One word? When seven would do…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they are funny creatures 😆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

today 🙁

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can see most of what we got up to listed below. Washing, baking, chatting and playing. I got pretty much everything I wanted to achieve done and we had Lucy and The Rs over for most of the day too, which meant Lucy and I managed plenty of chatting which was nice. 🙂

We’ve had long standing plans to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily (D&S’s schooled friends) tomorrow at Paradise Park but Mel emailed today to say her car is off the road and could they come with us instead of meeting us there or come over to ours for the day. To save petrol (my car’s been running on fumes since about last Tuesday) Ady had arranged to visit Paradise Park tomorrow and then pick us up again on his way home, so now we’re all going together and will be there at 930am for when Ady’s first meeting is meaning a very long day. Better hope for good weather 🙂

We watched a film tonight from the library – Frequency – which I really enjoyed. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that various choices create various split parallels of outcomes. I know the idea is a fairly tried and tested one but I quite often make choices and then retrospectively think about the crossroads effect an alternative choice could have meant so that and the sufficient levels of pretty things to look at in the film kept me entertained :).

Stuff I really must get done today:

Make some attempt on the laundry mountain – last load in now, all the rest hung out. But it looks like rain so it may well be staying there on the line for the rest of the week!

Some baking – we have no ‘nice’ food in the house and no money for buying anything, a picnic lunch tomorrow will require some cakes or biscuits – made chocolate chip rock cakes and jam tarts – fed some to small children today and plenty left for picnic tomorrow and treats for next couple of days

Sort out final balance for NicCamps and get everyone emailed about it – done!

Another coat of paint on the tardis – done! Looking pretty good now, but will probably need yet another coat

Ring Julie (SIL) Done! Arrangements for childcare, meeting up, birthday gatherings etc. all sorted 🙂

Work out guest list for D’s party – sort of done – about to email all expected guests and ask for confirmation figures

Start planning food and games for D’s party and make a list of what I need to get still have some ideas, need to write them down really so I feel properly organised 🙂

Try and get D to decide what he wants for his birthday – and talk him down if it’s excessive 😉 will talk to him later, but Lucy had the brilliant idea of keeping back any presents people bring to his party for him to open on his actual birthday, which is great as it will mean the first half hour of the party isn’t him opening presents and strewing the place with wrapping paper. Last year him opening all the presents diluted both the party and his actual birthday as it meant he had very little to look forward to once the party was over. And ETA again 🙂 We sat and looked at Argos online as he genuinely does only want Doctor Who stuff for his birthday apparently. I’m actually quite happy with this idea as it means not too much stuff coming into the house, quite specifically for him rather than just to be added to the toy mountain and stuff that will actually get played with rather than shoved in a cupboard. We looked at various things available and he compiled his wish list, explained about the idea of opening any presents given to him at his party on his actual birthday which he liked the idea of too and am generally feeling better that his birthday is on the way to being organised 🙂 Hurrah!

Email some local HE folk to see if any of them want to join the scrapstore sent email to local group yahoo list

Depending how well I get on with that I need to gather together the many things that need ebaying and make a start on that. I’ve a feeling September is going to be a very tight month money-wise (we’re already a party, presents and a tent over our budget :shock:) so if I could bring in a few extra quid it might mean we will still be able to eat after the 15th of the month! 😆

We were all up early this morning as we were off to London. A while back a leaflet had come through the door with the free paper advertising the Pops in the Park concerts from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Crystal Palace Bowl. One of the advertised events was a free Noisy Kids concert so once we knew we couldn’t make Jan and Jonathan’s this weekend I phoned up for tickets – day out in London, to see an amazing orchestra and totally within our budget :).

It was advertised that there would be 2000 free parking spaces on a first come first served basis so although the dreadful weather was likely to put lots of people off we decided to get an early start and were on the road by 9am. It was a really easy run up there, we found it pretty easily despite not having a full postcode to stick into the satnav, drove straight into a parking space and joined the small crowd making their way to the event. We’d taken camping chairs, waterproofs, umbrellas and a picnic and as one of the first families to arrive set ourselves up right infront of the barrier with umbrellas propped on our chairs keeping us dry and cosy. The weather really was crap and meant numbers were in the 100s rather than the 1000s I’m sure would have turned out on a sunny day, which was a shame because it was a fab venue and a very interactive concert which greater numbers would only have helped the atmosphere of. The RPO were on a stage with a big lily pond infront between the grass and the stage. We could easily spot a harp, violins, cellos (‘so that’s what they mean in HighSchoolMusical’ :lol:), double bass, trumpets, trombones, french horn so even though we were sitting for a good half an hour before it started there was plenty to look at and chat about. It rained on and off throughout but that was fine, we had our umbrellas – Ady lent one of them to a family sitting behind us who had nothing to shelter them from the weather and we were fine squished under two massive golf umbrellas.

The presenter was excellent – really talked to the audience, had the musicians dressing up in funny props and chose five children from the audience to come up on the stage, gave them a baton each, draped them in the conductors tail coat and had them each conduct an instrument to create a new intro to the Harry Potter music. I thought Davies might have wanted to do that but he sat really low in his chair when they were asking for volunteers :lol:. They played the William Tell Overture (which made me teary – bloody hormones :lol:), Festival March from Aladdin, Ride of the Valkyries, Firebird finale, Harry Potter theme, Simpsons theme and finished off with Superman theme. The audience joined in with a song he taught us, loads of movements, clapping, ooohing and so on and all the instruments were introduced and singled out. Davies and Scarlett really enjoyed it and I thought it was excellent :). A really good event.

It had finally stopped raining so we dropped the chairs, umbrellas and picnic stuff back to the car and had a walk round Crystal Palace Park. Looking at the website we only managed to see a small area of what there was there actually as we found The Maze and then spent a mad half hour trying to get the craziest self timer shots, with cameras set up front and back and us running towards the camera in a quiet tree filled corner. Having completely worn out Davies and Scarlett who were still not recovered from our mad week we then headed for home.

Ady cooked dinner while the children settled down to watch a film and I painted some big cardboard boxes with a first coat of blue paint. Ady’s bringing me some more home tomorrow so I can fashion a tardis for Davies’ party. Having already picked up some cheap party bag bits I was trying to decide the most original idea for the bags themselves and managed to make up some little tardis boxes. I need some more blue paper though – and to tot up the actual expected guests – so I can work out how many more I need to make. Davies came and did some drawing too, doing an excellent picture of a flying rooster, a hen sitting in her henhouse watching a special chicken tv while laying and an invention to get the eggs to the house without having to go out to the henhouse if it’s raining, all powered by water mill. We’ve all been talking lots lately about different life styles and all seem to be hankering after a similar type of set up. We need to see quite where the latest venture at Ady’s work takes him before making any rash decisions but we said we’d give our current financial situation 2 years which we are rapidly approaching and whilst it has in many ways proved much easier than we feared it is also a sort of half life between our old way of living with all the downsides of that, and a more frugal and simple existance without any of the real joys of that lifestyle. No idea really what will happen in the coming year or so, but I can definitely say we won’t still be sat here doing the same thing as we are now this time next year.

The children had a bath and then we all had dinner – roast beef. Child of Our Time was on and so Davies (and Scarlett although she wasn’t paying much attention) got to watch it for the first time. Ady and I started watching it just as we were expecting Davies and although the children on it are a fair few months older than him it has been very interesting watching them grow up alongside him and the different parallels those children and Davies have gone down as they’ve gotten older. I thought last year that we were mostly closely equated to the farmers in our parenting style and thought that even more this year with their very hands off relaxed approach to child rearing, with plenty of scope for their daughter to take on responsibility but no pressure from them. She seems to be rising to the challenge of that expectation very well and I again thought that Davies is probably most similar to that child in terms of his attitude too. Interesting to see her pop to the local shop on errands just as we are starting to let Davies do compared to the children who seemed so much younger and immature in comparison. Interesting programme that – I think so every year.

