; I didn’t really have enough icing, I couldn’t find my gingerbread man shaped cutter, I opened the decorative silver balls all over the kitchen floor, I could only find one cake board and so on. Argh and grr! I got good news that one family I was thinking wouldn’t make the party now can 🙂 and bad news that another family probably won’t 🙁 and wilfully neglected and was shoutily intolerant of the children by turn (all punctuated by arguing online about the joys of HE :lol:). But it all came good, the cake looks fine now, I have a plan to make some crispie cakes tomorrow when I get in from work and the sandwiches on Saturday morning. We have an empty house tomorrow night for the first time ever the night before a party which will be good for getting stuff done and the plan is for all of us to go to the hall together and set it up ready for guests to arrive from 1pm.

The children did a lot of playing with geomags. Scarlett made me a necklace and then brought the camera out to show me a picture she’d taken of it. I’m not sure if I was more impressed with the necklace or the picture. I assume accidentally she’s taken photos on sepia setting but I’ve actually flickr’d all she took as they were so nice and child’s eye view of things.

Tonight I’ve drunk lots and watched Music and Lyrics with was slushy but nice so all is right with the world again. I’m working all day tomorrow and then will be spending tomorrow night doing things like blowing up balloons and making Doctor Who sound effect cds for party games.

Ok, a bit of scene setting here first of all:

Imagine, if you will a bit of vaseline blobbed round the outside of your pc screen to make it all dreamy and soft focus.

Sprinkle some virtual geranium essential oil (it’s my favourite because it reminds me of turkish delight and a mix of geranium, lavender and clary sage was what I had burning when I gave birth to Scarlett – lavendar reminds me of Davies as I had weekly full body massages throughout my pregnancy with him by a wonderful woman who always used lavender oil) about the place and inhale and exhale deeply several times.

And then, on your imaginary internal ipod, or gramaphone if that’s more your thing, or indeed if you have the music available to play for real strike up Abba’s I had a dream.

I would recommend reading this whilst immersed in a bubble bath in one of those immense claw footed free standing baths but I am married to a Health and Safety qualified person and the idea of anyone with a computer balanced near water fills me with fear ;).

If someone had asked me ten years ago what I’d do with a lottery win I already had my wish list ready complete with pricing! It was all about ‘stuff’ and ‘experiences’. I wanted a kingfisher blue convertible BMW – infact I was desperate for a BMW before I hit 30, it was one of my biggest life ambitions. What actually happened by the time I was 30 was that my boss at the time looked into getting me a company car of a BMW and then offered me that or a payrise – and I took the payrise (lovely, lovely boss 🙂 ) so Ady and the kids chose me a BMW dinky toy which I still have in it’s plastic display box and presented that to me on the day, along with my first laptop, which actually given my dream car wouldn’t have fitted the two child car seats, the pushchair in the boot or been very sensible during the rainy Manchester climate in January with a soft top was probably a far better plan. I guess somewhere between 25 and 30 I’d grown up enough to put that plan on the back burner. 😉

Also on my list were properties in exotic places. I liked the idea of always keeping the house we live in now – it was our first house, bought on a scraped together mortgage with (another lovely) our boss at the time writing to the mortgage company to say we both earnt loads more each month than we really did and us having to work every Sunday, back when Sundays were paid at double time, in order to make the monthly payments. The deposit was all our wages for the month paid into our bank account and then we lived on toast for the rest of the month. Our early furniture was beanbags and in many ways this house hasn’t much moved on from that. And I like that really, it keeps me grounded and still thankful for the carpet, which is now 12 years old and rather tatty but when it was first laid after 6 months of cold drafty floorboards was one of the biggest luxuries out. But my property list included an appartment in New York, somewhere close to Central Park; a flat in London somewhere close to good shops and restaurants; a villa in Italy, somewhere not too far from Rome but coastal; a farm in North Wales; a log cabin in a snowy part of Canada, a castle in remote Scottish Isles… you get the picture. Postcard dwellings in steretypical places giving me experiences of peace and calm, buzz and nightlife, grand role playing, soundbites of culture and snippets of the travel programmes I’ve watched over the years that always make me feel very unfulfilled and ready to jack in everything and head off with a spotted hanky tied to a stick containing a hunk of bread and a lump of cheese, to find my fortune and see the world, Dick Whittington style. 😆

I had a list of mates who had been good mates and deserved a break who I would dole out cash to or give gifts to, to help change their lives in big or small ways, I had plans for a big party, lasting about a week, which I would throw to celebrate with everyone my changed fortunes.

But (da da dahhhhh!) a couple of weeks ago I was sitting chatting to someone about what I’d do if our premium bonds came up (we don’t do the lottery anymore, there’s no room in our budget for gambling 😉 ) and along with answering Davies’ questions as he was also present for the conversation I came up with something which probably surprised no one more than me as I sort of made it up as I went along, realising as I spoke that I really was describing a dream.

I’d love to have space – plenty of living space and plenty of outdoor space. I’d like living space to accomodate frequent guests and visitors and for the four of us to have our own spaces to do what we want with without encroaching on each other and needing to be mindful of how we keep them as they are shared spaces. I’d like outdoor space for cool stuff like swings and slides and treehouses, but also for animals, plants and nature. Space for loads more chickens to free range about the place, space to keep a cow or two, some pigs, maybe a pony if the children were interested in that. I’d love to have space for cats to have kittens outside, just coming into the house when they wanted a warm lap for a while. I’d like to grow fruit and vegetables. I’d love to have water – a stream, a river for paddling, maybe catching fish, observing life there.

I’d like to be as self sufficient as I could, to harness energy from wind, sun, water even, to heat the house from burning wood and to heat water and cook food that way too.

I’d like to learn from that sort of life and give something back too. I love the idea of learning crafts and trades such as strawbale house building, animal keeping, making things with natures resources, being creative and artistic without leaving so much of a footprint. I’d like to go back to one car only between us, only to be used when we really needed it, buying locally what we have to buy, making what we can.

I would love to be part of a small community – to get from the others and to give back in return – produce, skills, experience.

Thinking even bigger I’d love to be able to provide a learning centre for others so that they could come and experience that way of life and learn, offering their time or labour in return. I’d like to be able to offer friends the chance to come and stay for extended periods and live and learn alongside us.

But of course realistically that is all a dream which would take a hell of a lot of money to achieve.

However…. maybe we’ve been reading too much Milly Molly Mandy, watching too much River Cottage and spending too much time with our chickens but Ady and I have both been coming to the same slow conclusion that we are ready for something else, something different, something new and exciting. Ady never had passion for career building, it’s just sort of found him and while the job he does serves us pretty well in our current life he doesn’t get any intrinic value or personal fulfilment from it. I have come to realise that the ambitions I have for myself are not bound up in a career in the traditional sense of the word and have no desire to chase salaries or job titles anymore. The worry of our finances pushing us into a situation not of our choosing has past, things are stable and we could simply stay here, carry on working and paying off the debts slowly each month for the next 25 years. But that would be all we did for the rest of our lives, that would be our lives. And to us that’s a fairly grim prospect, it makes us feel trapped and tied and claustrophobic.

We are very aware that we don’t particularly want Davies and Scarlett growing up in this particular community and location and the differences between the lifestyle we would like, the small elements of it we are trying to introduce and our ideas are starting to grate badly with the reality.

So, what’s our plan? Well we’d like to live somewhere where we have that additional space, somewhere as self sufficient as possible, somewhere with potential to be creative and learn new skills and maybe turn them into money making oppportunities. We’d like to earn enough money to cover our bills and basic living expenses but work less hours and either get fulfilment from the work we do or have perks to the job – an example of this is all the benefits of my library job with it’s free music and film and access to huge levels of resources to complement our home education needs. There are many expenses about our life now which would be cut if we were to live that sort of lifestyle so a drop in salary, particularly if it came with financial renumeration alternatives would be feasible.

We would be able to sell our house, clear our debts and mortgage and walk away with a sizeable sum of money to invest. Presumably once we were debt free we would be in a position to obtain a mortgage again having not been bankrupt or defaulted on secured finance. And of course money lent secured on property is always more obtainable. We would be utterly prepared to ‘rough it’ for a year or more, buying somewhere run down and even a plot of land to self build and living in a caravan on site or similar. We are prepared to make short term sacrifices for long term goals. We have spoken about this idea at length, and with the children, both of who are very enthusiastic about the idea of keeping animals, having space, being able to have friends to stay more often etc. They are fairly adventurous children (well I guess they would be really 😉 ) and would probably thrive on the whole experience – stability and constants have not played a big part of their lives so far other than me and Ady always being around so I’ve no doubt they adapt quickly to further changes, particularly if they can see the benefits to the changes.

So we have an action plan – to find out what the financial situation would be exactly – what sort of settlement numbers we could expect from our creditors, whether we would be able to get credit again – how it would work with our current mortgage (it might just be the case that we can sell this house and buy something of equivalent value without quibble), what sort of money we would need to earn and ways in which we could do that between us, whether self build or renovation is preferable and of course geographically where – it needs to be cheap, cheaper than here certainly. It needs to have that community I talked about, some level of access to both Home Ed and general children’s activities (beavers, sports, leisure etc.) and be somewhere it is feasible for our living expenses to drop.

We’ve lived the more frugal lifestyle for two years come October and we always planned to give it first one year, then two and see how we felt about that change. It has been in many ways far easier than we expected, which is possibly what has driven us to consider further frugality. But in other ways we have struggled with that feeling of now being in a very long corridor, walking very slowly with no doors to escape from on either side. Life is too short to feel like you are treading water and biding time, particularly when it is not for any real purpose. I think we are about to hit an emergency stop button and see where we could get off and try a different pathway.

I worked this morning, it was easily the fastest four hours I’ve ever spent there, it just flew by. 🙂 There were only four of us on and the library is only open from 930 til 1pm on Wednesdays so everything needs to be done during the morning rather than stretched out until the normal weekday closing time of 7pm which means it’s always fairly fast paced. The chief librarian was working at Lancing today and I’ve only really spent time working with her at out of work events like the festival author talks and the Orange Fiction Prize evening. We had our tea break together and chatted and Home Ed came up as she was asking if my children had gone back to school this week. She is 30 something and childless so was very interested without feeling the need to defend any of her own choices and very enthusiastic about the idea.

