One word? When seven would do…

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but I thought it was quite a big deal, that Davies made his own sandwich for lunch today. It did involve climbing onto the worktop using the handle of the oven as a foothold – a trick which Tarly taught him 🙄 to get the peanut butter out of the cupboard which I’d really rather he didn’t do, but I was pretty impressed just the same.

So Tarly *had* to make her sandwich too – and she did a fairly good job of spreading marmite.

Now if I could just show them how to make tea….

Been a far better day today all round. 🙂 It’s been slightly cooler which has helped a lot, and aside from my laptop claiming to have a virus which appears to be not causing any great harm other than the AVG warning popping up three times every time I start a new application to say ‘hey Nic, you’ve got yourself a virus’ ‘Did we mention you had a virus Nic?’ and ‘Nic, you really want to be getting that virus seen to’. Which for the normal person on the street with average tolerance and patience levels, in a very hot room, with an internet addiction would perhaps induce one to throw the laptop out of the window fairly quickly. But not me, no siree Bob. I have two small children who have taught me patience, calm, serenity and the ability to ignore such minor irritations by clicking the ‘yes I know’ ‘Really I am aware of that’ and the ‘would you shut the fuck up coming along telling me about the bloody virus every two minutes already’ button with dignity, restraint and NOT hard enough to wear all the letters off the keyboard and damage the nerves in the tip of my finger. 😆

So all week Davies has been nagging to play with the air drying clay. I have a big tub of the ELC stuff which we’ve only ever used the once. It is not actually that nice to work with and leaves lots of chalky residue on the fingers (like real clay then really 😉 ) which I have ‘issues’ with. And I hate the idea of more expensive stuff being used for ‘playing’ rather than actual ‘making’. So I told him if he planned out what he wanted to make with it and maybe drew some pictures of it (and jumped through some hoops lit with fire and sang a song about it which rhymed and had original lyrics and at least two musical harmonies and a percussion part) then I’d get it out and play with him. I am partially trying to teach him a bit about planning, logical reasoning and stuff here and partially just don’t like the stuff (and yes, maybe I should just let him use it all up and be done with it 😉 ) and partially I just don’t want the windowsill and bookcase full of small misshapen ‘things’ waiting to dry, getting fragile and being broken by Scarlett and causing rows.

So I got him a book from the library the other night about sculptures. It talks about all sorts of methods of creating stuff from twig weaving, paper pulp and papier mache, stuffing paper and materials, junk modelling and so on. And it had a page on ‘critter pots’ a basic pot with some sort of creature or animal based around it, with a recipe for salt dough to use and then paint when dried. Which sounded a much better plan.

They’d been playing with magic sand while I was riding my trojan horse (and as an aside that’s a really good site which I must read in more detail for next time we get the magic sand out) so we cleared that up and then made some salt dough (dead easy recipe, 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt 1 3/4 cups of warm water, knead for ten minutes and use.) left it white so we can paint it and copied some of the pictures in the book. Davies made a frog with a bowl in it’s body, I helped Tarly made a duck cradling a bowl, then she made a duck on her own, which was excellent, totally recognisable as a duck, Davies made a model of Gromit eating a bowl of dog food and I made a Gromit with a bowl on his back and an ill fated Wallace with a bowl on his lap. Tarly then mashed up the Wallace, the duck and a little cat I’d made but the rest is all sitting drying out ready for painting another day. I was thinking of doing it again and sticking stuff into the bowls before they harden like the jewels you can get from BakerRoss or even mosaic bits to create different things. Both the kids love things like bowls in their rooms for all their tat and we could make some really glittery sparkling ones for Tarly’s dressing table bits and pieces.

Then we talked about paper making for a while – featured in another library book and looked at some origami but it was getting fractious so we decided to head out for a while. We went into Lancing to the library. Davies’ library ticket is probably in the house somewhere but has not been seen for a while so we got him a new one – he was thrilled to not have a Kipper one anymore and to have a poppies one like mine – and signed them both up for the Reading Mission. They’ve not done the previous summers ones. The librarian there is one I have spoken to before, a youngish man who is really earnest and tries really hard but clearly has no experience of being around children. He told them all about it (while Scarlett lolled around on the floor :roll:) and send us off with our first ‘mission’ – to find all the characters around the library and fill in a sheet. So Davies and I did that while Tarly played on the computer in the childrens’ area and then we chose a big pile of books. They love Charlie and Lola – although Tarly insists it is ‘Charlie and Lulah!’ so we found a couple of them. Then as it was lovely and cool in the library we sat and read a few books in there too. A quick scoot round the charity shops in town and then back home again.

My Mum popped round briefly, the children had a long, cool bath (their equivalent to a pool round here!), Ady read a couple of books to them and is now gardening, Tarly’s asleep, Davies is still being noisy upstairs and I’m about to cook our dinner.