Tomorrow I have various bits I need to get done, emails to answer, phonecalls to return and more party planning to be getting on with. Hopefully we’ll catch up with Lucy and The Rs at some point and then the rest of the week is spoken for again already with various meet ups with friends and working. Ady’s been spending some time watching shopping channels which amused me, no doubt picking up tips for selling and getting an orange tan, manicured nails and a fine line in meaningless drivel to fill time 😆 I can’t help fretting he may morph into that bloke Bridget Jones’ mum ran off with if I don’t keep a handle on him ;).

I was woken this morning at 6am by Scarlett yelling. I did manage to persuade her to get into my bed and snuggle back up to sleep but she’d already woken Davies too so by the time I’d gone and fed the cat who was making a big fuss once she’d realised there were humans awake they were both in my bed. I did sort of doze off back to sleep but they both kept talking to me so it didn’t seem long before the alarm went off for me to get up and I felt really tired all day.

Dad came to look after the children while I headed off to work. It was a really quiet day which stretched even longer as I had an early lunch break and would really rather have been somewhere else today – we were really sad not to have made the Off The Path gathering but I couldn’t get the day off work due to two other staff already being off and Ady ended up at QVC last night and this morning anyway. He had a great time, really enjoyed it, liked the buzz of the place and is very upbeat about the whole thing, so that’s good :).

Ady only beat me home by about half an hour so tonight has been lots of tidying up, getting tired children to bed (although Davies crept back downstairs for one last cuddle and saw the X Factor was on so stayed down to watch it), having dinner and baths and watching a mad programme on Challenge TV. I cried at least three times at X Factor – I’m such a sucker for the lifetime struggle to be stood infront of Simon Cowell sob stories. And now, because we have a busy day tomorrow and because I am still really wiped out from a busy week I’m off to bed.

Yesterday Ady and I were both back to work. My day was pretty manic, with the morning being extremely busy. We do Storytime on Thursday mornings every week for under fives, with it extended to pretty much all ages but mostly suitable for youngsters during school holidays. It tends to get quieter normally though with lots of people on holiday or otherwise busy, but yesterday as part of the Big Wild Read we had Zoolab to take over storytime with a tale about Speedy The Snail with a real live African land snail to help the story along. Oh and a toad, a rat, hissing cockroaches, a small snake and a couple of tarantulas! And it was packed with children! The adults all had to come out of the children’s library and stand outside to watch. Meanwhile the library itself was busy anyway, loads of the children combined a BWR visit with coming to storytime and we had several Important People from the library service along to attend the event too. I didn’t get involved in any of that (thankfully – it all looked pretty full on and whilst I don’t mind any of the creatures on show I wasn’t exactly desperate to meet them either ;)). The afternoon was a bit quieter but it still felt very much like I’d done a full days work by the time I got home.

Lucy and The Rs had been here in the morning and Frazer in the afternoon – which meant the children had been taken to the shop for chocolate and had him pandering to their every whim – he is a very indulgent uncle :). Frazer left, I tidied up and got some pizza dough going and then Em, Eve and Rei arrived. 🙂

The children were rowdy and crazy in the garden for a while, then came indoors and were rowdy and crazy in the house for a bit. Ady came home and we settled the children down with Aristocats and a variety of pizza based foods. Ady sorted Davies’ bedroom ready for a sleepover and did stirling work reading bedtime stories while Em and I sorted food for us and drank wine and chatted. 🙂 After a typically late Goddard hospitality dinner, a move for Eve back downstairs into Scarlett’s bedroom and more chatting and wine drinking the last child (Davies) finally fell asleep about 1130pm, followed by Ady and Em and I sat up til about 2am. Em headed off to bed and I sat for another half an hour or so before going to bed myself.

This morning was a predictably slowish start with tired children. They created a ‘lifeboat’ with all the sofa cushions on the floor and had a game with plenty of sealife creatures, followed by some dancing by Rei wearing a new and very pretty and suitable for flouncing dancing flowery dress :), Davies and Scarlett ate their way through half a packet of weetabix and then the children dug all the sea creatures out of the toy animal box and made an ocean of the lounge floor complete with ‘Scorpion Land’ :lol:. Everyone finally got dressed, I hung some washing out, the children went out to play in the garden, Em tidied up the ocean floor and we all headed round to Lucy’s.

We had a nice couple of hours round there given the amount of children and the amount of sleep they’d had 🙂 with Em heading off to deliver Eve and Rei to Weymouth and us staying for an hour or so afterwards to properly catch up after our holiday with Lucy. Ady was home for the afternoon as he’s headed off to QVC this evening to dress his first set for a 1am show, followed by another one tomorrow lunchtime before coming home – so he has a very expensive hotel room booked which I doubt he’ll actually spend much time in tonight, so we came home to spend a couple of hours with him before he headed off. Davies and Scarlett played low key games with betty spaghetti and geomags while I googled for Doctor Who party game ideas as it’s suddenly dawned on me that Davies’s party is only 3 weeks tomorrow and aside from booking the hall and buying a few bits for party bags I’ve not done anything about it. I’ve also realised we have a NicCamps type situation with more families staying here than we have rooms but having read about precise numbers I think we can squish everyone in 🙂 and as I’m working the whole day the day before I need to make sure I don’t leave too much last minute stuff to do.

D&S have just finished watching The Magic Roundabout (the movie – the bits I was aware of looked every bit as random and loony as I remember the cartoon being :lol:) so are being packed off to bed early while I have pasta for tea, drink the last of Em’s pink wine and have an early night myself. Another whole day at work tomorrow followed by a day up in London on Sunday lie ahead so no time for slobbing on the horizon for a while yet!

My very drawn out holiday blog – I started it when we got back last night but have only managed to finish it tonight so it now included today as well. It’s good to be back and it was a lovely break :).

We’re back a night early from the first holiday we’ve had just the four of us in several years. It had initially started as a holiday for several of us, at a different location, but ended up just being us and actually was rather nice that way. It took a bit of shaking down, with quite specifically a few fall outs between Scarlett and I – I think things have been sliding between us for a couple of weeks now with me failing to react in the positive and calming way I mastered earlier this year to much success. After a particularly unpleasant episode on Friday, followed by a big meltdown on the beach on Saturday (Very Public Parenting – yuck!) we had a Big Chat on Sunday and things have been fine ever since with her really trying to modify her behaviour and me really trying to modify my reactions – feels better already, although of course I anticipate it always being a work in progress…

It also takes a while to adjust to the changed dynamic of having all four of us together, both parents around full time and all of us getting used to new surroundings. We are still fairly virginial in the whole camping and outdoorsy stakes and we’d gone away with a budget of £100 for the week meaning food and entertainment were pretty frugal pursuits, so that posed an added challenge. I won’t lie and say the week was all sweetness and light and without it’s tense moments, but we did by far outweigh the sticky bits with lots of great times and as it is the first ‘holiday’ with the big label of ‘holiday’ hanging over itself rather than ‘home ed camp’ since we severely readjusted our financial situation it was pretty much a success I would say. 🙂 We all came home today having agreed we’d enjoyed it and looking back at pictures it was certainly filled with loads of good trips and adventures. In all, we had a lovely time but I didn’t want to skim over the bits which were slightly more trying in favour of a rosy picture.