I came home to my usual greeting of four children swinging on the gate yelling ‘Nic’ or ‘Mummy’ in a very pleased to see me fashion, which was nice. They played with the geomags before wandering back off outside to play again while Lucy and I chatted and then moved into the kitchen so I could start baking one of the cakes for Davies’ party (he’s having a dalek and a tardis – the dalek is finished, the tardis needs constructing and decorating but is baked). Then Lucy and The Rs left and Davies and Scarlett stuck on the first of the Doctor Who dvds I’d brought home for them. They hadn’t seen the first few where the Doctor meets Martha (I thought they’d started watching from the beginning of that series but apparently not). Once the first shift of cakes was out of the oven we went along to the butcher to get Septembers supply of meat for the freezer.

Davies and Scarlett had a whale of a time, they chatted non stop to the butcher, who is only too happy to talk to anybody about butchering so they covered all the various meats in our order (sausages, mince, steak, pork chops, chicken breasts and joints of pork, lamb and beef) including where on the animals’ body the meat had come from and how old it might have been when it was slaughtered, why you might die if you got caught in the walk in freezer and whether it would still feel cold to people from the North Pole (Scarlett’s question – she seems to have grasped the concept of relative then 🙂 ), why the little handbell on the side used to alert the butcher to customers presence when he’s out the back had been repaired, whether the butcher washes his hands (Scarlett again :)), how the mincer works and why beef is the most popular meat to be minced, and then I got involved for a couple of questions about how the fly zapper machine kills flies, why Davies had spotted a fire extinguisher there and finally why we call the meat from pigs pork or bacon, the meat from cows beef but we call lamb and chicken meat lamb and chicken. I vaguely recalled an explanation from a lesson on crop rotation in the industrial revolution in a history lesson when I was about 14 and someone asked the same question so I was able to explain that, which impressed the butcher as he hadn’t known. He then commented on how many questions they ask and how interested they are in everything – and how much they’d remembered from last time we went and he chatted to them, which was nice :).

We came home and Davies and Scarlett both drew pictures of the butchers while watching another Doctor Who episode. Davies’ was excellent with loads of great detail, Scarlett’s was very colourful with plenty of blood :lol:. Davies got me to help him with spelling Mick’s Butcher along the top and did a fine job of working most of it out himself – writing is definitely clicking for him more than reading, I guess he places more importance on his own words instead of other people’s 😆 They want to take them to him next time we go, but we might call in there tomorrow if we go to the library as it’s on the way.

Inbetween cake cooking shifts I cooked their tea and then Ady arrived home. They all went out into the garden to clean around the chickens. I got called out to see Davies’ ‘invention’ of a ‘brick rocket’. He’d got a plank of wood, rested it mid point on a low wall around the new bit of lawn so one side was lower than the other, placed a duplo rocket on the low end and then stamped on the high end to shoot it up into space, complete with countdown from 10 (funny how he suddenly was able to do that without ever thinkig about it). No idea where he got the idea from or even if he just worked it out for himself, he was pleased with it enough for it to have come to him as completely his own invention :).

The children came in for a bath while I decorated the (now cooled) dalek cake and then called them all into the kitchen for a viewing. Davies came up to me and gave me a huge cuddle and said ‘thank you so much Mummy for everything for my party. I love my dalek and my cake looks so cool and I really love you’. Which almost brought tears to my eyes and answers the question in the comments a few posts down about why I put so much effort into their birthdays – because I can. I can give my time and be creative and play hostess to 40 party guests and 20 house guests and make Davies and Scarlett feel like the most important person in the world for that one day a year. Watching them thrive and revel in the attention, atmosphere and centre stage of their parties last year was a real highlight of my year knowing that it is my efforts and creativity that have made that happen. I can’t afford to buy them the moon, take them to Disneyland, let them have music lessons, a swimming pool or any of the other things I might like to do in a dream world (hell I couldn’t even afford one of those parties at McDonalds for more than about 3 children 😉 ) but this is something utterly within my reach, something I get pleasure both out of doing and of doing for them and something they really do appreciate and enjoy.

Very infancy stages but D is desperate for some more theme park rollercoaster action so rather than another legoland trip I was thinking about Chessington if I can get good rates.

No idea of dates although it will probably be October some time (avoiding half term :)) and more likely a Thursday or Friday as we have to be back home for Beavers, swimming or Badgers on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday each week.

Anyone interested potentially? I sort of assume the power of a group booking might carry more weight in getting a good price.

Because being a (crap) vegan and all there was no poultry harmed in the making of our pesto pasta at Ali’s (although I think there may have been egg based preservative in the pesto and I believe peccorino cheese was brutally slaughtered too. Oh and there was senseless killing of pine martens for their nuts 😉 ) but a lovely afternoon chatting and idling away the hours catching up was just what I needed to soothe the blahs. Thanks mate 🙂 x.

First thing I had a plan to get up early, read some books with the children and go to the library on the way to Ali’s so Davies and Scarlett could finish their Big Wild Read challenge with their last two books. I scuppered this somewhat by having both children in bed with me cuddling and chatting for nearly an hour having woken me too early and then reading my book in bed for another hour once they’d disappeared downstairs. I gave them clothes to get dressed and asked them to look for their BWR passport things and choose two books each but neither of them could find them. So I had a tantrum about the state of their bedrooms, yelled at them to sort them out OR ELSE and went online for an hour instead. Davies tidied his room and found his passport, Tarly couldn’t track hers down so I’ll help her find it on Thursday and we’ll pop to the library then sometime. We all made up again and then went over to Ali and Freya’s.

We were all excited about their current two-houses status and after lunch we headed five doors down to inspect their most recent accomodation acquisition. Pretty much the same as they one they’re in now, plus or minus furniture and lean-to bolt ons, oh and a mirror image being the other half of a semi to the one they are in now (although I don’t know if the children noticed that). Actually Davies and Scarlett were more enamoured with Delilah, the neighbourhood cat who accompanied us in, exclaiming ‘look at Delilah, she’s rubbing her head on my hand to be stroked’ and ‘listen to Delilah purring’ 🙄 anyone would think we didn’t have a head rubbing, purring cat of our own in residence at our house 😆

After various spats about Happy Street (Scarlett was playing nicely with it making the bride and groom marry each other – and kiss! 😆 but Davies wanted to play with it) and what to watch on TV (there were votes for Shaun the Sheep and Dot, Spot, Bot and Jot or something) Ali had the inspired idea of suggesting they build an obstacle course on the patio, which Davies very specifically went to town with. It kept them going for a good half hour or more before we were called out to inspect and admire it. Actually I was really impressed at his imagination and inventiveness, using various stuff around the garden to create a credible course to knock a ball round. Infact it made me realise how far his skills in planning and executing a workable design have come with obvious testing and experimenting along the way. I must get the marble run out for him later this week, I think he’d do something far superior to previous attempts with it where it was more about height rather than actual design.

Anyway, I had the chance to do some of what I was talking about having missed doing lately with Ali, chatting about ideas, running things past someone else’s ear and getting their take on stuff, putting ideas into words and thinking aloud as I went. It was good 🙂 And I got to catch up on Ali’s life too, which somehow the summer along with various other things happening in both our lives has seemed to put on hold rather.

We came home, singing all the way to High School Musical songs. Davies played xbox for a while and then they had tea and watched Doctor Who. They are both still wide awake, typically as we’ll be up early as I’m working in the morning so I bet I end up getting them out of bed tomorrow instead of them waking me. Tomorrow afternoon bake-fest party prep begins in earnest with most other things in hand and organised now. I’m at the stage of it being close enough to look forward to now with most of the stuff I had on a big long list as still to organise now either in hand or already done.

Except the roads were busier before 9am and everywhere else was dead all day :).

First thing I did various householdy stuff and then we put CBBC on and they children watched something called Wonderful World of Weird, or something along those lines. This was great, it had all sorts of odd factoids including details of a French bloke who eats shopping trolleys, cars and even a plane. While that was on they were drawing and colouring – Scarlett in her magazine from Saturday and Davies with a tin box that was a free gift with Horrible Science magazine when we used to subscribe. He’d copied out the words ‘Horrible Science’ in beautiful writing although he claimed to have no idea what it said 😆 then he’d drawn various characters on bits of paper including the Horrible Science people and The Doctor, some potions and medicines in different colours, a pyramid shaped case for the potions, some lockers for the ‘most poisonous ones’. I’d planned to read some books with them this morning and pop along to the library to finish the BWR but they were so happily occupied with their drawing I left them to it.

At 11ish we walked round to the nearest cashpoint (only about a fifteen minute round walk) and chatted as we went about things as diverse as why the park was so empty, how Scarlett could be starting school today, why they give school years year names (does that make sense written down? It did when we talked about it), what happens when you finish compulsory schooling, how talking to someone who knows lots about something is the very best way to learn more about it rather than books or the internet, how Lucy or Julie would be good people, for example, to ask questions about horses (as we saw one walking along with a rider and a walker) and then once we were back on the right side of the road again they ran all the way home. We came in and brushed our teeth and then Ady arrived home so we could all go to the dentist.

Davies wanted first turn in the chair so sat there happily chatting away to the dentist about his new tooth, his wobbly tooth and why he didn’t put it under the pillow for the tooth fairy. She was really happy with the way the new one is coming through and his teeth over all so that was good. 🙂

Scarlett was next and once she’d chatted to her (the third person in the last week or so to comment on ‘how big’ she is ‘for four’ which surprises me, I think she is rather average sized but maybe I’m missing something) and looked at her teeth she proclaimed them all very nice and healthy but with an issue over her dummy usage. She knew straightaway that she was either a thumb sucker or dummy user and said we need to try and break the habit now before it starts to affect her adult teeth. She doesn’t have protruding teeth which could be fixed with a brace, she has a gap between the top and bottom teeth where they simply don’t meet. Cosmetically it is something I’ve never noticed before but now I’m aware of it I’m sure I’ll be seeing it all the time.

Davies had a dummy until his third birthday when he happily and all but voluntarily threw them in the bin and never spoke of them again really. We tried to do the same thing when Scarlett was 3 but after nearly 2 weeks of sleepless nights and a very unhappy little girl we gave her dummies again. We talk fairly frequently about her giving them up, but as we realised when we gave them back to her again after her 3rd birthday simply taking them away and going cold turkey because we’re the ones with the power to do so goes against everything we believe in as parents. So together with Scarlett, who agrees she doesn’t want a gap in her teeth forever if it is in her power to prevent it, we’ve come up with the idea that she only has dummies in her bed and we will gently take them out of her mouth as soon as she is asleep to minimise the time she has it. She has also agreed to try and maybe start using it every other night rather than every night once she gets used to the in bed only idea. I think she is as committed to this as we are so it will succeed, however slowly which seems far better than forcibly removing it and dealing with her tears and upset. It would be nice to think she might hit five not using it any more though.