Tomorrow we’re seeing Ali and Freya – for the first time in what feels like months and it’s Friday. Woo hoo! 🙂

As I said to Hannah the week before last and then spent ages trying to deconstruct it and make sense of it! 😆

This morning we took Malice back to the vets for a check up, so we were all out of the house, breakfasted and dressed prior to 9am. So we could do it if we had to, rather glad we don’t have to though! 😆 The children were really well behaved in the vets right up until Malice was being examined when they decided they didn’t want to share the single chair and were going to be fairly noisy in their negotiations as to who got to sit on it alone and who didn’t get to sit on it at all. 🙄 Malice is doing fine, the vet is pleased with her progress and we made an appointment for three weeks time to have her jaw unwired, which should be the end of the saga really. He shone a torch into both eyes and is pleased with the non-functioning one and feels happy that it can stay and will not cause infections or other trouble, which at least cosmetically is a good thing (not that I believe Malice to be a particularly vain cat! :lol:). The news on the other eye is less good, it is still very blood filled and he thought he could see further retina detachment (or something) which suggests the likelihood of sight returning is lessening ever more. 🙁 She is managing really well though and aside from choosing slightly odd places to curl up and go to sleep – like the middle of the kitchen floor, infront of the front door etc – she is pretty much just Malice really.

We came home and the children – well OK I 😳 made a big song and dance about clearing up an accidental mess they’d made. I threatened school on the basis that I am fed up with our relationship being me shouting and them sulking, they resent not getting any of the fun stuff and all of the crappy stuff and so do I, so I explained that if they went to school we would only see each other a couple of hours a day and could concentrate on the good stuff. We all kissed and made up after Davies said to me ‘but Mummy you only get cross and we’re only naughty when we stay home all day. Maybe we should go out with our friends more then you get to talk to your friends and we get to play’. Fair point!

I’d arranged Home Ed group to meet in the park today, we’ve not met for quite some while but a new woman had joined the yahoo list and exchanged a few emails with me. She has a 9 yo daughter who she removed from school last week to HE and was really looking forward to meeting others. Except I had this dread that aside from me, D and S there weren’t going to be any others…I hate feeling responsible for people’s HE perceptions and expectations. Julie didn’t want to come to the park so we arranged to meet at the beach after the park with me fully expecting this poor woman to have driven 20 odd miles to meet me and my little children in a park.

But no! No sooner had I sat down that she arrived, very friendly and chatty, quite happy to just sit and talk to me and then we were joined by Lucy, Richard and Rebecca and Peter and Sue with their 9 & 10 year old grandsons. Hurrah! The children all played together and the adults had one of those really inspiring and exciting conversations about celebrating individuality in children, raising them to think and learn rather than remember and be taught and feeling like we’d uncovered the secrets of the universe, well education at least! It was actually a bit of a shame to leave after nearly two hours but hopefully we’ll do it again next week.

So we left there and headed to the beach, the local beach at the end of our road. Paid a mere quid for parking, got the kids changed into the sunsuits and they were away – over the green, over the stones, brief stop to remove their shoes and into the sea before I’d even reached the stones! Julie, Jack and Maisie met us there. Julie performed amazing contortions within a pop up tent and got into her swimsuit and went into the sea with Davies and Scarlett (Jack and Maisie are less keen on the sea, or the sand, or the stones, or the noise of the jetskis) where they had a fab half an hour or so, their laughter could be heard way up on the beach. I’d not thought any further than the children’s suits and towels so I sat on the beach feeling like someone’s Granny wearing my jeans. I don’t think I’m a swimsuit on a beach kinda woman really but I’m checking out ebay for an adult version of the kids’ sunsuits for next time – it looked way too much fun to be sat up on the beach spectating! Renewed my intentions to sort out swimming lessons for D & S too – they’ve been on the waiting list at the local pool for the best part of a year already, they love the water too much to wait much longer and I really want them to be able to swim well. I had lessons at the same pool when I was about 7 and I reckon it was too late really. I am a weak swimmer, I hate getting my face wet and I would doubt my own ability to get myself out of trouble in the water let alone help anyone else, I can’t dive and I can see how much fun it is for all the people who can – I don’t want D & S to miss out.

We walked along to the cabin selling icecreams after a while and ate ice lollies as quickly as we could before they melted then we went back and the children clambered up and down the row of rocks leading to the sea. By then the tide was coming in and far from emptying out the beach was actually getting busier with children arriving presumably after school. Davies, Scarlett and Jack started a game standing on the bottom rock which the waves were just breaking on as the tide came in and stood yelling and throwing stones into the waves, after about ten minutes I looked up and they had been joined by five more children and had a whole gang of them playing. Davies and an older girl (about 8 or 9 I guess) then organised all of the children into some convoluted imaginary game involving lots more yelling, leaping into the sea and splashing about. Oh and lots of laughing!