Thursday We got away dead on time at 10am and the route finder anticipated us arriving at midday (it is only just over 100 miles so 2 hours is about right) which sounded perfect for going and finding some lunch before heading to the campsite. Unfortunately we hit traffic at Chichester and then again about 15 miles from Swanage so it was more like 1.30pm by the time we actually arrived. The campsite was through a rather rough looking area which had us both silently with sinking hearts (I’d booked it online with no real idea of what it would be like and it was very cheap so I sort of feared the worst) but the woman who booked us in was really friendly – all the camp wardens were sitting on a bench together outside the office and all looked really outdoorsy types – full of enthusiasm, showed me an aerial view picture of the whole site and explained we’d paid to camp at the bottom of the hill near all the facilities (showers, loos, chemical loo point, launderette, kids playpark etc.) but if we wanted to we were welcome to drive to the very top where the views were amazing. We thought we’d drive around and explore the site and then decide, but once we reached the top and saw the views we decided straightaway to pitch at the top of the hill. It would have been slightly cheaper (and at £90 for six nights I thought it was pretty cheap already) to have booked for there as it was away from the facilities but as we have the portapotty anyway and passed the washing up area and showers on our way out of the campsite every day it was fine to be a bit further away from them. The Crap Tent went up pretty well, although we still didn’t manage to pitch it totally square, unlike Chris and Alison’s Eurohike which we’ve got on long-term loan (;)) and seems to almost pitch itself despite our lack of experience the Crap Tent seems to need a protractor and set square and someone with a maths degree to work out the angles for us, and of course as soon as you put the inner pods in it pulls it all out of shape again anyway. We got pretty much set up and then headed back down the hill to Swanage to have an explore around.

We had bakery sausage rolls for lunch, eaten sitting on the beach, perched on the only few square centermentres of sand which didn’t have people cooking themselves squashed onto it. I guess living with a beach at the end of our road sort of spoils me for wanting to join the masses, and as I don’t really ‘do’ sunbathing or flaunting myself in swimwear sitting on a crowded bit of sand while overdressed and feeling my skin fry is so not my idea of fun. I do adore the beach and the sea, but actually I think I like it most of all during the winter when it is all windy and rainy, with just the odd person about and you just get contrasts of grey rather than blue. It is a lovely beach, just made massively less attractive for me by it’s likeness to one of those ‘saucy’ seaside postcards filled with windbreaks, people with knotted hankies on their heads and way too many giddy with excitement crazily barking at everyone dogs. Yes I was having a moment :blush:

We got a windbreak and had a play in the park. Now despite my documented dislike of parks this was quite a good one with an excellent swing with a full seat including back, moulded with straps so children could *really* swing and a massive seesaw with room for about 4 people on each side. So even I had a go on the seesaw. Then we gathered supplies from the CoOp and headed back to the campsite to finish setting up camp and have tea. We gathered lots of brochures and leaflets about things to do nearby and the campsite had given me a magazine aimed at tourists to the area too, but actually I wish we’d done a little more advance research on what there was to do as I’m sure we missed things and could have been slightly better planned. Curry for dinner eaten looking out over the sea, watching the sun set and finally the stars come out, people watching the rest of the campers (only a handful that first night) and congratulating ourselves on our luck at such a good campsite based on pure fluke!

Friday I’m not sure if we had a plan in mind or not but we drove past Corfe Castle
which only a few miles from Swanage and visible from our campsite, so parked up and walked up the steep hill to the castle. It is a National Trust property and cost £13 to go in, so deciding that at best it would probably only make for a few nice pictures and half an hour of engaging the children we passed on that and had a look round Corfe instead. Having come home and seen prices for joining the National Trust online though we’ll join up next month as free entry into the various places just local to where we were staying would have made for a good week and I think there are plenty of other places locally we could visit too. There was a shop dedicated to Enid Blyton’s works in the village called Ginger Pop (which I can find a link for but it keeps crashing my firefox so I won’t put here :roll:) with a Wishing Chair and loads of Enid Blyton books, toys and other bits inside – all very expensive and touristy but nice 🙂 Apparently Corfe Castle was the inspiration for Kirrin Castle in the Famous Five and the railway station from Swanage to Corfe, between which runs a steam train was the one Anne, Dick and Julian arrived at when first they met George and Timmy. There was a small museum (one room with two open doors to walk through) with lots of bits and pieces on the history of Corfe including some policemens truncheons, helmets and stocks so we looked at that before getting cakes from a bakers and taking them to the station to sit and eat them while watching steam trains puff in and out. There was a small railway museum too with various relics from trains and stations so we looked at that and weighed ourselves on the platform scales to see what a family of Goddards weigh :). Then we walked back to the car over the hill again. Corfe castle is very high up on a very steep hill which would have made it a bugger to invade, Davies and I scaled it while Ady and Scarlett stayed below. Climbing up was alright, if slightly daunting, but all the time I was aware we’d need to obey gravity and be coming back down again. Ady stood, camera ready while we descended but I managed to remain on my feet (knees very bent!) and Davies – who does not have to worry about grass stains on the bottom of his shorts – slid down on his bum! We also had a look in a lovely church while we were there -we like churches :).

We left there and had something of a hiatus about what to do next. I’d been insisting I wanted to find a ‘proper’ supermarket to get value tins of food to stretch our meagre budget so Ady had found a Tesco on his sat nav which we started to drive to with the children making a fuss about wanting to go to the beach, me getting cross because I didn’t want to go back to Swanage beach (due to it being full of people and quite specifically people who sit on crowded beaches 😉 ) and ‘we have a beach at home and didn’t come all this way on holiday to sit on a different strip of the same beach!’. So we turned back and went to Lulworth Cove which looked lovely in the guidebooks but cost £2.50 to park at, which was way too much of our budget when I was already in a bad mood so we pulled away from there too. Scarlett and I then had a major falling out about her putting her seatbelt on, which is best with a triple line drawn under it but I think shocked both of us with the strength of my temper 😯 😳 After all that we ended up back in Swanage, found a free parking space and walked to the opposite end of the beach to the crowds. I did some sand sculpting which Ady and the kids were most complimentary about until we saw a life size sculpture of a figure lying down which was so excellent it almost looked real and made mine look very amateur. Scarlett did some drawing in the sand which was very good too. Davies redefined ‘paddling’ into going out to the depth of his neck which meant me getting him to take his shorts off and go in in pants and T shirt was a bit pointless :lol:. We walked all the way along the bay in the sea and then all the way back again alongside the rocks looking for fossils. We found some steps up from the beach a short way before we’d come down so walked up them and found ourselves on top of a cliff which led to the roads and eventually back to the car, by way of a sweet shop to spend 20p which Scarlett had found on the beach. Then back to the campsite for dinner. The site really started to fill up ready for the weekend with loads of people arriving and plenty of people watching potential including one very entertaining argument about someone pitching and then parking their car too close to someone else’s tent and ‘ruining their view’ 😆 I sat and mostly read my book.

Saturday We spent a very nice morning lazing about the campsite – I read most of a book and indulged in loads more people watching and tea drinking. Chris and Alison were coming to visit but their journey took way longer than expected, so although the lesser time spent with them was a shame it was nice to have nothing to be doing. Ady even took Davies and Scarlett down to the little park on the campsite which meant I had total peace, aside from twitters ;). They arrived, we spent ages more lounging around and chatting before heading down to the beach for an hour or so, via the shops to stock up on barbecue food, before coming back up to the campsite for a barbecue. They stayed until it got dark – and a bit later before heading off for yet another epic journey home, meaning they spent more time on the road there and back than they did with us, so thanks, for coming, for the horrid journey, for the company and of course for all the food 🙂 😉 xx. We dragged Davies and Scarlett away from the posse of small children roaming the campsite in the dark with torches and put them to bed.

Sunday We decided to head along the coast towards Weymouth and see if we could spot any car boot sales along the way. I spent my first mini break away from home in Weymouth, staying with my then boyfriend and his family, so the town has many memories for me (from, gulp 15 years ago!). I was telling the children about it (not all about it, obviously, Weymouth was after all the scene of my infamous vomit inside my jeans adventure!) and how my ancient Ford Escort had to make the journey along the coast in installments cos it kept running out of water in the battery. Odd to stand on a bridge I’d stood on drunkenly exchanged promises to love each other forever with someone some 15 years later with my children by someone else! 😆 We had chips for lunch and having seen some lads crabbing over the side of the marina wall and doing pretty well we bought the kids a crabbing line each from the pound shop, but having no bait were unsuccessful in catching anything.