Ady was next and was told that his teeth and gums are doing really well and he could even go to 9 month intervals between appointments if he likes. :). I was last and had a scale and clean up done and was told I’ve no need to go 3 monthly either anymore and can have 6 monthly checkups with the others now. So we left with an appointment for next year :).

We came home for lunch and then Davies, Scarlett and I went off to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie and a couple of other HE families at the fruit picking farm. The other families are both localish Home Educators that I’ve known for a couple of years and see at various events with Julie. They all get together at least once or twice a week though so Scarlett struggled a bit to infiltrate the girls gang that was Maisie and Cate and Katie’s daughters and in true Scarlett style gave it a go then decided it was probably not worth bothering so played with the boys instead :lol:. Davies went straight into over loud, showing off mode which he often does in company he’s not sure of. I can sympathise as I can sometimes do a similar act although it is slightly more sophisicated than his once alcohol is added to mine there is probably not much in it ;).

We picked apples and sweetcorn, the others also picked raspberries. We all ate loads of apples picking off different trees and seeing that there was a difference just between two trees of the same type of apple let alone different types of apples in terms of firmness, sweetness and so on. Scarlett also tried and ended up eating all of a corn on the cob as we walked round. We finished up with a whole circuit on the tractor and then the others got off to pick onions which I decided we didn’t need so we waved them goodbye and carried on to the entrance. In the queue Scarlett and Davies befriended a little bilingual boy while we waited so we chatted about that. Oh and how the Kaiser Chiefs have lots of nanananahs in all their records :lol:.

We called into Tescos on the way home to get sweets for party prizes and goody bags so that is another job ticked off my party list. Ady brought home over 100 images from Doctor Who printed onto A4 and A3 paper so that’s my decoration for the room pretty much taken care of too (it’ll be blue tac a-go-go Saturday morning :lol:). We then chatted about how many days are in each month on the way home. I told them the ’30 days hath November…’ rhyme and we talked about leap years. It came about as Davies is counting down the days both to his party on Saturday and his actual birthday next week. Normally I wouldn’t go so far with an explanation but I’m trying hard to give a bit more information at the moment when they show interest hoping that something will spark more interest and we’ll head off on a flight of fancy. I’ve realised that my answers to them haven’t grown much in terms of content in the last year or so and they are probably ready for more details than I give a lot of the time. Which is not me beating myself up as I just as often end up giving really long winded explanations for things, but I want to try and do it more often so it is a matter of course rather than a conscious ‘oh here’s something I could expand on’ type thought.

Once home I cooked their tea, cooked our tea and made some extra mini quiches with leftover quiche mix and pastry.

I’ve felt quite blah today, a bit out of it with the people we saw and am still sad not to be making the London meet up on Wednesday (and still smarting from working preventing us from going Off The Path so pissed off work is stopping Wednesday too 🙁 ). Given Kessingland was not the week I’d hoped it would be and we seem to have not managed nearly as many get togethers with friends this summer as in previous years I am feeling rather out of touch with various friends. Although I am looking forward to seeing everyone at the weekend I know it won’t be the right time to sit and chat and catch up then either so I’m hoping to plan in some visits, home and away with various people soon to catch up properly. I think all our regular clubs starting up again next week will be a good thing for us all too, I like the shape of our weeks to have form even if what we do during the day itself is rather made up as we go along.

Finally Ady and I are doing much talking about different ways of life and where we’d like to be all of which is something best sat and debated with mates when you are in the early days of making such decisions so I’m hoping to do some of that in real life time soon too.

Off to the car boot sale again this morning. I’m feeling a bit car-boot-sale-ed out to be honest, but we’ll be giving them a miss for the next couple of weeks anyway and then we’re planning to attend one as sellers rather than buyers so I should be about ready for the winter break by then I reckon.

I’d been looking for some science kits and spotted a couple of good ones today – a circuit and electronics type one and a build a robot type kit which I bartered down to two quid for the two. Davies got a (very annoying, it’s already been confiscated twice :roll:) voice changer thing and I got a couple of tops for him too.

Then we went to my parents for lunch. I had various favours saved up to ask my mum, all of which she said yes to, so that was a result 🙂 including the final one which was cutting my hair. It’s been about 3 months since I had it cut shorter with her doing the final phase and I thought I’d save £20 and get her to do it again, simply chopping the same length off all over to keep the layers in. It appeared to be nowhere near that simple and she got quite hysterical about the whole thing eventually refusing to cut any more off as it was going all wonky and she was worried she’d cut it too short. It was indeed very uneven but I managed to hack off a few more bits myself at home and after washing and leaving to dry it seems fine now. Fortunately I have a lot of hair and it’s natural rather random pattern of curls and waves lends itself quite well to abuse and rough handling (what a queer notion eh? 😉 ) and forgives even the most haphazzard attacks on it with a pair of blunt scissors 😆

Scarlett sat and observed the haircutting while playing barbie.com on Mum’s laptop, while Ady and Davies did the first electronics kit. Eventually we decided to come home to give the kids an early night and I sat and did the robot building kit with them while Ady cooked their tea. Scarlett was fairly oblivious to it other than the basic definition of a robot which was included in the kit and Davies certainly didn’t grasp all of the wiring stuff but got an good basic idea of what it was all about. Electronics is not something he’s ever shown any great interest in to be honest, but I did GCSE Electronics and at the very least I thought a basic idea of how things work might grab his attention. An element of it did (he liked the fact that somewhere along the line the previous owner had cross circuit wired it so the switch worked opposite with ON being OFF and vice versa) and it reassured me that in exposing and introducing him to electronics I had at least opened that avenue of opportunity if that’s something he he later follows. 🙂

I finished off the tardis for goody bags and spent some time playing with the superplexus ball, the children went to bed and I cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner.

We went to a car boot sale this morning, a different one to normal. But the children (and I) were tired and not really in the mood for it so I took them back to the car while Ady finished walking round. On the way home there had been a car accident on the bridge resulting in a very smashed up car although no one seemed to have been hurt. When Ady stopped behind the car infront at the roundabout a lad on a pushbike went to cross without looking past our car to the second lane, where unfortunately there was a car still travelling. He was knocked off his bike, onto the car bonnet and bounced onto the road. The whole thing happened in slow motion with Ady shouting ‘Noooooo!’ as he saw what was about to happen before it actually happened but with no time to actually prevent it. Luckily the car was travelling really slowly approaching the roundabout and the lad landed on his thigh / bum rather than any more delicate part. A few scratches to his bike and the car bonnet appeared to be all the damage done. Ady leapt out and there were scenes of shock with the poor woman driver of the car looking utterly shocked (I imagine she is still replaying the whole thing now and will be for years to come), the lads friends who had already crossed and watched the whole thing in horror and of course the boy himself who had the sort of lucky escape most kids who ride out infront of oncoming cars don’t live to tell the tale of. Davies and Scarlett witnessed the whole thing too so maybe they learnt some future lesson. Very scary and very pleased we saw him leap straight up and shout ‘I’m OK!’ in an embarrassed fashion rather than being another statistic for a 999 call.

We came home for lunch and menu planning for September before they dropped me back to Shoreham to work. I’d been asked to work at Shoreham library this afternoon as they were shortstaffed but when I got there they were actually very well staffed with 5 of us there. I spent the first hour gossiping with E, a very camp, bitchy, 40-something man who works there and I have met once before when he came and worked a day at Lancing. We were chatting about the differences between working at the library and working in retail management (he used to be a retail manager too), which led to him talking about the lack of budget for things like marketing and displays and explaining his idea for a Doctor Who display he’s putting together, so naturally I mentioned the dalek and Davies’ party and showed him some pictures on flickr. He was really complementary about the whole thing saying how great it was, how Davies will always remember it and how sad he always feels when he sees kids having their birthday parties at McDonalds. So that made me feel good 🙂 Then we talked about our chickens and then we got onto Home Education and autonomy. He ended up saying he’d like to come and live with us as our life sounds so cool 🙂 If we ever realise our self sufficiency dream of a large house and land with livestock I think E and his partner could make an ideal addition in the way of doting ‘uncles’ 😆 and of course they could help us tick some additional demographic boxes ;).

There was then a phonecall between the senior at Shoreham and Wendy back over at Lancing which resulted in them realising that Shoreham was overstaffed while Lancing was struggling so I rang Ady to come and collect me and take me back to Lancing for the second half of my shift 😆 I was very welcomed back there for further discussion about Davies’ party and chat to T, the Saturday lad about his trip to Reading festival. I was rota’d on the enquiry desk so I sat and worked my way through some training on all the library’s subscriptions to various electronic resources such as Brittanica Online, newspaper clippings search engines and so on. So I spent some time trying to find out answers to my questions about where the English Channel ends and other ocean related ponderings as a result of my conversation with Tarly yesterday morning.

At 5pm Ady and the children collected me and we headed off to Sainsburys to do our mammoth monthly food shop. It was all very laid back with the children being really helpful, we got everything, they loaded it onto the conveyer belt while I packed (and Ady went off to get some brandy which we’d forgotten) and then the children went off to look at the magazines. Ady twitched a bit at that (other end of the store, out of sight) but as I said, we can’t let Davies go to the shop or postbox on his own but refuse for him to go to the other end of the same shop as us. They came back with a Doctor Who magazine which Davies got bought (they really had been not just well behaved but genuinely helpful 🙂 ) while the cashier was joining in with Ady and I’s game of guess the shopping bill total (2 full trolleys only £165 but they’d run out of 6 pint milks so we still need to get them and the meat for the month from the butcher next week). Ady took Davies to start loading up the car while Scarlett and I chose a magazine for her (based almost solely on the free gift on the front :roll:). Home for a production line of Ady bringing the shopping in and me putting it away, an incredibly late dinner for the children while watching X Factor (tears tally just twice this week 🙂 ) before having an incredibly late bedtime.

I’ve really enjoyed it being September today, it is easily my favourite month and probably my favourite time of the year, it feels like every thing is ahead – the autumn, which I love, the winter, which I possibly love even more and the knowledge that sometime eventually spring is around the corner. It’s the beginning of birthday and anniversary and Christmas season for us, which I think everyone knows by now I celebrate to the max so that’s good. Also it’s been such a crap summer in terms of actually having summery weather that it’s something of a relief to draw a line under it finally and accept that it all happened way back in April (and luckily our lifestyle allowed us to enjoy every bit of April on the beach when it wasn’t packed with everyone else, so we’ve no need to feel cheated).