We eventually dragged them reluctantly away around 5pm, they had sandwiches for tea and then had a really long, cool bath to splash around in some more and get all the sand and salt off them. They’re still awake now but the temperature does finally seem to have dropped a little so I’m hopeful for a better nights’ sleep tonight.

Tomorrow is as yet free but as we are all determined not to fall into the at home therefore having a crap day trap we have a pile of library books on origami, making models, making pop up cards and general paper craft to look at and get some ideas from and then maybe some art and craft. The librarian told me to come down and get them signed up for this summers reading whatever it is this year thingy at book group last night so we might wander into town and do that. And the paddling pool and sandpit may end up being a good bet if all else fails.

Tonight was book group. I walked there, it’s only about a 15 minute walk through alleyways. Partially because I needed to get out quick as the children and I were at consulting divorce lawyers point, partially cos I was so bloody hot I couldn’t face sitting in my car for even five minutes and I thought a walk would be nice and partially because if I didn’t have to drive home I could have that always offered, always declined second glass of wine at book group.

So I walked to book group, had a really good time there and then walked back, arms full of books. On the way there I had no intention of walking back through alleyways at 8.30pm, on the way back, bouyed up by the said two glasses of wine and the invincibility alcohol brings I had no intentions of going any other way. And not only that I smiled and said ‘Evening’ to the two people I encountered coming the other way.

I have this theory that we have a brief period of fearlessness – as a child you have caution as soon as you are old enough to know it, it lasts until teenage years when you go through a time of feeling utterly invincible – nothing can touch you, nothing can harm you. And then suddenly you start to feel vulnerable again, it is slightly pulse-raising to walk through the middle of a group of teens, if you hear footsteps behind you on the pavement after dark you feel intimidated. Between the ages of 15 and 19 I took the most enormous risks, risks I shudder at the prospect of my daughter, and actually even my son taking a few short years from now. But take them they will, and feel invincible they will and frankly they deserve to, if only for a finite period of time. Cos I sure as hell did and loved every minute of it!

So tonight I recaptured it briefly and very lovely it was too.

Book group was really good. I’d read the book and not thought a lot of it really but in discussing it with the odd mix of people who make up our book group I retrospectively discovered a new dimension to the book, a new level. I intend to read more of the author’s writing on their recommendation now, which I guess is what reading groups are all about really. Also feeling very high about the fact that after this month’s read the following two months are both books of my own recommendation. 🙂 🙂 Feeling altogether less the book group, chick lit reading bimbo and more a part of the core of the group :-).

What else? Lots of shouting and grumpy too hot-edness really. I made a start on sewing a Puss In Boots (the Shrek 2 version) for Freya’s birthday pressie which inspired the children to put the film on. We watched loads of Discovery Kids which seemed to have a theme of Space today, Tarly did some puzzles, there was play with geomags and plasticine. There was also lots of cuddles. 🙂 Tarly painted my nails, Davies made a really good volcano with plasticine which he presented me with. I retired to my room for about an hour with a book although both children followed me up there at various points so I probably only had about 15 minutes of childfree time and the rest of the day was spent doing boring tasks like changing beds, pegging out washing and sticking pizza dough on to mix in the breadmaker.

Tomorrow we need to be rather more active as we need to have Malice at the vets for shortly after 9am for a check up and then we have a Home Ed meet up in the park in the afternoon. I’ve also had a phone call today from Miranda who is staying with her parents fairly locally this week and might get together with her tomorrow evening for a drink although both of us will have to drive so it will not be particularly riotous or rowdy!

And I don’t like it. 🙁

I’m sure there are many activities this is the perfect weather for but none of them involve sitting in a house with two tired, grumpy children when you are a tired grumpy grown up really.

Yesterday Davies and I were talking about birthdays and he started talking about his Wallace and Gromit birthday party. He’s been planning it for months so yesterday we got pen and paper and made a proper list, talked about the venue, the food, the games, the guest list and so on. It is still a whole 2 months until his birthday but as many of the people on his list will have to travel and probably stay overnight to attend it made sense to start initial planning now I suppose. So this morning I rang the venue we used for Home Ed group last year and we had our Halloween party at to see if it was free. The Saturday before his birthday also happens to be Ady and I’s 7th wedding anniversary so we went with that date. I’ve booked the venue, Davies went through the guest list with me again and made an invite which he insisted I started sending to people so we scanned in and emailed.

I’d not shown him how the scanner worked before so he sat quite interested in that for a while impressed with seeing his drawing suddenly appear on my laptop and then on flickr. We also got out a couple of snap it kits which we’d bought last time we were at the Science Museum and never looked at. They were OK although not as all singing and dancing as I think the children were expecting them to be really. We made the ones they coloured themselves so we can still make the preprinted ones. I think they were actually more interested in the folding that anything else so maybe I should look at some basic origami with them.