We decided to head across onto Portland for a look round, it being somewhere we’d never been before but knew of. I had in my head it was a complete island with no road access for some reason which it isn’t so we drove across the road with beach on both side and up to the viewing areas for amazing views of Chesil Beach. We’d spotted a boat in Weymouth harbour with the name ‘Davies’ on it and there was a war memorial at the viewing point with another ‘Davies’ on it, so we talked a bit about war and memorials. Ady and I also talked a bit about just how beautiful England is. I know the sun was shining which always makes things pretty but we are quite used to sea and hills where we live and often acknowlegde how lovely Sussex is but Dorset is particularly lovely I think.

We drove along to Portland Bill lighthouse and parked with the intention of getting some photos from outside but it was only £6.50 for a family ticket to go up inside so we did it. There is a museum / tourist centre in the base with various interactive bits and then you go up the stairs to the very top. The children did really well given it is quite head swimmy going up steep spiral staircases (Scarlett was only just tall enough to be allowed in to climb it) and then the final 19 steps from the viewing platform up to where the actual light is are ladder style. That done and photos taken we all had to climb back down again! 😆

We came down and found the amazing rocks to clamber on. Now Davies and Scarlett are rock clamberers extrodinaires so they wasted no time at all in scrambling about on them. There is an amazing rock at the end called Pulpit Rock which actually has hand and foot holds so you can climb it (which people do and then jump into the sea afterwards). I think Davies and I might have had a go if we’d not been wearing crocs and if the way down – jumping into the sea or back the way we came – hadn’t been so daunting. We amused ourselves by dangling our legs off the side, laying down close to the edge and leaping over the big gaps between rocks with waves crashing below though, so still felt quite brave :).

We then had a very entertaining half an hour where we tried to get some self timer shots of us with the lighthouse in the background. Entertaining because the place was swarming with (mainly foreign) tourists who saw Ady taking off a shoe to wedge the camera in the right place, or balance it on rocks, or leave it in the middle of the grass and run back to us and kept offering to take the photo for us. Which we sort of couldn’t help but smile gratefully and accept really. Except not only did that mean it wasn’t a genuine self timer, it also meant that in every single one of the taken by someone else shots (and I think there were about 5) they’d managed to chop the top of the lighthouse off. So we have a selection of nice shots of us with half a lighthouse and less good ones of us with Ady swiftly leapt in at the last second but with the lighthouse in shot!

We picked up a leaflet while we were there about Marine Week happening currently including various events such as glass bottomed boat rides from Fleet lagoon, which looked fab and very reasonably priced. Somehow I completely missed the bit saying booking was essential, so we planned to do that the next day and headed back off to the campsite hoping for a good nights’ percy thingys spotting. The weather which had been clear all the time to that point and stayed clear while all the stars came out suddenly clouded over at 1030pm with the visible stars shrinking from a panoramic sky view to the tiniest patch, to nothing pretty much at about 11pm when it was all due to start happening. We gave it ten minutes or so to clear up before rain set in and we gave up and went to bed.

MondayWe all slept in in the morning and showers followed by washing up the previous nights dinner made for a slow start to the day. We headed back to Whke Regis for the glass bottomed boat, picking up stuff for a picnic lunch at Asda on the way. We located the jetty where the boat left from and sat nearby picnicking and then spent some time watching people crabbing using bacon in a washing powder tablet bag on the end of a line. This was the method we’d been told was successful at Pagham Harbour last weekend and sure enough they were pulling two or three large crabs out every few minutes. The boat pulled in with the previous tour all getting off and saying how wonderful it had been. The fisherman running it (who looked just like Captain Birdseye!) asked if we’d booked and when we said we hadn’t radioed to the booking office to discover it was fully booked for all the rides that day :(. They were not expecting to run on Tuesday due to the bad weather forecast and we were coming home on Wednesday so that was that – no glass bottomed boat ride. 🙁 I was the mostb upset I think, it had looked so good, although having peeked at the boat to see that yes, it really did have a glass bottom panel the children were very keen too so I’ll have to see if it is something that we can do locally at home.

We stayed and watched the crabbing for a while before deciding to go back to Lulworth Cove again and see what it was like there. This time someone kindly gave us their carpark ticket as they were leaving with over an hour left on it, so we walked round the museum centre and then down to the cove. It was very pretty and we watched a crab being dressed in one of the little shacks selling freshly caught fish, paddled in the rock pools and found some tiny crabs and a teeny tiny octopus like creature before deciding we had budget left over from not doing the boat ride to spend on ice creams. We found a shop selling fantastic Dorset ice cream and as the sauce machine wasn’t working properly she gave us the flakes for nothing 🙂

The children are still at the stage of ice cream eating where they need an adult on hand to keep licking it into shape for them so Ady took on that role while I had a whole one to myself. 🙂 It almost made up for the boat ride.

Back at the campsite the rain suddenly set in while Ady was cooking the kids’ tea. We battened down as best we could, took our tea in the tent too and sat reading Milly Molly Mandy stories until the children went to sleep, then chatting for a while longer before trying to sleep through as much of the howling wind and lashing rain as we could. We suspected the tent would not hold up well to the weather and had evacuation plans in place ready should the worst happen but we did manage to make it through the night.

Tuesday In the morning though it was apparent that all three bedroom pods had leaked and bedding had started to get soggy in places. The tent, which had already got a few tears in points of tension was showing distinct signs of not being able to take much more so we put towels around the outsides, stuck marquee poles in to keep the outer off the inners and planned that if the weather didn’t dramatically improve through the day and dry out then we’d pack up for home that night rather than the following morning. We had a speedy breakfast and headed off down into Swanage to find a free parking space as close to the bus station as possible. Donning waterproofs and wellies we ran back to the bus station to catch the first bus to Poole. For £14 we got a family explorer ticket which was unlimited travel for the day on Wilts and Dorset busses. Some were open topped, although the one we got on wasn’t, but it was double decker so we sat at the top and watched the countryside go by as we drove through Dorset, over the chain ferry and towards Poole and Bournemouth. We pulled up behind an open topped bus just outside Poole so leapt off our bus and onto that one and sat at the front on the top getting blustered about in the wind and rain. Ady and Scarlett decamped downstairs but Davies and I lasted it out, laughing the whole way. 😆

We stopped at Poole and got off to find some food and tea and coffee as we’d run out of milk and water at the tent so hadn’t had a caffiene fix yet. More bakery goods and hot drinks later we headed back to the bus depot to find our bus had just left and the next wasn’t due for another hour. The depot was at the back of a large shopping mall which we’d walked through to find the bakers and found ourselves feeling like country bumpkins in. Not only were we camping, which always gives you a slightly ‘simple life’ look and feel, it’s also been a while since we frequented shopping malls really. For once I wasn’t filled with a sense of longing for plastic to go and thrash in the all the shops, I was filled with almost relief that I don’t feel the need to do that anymore and a slight panic and the frantic-ness of the atmosphere, which used to excite me and encourage me to spend but now makes me feel out of control and likely to do something silly – like an alcoholic in a pub or a gambler in a betting shop I guess – I know the high of spending could so easily be submitted to again but I also know the price of it – on all levels and it’s nice to feel I can walk away without longing for it and head back to my tent! 😆

So, not wanting to spend an hour back in the shops we caught a bus back to Swanage by a different route past the castle rather than on the ferry. This was a regular bus, with steamed up windows you couldn’t see out of, miserable people not talking to each other and tutting at the childrens’ laughter and chatter and that depressing feeling that public transport can sometimes give you. It is that aspect of busses and trains that makes me long for my car, with the music on, the ability to choose my own route and not worry about how many traces of bodily fluids a swab test might find on the seats. I apologise now to all green minded bus users but I spent the journey wanting to retreat into my coat and glare at anyone wanting to sit within three chairs of me :lol:.

We got off at Swanage and had 45 minutes before the next open topped bus went off and headed for Bournemouth so we went to the little museum and heritage centre in Swanage for a look round. I wish we’d been before actually as it was pretty good with various interactive bits for the children to do and we could have spent more time there. We came out and looked at the sea for a while – a distinct contrast to the same beach two days previously with an odd double wave thing going on where the water hit the sides of the walls containing it and bounced back into the breaking waves on the beach.

