One word? When seven would do…

sort of like back to school but without the school bit 😆

We all went to bed early last night and were all up early this morning. I woke before 8am and knowing I had a job list I’d made for myself last night before going to bed I got up and made a start instead of rolling over and going back to sleep. Davies and Scarlett were already up and breakfasting downstairs. I put away loads of washing, chucked all the dirty washing from upstairs down the stairs ready to make piles of laundry ready for processing and then called Davies up to his room for a grand clothes trying on session. I filled a whole basket with outgrown, worn out or garments I have now seen for at least two winters if not three and am sick of the sight of 😆 Although at least two tops (including his orangey jumper with ‘Ecology’ on the front that there are pictures of him wearing at every winter gathering since I met most of you) were nabbed by Scarlett as suitable for her now, she adores wearing his cast off clothes :). Made a mental list of things he still needs to keep him going (pants and socks mostly although if he does grow he’ll need trousers) and brought his Badgers and Beavers tops downstairs ready for sewing on badges.

Once downstairs I put washes on, got the children dressed, phoned and paid the balance for NicCamps and did various other online bits then sewed on the Beaver badges ready for this afternoon. Lucy and The Rs arrived just as I was throwing food for lunch into a bag and Lucy loaded them all into the car. We went to the bank via the petrol station and saw Lucy’s owl from last week and it’s mate which was very exciting. We thought they might be eagle owls and some googling reveals they almost certainly are. My picture isn’t great but viewed large you can clearly see their sillouettes. We’re planning on going tomorrow to look with binoculars and maybe getting in touch with a birdwatching expert to report it. They are huge and such magnificent creatures :). And then on to Magical Mondays.

Magical Mondays started up again last week although we didn’t make it due to a dentist appointment in the middle of day so today was our first day back after the summer break. As it was an open session (recruiting fresh blood 😉 ) Lucy and The Rs came along, having given it a go earlier in the year and deciding they’d like to join. It was really good to be back 🙂 There was clay which Scarlett got stuck straight into although for her I think the appeal was more about the getting wet and clay-y than the art of creation :), Davies joined her a little while later and made a tardis and a figure that he wants to paint when they dry off and harden. They joined in with the running around, inside and out and aside from an incident at the very end where Davies came into contact with someone’s light sabre and received a nasty blow to the side of his neck behind his ear which sent him running back to me in tears 🙁 a good time was had by all. He did recover by the time we said goodbye to everyone and given the tiredness and general overwhelmingness of his weekend I thought he managed today pretty well really. Lucy and The Rs came back for a play but he managed to combat not feeling very sociable by playing with his dalek in his bedroom (he took my camera and made a couple of short films about ‘me and my pet dalek’) and then doing some drawings. Scarlett stayed in the garden mostly playing with the chickens and whichever child happened to be around to join her. She is easily the least needy of all the children, hardly ever needing to come and report wrongdoings (to her specifically or simply generally) and manages to just get on with her life and rub along next to others if they care to join her without being particularly bothered if they don’t. I think she has a great attitude to life like that :), Davies is far more bothered about what other people may or may not be doing, Scarlett really couldn’t care less!

Lucy and The Rs left, Davies and Scarlett tidied up and I cooked their tea which they chose to watch High School Musical The Concert while eating. Scarlett sat there, mouth full, singing along to all the songs, which made me smile. Ady arrived home and Davies and I walked round to Beavers. He quite happily kissed me goodbye and headed off into the bedlam that is Beavers :lol:. Meanwhile Scarlett had a bath until her skin wrinkled and then had her mammoth trying on session with me struggling to persuade her to get rid of clothes that are too small for her. She also needs underwear but is otherwise fine for clothes. Oh and they both need shoes, but that’ll have to wait another couple of weeks until payday – luckily they are still wearing crocs and have wellies that fit so we’re covered for weather possibilities for another fortnight 😆 Ady went to collect Davies who also had a bath and then it was bedtime for them and bath and dinnertime for us. We’ve watched another Torchwood episode and with a full program of owl hunting, first swimming lesson and reading group for me in the evening lined up for tomorrow I suppose I should go to bed soon too.