We also nipped into town this morning. I had a couple of items to return to a shop and we had a wander round for a while, got cakes for lunch and came home again.

I’ve been fairly short tempered with the whole world in general today and of course the children always react accordingly by giving me plenty to be shouty about 🙄

Davies had Badgers this evening, I sat in my very hot car and cooked for an hour but at least managed to finish the book for Reading group tomorrow which I have really struggled my way through. Badgers was held outside on the field infront of the hut due to the heat and as it was last but one session of the term they just played games really. I half watched and listened to some of it, they played charades, which I don’t think Davies has ever played before, and some rolling a ball between them and shouting something out game too. Funny to witness how quiet and bashful Davies can be in some situations given how rowdy and boisterous he can be in others. If I told them at Badgers how he’d stood at the front of that marquee at Kessingland they’d never believe me… I asked him earlier if he wanted to invite any of the other Badgers to his birthday party and he said no. He loves going and is always happy and says he’s enjoyed it but it is such a clear marker of how different a child he can be depending on circumstances and how the wrong situation for him at school could mark him out as, and no doubt eventually perpetuate for him to become, a completely different child over time.

Tomorrow I’d really like to shout less, be cooler and be cooler!

Someone – could it have been Chris French? – asked me if I’d still got their metal scissors from the kitemaking at camp. I said no.

However, I have just found the bag of leftover kitemaking bits and bobs and there they were. Sorry! Will happily return them to the rightful owner!

Valdereeeee! Valderahhhh!

Another lovely day today although way, way, way too hot for my tender colouring. 🙁

It was my Mum’s belated birthday celebrations today as her actual birthday was a week ago last Wednesday when we were in Scotland staying with Joyce and she was with a friend who shares the same birthday seeing a show in London for the day. So Malice, holiday and other birthday celebrations all sorted we finally rescheduled to celebrate it today.

Davies was supposed to be doing a tour of the local airport with Badgers today, which he took a lot of persuading to agree to sign up to attend on the basis that I would not be able to go with him and I would not be able to lurk a few paces behind. He was struggling to sleep last night and I think he was hovering between excitement at the propsect of the airport tour and aprehension about being without us for a full afternoon. Personally I was utterly dreading it on oh so many, completely my issue levels but was hiding it really well (I was honestly, ask Ady if you don’t believe me! ;-)) so the plan was for all of us to go to the airport, drop Davies off with the Badgers and head off round the airport and beach (near that scoobidou geocache we did with you, Chris and Alison) with a picnic and meet him afterwards.

So when the phonecall came through last night to cancel it, Davies seemed fairly relieved, I was very pleased and we were free to do something else instead today. We discounted the beach as it is not my Dad’s ‘thing’, Arundel as it would be packed, Brighton as it would be even more packed and any where we’d need to drive far to get to as it was way too hot to be in the car for very long. So we decided to do a downs walk and after checking a very old book entitled ‘walks for motorists – the south downs’ and googling I came up with a five mile walk to Cissbury Ring and back. Which looked idea – about 3 hours walking, middle point break at a nice spot for a picnic, head off around 11.30, stop for 1pm lunch, back by around 4pm, lots of lovely views etc.

Nope!

It was simply too hot, too open with no shade in the blisteringly hot sun, too at the end of a crazy couple of weeks for the children and too incompatible six walking companions with Dad who wants to stride ahead, Mum who wants to walk in the sunshine, Ady who wants to take endless photos, kids who want to be carried / stop for a drink / stop for a picnic / stop to look at every single creepy crawly they spot and me. Who is not built for walking. Who has exercise induced asthma and didn’t bring an inhaler. Who has thighs which rub together in the heat. Who is of fair and gentle complexion which does not do well in open sunlight with no shade and no pimms! 😆

We got to about 2 miles in – a good hours walk in the heat, up hill and along stoney, unforgiving paths and realising we were another mile yet from our destination and every step we’d taken had to be retraced to get home again we fell upon a patch of shade with great delight, decided it was far enough and had our picnic before heading back again. I had applied one lot of suncream to children and self – all of whom have already got a slight tan and have been fine with one application per day of factor 60 but within half an hour it was apparent we were not being protected enough – and had I brought suncream with me in the picnic bag? No I had not. The children were indeed fine and I am only suffering with a feint redness but enough to make me feel very silly. 🙁 I also faired not so well in the heat and was starting to feel very dehydrated (despite plenty of water) sick and dizzy.