Then we dashed back to the bus station and got the bus to Bournemouth. Another place I’ve never been to before and as it was raining with blasts of sea spray coming at you down on the front we ended up having a quick half hour wander before getting back to the next bus back to Swanage again. We did find a really cool surf board attached to the wall to pose for pictures on though – we’d have all had a go but a gaggle of students appeared and neither Ady or I wanted to do it infront of them 😳

One stop in on the way back to Swanage we were joined on the top deck by a woman who wanted to share her whole life story with us. Ady and the children ventured to the back of the bus but I stayed to chat with her as she was quite interesting and obviously lonely. There is something rollercoaster-like and thrilling about open topped busses normally, let alone when it’s windy and raining, so the ride home was good fun, especially the ferry.

We got back to the campsite, the children changed into pjs and got into the car to watch a film while Ady and I packed up. The Crap Tent was a real casualty of being unpitched in the wind and got further damaged, Ady and I got drenched in near torrential rain but we’d stashed dry clothes ready in the car so as soon as we’d packed up we drove to the shower block and got changed before starting out for home. We stopped at the chip shop to get food on the way and got home about 930pm which was at least half an hour earlier than I’d dare hope for so that was good. 🙂 The cat was utterly delighted to see us and sat purring, on my feet for about 5 hours. The children got changed into pjs they hadn’t been camping in all week and I read them another Milly Molly Mandy story before packing them off to bed and then relaxing in a very deep, very hot bath. It was a shame it ended in the wet but having spent the whole week at Kessingland in similar conditions it was fine to tolerate it for the last hour.

Today We spent the morning being very lazy, unpacking the car, sorting the washing out and not a lot else before having lunch. It rained all morning but cleared up at lunchtime so I was able to get a couple of loads of washing out before we left to go to the bank. I’d found some washing powder bags in the cupboard so set up the kids’ crabbing lines with bacon in bags and we drove to a little place just near the point that the River Adur joins the sea to do some crabbing. Davies and I pulled about 5 out of the water but with nothing to put them in we couldn’t get a proper look at them before they scuttled off back into the sea so I nipped home to get a bucket. By the time I got back the tide had gone out, reducing our water to a sandy muddy bank so we drove round to a different bit of beach but decided it wasn’t the right venue either. We collected some pretty shells washed up along the beach and then popped over to see my Dad and brother for an hour.

Three good things have happened today – I had a message to ring work and phoned to find out that my least favourite colleague has handed her notice in for the end of September. She works Saturday mornings when I work Saturday afternoons and they wondered if I’d like to change to mornings once she’s left – well yes! 🙂 This means even the Saturdays I do work I will be finished by 1pm so it won’t ruin the whole weekend – so hurrah for that :). Secondly I got a rabbit hutch off freecycle. The chickens are all tucked up in it tonight although I’m slightly concerned its a bit small. I know they would have about a 50th of the space each if they were battery hens and it is only at night as they free range during the day but at the very least it will be wood to use and a design blueprint for a bigger scale version if it’s not suitable. And finally having idly bidded on a tent on ebay because it was an Outwell which we like, and cheap, and the right size, and collection only (but only down the road really) we won it – for nearly a tenner less than my highest bid :). Have arranged to go and collect it next weekend. It looks to be around the same size as the Crap Tent – which is idea, we were happy with the dimensions of the Crap Tent, just not it’s weatherproofness or ability to pitch so hopefully this will be the tent for us. No idea if we’ll manage to use it this year as all our weekends seem to have filled up again but fingers crossed we’ve got something that will work for us this time.

And that’s it, I think I’m up to date. Back off to work tomorrow and Lovely Em is here tomorrow night so I expect I’ll be playing catch up again later in the week. It’s been good to have the break, we’ve done lots of chatting about where life might take us next and lots of planning maybes for the future, but at least, unlike Kessingland we really do feel like we’ve had a break this time, I feel refreshed and ready to get on with things again. 🙂

So what a happy coincidence that we’re off on one tomorrow :).

I worked this morning and it was really busy. Wednesday’s often are actually as the library is only open 930am-1pm – most of Lancing still closes on Wednesday afternoons as used to be the case in lots of towns I think. So we have to pack all the normal days stuff into four hours (staff start at 9am although the library doesn’t open til 930) like unpacking the days delivery, processing anything on it and packing up stuff ready for collection tomorrow to go to other libraries. It’s the one shift I work where noone seems excess to staffing requirements either as we normally run with 4 people on – one to man the counter, one the enquiry desk, one to shelf returned books and one floating. Today I was supposed to be shelving first thing, then on the counter (issuing new books and discharging returned ones) and then on the enquiry desk, but I was all over the place as and when needs arose. We had loads of children in for the BWR so that desk was being hot-desked by whoever was free at the time, which meant the counter or the enquiry desk was often unmanned. It’s so nice to have been there long enough now to be able to deal with most things – even basic stuff like the printer running out of paper when everyone else was busy so I just fumbled around with it til I worked out how to reload it without having to interupt someone else. I did six lots of BWR chatting to children – a real contrast between them all. I had one boy who had read all six books and come in for his medal and other bits and pieces, one childminded brother and sister who made me really sad. They don’t belong to the library but the childminder really wanted them to join in the BWR so brought them in but said to me that she’s tried to get their parents to come in and join them to the library but they have the attitude that if they are paying her to childmind them then she should take care of all of it. The little girl was really sweet, bright, articulate, really fluent reader who clearly adored books and happily chatted away to me about her choices but her little brother was a really unpleasant child who sat being rowdy, wouldn’t talk to me when it was his turn to do his books but wanted to interupt her all the time when she was talking about hers, demanded pens and paper to do more colouring after I’d kindly given him one lot to shut him up while I talked to her and then stabbed the felt pen down until the nib went in despite me asking him about four times not to do that please. And then went off and left all the lids off ON PURPOSE. Git! I often think that we don’t spend enough time reading aloud with D & S but actually seeing how passionate my children are about books and stories in comparison to some of the children who come in the library we’re clearly doing a whole lot more than a lot of parents. And the children – it’s shocking how unable to talk to grown ups they are, they can only be rude or shy, so few of them are happy to chat away and talk to us. I found myself having to really drag things out of two boys today and ending up talking to them like really little children in what even I considered a patronising tone and then when they left realised they were actually older than Davies and Scarlett at 5 and 7 – I couldn’t imagine talking to D&S or indeed any of the other children I actually know like that – they’d look at me like I was mad! Now I understand why teachers and childcare workers have to adopt that sickly sweet tone and ask seven year old to be ‘quiet like bunnies’ or ‘if you were an animal what sort of animal would you be?’ because I found myself resorting to similar measures 😯

I came home for lunch and then took Davies and Scarlett with me up to Truleigh Hill for a look round the room sizes etc. for December NicCamp. There was stunning downs and sea views all the way up there which made me feel a bit better about having booked a holiday just 5 miles from home. The rooms are all decent sized although the living area is a bit on the small side, but I’m sure we’ll have a great time there, so aside from a few small ironing out matters which I’ll deal with when we get back next week that is all in hand and sorted. 🙂

We came home and Lucy and The Rs came back again, having been here all morning looking after Davies and Scarlett while I worked. Scarlett and Rebecca cleared up Scarlett’s room after some ritual trashing of it which had it looking like it had been ransacked by burglars – I hate it when children just trash a place, I can deal with mess made by playing with stuff, but just chucking bedclothes on the floor and throwing toys around for the sake of it really pisses me off. 🙁 They did a good job in the end with some assistance from Lucy though. I realised I’d missed Lucy’s birthday last week so felt like a crap friend for that, particularly when I discovered she’d spent the morning here looking after D&S while I worked 🙁 Will do something belated for you Luce, I promise :oops:.