Ady took Davies off to work with him today. It was a last minute arrangement made last night at Davies’ request. It’s one of the advantages of A’s job actually that he can do that every so often. He couldn’t take both of them off really as they’d prevent him from actually doing his job but one at a time gives him a bit of company on the long drives, them an idea of what Daddy actually does when he goes off to work and a bit of a rest from me for the day 😆 and that wasn’t a typing error ;). They had a good day apparently, McDonalds for lunch, introductions to several of Ady’s regular stores inlcuding the whole Home Ed chat when D was repeatedly asked about going back to school next week and some precious one to one time with Daddy, which Davies, quite specifically rarely seems to get but definitely seems to crave.

Scarlett scrambled into bed with me when they headed off early this morning, bringing with her a little seashore spotters book from last weeks car boot sale. It has sea creatures and plants to be seen on the coast around the UK with little bits of information about them all so she started off showing me all the ones she knew or had actually seen (cuttlefish, some seaweed, shorecrabs, spidercrabs, starfish, jellyfish) and then we went through the whole book and named everything. Some of the descriptions she wanted me to read in full and after a few noticed that ‘English Channel’ and ‘North Sea’ kept coming up, so we talked about how the whole of our country is surrounded by water but off different bits of coast it is different seas – the sea here at home is the English Channel, in Kessingland it is the North Sea and when we used to go to the beach from Manchester (usually Southport or Blackpool) it was the Irish Sea. She thought about that and then asked ‘but they all join up don’t they?’ which I agreed to and then pondered privately about territory out at sea and where one ocean starts and another ends. Must google that actually…

We got up, she drew pictures on my back with moisturiser while I put my make up on and then got dressed and we came downstairs for her to have breakfast and watch some tv. I’d told her that we needed to go into town to go to the bank but after that she could decide what we did. We headed into town and parked slightly out of town to walk in as there used to be a kitchen shop on the way where I was hoping to get a few cake making bits but it appears to have long sinced closed down. We went to the bank where we spent the time in the long queue guessing which cashier would be free next, then walked through town to the other bank via various charity shops. I paid the mortgage and then we wandered around town for a while. There was some sort of foreign market on (Worthing frequently has market days, about 3 a week I think, one of which is a regular swap market with one of the French coastal towns where their market traders come and set up here and ours go and set up there for the day, wonder which is the most successful?) so we looked at the various foods before ending up at The Works. I’d been after some gold and silver paint but they didn’t have any. Scarlett chose a couple of bits from their ’59 pence each or 2 for a pound’ area and got some scented gel pens and a little notebook set, which has delighted her all day so was well worth a quid. We carried on walking to the other end of town where there is another kitchen shop but they didn’t sell what I wanted either, but were able to recommend somewhere else to me. We were then only about 5 shops away from the charity shop my Mum works at so we called in to see if she was working today and she was. She was delighted to see us and plied Scarlett with a pretty pink basket and showed her off to all her workmates :). Scarlett was a bit overwhelmed without Davies to deflect the attention and spent a lot of time buried in my shoulder. 😆 We left there and headed back to the car with Scarlett needing a carry for some of the way as she’d worn her other crocalikes which were rubbing.

We stopped at the recommended sugarcraft and cake decoration shop on the way home, which although was only carried very depleted stocks (wonder if they don’t bother replenishing after the wedding season or something) did have what we wanted (blue food colouring pigment, gold edible glitter). As we pulled out of our very tight parking space the bloke in the car infront, who I’d vaguely registered as he drove by suddenly turned around in his car seat and started waving frantically at me, which totally threw me for a minute until I realised it was my brother :lol:. We drove past my parents house to see if my Dad was home and then drove past him too, but he wasn’t on his way home as he didn’t turn into their road.

Next we stopped at Sainsburys to get a few bits for dinner tonight and for Scarlett to choose whatever she wanted for lunch. Turns out her needs are few and aside from a pink iced cake from the bakery she was happy to have the pastry off my chicken and ham pie. We had a look round the aquarium shop next door and a lengthly look at the jewellry stands in Sainsburys though and it was quite nice bowing to all her requests for once. Home for lunch, she played with her notebook and pens and I had a quick play online and then we debated painting the dalek or going out to the beach. She was happy to go with the dalek so we started that with me in charge of the spray paint and her in charge of brushing the excess in so it didn’t drip. It was quite windy so I needed to spray closer to the surface than recommended otherwise the paint was getting blown away before it made it onto the dalek! We ran out of the first tin of paint and the second tin I’d bought was in no way a match for the gold and we quickly realised we’d be needing at least one more tin even if it had been the same colour so we hopped in the car and set off on a paint hunt with our empty spray can for colour matching.

We went into Lancing first, with me still wearing my paint and paste splattered jeans much to Tarly’s amusement but only found one tin which we knew was probably the wrong colour, so we drove up to B&Q where we were able to get a perfect match. We came home and finished the spraying bit and then tried to start the contrasting bubble bits but really struggled to spray without getting it all over what we’d just finished, so settled for spraying it into a pot and then applying with a paintbrush. That tin quickly ran out and wasn’t giving much coverage so we tried mixing some paint with yellow and white and some gold glitter but that didn’t work either. So we set off again to try and find some contrasting colour. We tried a different DIY store but gave up and went back to B&Q.

When we got home Ady and Davies were back so the three of them snuggled up on the sofa together playing xbox while I got some more done before realising the gold we’d bought was almost the same shade as the spray paint :roll:. Ady was going back out again anyway to collect some logs off a workmate he’d helped to fell and chop up a tree in return for the firewood (and a crate of beers 🙂 ) so he went off to change my paint for me too, while I did all the various other coloured twiddly bits and finished off the sink plunger bit. Oh and made the kids’ tea.

Ady came home and bathed the children while I did the last few bits of the dalek before announcing it finished (Davies is very chuffed with it, totally worth it 🙂 ) and came in to cook dinner for us.

My wrist is really painful again. It started hurting about 2 weeks ago and I thought I’d laid on it funny during the night but it’s not really gotten better. I do notice it twinges at work when I move a shelf full of books along at once, or lift several hardbacks in that hand (which you just do, when you are moving a pile of books even if it’s just briefly to gather then into the crook of your arm) and I guess the painting today has aggravated it which has happened before when I’ve done something like wallpaper stripping or painting when I am bending my wrist a lot. Annoying low level grumble pain rather than anything to take painkillers for. Might tiger balm it and go to bed.

I worked this morning. It would be my full day to work this week but as they owe me hours for bank holiday Monday (we all get pro-rata’d hours back from the library being closed for the day) I finished at 130 instead of 5pm. F, my favourite colleague was working so we had a good laugh together and aside from an incident of me getting caught with a very smelly man who came in to use the photocopier and wanted to tell me his life story (I was rescued by one of the others interupting to tell me I had to go to lunch 🙂 ) it went really quickly.

I was greeted at the gate by four children all chanting ‘Mummy’ or ‘Nic’ depending on whether they are related to me or not, which was very nice 🙂 and then thanks to the lure of lego, chickens and jaffa cakes Lucy and I were pretty much left alone for several hours to chat, which was lovely. We discussed all sorts of things from hairstyles to home education before they headed off and I sorted Davies and Scarlett some tea out. They watched the Doctor Who Christmas special with Catherine Tate in it which they hadn’t seen before (it was before they started watching it and although they have gradually caught up with all the episodes with Rose in I’d forgotten that special and not ordered it in until now). Some of the one liners and facial expressions went over their heads but made me snigger, I do like Catherine Tate. Also on the disc is the Music and Monsters Doctor Who Confidential with David Tennant talking in his scottish accent (which makes all the difference to me, I can start to see what the fuss about him is about when he talks like that 😉 ) and the music being played the orchestra so they watched that too and really enjoyed it.

Earlier Lucy and I had removed the space hopper from the dalek so I brought it in the lounge and spent a couple of hours putting on the last few ‘twiddly bits’ including the second sink plunger as it’s eye. It just needs the last few bits stuck onto that eye piece tomorrow and then it’s ready for painting :).

Ady is planning to take Davies to work with him tomorrow if he’s up early enough so I will just have Scarlett with me. I need to go into town to the bank but other than that I plan to spend some time doing whatever she wants to do which will be nice.

that bloody dalek! I can’t say I wish I’d never started as I am enjoying it and I do think it will look pretty good when it’s finally finished but if I’d known just how long it was going to take before I started it I may well have had second thoughts. Thankfully it’s only cost the price of 2 sink plungers (that’ll be £2.76 then) and 2 bags of Tesco value flour to make the papier mache paste (about 50 pence) as the boxes for the frame came from Ady’s work, as did the plastic circles which I cut out of plant trays, it’s taken an old Thompson local directory and several free copies of AutoTrader in newspaper and a borrowed space hopper to frame the domed top. Hopefully the domed top will be dry tomorrow so I can take the space hopper out and put the second sink plunger in for the eye piece, add the final few bits of embellishment tomorrow and Friday and spray paint it all over the weekend. If I were to tot up my hours spent on it though, even on my current rather modest (in comparison to hourly rates I have commanded in years gone by) library wage it would already be heading towards the £200 mark 😯 I have rather enjoyed getting my hands all messy, wearing the same vest and pair of jeans which by now are multi-layered with paste dried on and having smears of flour all over me though, in a different life I could have quite gotten used to the artistic way of life having an airy studio covered in paint splatters and dried on clay. It’s acting as a curiosity for the neighbours and people walking by anyway – that and the chickens who have worked out how to get onto the front lawn and wander around the dalek clucking 😆

I had an interesting conversation with Scarlett this morning about heart attacks and death. She is a funny mix that child. She does not worry about physical pain and is very ambivalent about death – when we lost Malice and Feathers while Davies went into full on black armband wearing, weeping wailing mourning Scarlett was very philosophical saying she ‘was sad but wasn’t going to cry’ and showing great interest in what happened after death. She is always brave in the face of hurting herself and doesn’t think twice about lashing out at Davies with a slap or a kick but rarely goes out to hurt someone’s feelings. She told me last week that ‘I don’t care about you!’ (I was trying to get her to shut a window she was hanging out of by telling her I was cold), then dissolved into floods of tears almost as the words left her mouth sobbing that ‘the word came out wrong, I do care about you Mummy, I do’. One night over the weekend we let the children stay up late watching a sort of Baby Einstein style animation on one of the kids channels on tv with basic cartoons set to music and she was in hysterics about a baby chick who was lonely and didn’t have his mummy or daddy or any friends – she’d got that from her interpretation of the cartoon as there was no real plot line as such and was devastated about it being a sad story. It took several nice books being read and lots of cuddles to get her over it so she could get to sleep, bless her. Anyway, she was asking about heart attacks and what happened while I was doing the washing up and she was sitting on the worktop getting her cereal so I did a little diagram of a heart, talked a bit about ventricles, chambers, pumping blood and oxygen and how it can go wrong. She seemed really interested and I realised that so few of the things she gets to talk about are original Scarlett ideas – her general knowledge is very wide but mostly Davies-initiated. Feeling inspired by the Skylark book I’m reading I’ve pledged to follow their interests a little more and try and follow up on conversations with books if I can to supplement my often sketchy explanations. This was a good example of something I’m sure Scarlett would be happy to hear more about – although I was saved from having to do much by Supervets being on tonight with a dog having open heart surgery so plenty of her questions about what a real heart looks like were answered very conveniently by that. 🙂

I wanted to finish a blog post on Monster & Teeny this morning so Davies sat with me for a while I started that and then wanted to look at his Monster Movies Blog which led to watching his chicken film again. This led to Scarlett hearing some music in the background of the movie from the barbie.com website (she must have been playing it while Davies and I were videoing) so she used Ady’s laptop to play on that and Davies spent some time on the xbox – it’s been ages since he played, I’m so glad we’ve not invested loads of money in a game consule and games as although he enjoys it for an hour or so whenever he does play it’s really not something he does often enough to justify any more money than we spent on it. Also while Ady and I will sit transfixed at the amazing life like graphics on xbox games Davies expects that level of quality on games as it’s all he’s ever known and is more happy on gamesgarage logic games that playing some fast paced action x box one.