It turned out to be one of those retrospective perspective events though and we all agreed once home it had actually been a very nice walk with loads to see, breathtaking views of Worthing, Brighton and the sea to the south and the rolling downs to the north, more wildlife – birds, bugs and butterflies that you get in your average Springwatch episode and a fairly easy going terrain really. The perfect cooler weather route definitely. Photos in the usual place – can’t be arsed to put any here! Loads of educational stuff covered with the children though, we looked at the various crops we walked past and through and discussed what foodstuffs they might be made into, looked at all sorts of wildlife too numerous to mention, collected a small bagfull of caterpillars and their ‘home’ plant which we’ve brought home and installed in our Butterfly garden net thing from last years Insect Lore grow your own butterfly thingy kit to observe. And Ady had a long chat with them about 3rd world countries where heat and being thirsty means a hell of a lot more than it did for the last half hour of our walk when the water had run out…

We got back and as Mum had brought over vanilla ice cream and I’d bought two bottles of coke on BOGOF – one needed for the Nigella ham in coke we had for dinner and the other for spare, I made coke floats all round. A hot summers day staple from my own childhood it was Davies and Scarlett’s first experience of such a delicacy so they were enraptured by it. 🙂 Followed by Mum’s birthday cake which for the first time ever Tarly got to carry in with candles lit from the kitchen to the lounge (actually I’ve only just started letting Davies do it!) and the arrival of my brother the children were in 7th heaven!

They had a wash all the dirt from the downs off bath and I performed my new trick of drenching Tarly’s hair with conditioner and brushing it in the bath to get all the tangles out with the plan being they’d fall, exhausted, into their beds. Ha!

We finished cooking the ham in coke and served it with roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips, broccoli and shelled ourselves peas for all the grown ups and both children reappeared from their beds to beg gammon from our plates (and beer and wine from our glasses! :roll:). We persuaded them into bed so we could have dessert in peace, they have only just gone to sleep and Mum, Dad and Frazer have just left. Ady is already in bed waiting for morning and his return to work after holiday to come and despite it still being ridiculously hot here at nearly midnight I am off upstairs myself to see if there is any chance of being able to sleep.

What Your Soul Really Looks Like

You are a wanderer. You constantly long for a new adventure, challenge, or eve a completely different life. You are a grounded person, but you also leave room for imagination and dreams. You feet may be on the ground, but you’re head is in the clouds. You believe that people see you as larger than life and important. While this is true, they also think you’re a bit full of yourself. Your near future is likely to be filled with great successes and accomplishments. You just need to figure out how to get there. For you, love is all about caring and comfort. You couldn’t fall in love with someone you didn’t trust.

We’ve been super efficient today and got loads done. 🙂

First thing (well as first thing as it gets round here 😉 ) we went to Asda to get my Mum’s very belated birthday pressie of a basic digital camera. We got a nice one which Dad paid 2/3 of and then Ady went over to Dad’s to help cut his hedge. He did that in superfast time and we headed off over to Chris and Julie’s for the afternoon.

Had a lovely time sitting in their new sunroom while the children played, we ate homegrown raspberries with meringue and cream and drank copious volumes of tea. Lovely. 🙂

We’d half planned to go camping with C&J for a couple of nights this week while Ady was off but obviously we’ve been unable to leave Malice so that hasn’t happened. So we sat with diaries and planned a weekend in the New Forest camping. I was staggered to realise that we are actually busy with something every single weekend until September now so we’ve pencilled in the first weekend in September and now we need to find a campsite. C&J have invested in a tent so they are raring to go already. 🙂

Home via McDs to cash in some luncheon vouchers for the children’s tea and I managed to get some videos listed on ebay in my campaign to raise the cash in my paypal account to sufficient to get a tent on ebay for us.

Tomorrow Davies was supposed to be going on a Badgers trip to the local airport which has just been cancelled so we are off to do something with my parents for the day, as yet undecided to be arranged in the morning.

We didn’t make it to PYO today, a variety of events conspired to make us not actually manage any of our planned activities but we had a nice, if slightly frustrating, day anyway.

Ady’s phone didn’t arrive so he spent ages chasing that up and now it’s coming tomorrow. So while we waited in for that I did a load of baking (peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, banana cakes, cheese scones) and loads of batch cooking (I’d cooked chicken curry overnight in the slow cooker so I dealt with freezing that into meal sized portions, stuck a batch of bolognaise sauce on and made a batch of pizza dough. I’ve since made a huge lasagne with 2/3 of the sauce and pizza for the kids tea and garlic bread to go with tonights lasagna, leaving one portion for a spag bol next week and a second portion of lasagne for the week after. All of which is not remotely interesting reading I’m sure but I’m proud of it so I’ll blog it anyway! :lol:). Ady did some more coal bunker dismantling and taking the rubble to the tip and the children had a whale of a time playing in the garden. We’ve moved their playhouse to the side of our house and it has inadvertantly given it a little patch of garden of it’s own so they spent some time digging that with little spades. They have also spent heaps of time finding all sorts of garden creatures (you know all the species preschools spend months doing projects on ‘minibeasts’ about :lol:) inlcuding rushing in the kitchen to show me ‘baby snails’ that they’d found inside a dead snail so assumed must be baby snails. Hence a lesson in larva as they were maggots. I don’t think they’d realised that pretty much every flying creature starts life as a wriggling thing of some sort not only butterflies, so we discussed ladybirds, moths, flies etc all coming from eggs as larva and undergoing chrysalis stage before becomming their final incarnations. They were filthy dirty but very happy and performing excellent examples of lovely free range autonomously learning children too. 🙂