title shamelessly nicked from one of Merry’s blogposts, but I feel justified in using it 😆

So, another September, another Davies’ birthday party extravaganza with themed baking, custom made goody bags, copious staging decorations and an inappropriate for the purpose of being adult in charge of a child’s birthday party cleavage revealing top. Back in the Goddard Family Party Venue Hall for the fourth time (Halloween 2005, Wallace & Gromit 2006, Princesses 2006), some additional guests, some much missed guests, my Mum and Dad in the corner and more camera flashes going off at critical moments than would make a Hollywood star feel loved.

I think it was the first time we’ve hosted a party and not had house guests the night before, which was slightly weird actually, but probably meant we enjoyed it more due to not being tired from over indulgence and a late night the night before, and over excitement with room fulls of children from early in the morning. It also meant we got everything expertly completed, left the house ready for the onslaught and were at the hall by 11am (hope they don’t check the alarm setting records, we didn’t start paying til 1pm!) sticking literally 100s of posters onto the walls. I think we did a good job for the Halloween party decorations but actually this probably was the best we’d managed to decorate what is essentially a rather tatty, characterless space. We had the Tardis on the stage, the Dalek overseeing the food tables, a K9 (which we’d made that morning and the paint was barely dry on) pinned to the wall and I got to put Chris Ecclestone on the gate and Ady put John Barrowman in the ladies. Win:win :).

Scarlett had given Davies her birthday present to him of a sonic screwdriver early for the party so the children ran around the hall dressed as Rose and The Doctor while ‘Are you my Mummy’ and the Doctor Who theme tune blared out.

Katy and her Weeping Angel were the first arrivals, shortly followed by the Magical Mondays Massive (fresh from their public transport adventures which they were not keen to share with me on the basis I ‘wouldn’t understand’ :shock:) and a steady stream of other guest from around the country. I think everyone was true to form, we had Ros complete with (very generous 🙂 ) gift and cards for Davies and anniversary present for me and Ady, and face paints – Ros definitely worked harder at that party than me 😆 when she wasn’t sitting between my parents looking like their long lost daughter of course 😉 (thanks darling xxx), we had The Babs arriving late complete with classic The Babs anecdote explaining her lateness 😆 Oh and Julie without Chris. Infact there was a distinct lack of Chrises really (should that Chrisi?) given that it’s easily the most common name for fathers of Davies and Scarlett’s friends and relations with just Chris French flying the flag for Price’s, Goddard’s, Raine’s and French’s and therefore earning the title later in the evening of ‘The Only Chris Present’ :lol:.

We ate, I was hassled for party games (we played ‘Don’t Blink’ (musical statues by any other name), pin the tail on the K9 (which happened once I’d made a new tail to replace the mysteriously disappeared one), an over under pass the balloon down the line game and one of Bob’s (surely now infamous) party games which involved holding hands and crawling through each other’s legs. At that point due to a team of 12 winning and about 11 joint winners of pin the tail on the K9 (due to me foolishly afixed said K9 to the wall with staples, one of which was in precisely the point the tail needed to be, so all the participants over 6 won hands down while the little ones were far more in the spirit of ‘comedy pinning’) I ran out of party prizes anyway. A quick straw poll ascertained that it was those children most hassling me for party games who were most likely to strop upon not winning and all of them were interested in the games for the prizes rather than the taking part, coupled with neither of my own children playing any of the party games (why would they want their play directed by a shouty grown up in a tit-flashing top when they could run around pretending to be 5 Doctor Who’s, 3 Rose’s, a Martha and a Cyberman :lol:) meant I didn’t need to bother with my planned themed versions of Duck, duck, goose (Doctor, Doctor, Dalek), Stuck in the mud (‘save me Doctor’) or ‘match your partner’ (split into pairs and find the matching poster to your partners selection). And of course nothing will ever compare to the popcorn game of 2005! 😆