The washing machine did overtime catching up on yesterdays backlog and then we spent some time outside. Davies and Scarlett played with the chickens while I daleked. We came in again for an early lunch before heading down to Brooklands for the circus skills have a go workshop. It was packed with a mix of really small toddlers who’s parents wanted to have a go and some unsupervised but not much older than Davies boys who tried to nick a load of juggling balls at the end. Scarlett and I threw balls to each other, they both span plates and Davies went to chat to the woman about her trapeze act and how she has callouses on her hands and just how her dad does the trick with the cups and balls and lemons (she said she didn’t know :lol:). It was too chaotic really to talk to them about workshops so I’ll email them for more details. The children both wanted to stay and play at the park and then go to the show starting at 2pm again but I persuaded them to come home as Ady was due home early and I thought if we were going to go to the circus again it would be nice if he came with us.

Davies and Scarlett played with some wooden blocks and toy animals (specifically a kangaroo which has a removable joey in it’s pouch) and I made some tardises while we put Superman on. I thought they’d really enjoy it but actually 20 odd years on I found it quite slow paced and plot rather than action heavy and it just didn’t hold their attention, so we listened mostly to the music (which they both recognised from the Noisy Kids concert) and carried on with our pursuits.

I did some more daleking while the children did some more playing with the chickens and then spent some time creating little graves for Malice and Feathers complete with headstones, crosses (‘for Jesus’ apparently) and flowers – bet the chickens eat the flowers and scuff all the rest up tomorrow 🙄 Ady came home and helped me glue some bits on to the dalek then very kindly bathed and fed the children while I continued to wrestle with a tricky bit and then tidied the garden up. I came in and hoovered while Ady washed down the chickens area, then I watched Supervets with the children before they went to bed.

Ady and I have been watching back to back River Cottage programes because when we grow up we both want to be Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (yes, I am aware there are several glitches with that vision 😉 ) and now I must go to bed, I’ve got work in the morning.

I guess I do get a fair bit done, it just never feels like it til I sit and write it all down at the end of each day.

First thing this morning I did some work on the laundry pile – putting away clean stuff. The washing machine has been out of action for 36 hours (it’s working again now, Ady did something to it using a tool and now it works – wahey, my own personal handyman! 😉 ) so there is a huge pile of dirty washing big enough to have it’s own postcode sitting in the bathroom but I was excused from worrying about that today. The children had breakfast – Davies had dry cereal because there was no milk and no skippy for his toast, Scarlett had a toasted bagel that was kicking around from Friday night’s dinner and only edible toasted. She only ate half actually as Candle licked some of the butter off the second half, so she ended up feeding that to the chickens – a real community caring sharing feel to breakfast time here today! I had tea with cream cos we had no milk. Tea with cream is disgusting. I either need to learn to drink my tea black or start to like coffee I assume is more acceptable with cream than tea is. Tea with cream is disgusting, I may have mentioned that. So no bread, no skippy, no milk… once I realised we had run out of loo roll too it became obvious we’d need to go shopping this morning :lol:.

On the way to Tescos we talked about bus routes – Davies had spotted the bus we were behind had a number 7 on it and we talked about routes and destinations and how the bus does a certain route repeatedly and at different frequencies. If I hadn’t also been about to run out of petrol we might have followed the number 7. But we didn’t because that would be a) a really unecologically sound way of using public transport b) a bit mad c) really annoying cos you’d keep getting caught behind it at every stop and even if you were following it and therefore wanted to pull in behind it each time there is a certain period of being behind a bus after which you simply cannot tolerate it stopping every few 100 yards and d) we barely had sufficient petrol to get to Tescos. Might get an all day travel ticket one day and show the children the routes though, or pick up a couple of timetables from work to show them.

We got our various essential bits at Tesco and a few other items including paper cups and plates for Davies’ party, some cake decorating bits and then came home. They’d been squabbling in the car on the way home so I’d told them to sit quietly and watch a film without arguing for an hour while I did some dalek making (making the skirt stronger and fretting about the dome and the plunger). I’d picked up a value frisbe at Tescos for 46 pence as the children had been looking longingly at the whizee noised frisbe our camping neighbours had in Swanage so I’d planned to get them one next time I saw some. They decided to play with that rather than watch a film but worked really hard to get on with each other on threatening of not going to the circus from me if they disturbed me. They then decided they wanted a water pistol that The Thank you Neighbours had brought over for them and we’d shoved in the garage (did I mention that David apologised for seeing me in my nightie the other morning and then made it all worse again by telling me how lovely I’d looked in it! :shock:). So they got the garage door key down from the high shelf in the kitchen (would have required clambering but I’m not thinking about that) then walked round the house to try and unlock the garage which they couldn’t do because there is a real knack to it that I only learnt when I was about 28 and had sat a NVQ level 2 in locksmithing 😆

I came in and we had lunch and they watched some Cat in the Hat while I had some pc time, whereupon I discovered that B&Q sell sink plungers for £1.28 so we shot up to B&Q to purchase one. I thought we’d managed to sneak through without being spotted by anyone we know but got caught at the tills by Gwen who has been there for years and wanted to chat. She asked me how long it was since I’d left (that store, it was 12 years ago) and said that for years after I left customers would ask after me and say I was the only one there who seemed to know what she was doing! A fine accolade indeed to have been championed as the best part time checkout operator B&Q Worthing had ever known! 😆 If only my Dad could have been there to hear that I know he would finally have been proud of my accomplishments and be prepared to overlook all my crapness with money and failure to send my children to school. 😆 She asked what I was doing now and I explained that I work part time in the library and spend the rest of the time at home with the children, which led onto her asking if they were at school yet and me explaining they ‘should’ be as they are school age, but aren’t because they learn at home. She wanted to know all about that then and how I ‘make them learn’ 🙄 I did a quick sketch of how they are still very young yet and so far are very motivated without giving her the full overhead projector, case study and illustrated with a dance routine, a jingle and costume characters production on autonomy because we were running late for getting to the circus. Which made me smile to myself as having torn ourselves away from making a life size dalek to buy a sink plunger whilst on our way to the circus pretty much sums our life up really and makes me think being the best checkout chick in B&Q 12 years ago was probably pretty good grounding for something 😆

Freds Flying Circus is playing at the local laked park for a bargain £2 per person admission. We’ve actually ‘met’ them before as they were holding the circus skills workshops at Sompting Festival. Lucy and The Rs were already there with excellent seats so we squished in next to them and enjoyed the show. Davies sat enthralled for the whole thing, Scarlett lost interest slightly towards the end and wanted to sit on my lap. They are running free workshops at 1230 each day so we’ll go down tomorrow so Davies can have a go. He’s been asking to learn circus skills for a while and I’ve been very slack in sorting it out so I might have a word with them there tomorrow as they are clearly local-ish and if Davies is genuinely interested maybe I can arrange something or at least get some contacts from them. We chatted on the way home about our favourite bits and they came straight into the garden and set up a circus act while I started inserting my sink plunger into my dalek.

Lucy and The Rs came back to ours, having detoured home to collect Rebecca’s space hopper which she’s very kindly lent me for a couple of days to form the shape of the domed bit of the dalek. So I carried on making that while chatting to Lucy and the children occassionally played and mostly argued – Davies and Scarlett continuing to do that thing of wanting to play with each other and not being able to just leave each other alone, but irritating each other and then arguing. 🙄 Lucy and The Rs left, I finished the bit of dalek I was on and then a huge grey cloud looked certain to burst so with the children’s help I got the dalek inside in to the playroom. They suddenly clicked into a game they could play without arguing so we had half an hours peace before we decided to do the baking I’d planned to get done before the apples and blackberries spoiled that we picked last week. They both had a go at peeling apples and deemed it too tricky, so I gave Scarlett pastry ingredients in a bowl and got her to rub them in and gave Davies crumble topping ingredients in a bowl and got him to rub them in. I peeled and chopped the apples and then Davies put apples, blackberries and crumble topping in his bowl and was very proud to have almost entirely made it himself :). Scarlett greased the pans for me while I rolled out the pastry and made little individual tarts, they put blackberries into the pastry bottoms while I cooked down some of the apples with some sugar and then made criss cross tops for them. By then they’d got bored so wandered off to play while I made an apple bread and butter pudding style creation and then finally cooked their tea. Ady arrived home and was very pleased to find the kitchen smelling of apple and cinnamon. 🙂

Doctor Who came on followed by Doctor Who Confidential while they were finishing their tea so they got to watch that while I popped to Sainsburys (forgot cat food :roll:), then bath and dinner for us. Tomorrow I have further dalek construction planned and a visit to the library for the children to finish the BWR and back for the circus skills workshop. It’s all go here. 🙂

Order new contact lenses online – just realised I only have a week or so supply left – decided to wait until A get’s paid on Friday

Get to Tescos and buy bread, milk, loo roll etc. Supplies running very low here – done 🙂

Find something to make dalek’s sink plunger style bit (but not a sink plunger at 3 quid!) and the domed top (beach ball?) and get that done this morning so I can start putting on detailing tomorrow ready for spraying by the end of the week – really want that done this week so I can concentrate on food for the party next week. argh really struggling with this. I’ve just lost my temper with it trying to put a flat front bit to put the sink plunger bits on and I’ve sort of ground to a halt without something to make the domed top bit. I’ve just put a ‘wanted’ email on freecycle for a sink plunger and a space hopper or giant beach ball but I’m sort of running out of ideas otherwise without starting to spend money on it which I really don’t want to do. 🙁 Grr.