Ady came home, Lucy and The Rs left, Davies and Scarlett came in and had some tea and then went off to bed while I packed clothes etc. and Ady loaded the car up ready to go in the morning. We had a really late dinner (but it was lovely – sausages from Jimmy’s Farm brought for us by one of Ady’s work friends) and I’m about to unplug myself from my laptop and go to bed. Back in a week 🙂

When Davies was about 2 he loved Toy Story. He had Buzz Lightyear pjs, pants, soft toys, hard toys, books, towel – you name it. He watched Toy Story and Toy Story 2 over and over again. He went out dressed as Buzz regularly and for days would insist that we call him Buzz while we were addressed as other characters in the film. The Christmas he was 3 Disney On Ice came to Manchester where we were living at the time and featured Toy Story characters so we took him along. Front row seats with the chance to shake hands with the characters at the end. I’d never seen a child so entranced and for weeks afterwards he would recount, with wonder in his eyes and words, how he’d shaken Buzz Lightyear’s hand. It was fab. 🙂

Davies has always been a fairly literal child – although he has a big and vivid imagination he is also very clear that it is indeed his imagination and as such doesn’t have much time for fairies, Father Christmas and so on. He decided when his tooth fell out at the weekend that ‘we won’t do fairies Mummy, I’d rather keep all my teeth in a box’ (bloody hoarder, just like his father :roll:), but today, even though he was talking about what good costumes the characters were wearing there was still something really rather magical about him ‘meeting’ Wallace and Gromit. I’d put out his W&G T shirt to wear – which was a good move as he was imediately hailed as ‘Oh look, your biggest fan!’ when the costume characters helpers spotted him. He went to three of the appearances and stood for the whole half an hour each time entranced, touching their hands, hugging them and chattering away to them even though they could only communicate back in sign language.

He was also giddy with excitement and drove me mad, but that’s beside the point 😆

We had a lovely day at Drusillas, with plenty of time in the pool, some walking round the animals, some flamingo challenges which we even had random passers by joining in with (stand on tiptoe, on one leg and tuck your head under your arm :lol:), some time at the play area, some ice creams (thank you Ros 🙂 x). Oh and did I mention the giddy excitement? 🙂

Scarlett was rather shocked at how big they were, which threw her enough for her not to want to go anywhere near them, but thinking that she would only come home to regret that we persuaded her to come and meet them and for the last half hour she too was chattering away and hugging them as well

Home for tea and a watch of Doctor Who which my mate Dayve was in as an extra to see if we could spot him (we didn’t) before a bath for D&S and off to bed. Ady and I watched Miss Potter which we both really enjoyed and now I’m off to bed too, as I’m working in the morning so need to be up at a proper hour :).

Feeling much better today, despite being woken by a hysterical Scarlett because Ady had already gone off to work. She finally calmed down and both children got into bed with me for cuddles before we all went downstairs. They breakfasted and Davies made a birthday card for Dad, then we headed off to Tescos for various ingredients and bits for a barbecue tonight. We were in there for ages looking at all sorts of things including picking up various bits for goodie bags for D’s party (on the basis that if I get something each week we won’t notice the cost :lol:), a sunhat for me as the only one I had has been taken by Scarlett and a load of vests and pants for both children as I noticed Scarlett’s draw is full of age 2-3 and Davies is full of age 4-5 with the odd 5-6 all of which are washed and worn and very shrunk. They were all on special offer anyway as part of the back to school stuff and reduced to clear as they were presumably last years packaging, so it made sense to buy now. Davies needs socks too but I think he might be about to go into the next size socks (I’m pretty sure it’s 12 1/2 to something) so I’ll wait for sock wearing weather again for that one. I did get them a pair of next size up wellies each though as they had £2 a pair plain pink or blue ones which I know will be nowhere to be found come welly wearing weather. When we get back from holiday next week I’m going to sort out a load of outgrown stuff to ebay and will then have money to do a proper new clothes shop for them come Autumn.

Home for lunch and as they were both fading fast from tiredness (and I’m pretty sure Davies has my cold and Scarlett is probably going down with it too) we stuck a film on for them to sit and watch – Arthur and the Invisibles. Davies had been looking at the case and asking if the actor who plays Arthur was Charlie from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and also from 5 Children and It and I’d said I couldn’t tell from the picture, so he said we’d know as soon as we heard his voice. And sure enough it is and we did! We particularly liked his spikey hair in this film, which is not dissimilar to how Davies’ looks when it’s tufted up, so that pleased him. 🙂 I got bored of watching so after making a phonecall to arrange to go and visit Truleigh Hill later this week for a nose round I went off to start baking Dad’s birthday cake.

I had this vision of a cake with layers (not unlike how Shrek tries to describe himself to Donkey :)), chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate frosting – you get the idea. When I was about 15 a friend and I used to go into a coffee shop and buy slices of this cake they called Death By Chocolate which was layered like this. I couldn’t find anything similar listed on google under death by chocolate recipes so gave up on that idea and looked for recipes for the individual layers instead – UK ones, because I’m always suspicious of things called corn starch and powdered sugar and measurements in cups :lol:. So I duly made two chocolate cakes, melted chocolate and cream together and chilled it and then then tried to whip some cream to fold some of the melted chilled stuff into to make the mousse. But I don’t actually have a proper handwhisk, just a blender from when I used to puree food for babies, which doesn’t actually whip cream, it just overwhips it to curdled yellow stuff. So when a quick check on argos website revealed they sell the very implement for under £4 we dashed along the road to argos and purchased one. Hurrah, it’ll be instant whips and creamy desserts a go go here from now on :lol:.

When we got back Lucy and The Rs were outside waiting for us so the children played outside – no idea what but I know it involved ‘clubs’ and musical instruments while Lucy and I chatted and I made full use of my new kitchen appliance. I learnt that making a cardboard ring to tape round the cake and the mousse while it set would have been a handy tip as it squished out of the edges but it still tasted gorgeous so is something I’ll try again. Lucy and The Rs left as Ady got home, with Mum and Dad arriving soon afterwards.

We had barbecued dinner outside then came in for cake after which the children – who were tired at lunchtime and really, really tired by 10pm 🙁 went to bed. Mum and Dad did their usual trick of not going home until we virtually kicked them out but it was a nice evening just the same.

The big news here today is that Ady has been provisionally offered a new role at work. This comes not two weeks after his job role changed from Merchandising Manager and Health and Safety Manager to National Account Manager for Wyevale Garden Centres and Health and Safety Manager with a member of staff below him to train up on the H&S stuff. Roundstone have just done a deal to supply QVC shopping channel with bedding plants to sell on the tv and part of the deal is that there is a ‘Face of Roundstone’ supplied to QVC to be on tv selling with the presenter and also to dress the set with product. Apparently the first person the board thought of for the role was Ady 😆 so he’s off to QVC next weekend for a screen test and if all goes well his job role will be that combined with H&S for the next 2 years. There are a couple of other work related things for him in the pipeline at the moment too, all of which are making him feel happier with his career so that’s all good. The downside is the potential for my 11 hours a week to become ever more trickier – particularly if my every other Saturday afternoon isn’t definitely covered by Ady, but losing that money would be one of the issues he’d raise with work as and when his new role becomes definite and they talk new salaries and benefits packages. I would be really sorry to let my job go and hopefully it wouldn’t come to that but realistically it would be the first casualty if it started to become difficult to work round. Apparantly it is by no means closed sets at QVC though so there would be loads of potential for us to go up with him to work and see all the behind the scenes stuff which I know would make one of our family very happy indeed to see the workings behind the camera 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to Drusillas as it’s Wallace and Gromit day there, which Davies and Scarlett don’t actually know about yet. It’s the main reason we rejoined annual membership as we couldn’t have not gone along to that practically on our doorstep and membership is the price of 3 visits. I imagine it will be heaving with people but I’m determined to get a couple of photos of Davies shaking hands with his heroes. 🙂

it will be ready in time to get one for Davies’ Doctor Who party? 😆

69 today! Now I know I often take lots of pictures which look very similar to each other and flickr the whole lot. I admit sometimes I do it just for fun now ;). But tonight I took about 50 photos in a row of my Dad with his birthday cake, some alone and some with Davies and Scarlett and when I looked back at them almost every one had captured something slightly different in his expression. I’ve not flickrd them all, just the ones which made me smile when I looked back at them, but in at least 2 I caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like at Davies’ age sat behind the flickering candles on birthday cakes of many years ago.