I managed a quiet ten minutes with Davies sitting opening his cards,

(thanks for the photo Liza :))

another quiet ten minutes painting a tardis and a dalek on Scarlett’s cheeks,

Which impressed one of Ros’ list enough to have their face done by me but didn’t ease her workload as much as I’d hoped 😆

The annual lined up against the wall shot was taken – it compares well to last years 🙂
2006

2007

I enjoyed it, but of course the main thing is that Davies enjoyed it. And enjoy it he did 🙂

and this lovely one of Em’s I can’t seem to manage to nick for my own flickrstream ;).

The usual group effort of tidying up was made even speedier by getting the children involved with the promise of taking home to keep any posters they wanted to take off the wall. We waved off about the half the guests and the rest came back to ours. Alison, Lije and Lulah joined us for a couple of hours before heading off and leaving just the 24 of us sleeping here the night to organise fish and chips. Babs was selected for her natural organisational and making things simple skills (oh and the fact she wasn’t sure what fishcakes might be called in a southern seafood emporium) along with Bob (sober so could drive) and we somehow all squished in and managed to pass round salt and vinegar (when Scarlett wasn’t necking the vinegar direct from the bottle – funniest quote of the weekend was Davies rolling his eyes and saying ‘oh Scarlett, she’ll drink anything that looks like wine!’).

During the course of the evening the numbers in the lounge dwindled, the wine levels left in glasses got lower, a stack of books various adults had read aloud to various children grew higher and eventually at around 230 the remaining few went to bed. I have a new favourite baby girl :).

This morning started way too early. Scarlett roused, went downstairs to find Ady and couldn’t so came back upstairs again and got into bed with me. I assumed he’d woken early and whizzed off to a car boot sale so went back to sleep with the children, with Scarlett tsking about the children in Davies’ room next door saying ‘those kids are very noisy!’ (in fairness I think there were 7 of them :lol:) until we started to smell the unmistakable aroma of cat poo so got up and dressed in order to track down it’s location. We came downstairs to find a kitchenful of people and Ady brandishing the Ady machine. He’d gone out to let the cat out around 6am, managed to get locked out and felt it was too early to ring the bell to get someone to let him back in (fool, I’d have been hanging off the doorbell, rattling the letterbox, ringing everyone’s mobiles and throwing stones at the windows. Then again I’d have probably managed to get locked out whilst naked or without contact lense or something so I might have been more desperate to regain entry :lol:). Unfortunately the cat had somehow re-entered the house and shat copiously on the carpet in the hall, treating everyone to a scent rather different from the freshly brewed coffee and nicely warmly croissants we might have hoped to offer guests :(.

We remedied that with coffee and croissants and tea and brioche (thanks Family Fish for all the morning goods, oh and the organic milk ;)), the children burnt themselves out again running around in the garden while the rest of us slowly came to, ate, chatted, read aloud some more (I’m surprised I’ve not composed this blogpost in Seuss-esque couplets, I’ve read that many this last 24 hours :)) and slowly started to trickle away (aside from The Barts who were off at the crack of dawn to listen to loud fast cars 🙂 ) until eventually just The Only Chris Present, Helen and bean offspring were left.

Davies and I wandered to the butcher when we realised we’d not taken any lumps of dead animal out of our freezer for dinner tonight. The butcher was closed so we walked on into Lancing which was nice. He needed some fresh air, exercise, a bit of one to one and a bit of time away from the craziness, then Ady came and picked us up. The Beans left a short while afterwards and we finished making the house back into a home rather than a youth hostel :lol:.

We gave the children some of the leftover fizzy drinks and sweets from goody bags to try and keep them awake as they both wanted to go to bed at about 4pm. It had rather too much of the desired effect in Scarlett who was utterly wired throughout dinner and the repeat of X Factor before crashing and burning at 8pm. Davies wasn’t far behind and I kind of assume they won’t be waking any time too early tomorrow morning either.