Do something with the apples and blackberries we bought at the PYO last week – pies, crumbles? something I can bake and freeze, not enough blackberries for jam really. maybe later…

I’m taking D&S to the circus this afternoon and there is a free circus skills workshop at 1230, but I think I might aim to do the circus show only today and maybe take them back for the skills workshop tomorrow after they’ve actually seen a performance. If I haven’t done them severe physical harm for getting in my way when I’m losing my temper with the dalek we’ll be off to the circus in a little while. Why don’t people (and I know plenty of adults who struggle with this too) read the signs and know to stay out of the way of someone in a black frame of mind?! @$*!!

Washing machine appears to be broken though so no laundry angst today – although there is a sufficient pile to be fretting about I can’t do anything with it. Ady is worrying about that on my behalf and is planning to pull the washing machine out later today and see if it’s something he can fix or whether it’s time to look out on freecycle for a new one. Our’s is 8 years old next week and although it’s taken a bit of a battering in those 8 years it would be nice to get a couple more out of it.

see what I did there?!

We errected the new tent today – we’ve been debating what to call it, the first tent was ‘ChrisAndAlisonsTent’, then we had ‘The Crap Tent’ which we have to thank for introducing the word ‘crap’ into our childrens’ vocabulary. So far we’ve come up with ‘the big tent’ (Davies) – which to us it is but put it next to a Kyham and it’ll be dwarfed again, ‘the fab tent’ which seems a bit expansive when we’ve yet to camp in it and ‘the top tent’ ditto. Anyway, it is in pretty much immaculate condition, the living area is bigger than the crap tent and the bedrooms are all spacious what with the outer not sagging into them and all. It has all these little features like little storage pockets, a hook for hanging a lantern in the middle of the living space, poles to create a porch, adjustable tension straps between poles to brace it square and you know, gimmicks, such as not ripping when you try to put the bedrooms in, zips that actually shut the tent and don’t gape open in places and a flysheet that seems designed with the poles in mind :lol:. Really want to go camping again now to test it out but I don’t think September’s finances will stretch. Fingers crossed for a warm October? 🙂

Off car boot sale perusing again first thing today. It was busy but not a lot worth having really. We got a Where’s Wally pocket book, I found some more clothes (another couple of dresses for Tarly, but for next summer, a couple of fleece tops and a dressing gown for Davies), a load of toy snakes, fish and lizards and a couple of books. Yesterday we got given three bedding sets for free from a seller who was packing up – a Care Bears one, a Tweety Pie one and a Victoria Plum one. I was explaining how Victoria Plum was a toy from when I was a child and Scarlett and I found a book about her today :). Davies then spotted a Mr Blobby bedding set for 75 pence so he’s got new spare bedding too. Oh and I got Body Bits kitfor a pound too, which the kids had a bash at constructing but I’ve not had a proper look at yet.

We came home and I did a bit more dalek-ing – patching and strengthening the top section and then we headed off to Lucy & Colin’s. We pitched our tent and had a barbecue. Davies (and to a lesser degree Scarlett) were both very tired (three late nights in a row 🙁 ) and quite waily which made it not the relaxing afternoon I’d hoped for. I’d caught the sun on my shoulders and back so stayed inside out of the sun while Ady sat and was clambered over and wailed at by most of the children, bless him. At six pm when Davies and Scarlett were involved in yet another sibling related tussle we decided enough was enough and called it a day. Ady wrangled the children into bed while I put a skirt on the dalek, then sat with Davies for a while as he was in better humour once he was actually at home, in pjs and in bed. They’ve both fallen asleep nice and early and are on a promise of being taken to the circus on at Brooklands tomorrow afternoon if they let me get on with the dalek tomorrow morning.

I’ve read another chapter or two of And The Skylark Sings With Me which is continuing to inspire and enthuse me about Home Ed and will no doubt lead to a post at some point. And now, because we’re already bathed, fed and so on so very early I think I’ll watch a film 🙂

We went to our usual car boot sale this morning but a combination of it being rained off so many weeks this summer, a brilliantly hot August day and the long weekend meant it was heaving. Heaving with sellers aswell as buyers though and many a bargain was to be had. 🙂 I’d taken about £7 with me and spent every single penny. Ady had some left over but we probably spent a tenner between us. Ady and Davies walked round together and got various bits and pieces including a couple of little Wallace and Gromit figures (for Davies’ playhouses) which we’d only ever seen on ebay at well over £5 each before – for 10 pence! They also got a book for Scarlett on Spirit which is a firm favourite of her and Maisie and something they play at most times they get together. We also got a superplexus ball which I’ve been hankering after for ages for 25 pence. Scarlett got a mosiac coloured tangram puzzle for 26 pence (the bloke wanted 50 pence but she had 26 pence clutched in her hand and smiled sweetly so he gave it to her for that 🙂 ), we got a little Polly Pocket playset with some tiny dogs for 50p but bargain of the week was the clothes this week. At one of the first stalls I found a man selling his two daughters outgrown clothes for 50 pence an item. All the stuff was immaculate and Next, Monsoon etc. Most of it was little stuff but I got 5 items for £2.50, all gorgeous frilly skirts, mirror and bead bedecked tops and so on. If I’d had more money with me I’d have bought loads of the smaller stuff off him to ebay. A bit further round we found someone selling every item for 20pence so got a full length fleecey lined winter coat, a reversible fluffy gilet and two black dresses for 80 pence. Finally we came across a woman packing up to go home who first of all told me 50 pence an item and then said I could fill a bin liner for two quid. And fill it I did! I actually gave her £2.50 because I was so pleased with what I’d got and when we came home and laid it all out we’d got six pairs of trousers, three fleeces, three jumpers, two skirts, a tracksuit, two dresses, seven tops, a coat, a gilet and a long cardigan for the princely sum of £5.60 – so that’s Scarlett sorted for winter then :). I’d picked up various items aged up to 6 years including most of the trousers (she’s currently wearing 3-4 in most trousers but they’re all cropper summer ones) so we had a trying on session when we got home cos they all looked huge and I was preparing to put lots of the stuff away for winter next year, but everything fitted now! She has been looking quite long of leg lately and all her skirts have been a bit on the short side so she’s been wearing them with leggings but I had no idea she’d grown quite so much! Also the style of the jeans is that of a girl rather than a toddler so suddenly every last trace of a toddler is long gone. Davies looked at her and said ‘those trousers make her look all tall and thin, she’s like Barbie!’ 😆 and indeed she did suddenly look like a child who could well be about to start school in two weeks 😯 But she’s my baby!!! Final bargain was a Wallace and Gromit pop up book – the full story in cartoon strip of A Close Shave with all sorts of pop ups and moving parts. She wanted £2, took £1.50 and Davies was utterly delighted with it. Id planned to smuggle it in as a birthday present but he spotted it in the bag and wanted it there and then. He’s spent the whole afternoon entranced by all it’s moving bits and planning how to make pop up pictures of his own. 🙂

Home for lunch and then I headed back into the garden taking my papier mache dalek with me. I got a load more done and am now up to the domed top, which I’m still unsure how to tackle – it’s too big to use a balloon but I think a beach ball may do the trick to papier mache over. I’ve then got all the detailing to do, so am hoping for a nice couple more days as it dries so quickly outside it is making the whole project loads quicker. I spent about 4 hours outside, with music playing and found it all very theraputic. Both the children came and helped at various points – Davies grew bored of it very quickly, a thing of this size isn’t very exciting as it’s lots of repeptive tearing and sticking strips of paper. Scarlett stuck around for longer, although she was more interested in picking dried bits of paste off of my skin and clothes (she loves picking at things that child, never did grow out of that) and then making up more paste with the flour and water and chattering away to me about nothing. There’s another car boot sale on in the morning so we’ll be looking out for a beach ball and a sink plunger to complete it. Davies has decided he wants it to be a gold dalek rather than a black one so I’ve been googling for images for the detail.

Came in around 7pm for roast beef cooked by Ady and we all ate together. Davies had roast beef with potato waffles and yorkshire puddings – he loves beef but doesn’t like roast potatoes. Scarlett who is a total carboholic had mashed potatoes, yorkshire puddings and pasta! She filled the yorkshires with mash and then filled all the pasta shells with mash too – strange little girl! 🙄 We all watched Child of Our Time together with various comment and conversation about it. I’ve enjoyed watching that show since it started when I was pregnant with Davies and it’s great to be watching it with him now.

Tonight I’ve been doing some more Tardis goody bag making and started reading And The Skylark Sings With Me in the bath. I borrowed it from work ages ago when I did a subject search for Home Education books and whilst I’m probably coming to David Albert pretty late so far I’m finding it an inspiring and interesting read. I discovered when Mum took me out for dinner last week that Dad is still very much opposed to Home Education, which probably bothers me way more than it should. It’s not that I value his opinion on this topic particularly because I don’t. I think he is being ignorant and arsey by not talking to me about it properly, not learning more about the idea and not having any sound basis for his opinion. I just think it’s a real shame that he doesn’t get what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’m also aware that the older the children get and the more obviously different they start to become as a result of our autonomous style the more I may be called to question over it. Again, I’m not terribly bothered what people think of it as such but I do feel very passionate about what we’re doing and would like to have as much information over and above simply presenting the children as living, breathing, learning examples of why it’s the right way for us to cite at people as evidence. Also it is always a pleasure to read such positive, convinced parents filled with joy and passion about their children and how they approached home education.

Didn’t blog yesterday, partially because I was at work all day and I never have much to say when I’ve been at work, partially because I’d made a start on another blog post which I still have in draft but was planning to post first but mostly because I got paid yesterday so after 10 days of scraping together coppers for bread and milk we were able to buy alcohol again and I got stuck into the wine pretty early so wasn’t capable of coherant typing after about 930pm! 😳

Julie was here with Davies and Scarlett in the morning and my Mum was here in the afternoon. They’d been to the park with Julie but stayed in with Mum – not sure what they all got up to other than that although I know they watched some Doctor Who. Davies had started making a Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory with an old box and some old loo rolls on Thursday night in bed so he’d finished that. I must get some photos of it actually, I was really impressed with it. It’s like a polly pocket playhouse – it all folds out and has various bits on it including the vast gates that swing open to let the golden ticket holders in, the chocolate river complete with waterfall and outside it has the swirly whirly chimneys all made with telescopic loo rolls all torn to shape. It’s ace 🙂 He’s made little figures to go in it of all the main characters and some oompaloompas too. He’s so creative and imaginative, he is able to visualise what he wants to make and work out how to make it happen, he has real vision and is great at making it all come together. 🙂

I had a good day at work, the morning flew by and I was on later lunch so the afternoon went quick too. I spent an hour or so on the enquiry desk which I really enjoy – I helped a woman who was from NZ and wanting to get back home for Christmas but without any internet knowledge and had been to a travel agents and gotten no help at all. She told me I was wonderful 🙂 And I researched and ordered in a load of books and photocopied loads of information for a woman on behalf of her 13 year old daughter who is interested in a career in midwifery or social work, and ordeed some large print sagas by Lesley Pearce for someone among other things. I really like working on the desk, you get a really varied selection of stuff to do (plus I feel quite important sitting behind it 😉 ).