So Happy Birthday Dad, the most infuriating, challenging, loving, supportive, caring, steady, calming and comforting person I have had the priviledge to know, let alone be related to. 69 years is a whole lifetime to many, I hope you have many more years left but I saw in your eyes tonight a whole life time of memories of birthdays and years of the past – I’m pleased today was one of the happy ones.

I had a really crap nights sleep last night with lots of waking up to cough or blow my nose so when Scarlett woke just after 7am I was so not ready for the day to start. But we had to be out of the house by 9am to go to the Beach Beasties event at Pagham harbour. It’s a bit of the coastline which I’ve never been to before despite it only being 20 miles away – and totally gorgeous. And totally within our budget of being a FREE event too :). Ady gave me some cold and flu tablets so I was flying high by the time we actually got down to the beach.

Full set of pictures here on flickr but here are a couple of my favourites:

There were five rangers and about 15 children and equal adults so a fairly good sized party of us, it was low tide so loads of rock pools and seaweed covered very shallow water to search in. We all were given a tray to fill with water and keep our catches in to show at the end and the rangers walked amoungst us telling us about what we were looking at. We caught crabs – shorecrabs and spider crabs, shrimps, sandmasons and Ady saw although didn’t manage to capture, an eel. The crabs were the most exciting really – I spotted a pretty sizeable shorecrab which Ady captured and we all gathered round to inspect and were told all about how they shed their shells once they outgrow them, grow back pinchers over the course of 2 or 3 shell sheds and how they balloon up with water to help split their shell. Really interesting stuff 🙂 Someone else then found a spider crab which was even bigger than our shorecrab and as it had just shed a shell it’s current body was still quite spongey and soft while it hardened off so that was an excellent example. Scarlett spent ages with one of the rangers learning about the different types of seaweed – mermaids hair, sea lettuce, bladderwrack and Davies talked to another ranger for a long time about the crabs and shrimps. We were there for about two hours before the tide was about to start coming in and looking back to the beach we realised it had filled up with sunbathers. All the trays were gathered in and we all had one last look at the various things the group had collected before the crabs were all taken off to be released away from the crowds and we headed for home to have some lunch.

Ady cooked sausages, eggs and bacon on the barbecue after which I decided I was too hot to stay outside in the sun and came in to slump on the sofa, falling asleep for the best part of four hours 😯 I had plenty of visitors – Davies brought me a blanket and Scarlett came in at least twice to tell me she lloved me and I kept rousing enough to blow my nose and hear twitter texts coming in but one minute it seemed to be 3pm and the next it was 7pm! I guess I must have needed it though and it’s not done me any harm because I’m already ready for bed again now, so it’s not messed up my sleep pattern either – probably just sleeping off the cold and flu tablets 😆

Ady and the children did some seaside inspired paintings and then made fish shaped pancakes on the barbecue for their tea. Ady chucked them in a much needed bath around the time that I woke up so I went and washed their hair while Ady starting cooking a roast pork joint and some roast potatoes on the barbecue for our dinner. The children took ages to go to sleep, which surprised me as it’s been a full on day for them. We were supposed to be going to meet friends in London tomorrow but it’s my Dad’s birthday which had slipped my mind when I made the arrangement so we’re having Mum and Dad over in the late afternoon / evening and actually unless I make an amazing recovery overnight I think a trip up to London would have done me in anyway. I so want to be over this cold for the end of the week so a quiteish day at home, baking a birthday cake for Dad and pottering about should be enough to see if off hopefully.

I worked this morning. It went pretty quick even though it was a quiet Saturday – I assume the lovely weather and the fact that loads of people are away on holiday meant that the library wasn’t a destination for most people today. I did bring shame upon my people though this morning for which I must repent. I let myself down, my children down, hell I let you all down. I must bow at the feet of the god of Home Education (it’s Mike Fortune-Wood isn’t it? 😉 ) and confess my sins and pay the price of my crime. For I cannot be truly called Home Educator any longer. I must give back my hama beads, recant my rainbow and no more must I take out free trials of education city using different surnames and postcodes to trick them into thinking I’m a brand new potential customer. I was tasked with using the laminator at work and I failed. It’s a big laminator, that much is true – not the simple A4 capacity only type home use one I am proficient with, having been A Home Educator for some 4+ years now, but it is still one of the most basic items in the HE kit – one of the first things you are required to have in your home, along with the map of the world (gulp) and of course the table to do work round (ah, fuck). So there you go. It’s time to come out once and for all and confess that actually I’m not even very good at being a Proper Home Educator. And I did once have a sonlight catalogue but I mostly just ripped it up to make papier mache with so that probably doesn’t even count. And sometimes when my children show an interest in something – for example Doctor Who – I don’t sit down with them and make lapbooks about it. Anyway, I was laminating today, having smirked a bit when I was asked if I could use a lamintor and assured my boss that I could. And then it all went wrong, and it chewed up the sign I was laminating (one about how the library could not be held responsible for any damage caused to audio visual equipment by playing items borrowed from the library such as cds, videos, dvds and audio books) and I had to get someone to help me yank it back out again. Oh the shame 😳

Other than that it was a fairly uneventful morning. 😆

I got home to find Ady and the children in the garden, playing with the hose pipe, having barbecued sausages for lunch. Ady’d heard about a car boot sale on in the big park in the town centre so we decided to head down to that and see whether it was any good. But before that Davies’ tooth came out and we got all distracted by looking at the childrens’ baby books to see when he’d cut his first tooth and then looked at all sorts of other information and pictures in there, I wish I’d been a blogger back then, it would be great to have more records of that sort of stuff.

We parked the car near my old secondary school and walked to the park. The car boot sale was somewhat oversold, with no more than 20 cars and most of them traders selling new stuff rather than genuine car-booters. Me and the children sat on the grass and watched some belly dancers do their thing (Scarlett was describing the dancers to me – one was fat, one was young and one looked like Alison! :lol:) then we walked round the rest of the stalls. There was a fire engine with firemen giving safety advise so we chatted to them awhile and then there was a load of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits and other small creatures all displayed. The children wanted to hold the chicks and having done their usual charm offensive of telling the birds’ owner all about themselves and the chickens we’ve got at home that we hatched out of eggs ourselves, she very happily plonked all sorts of creatures in their arms, including the 4 day old ducklings that she said she’d not let anyone else hold :). We had a long chat to her about all things fowl and when she told us that the 4 week old rooster there would grow to be really huge I said to the children ‘Oh, like that massive cockerel we saw at the South of England Show’ to which she replied ‘ah yes, that was his father – we were there too!’ and it turned out that the chick today was indeed sired by the massive bird we saw at Ardingly in June:
which was pretty cool :).

We left there and had a little play in the park before walking back to the nearby CoOp for some barbecue stuff. They didn’t have much so we walked back along to the car and then drove to Sainsburys for food instead. We got home around 6pm, I made various salads, which the children even tried 😯 – a real surprise to see them both eating rocket and watercress! It was really nice sitting out chatting while the children played and the food was cooking – I think it was our first barbecue of the year here at home. The children are also old enough to do stuff like go to the freezers in the garage to get the ice creams too, so it’s lovely being able to direct them to do stuff while we carry on sitting down too :). We came in just after 8pm, Ady showered both the children while I cleared up and they both went to bed at 9ish and fell straight asleep, which is also nice.

Tomorrow we’re planning to go along to a rock pool beach combing event in Chichester harbour, which sounds fun so I’ve bought the children a net each from the local pound shop in Lancing and an early start to get there for the meeting time of 10am is required, hence an earlyish night for me.