We had lunch of cheese scones followed by banana cakes and everyone else went back outside again while I made an admirable start on what I am finding a really quite unexciting book for reading group next week. We were supposed to be heading out digital camera shopping for my Mum’s (very belated) birthday present but the arrival of Mum in person scuppered that idea. I stayed inside, Ady did some further garden related ‘stuff’, Mum joined in with the childrens playing and eventually around 4pm we piled in the car and headed down to the beach for an hour.

We had a lovely time there – it was still fairly busy but we found an empty-ish stretch, kicked off our shoes and paddled, then played at collecting as much seaweed from the tide washing in as we could. Great fun! 🙂 For once we had no camera, which meant there are no lovely illustrations of it on flickr, but also means we all gave our full attention to just playing rather than capturing images of it. After an hour or so both children were starting to shiver so we came home and they had a warm bath while I sorted their tea out. Mum headed for home and the children eventually went to bed and to sleep.

Malice is doing well still, she’d not been eating or drinking much today but has surprised us tonight by having ignored all our ‘brought to you on a silver platter in the lounge’ deliveries of food and water and headed out into the kitchen to eat where she always did. She also managed a really quite near miss with the litter tray too, leading us to conclude that just like the children she is probably better left to her own devices really and interfering with her and spoonfeeding is actually neither what she wants or needs. So that’s good. Both for her recuperation generally and our own laziness! 😆

Busy weekend catching up with various family followed by back to normality again next week. Almost looking forward to it! 😉

She looks better even if she can’t look better! She’s had the sewn up eye unsewn today and although it is totally non-functional she does at least look symmetrical again and less like some sort of feline spectre. They had a look at the other eye while she was sedated and it is still too blood filled to see to the back so a complete recovery is very unlikely although she does appear to have some level of vision, albeit very limited. Her jaw is healing well apparently, they checked that too and it is aligned OK so the wire will be removed in about a month when it is completely healed. She has a ridge on her palate which suggests she had an upper jaw fracture too so it is unsurprising she is still struggling with eating and drinking but she is well on the mend and I think it is just a case of letting her find her own pace and learn her way round the house again without sight. She’s back next week for a check-up on the eye and then in a months time for the wire removal. All positive anyway – hard to believe two weeks ago tonight she was prancing about in and out of the house and garden and then never came back when it got dark. 🙁

She’s already managed to get onto the sofa by herself and tonight has negotiated her way on to the precarious perch of sitting on the arm where she always did, and very comfortable she looks there too. So I guess although there’s a way to go and some adjustments to get used to she’s going to be OK :-).

Scarlett came with me to the vets while Ady and Davies stayed home and played Zoombinis. Then Ady loaded the car up with some rubble from our taken down coal bunker and I made a picnic and we set off for the downs via the tip and the church I mentioned yesterday.

We wondered round the graveyard for a while, reading the headstones and talking about the people who were buried there. Chris, we did indeed read pretty much every name just like SB would have had you do. 😆 I explained the difference between burial and cremation when we reached a large headstone to remember people who’s ashes had been scattered and we debated which of our dead relatives had chosen each method. Ady and I both said we’d want to be cremated and the children both said they would rather cremation too. At the graveyard where Ady’s Dad is buried there is a huge section for babies and children which is tremendously sad and always just has me crying so I was quite glad there was no such area in this churchyard as it would have been far harder to explain. Of course the children know that children die but there is something so powerful about row upon row of childrens’ graves. I felt similar when we visited Ypres on a school trip years ago and saw the 100s of war graves lined up in perfect rows. At least most of the graves today were of old people, with lives fully lived and children and grandchildren to have handed their memories down to.

I wasn’t expecting the church to be open but it was so we were able to go inside and look around. I dug around in my memories of GCSE Religious Education and was surprised to recall as much as I did of the names of all the pieces of furniture. We looked at the beautiful stained glass windows, I showed them where a bride and groom would stand to marry, where a baby would be christened, where a reading would be given from and we peeped at the organ, they both had a kneel on a prayer cushion and a sit in a pew and just enjoyed the peace, cool and calm that exists within a church even without the slightest belief in anything spiritual.