Today has been very productive. Ady and the kids were already out in the garden (Scarlett in her nightie) while I was still getting dressed. The doorbell rang twice which I assumed with one of the children so crossly pulled a nightie on and stomped down the stairs. I hadn’t quite pulled it all the way down before I reached the bottom of the stairs to find David – the Thank You Neighbouur – standing in the hall looking a bit nervous and cooeeing. He looked even more nervous once his eyes had moved back up my body to meet my eyes 😆 I told him everyone was out in the garden and he scurried back out of the house again looking very scared and muttering apologies as he went! And I stomped back upstairs again to get dressed! 😆

Ady did some chicken maintennance and sorted out the coop me and Dad made with the run attached and the freecycle rabbit hutch as a nesting box for them (they are due to start laying in 3 weeks 😯 of course we’re still not 100% sure they are hens, but I guess the first egg will be the proof!) and moved the whole thing onto the concrete. Me and the children finished painting cardboard boxes blue to make a tardis for Davies’ party and I did some white and black detailing on the dried ones. We had lunch and then I grabbed the bull by the horns and began my most ambitious papier mache project yet with a dalek. Not at all sure how it will turn out but I’ve made a good start on it today and will try and get most of it finished this weekend.

Then we headed off to go and collect the ebay tent we won last week – about an hour’s drive away. We’ve not taken it out of the bag yet, will do so on Monday when we plan to pitch it to check it is ok, so now idea what we’ve bought really as yet.

Home again via Tescos and various shops in Chichester to grab some bits for Davies’ birthday. With the exception of one gift we have finished buying which is good, and I’m feeling quite organised for his party too. We also called in to the chicken supply shop for more chicken food and to chat with the man there about what we feed them longterm with things like grit and oyster shell and whether layers mash is better than layers pellets etc. all very interesting to chicken keepers and pretty irrelevant to the rest of the world ;).

Once home we finished what we were doing (me, papier mache-ing, Ady chicken run sorting), fed the children, then all watched X Factor (I still cried once so it can’t all be about hormones, I must just be a sap!) before packing the children off to bed. Tomorrow I’m planning to do more dalek-ing and I think we might be carbooting in the morning too.

Another day, another free event in the Goddard household! 🙂 I think I may have mentioned this before, but as I’m only repeating myself for which I cannot be sued and it gives Chris something to snigger about I’ll do it anyway, but it really is amazing how much free stuff is laid on when you care to cast around and look for it. Working at the library has been a massive source of information for me about what’s happening locally, and not so locally from the Pagham Harbour beach beasties event to the Noisy Kids concert – and a month or so ago I spied a poster about Green Diggers – the children’s wing of the local, council run gardening club so I sent off the application form for Davies and Scarlett and in the post came a kids fork and trowel, some seeds and membership cards and an Usborne gardening book. Last week I got an email from them to say the first Green Diggers event would be held today at a local garden centre.

I was talking to my boss yesterday about how different people view the library service in different ways. Some of our borrowers are full of praise, filled with awe and wonder at this FREE service open to all for borrowing 20 books for three weeks, all the top titles, reservations that you can be emailed or phoned to say are in, very cheap dvds, cds and the unabridged audio books on cassette and cd that you simply can’t buy anywhere else. Other people are aware that in the same way as streetlighting, the police force, state education and refuse collection this is a service that we pay for, in our council tax and whilst all this may be great value for money and it’s a bit odd that more people aren’t making use of these services, we are the consumer of these services rather than a recipient. I sort of sway between the two really – I’ve always been a user of the library service, since childhood – one of the first things I did when we moved to Manchester along with registering with the local gp was to join the local library. But I still think it’s a great service. Bloody hell, I’m almost a socialist! 😆

Anyway, back to today. We did our usual trick of scrambling out of bed with moments to spare to get dressed, fed and out of the house but managed to be bang on time arriving at the garden centre at 930am. It is a garden centre my Mum used to go to lots when we were kids so it brought back all sorts of memories walking across the carpark, as I’ve not been there since I was probably not much older than Davies but it didn’t appear to have changed much. We were ushered into an area with cacti where there were already about 10 children waiting – I guess there were 20 or so children altogether in the end. Odd how most of them were in the 3-5 age range even though the green diggers is for under 12s. I would say with the exception of two older boys Davies and Scarlett were the oldest children there. What a shame that parents of 3 plus children seem to lose them to the education system and become so less involved with them, even in holiday time :(. I’m slightly kicking myself now for not responding more enthusiastically to the friendly approaches of one of the other mothers, but I’m a bit out of practise of making friends with ‘normal’ people 😆 I was also amazed at the couple of parents who dumped and ran, despite the literature being very specific that no childcare would be on offer and parents would need to remain on site at least 2 mothers dropped their children off with a cheery ‘we’ll be looking round the garden centre – see you in a couple of hours’ :shock:.

We started off with all the children being given two terracotta pots (clearly I couldn’t touch them 😉 ) and loads of brand new paintbrushes and lovely acrylic paints to decorate them. Davies took time to plan his first one and did a lovely blue rim with various flowers and plants around the pot including daisies, cacti and so on. He took so long that he was the last one left to complete his second and most of the paint on our table had already been artisically mixed by the small boy sharing it with us, so we came up with the idea of a ‘splodge pot’ with dabs of all sorts of marbled effect paint and then he wrote ‘Davies’ on it with his finger mixing it further – it looked fab and was second prize winner in the competition!. Scarlett did one pot with various blocks of colour and was then taken with the different colours the water on the table kept changing to as brushes were washed out so we made a rainbow pot (I thought of you all as I encouraged it 😉 ) with the whole ‘between red and yellow comes orange, between yellow and blue comes green’ type stuff mixing the colours on the pot as we went.

Splash fm radio (local radio station down here) arrived with a keen young woman and her furry green mic and they homed straight in on Davies. She asked his name, how old he was, complemented him on his pot and then asked how he felt about the end of the school summer holidays, to which he replied that it didn’t matter to him as he didn’t go to school and was home educated! 🙂 I was also interviewed with a soundbite ‘oh I love the end of the school holidays – it’s a real relief! I home educate my two children and we get everywhere back to ourselves again when all the rest of the children go back to school!’. Davies took his first pot off to leave to dry and got chatting to one of the volunteers helping with the event who then came back over to me to tell me what a wonderful child ‘your Davies’ is. She said he was telling her all about his pot, describing in great detail what all the pictures were and what an intelligent and charming boy he is. She said she’d gone to the radio woman to tell her to talk to Davies and sure enough there he was, back with furry mic thrust back in his face, in his element with his hands gesticulating and his face alight with whatever he was talking about (turned out to be home education and his pot when I asked him later.) – was very proud 🙂 🙂 :).

While they painted their second pots and Scarlett and I were discussing colour mixing the photographer turned up and also homed in on Davies asking him about his pot and snapping away as he talked, then he asked if Scarlett was Davies’ sister and asked if she’d like to have photos too – which she did, so they posed for ages in various ways for him. He made sure I’d signed one of the consent forms for their pictures to be used and said it would almost definitely go in the local council colour newsletter next edition (ooh which we hold at the library 🙂 ) and that it would probably be picked up by local press too. They finished painting their second pots and spent ages washing their hands as one of the older boys had worked out he could blow bubbles with the washing up liquid water and they all spent a while doing that. Then the photographer came back over and asked if Davies and Scarlett would please pose some more for him so they went off to a roped off area and had a load more pictures taken 🙂

By this point the rest of the group had already set off on their guided tour of the nursery so we were escorted speedily to join them, catching up as they reached shrubs and were looking at lavendar – which clearly Davies and Scarlett know all about, given it is something they sell from our garden 😉 :lol:. Then we moved onto herbs and the photographer appeared again, snapping them sniffing herbs and naming several (fennel, thyme, mint etc – always amazes me how they pick this knowledge up :shock:). We then walked back to the aquatics department with Davies making me laugh asking about ‘the refreshments’ he’d heard mentioned. I said to him ‘Refreshments!? You really are turning into Milly Molly Mandy!’ which was when another mum turned round and struck up a conversation with me about MMM and the charming words it had put into our children’s vocab. 😆 The fish area was fab with various amazing tropical fish to coo over and then back to the coffee shop for the much promised refreshments. Fruit juice, water, chopped up fruit and chocolate brownies. 🙂

Then it was back to the pots. They had laid out about 12 types of compost in big tubs for the children to feel the difference and really get their hands dirty, they learnt about various types of bulbs and then got to plant up their pots with compost and bulbs to bring home.

Then we had a tour of the cacti while they waited for the local newsteam to arrive so it could be on tomorrows evening news show. Davies and Scarlett were both really interested and by now lots of the children were getting bored or restless so they really stuck out with their asking intelligent questions and showing lots of interest in what was being said. Lots of the cacti there were night flowering and in the wild would be pollenated by bats, and one example by hummingbirds. This amazed me as I had no idea creatures other than bees (and birds by way of eating berries and then the seeds being spread in their poo) pollenated things.

Finally it was time for the prize giving – the local news team had not yet arrived but anyone wanting to appear was welcome to hang around to be on tv – we decided not to bother, thinking that radio and newspaper pictures would be sufficient ;). The first prize for best pot was either a fork or a spade – child sized – donated by the nursery. Although very nice and probably very expensive it wouldn’t have been much use to us here, so with great relief and pleasure Davies collected his second prize for 2nd best boys pot decoration of a worm world 🙂

But in true Bullseye fashion, no one went away empty handed and everyone got given a seed planting kit to bring home along with their two handpainted pots planted up with bulbs. Davies and Scarlett went off to thank the woman from the council who’d organised it all and the manager of the nursery and we headed off with our bagfulls of stuff. An excellent event, hope they organised loads more, it was fab. 🙂

We left the nursery and headed straight to Lucy’s for lunch – and as it turned out a whole afternoon and tea for the children as well. None of the children were on top form – Davies and Scarlett had clearly used up all their wonderfulness for the day in the morning, but they all muddled through for a couple of hours together – all wailing if we simply offered to go home instead of play together :roll:. Lucy and I managed some good chats about dream lifetstyles if we won the lottery though which was nice :).