See that tooth on the bottom? It was his first tooth ever, it broke through on 28th June 2001. 6 years and a few weeks later it’s come out. Anyone who’s seen him in the last couple of weeks will have been treated to seeing how wobbly it has been for *ages*. Somehow both Ady and I have been around to witness both children’s first steps and first words – by pure coincidence given we have both been working around the time it happened for both children. Today, not long after I got in from work at lunchtime Davies was eating a gingerbread man and his tooth started bleeding. I went to wobble it to see how far from coming out it was and simply plucked it out as I took hold of it, so we were both around for this landmark moment too.

I’ve always had a sort of idea but now I’ve wikiepedia’d and I really, properly know.

And if you don’t follow my twitters you won’t know why I was prompted to find out what a levee is today but I bet you could guess anyway, let’s face it levees don’t come up all that often in your normal UK average day to day lives.

Not at all sure where this morning went really, given we didn’t leave the house until 11am but I’d like to pretend I was occupied with constructive, productive pursuits, even though I suspect I was mostly messing about online while the children ate sugar puffs and made a mountain in the hall using the car mat. I know I did some more of my personal pages for my american chicken forum – I’m loving being part of a whole new community of internet folk who probably don’t really exist outside of my laptop. 😆

We left home at 11am to go to Ali’s house, taking with us the set of fun blox that we borrowed from Freya about 18 months ago. We’ve had two sets of our own since kessingland 2006 but never managed to coordinate visiting Ali’s house at the same time as remembering to take the blox with us. It did mean that we forgot to take bread with us though as we are only capable of remembering to take one thing a-visiting at a time. The roads next to Ali’s road have all recently been made parking meter parking only which seems to have meant that all the cars which used to park in those roads have moved into Ali’s road. Also there is lots of building work going on in at least 3 houses down their road so there were various vans parked about the place, which meant we drove round for about 10 minutes trying to find somewhere to park that didn’t require either paying for it or getting public transport to take us back to Ali’s 😆 We eventually found somewhere at the end of their road and in we went.

Very quickly into initial conversations Davies asked me something which I answered with ‘a long, long time ago….’ which, as I blogged about just the other day, I can’t say or type without breaking into American Pie. So once I’d answered Davies Ali and I indulged that, first with a minor singalong and then with all out 8 minutes 32 seconds of pure enjoyment of all the magic that is Don McLean by Ali putting American Pie on their fancy pc stylee music and video entertainment doobree. Ali knows more of the words than me but we had a great 8 minutes and 32 seconds of singing along and encouraging the children to do so too with lots of calls of ‘Everybody….’ for the chorus. Of course they didn’t join in, they mostly look plain scared but we felt great :). After that I popped out to the shop to get the bread. I opened Ali’s front door and stepped out with a very gutsy ‘the three men I admired the most….’ and realised that Ali’s next door neighbour was standing outside her house chatting with another woman, both of whom had paused their conversation when I exited singing. I had a brief internal struggle as to how to play my next move – I could blush, put my head down and pretend I hadn’t been singing, turn to them with arms open wide and urge them to join in, or lower my voice slightly and murmur the next line into the wind. I went with the third option and walked away quickly humming about the last train for the coast. 😆

We had a lovely afternoon at Ali’s. The children spent a fair bit of time off playing so we got to chat lots, we had lunch, Ali bestowed many gifts upon us and then foolishly, buoyed up by the success of their independant playing and possibly still riding the crest of thinking we were lonely teenage bronking bucks, we donned our pink carnations and drove our pick up truck (well ok we walked) to the P.A.R.K. Now we did the P.A.R.K. about this time last year and frankly it was a total disaster. This time Ali had prepared for it really very thoroughly. She had a rucksack with cornettos in. And water. But no, it was not to be. The very notion that the children would take their ice creams and play on the dedicated play equipment whilst allowing us to sit on a bench and eat our ice creams was so not to be. We had discussion on ice cream flavours available, a tantrum about being pushed on the swing, several handfuls of grass showers, a small body with very big ears squashed inbetween us on the bench (because the conversations of two grown women clearly outrank the conversations of a 6 year old and a 4.5 year old who mainly talk about ponies and princesses). So we gave up on that idea and headed for home, via the local shop where Ali bought them all a magazine each.

The magazine proved a very cunning plan – Scarlett sat and coloured in the ponies pictures in hers, Davies looked at the pictures in his Doctor Who one – mostly the ones of merchandise available 🙄 and we were inspired to put a Doctor Who episode on. My casting vote of one with The Ecccleston and Captain Jack won out so we had lots of ‘Are you my Mummy?’ punctuating our final conversations along with Freya giving me demonstrations in building things with fun blox. 😆

Home for the children to put on Shrek x box and play that together really nicely for about 2 hours. Ady came home and somewhere an evening has disappeared.

I’m working tomorrow morning instead of afternoon so I have a plan to go to bed very soon. I’ve got a list of the 60 odd items we have dotted around the house belonging to the library which I want to take at least half of back tomorrow.

Off to work for me today. Lucy and The Rs were here with Davies and Scarlett in the morning and my Mum was here in the afternoon. Ady’s been complaining of a cold for the last 2 or 3 days and during the course of this morning I started to feel a telltale lump in my throat and a sniffle started to manifest itself which by lunchtime had me concluding that a) I was ill and b) I felt ill.

It had been a busy and rather chaotic morning. A new assistant librarian started a couple of weeks ago and is clearly keen to ‘put her stamp’ on things. She is young, fairly earnest and as librarians go probably almost quite dynamic ;). Anyway she’s made a couple of small layout changes which even I, with my whole 8 months experience at 11 hours a week can see make no sense at all and are actually plain stupid. So, bizarrely, along with all my colleagues I felt really quite irritated by this and personally affronted at it. When I was at Clinton Cards one of my favourite quiet period pastimes was to reshuffle the layout of the shop and many a happy afternoon was spent with all the soft toys in the middle of the shopfloor while we redesigned the layout and moved whole great sections of the shop around. At Bhs we rotated great chunks of the shop floor on a very regular basis with swimwear at the front during January to April and chunky knitwear from May to August (and no, I am not entirely joking 😉 ), January and July and the various mid season sales meant all reduced stock was brought to the front, Christmas party wear and big winter coats took floorspace in the winter, the Christmas ‘Shop’ took over half of womenswear from October onwards and we created a whole island of novelty socks twice a year in menswear for Fathers Day and Christmas. Oh and we had a portable umbrella stand which we used to wheel to the front of the shop every time it rained 😆 So I guess I’m internally struggling with a) it not being my job to decide what gets moved about any more and b) it being a blatantly stupid move anyway! Oh and c) feeling ill so being irrational 😆

I wandered around the shops very half heartedly for 20 minutes or so before buying a bottle of coke and a jam donut for my lunch in the hopes that a combined sugar and caffine high would suffice to get me through the afternoon. Then I went and sat at a pc for half an hour and updated the links page on my blog.

The afternoon was rather better, several of us were bored so we entertained ourselves by singing mana manah from the Muppet Show and discussing camping trips and how our own garden might just be the very place to spend next week 😆 Oh and I did lots of cutting out of green paper leaves to form the display of a big tree with every child who finishes the Big Wild Read having their name written on a leaf and added to the tree. Very Blue Peter 😆

I came home to a very tidy house but Mum wanted to talk. Not listen, just talk. So I fed the children, bathed the children and listened to her monologue all the while fantasising about lemsip but knowing that cold and flu remedies are an evil that I should stay away from – I have learnt my lesson in the past with the siren song of the beechams!. Ady got home, Mum left, I went out to the swimming pool to pay for Davies’ lessons in September (Dad had given Mum the money to pass onto me). Then I had a very late dinner and watched Torchwood which made me cry which didn’t do much for my dripping nose really.

And I’m sure I had much more I wanted to say but I can’t because I have to go to bed immediately, before I succumb to the nightnurse!