We left there and drove over the downs in a big circle enjoying the views (all golds, yellows and browns at this time of year with crops of maize, wheat etc – a contrast to the vibrant yellow of the rape a few weeks ago) then came back and parked in the road opposite my parents to go for a walk over the downs and a golf course. We found the white flowers (don’t know their real names) that pop out when you pinch the base of them – I remember as clear as yesterday my Mum showing me them in a car park when I was about Davies’ age and telling me the rhyme ‘Old Mother Reilly jumped out of bed’ while pinching and popping them. I showed the children how to do that and they were picking them every few steps. Scarlett got the hang of it before Davies did and I said ‘oh you’ve got the knack’ to which Davies imediately said ‘I want a knack, where did she get the knack from, why did you give Tarly a knack and not me???’ which made us laugh lots.

We sat and had lunch looking out over a view of Worthing, the sea and the block of flats on the seafront Ady and I first lived in for the first six months we were together pointing out landmarks to the children. Honestly, I’ve told that many stories to the children about ‘before you were born’ this week I am suspecting I have achieved Grown Up Status somewhere along the line without realising or having a proper graduation ceremony! 😆

We walked back to the car and dropped Ady and Davies home so Tarly and I could go and collect Malice from the vets. Once home and settled I had to go and get a few food shopping bits and Tarly wanted to come with me. We actually went to two supermarkets – the small local Somerfield to get some of the special offers they had advertised in a leaflet with the local paper (half price raspberries, BOGOF extra virgin olive oil etc) and then to Sainsburys for some basics items. I love being out with just one child and Tarly is very entertaining when she has centre stage. She has a non-stop dialogue which leaps from topic to topic but makes me laugh so much. She also looked so kissable today in a lovely flowy skirt, a vest top with butterflies on it, her hair all tangled and her face all covered in grime – gorgeous, grubby little girl! 🙂

We did early baths and bed for the children tonight as they have both been late to sleep all week and Davies particularly has been showing signs of tiredness which coupled with having Ady home has been showing in testing behaviour with me. I love having Ady off work – it does the children and him the world of good to spend more time together, I enjoy a bit of a rest from full on hands on full time parenting and of course I like the time just the four of us as a family but because we all know it is limited period only style life there are inevitable casualties to the temporary shift in dynamics – this time it is me and Davies. We patched it up again and I read them bedtime stories in the bath so they could stay in it longer at their request. It was a children’s Bible I borrowed from the library and I was actually quite disappointed in it. One of the things I like most about the Bible is the language so it have it made ‘child friendly’ just turns the stories into fairy story style tales – which don’t actually scan very well anyway. We don’t actually have a Bible in the house so we really must remedy that and I can just read the original text (well you know what I mean 😉 ) cos I really wanted the full drama of the creation story rather than the diluted ‘and he spread the sky all about like a tent round the world’ stuff they got today. 🙄

Ady’s got an (free) upgraded mobile phone handset arriving in the morning which he is very excited about and the children and I are holding out for PYO fruit picking tomorrow too so we’ll have to see what happens.

says Happy 5th Birthday Freya! 🙂

Hope you’re having a fab day and look forward to belated celebrations at your party 🙂

Lots of love,
Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

First the good news from today; Malice has started eating food and drinking water herself. This is a Very Good Thing – if for no other reason than it means no more expensive vets trips so she can have nasal tubes inserted. 🙂 We had to put the bowls right infront of her nose and coax her a fair bit but we managed it and she had a really long drink and a fairly good amount of food too. Hurrah! 🙂 She’s back to the vets for the day tomorrow to have her eye unsewn and see what lurks beneath and I’ll be finding out what exactly the state of play is with the cm of wire sticking out from her chin keeping her jaw in place too and whether it is coming out or being trimmed and staying in forever as I’ve not actually asked about that yet. I also think she is getting some level of vision back too. She is ‘looking’ towards the big windows in our lounge which makes me think she has at least some sort of light and shade recognition coming through.

In other news we’ve been doing ever more gardening and garden sorting today including taking down some coal bunkers outside our back door, well OK Ady has, I’ve been reading my library book! 🙂 We went to Paradise Park today at the children’s request, not for long as we go there so often it is a cursory nod to most of the attractions and we wanted to not leave Malice for too long but we had a nice walk round and a picnic lunch in the gardens, Ady thrashed me at table football and air hockey on the amusements 😳 Davies impressed me and amazed Ady by getting every dinosaur right in a name the dinosaur by pointing to it quiz there which we’ve never done before and even Tarly demonstrated lots of retained knowledge on some of the stuff exhibited there.

We popped home to check the cats and collect an old mobile phone handset for my Dad. My parents have gradually accepted there are benefits to carrying mobile phones so every time we upgrade a handset they get the upgrade before last (we like to have a spare each – we brought old phones with current sim cards to Kessingland so that we didn’t fret too much about leaving them in a damp tent or dropping them in the sea!) – so my Dad now has a fairly decent camera phone with all sorts of mod cons which he will use to make and recieve phone calls in the event of an emergency :lol:.