It was a great weekend – thank you so much to everyone who came, contributed, supported, attended etc. It was very appreciated by all of us and I’m sure there’ll be another round of thank yous to come when Davies opens presents from people on his birthday on Friday.

I feel pretty much like I did 8 years ago right now; at the end of a crazy few days with lots of great memories and photos to remind of a lovely day. 🙂

It was a Thursday and at 830am local time, which was 430pm UK time I walked down the aisle on my Dad’s arm to become Ady’s wife.

You’ve seen the photos, viewed the video and heard the story many time. Everyone else may well tire of it, but I guess I never will. This morning I sat and looked at our wedding photos with Scarlett (fresh blood ;)) and I’ve just tracked down our entry in the Clark County records online and the verse from Corinthians which was part of the ceremony. For once I think I’ll let someone else do the talking for me and just be happy knowing that everything we promised on that day has been tested and never found lacking, the feelings we expressed for each other have been demonstrated time and again.

Love is patient, and love is kind,
it is not jealous or prideful
love is not rude,
it is not selfish,
it is never angry, it is not happy with evil,
love is not happy with lies, but rejoices in the truth.

Love never gives up,
love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.

Love never fails.

Happy Anniverary Ady, if the above is what love is, then you, to me, are love. xxx

Pretty much :).

I didn’t replicated my slothness slacker-mom performance of yesterday and was up and about well before 8am with children dressed and breakfasted when Julie arrived with, oh, seconds to spare before I left for work. The senior library assistant who runs the library day to day has been on leave this week so it’s been maned by a variety of other senior staff who don’t know the lie of the land so well. Which has meant that I’ve been given loads of extra stuff to just do without really thinking about whether I could do it or not. I’ve been fine actually and really enjoyed it but it was slightly daunting being left between 1 and 2pm on a busy Friday lunchtime with me in charge of the enquiry desk and the Saturday lad on the counter. 😯 All was well though and aside from getting engaged for longer than I’d have liked with a man telling me about his Russian girlfriend / penpal who emails him each day and the email he had the other day asking him to help someone ‘unlock’ their trapped money. You know, the email we get about 4 times every time we check for new mail and goes straight into our spam folder. I’m staggered that there are people who not only read the whole thing but actually sit and consider it for a while as a serious option. Scary.

I had my teabreak with one of the new members of the management team – a librarian. I guess she’s a few years younger than me, she’s done two degrees so isn’t still in her teens and had a good chat with her about why she wanted to be a librarian when she grew up and some of the benefits of Home Education. She was asking about Davies’ guest list for the party and whether he’d only invited boys and I explained not only had he invited girls too he’s guest list included children from 2 up to 10 and adults of all ages, all of whom he is equally excited about attending and she was very enthusiastic about that as a plus of HE – that and allowing children to be themselves. I wouldn’t normally comment as such but it was another example of someone who has no ulterior motive in judging Home Education (like a child of their own for example) being way more open minded to the idea than someone who is put on the defensive by it quetsionning their choices. Not especially relevant to my blog but certainly to me at the moment.

I arrived home at almost the same moment as Ady did, pulling up behind his car as he turned the engine off so the children did a welcoming chorus for ‘Mummy and Daddy’ which was nice :). I got changed and went straight out to the supermarket for last minute bits for tomorrow while Ady fed the children and then they all stayed in the garden while I did some more baking – sausage rolls, rice crispie cakes and decorated the cybermen biscuits. The kids had a bath then went off to bed while Ady and I stuck blue tac on posters, watched Torchwood while agreeing that if Ady were gay John Barrowman would be on his list and that if John Barrowman were straight he’d be on mine 🙂 and ate pizza.

8 years ago today we arrived in Las Vegas for our wedding. We both confessed tonight that we’ve not got cards or anything for each other for our anniversary on Sunday but decided that it being overshadowed by the birthday party of our child is proof enough that things are going just fine :). Back after the weekend!

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.