We came home and Ady had just arrived home to find all the chickens in the front garden – we opened the front door and Punzel made a dash for it and ran clucking round the lounge for a few minutes like, well a headless chicken I guess, before Scarlett grabbed her and evicted her again 😆

they are funny creatures 😆

Then Davies and Scarlett sat on the doorstep and assembled the worm world with layers of soil and sand before going off worm hunting round the garden and finding 8 lucky worms to come and perform a sort of Big Brother style period of time living in Worm World and being observed every day – maybe we should set them tasks to complete and offer them a diary room space to rant 😆

That done, I finally persuaded them in for a much needed bath and then we all listened to an old Doctor Who cd I borrowed from work before it was bed time for them. I’m working all day tomorrow, with Julie here in the morning and my mum in the afternoon so they’re looking forward to a good childcare mix for the day before we all enjoy a long weekend. 🙂

Thanks for all very welcome comments of sympathy, empathy and brackets for yesterday :), you’re all lovely.x

Off to work this morning, so predictably the alarm at 8am woke me before the children which meant a mad dash with them still in pjs mid-breakfast when Lucy and The Rs arrived. We so couldn’t get out of the house to get to school in the morning 😳

It was a really busy morning at work, I like Wednesday mornings, it’s a nice colleague mix and the Childrens Services Librarian for West Sussex was in doing the BWR too, which was good cos I really like her. I got the course details through for my baby rhyme time and childrens story time training in a couple of weeks, after which I’ll start doing storytime on my Thursday shifts which I’m sort of looking forward to. We have to come with our favourite nursery rhyme (need to think of one), a favourite children’s book (need to think back to pre-school age books rather than what I’d read now, probably We’re Going On A Bear Hunt I think) and a teddy or dolly – I imagine that won’t be a problem to select from our house :lol:. I had tea break with my boss which we spent talking about how the library could improve it’s marketing at new adult borrowers which was interesting – definitely an area I’d love to move into working in long term if the opportunity arose, if life pans out that way over the next 5 years or so.

Home to a fairly chaotic couple of hours. Lucy and I really wanted to talk and went to extremes of moving into different rooms but kept being followed by interupting children, and not even interupting for decent reasons, it was like that interupting sheep knock knock joke. I lost my temper and shouted at all of them when they were discovered ritually treading hula hoops into the lounge carpet which finally seemed to buy us 10 minutes for the end of our conversation. Actually Davies has been a bit craving of my personal attention the last week or so and I realised we’ve not had any days without seeing other people really so I’m hoping for a quieter week next week. A drive from home to the PYO farm and back again with me chatting to them both in the car rather than trying to talk to another grown up seemed to almost magically sort him out temporarily so I’m pretty sure that’s what his problem is. It’s just that he tends to show his attention seeking in a clingy way which brings out a very strong urge in me to run away rather than meet his need for lots of cuddles and attention. 😳 I’m a bit crap with neediness.

So Lucy and The Rs left and we headed over to the PYO to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie, who we’ve not seen for a couple of weeks although we’ve caught up a few times on the phone. We rode round on the tractor and picked eating apples, cooking apples and blackberries – planning some Milly Molly Mandy style endeavours for the blackberries and cooking apples – and the eating apples have already had serious tracks made in them – they are lovely picked straight off the tree though :). Having explained that we needed to pick off the tree rather than the ground and that the higher up the tree the more sun the apples would have had and the nicer they would be I was most amused to find both D & S up the trees picking 😆
. We spent so long at the blackberries, with the children finally running up and down and entertaining themselves while Julie and I picked and chatted that we lost track of time and suddenly a landrover appeared with the owner of the farm inside saying that they had closed and all the staff wanted to go home please! Our two cars were the only ones left in the carpark and they’d done a circuit of the farm looking for us, finally finding us in the blackberries. We all piled into his landrover and he took us back to the entrance to pay with all four children munching away on his not paid for yet apples 😳 which just made him laugh! 😆

We parted company and we came home with the children eating yet more apples on the way. They had toast for tea (far too full of their five a day to be wanting proper tea!) and watched Polar Express before having a bath to wash PYO dirt off them, while I got ready to go out with my Mum. Every so often she decides to take me out for a meal – she did about this time last year. This time we went to a chinese restaurant with an eat all you like menu so we chose three starters and six main courses, a bottle of wine and totally troughed out on lovely food 🙂 It was really nice, finished off with a couple of Baileys and door to door dropping me off. Couldn’t ask for more really. Ady enjoyed a night off to eat pie (a dinner I don’t like) and watch Band of Brothers on dvd with the prologic on really loud (I could hear it outside the house :roll:) so everyone was happy.

today 🙁

We all overslept this morning which meant I had to text Mel at the time we were supposed to be pulling up outside their house to say we were running half an hour late. I am *always* late when we meet Mel – she once told me she now plans to arrive at least 10 minutes later than we arrange anyway 😳 but actually although I am often running late it is something I really hate so that put me at a bad start.

We got to Paradise Park really early – just before 10am and it was really quiet. The woman on the desk was really surly, not giving us enough stickers to get in and then looking like it was my fault when I drew her attention to it and asked for another one. Then she didn’t push the button to let us in so we sort of stood around for a few minutes looking like spare pieces. Just odd, but not annoying enough to actually complain about. Also I noticed there was some sort of treasure hunt type thing but there were no forms to take round and fill in and I didn’t like to ask after the other small incidents.

The children were all in a high state of giddiness and being rowdy and noisy in turns with both Davies and Scarlett deciding to be clingy at the same time every so often and wanting to hang off me. I like cuddles, kisses and strokes but I can’t bear just being crowded and clutched at. There was almost constant debate about which way to walk next and lots of jostling for first goes at pushing various buttons all of which I just found really wearing today. I like Mel a lot – I met her a couple of years ago on netmums but I’d really class her as the mum of the kids’ friends rather than my friend. We always manage to chat easily enough in a catching up on certain topics sort of way (my job, her job, her kids school, my kids HE groups, extra curricular activities, her studing, Ady’s studying – all very safe and not particularly personal or ‘interesting’ chatting – the sort I would imagine is done at school gates a lot) and today that wasn’t easy company to be in where I felt I was making an effort – I’d have been better off alone or with someone close I don’t feel the need to say a lot to other than ‘I feel really blah today’. We ended up having a big conversation about how well the children got on as siblings with me saying D&S are really close and play well together pretty much all the time – which they then totally disproved on the way home by both ending up in tears for pulling each others hair :roll:.

Mel bought the children all an ice cream and us tea and coffee in the cafe there which was nice, but then paid for Liam and Lily to go on a mechanical horse ride each, so I couldn’t really not pay for Davies and Scarlett to go on it. Then I gave D&S the choice of the train (at £2 per person or something it would have meant no bread or milk for the rest of the week at home) or a few tokens each in the amusements which are only 20 pence each. Fortunately they chose the tokens so we headed there and I gave them four tokens each, told them that was all I had money for and to spend them wisely. I was really proud of them (unfortunately only briefly 🙁 ) as they were all pleased and grateful spent ages weighing up what they wanted to spend them on, except Scarlett then made a big fuss (her second already since we arrived) about wanting more 🙄 So we went off to find somewhere to eat lunch, which quietened things down a bit, then we went into a small area they’ve set up as a ‘classroom’ with loads of crayons, pictures of kids tv characters to colour in and plain paper to draw on. That was quite peaceful for a while actually (aside from Ady ringing to say he’d be picking us up around 5pm – it was still only about 130pm by then and I’d already had enough really so started to feel really trapped). They all did loads of colouring and then we made some paper aeroplanes and they spent ages trying to fly them through the rafters in the room. Made me think of wet play at school when we weren’t allowed out in the playground when it was raining and everyone used to get a bit stir crazy in the classrooms.

There was a bit of a gap in the rain then and Liam and Lily wanted to play crazy golf (another quid a go per person), fortunately Scarlett didn’t so as I didn’t have any chance Mel paid for Davies (which I didn’t feel too bad about as she had got in for free on our ticket and we picked them up and took them there). It started to pour with rain while they were playing (and I use the term playing loosely – Liam was getting really, really cross with the ball for not doing what he wanted, the club for not hitting it right, everyone else for laughing at him and the people behind for wanting him to hurry up and have his go so they could get their turn, Lily was picking the ball up and putting it wherever she fancied and then hitting it and Davies was scooping the ball along with the club – I’m not very indulgent of children not doing things right at the best of times (aside from slides of course 😉 ) and today I had no patience for it all, in the rain) so Scarlett and I went back inside for a while. I sat squashed inbetween a row of mothers all shrieking at their children (the only time I almost smiled was when the woman next to me hailed her children with ‘Harmony and Nikita!’), which was the point I rang Ady and begged him to come as soon as he could and rescue me before I went back into the ornamental gardens and found some poisonous leaves to ingest.

The others came back in to join us, Liam and Lily complained they were bored, Davies got stroppy that Liam didn’t want to play with him, Scarlett got stroppy that I didn’t have any more money for the amusements. Mel bought loads of tokens and have some to Davies and Scarlett who then kept coming and asking her for more, despite me telling them not to while I sat and watched some grandparents who had brought their two grandsons out try very hard to control themselves from not smacking their frankly horrid oldest grandson – the rage on the grandad’s face was obvious. Finally Ady rang to say he was mere minutes away so we made out way out to the carpark, running the gauntlet of the gift shop as we went (can I have…..? NOOOOOO!), piled into the car and then listened to four children do their full range of ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I’m thirsty’ ‘are we there yet?’ ‘I’m too hot’ ‘I want the window shut’ be generally horrid to each other, tell knock knock jokes with no punchlines, adapt ‘I know an old lady who swallowed a fly’ to include the words ‘bum’ ‘wee’ ‘poo’ and ‘t rex’ with Liam and Lily giving me a constant middle row of seats running commentary on what dreadful things Davies and Scarlett were doing from the back seat with me initially feigning interest to barely bothering to acknowledge them by the end of the journey.

Once we’d dropped them off I bawled out D&S who were then guilt ridden and have spent the hour since we got home trying to cuddle me and apologise when all I actually want everyone to do (Ady included) is fuck off and leave me alone. And we’ve got no milk for a cup of tea. And yes, I might have my period!