Spent an hour or so with Dad and then came home. The children had pizza and garlic bread for tea again and we had pizza for tea too.

Forgot to mention two nature related incidents yesterday – one was Ady bringing in a spider carrying a bulging egg sac with her for the children to see yesterday which was really interesting and the other was the children spending ages collecting snails – they got about 8 and setting them off up the wall of the house in a race 😆

Tomorrow we’re planning a walk up the downs – something I’ve not done since I was in my teens and the children are only barely old enough to think about really. There is a local church dating to the Saxon age which I did a school project on and the children would like to see inside having driven past it for years, also it has a very pretty and full and old graveyard which is always interesting to wander round and read the headstones in.

Ah more domestic bliss and gender stereotyping abounds chez Goddard today. I have batch cooked chilli for the rest of the month, made two loads of pizza dough (one of which was turned into pizza for Tarly and garlic bread for me, Ady and Davies and eaten today, one of which is ready for pizza for me and Ady tomorrow for dinner). Ady’s done more gardening stuff. He’s done loads actually and the garden is looking fab and really tidy – and as he’s done lots of chopping back hedges and re-establishing edges it is slightly bigger too – every little helps! 🙂

The children and I looked at some library books before returning them – a couple of really good ones. Davies had a pretty good go and reading some of a Dr Seuss one and we really enjoyed this one too. I love that their sense of humour is getting slightly more sophisicated and they ‘get’ stuff like that now rather than needing everything explained to the point of it losing it’s comedy value.

The children are enjoying having him home but I think we are suffering from 10 day in disruption to daily routine and need to get out of the house tomorrow.

We did go out this afternoon – having finally mastered pedalling (and that is simply pedalling with full support of stabilisers) Davies rode his bike and the rest of us walked into Lancing so that we could return some (very overdue :oops:) library books and have a quick mooch round the charity shops. He did really well actually although I have to say that far from the idyllic vision of a small boy learning to ride a bike with the warm and proud encouragement of his parents, riding through wide green safe open spaces it was more of a testing of our patience (will you just bloody look where you are going and manage to steer at the same time as pedalling already?!) and his skills were honed more by the fear of falling off down an alleyway or narrow pavement and falling into dog poo or broken glass – Centerparcs it ain’t!

So that took about an hour and a half and Ady and I took it in turns to walk alongside Davies or walk holding Tarly’s hand which was nice.

Malice has taken some syringed food and water from Ady today, not loads but enough to not be too concerned. She seems ever more settled despite our almost constant experiments to see if she can see anything – we’re getting more scientific with props such as torches and lengths of wool. I got excited tonight when she was following the progress of the hoover until I realised she was just listening to it! Doh! 😳

We’d had half a plan to go camping with Chris and Julie for a few nights this week which obviously won’t happen now so we are planning to get out for the day somewhere tomorrow as the week is starting to go by quickly and nice though it is to get stuff done around the house I think the children (and I!) would benefit more from having Ady around to enjoy time with rather than use him as some sort of handyman while he’s off work.

Davies was late to sleep again – he’s got this little V Tech notebook thing my Mum brought round ages ago and he quite often plays with in bed. He’d found a melody maker thing with a little onscreen keyboard you composed tunes on and was playing with that, so we got invited up to listen to his composition.

I appear to have been going down with a cold the last couple of days. Davies was coughing a lot last week and had a slightly runny nose but we put it down to the air con in the car drying his throat and a combination of hayfever and playing with water giving him a runny nose. It would appear not though. Today Tarly and I have both also been runny of nose and I am feeling distinctly pants. 🙁 Huge apologies if we infected anyone with Goddard Lurgy on our TOTN too.

First thing Davies and I took Malice to the vets. She was kept in for the day while they tube fed her through her nose, injected her a few times with various things and handed her back 6 hours later with an invoice for £35. She’s due back again on Thursday to have her sewn up eye unsewn – which no doubt will come with a further invoice. 🙁 They were pleased with her progress though, have given us food to be diluted and squirted into her mouth with a syringe and a general chat about how amazing it is that she is alive at all given the state she arrived at them in and how she is one tough cat who is intent on using up all nine of her lives before she finally calls it a day! 🙂 She’d been found at a petrol station (the nearest one would be a ten minute walk for me and crosses the main road :shock:) and brought in by a very upset woman who couldn’t believe how many cars were just driving past a clearly dying animal but didn’t leave any contact details so I’ve no way of thanking her. I thought about the local paper but Ady reckons it’ll just open a flood of people claiming to have been her and hoping for a reward (I could needle felt them something perhaps! 😉 ). Her non-sewn-up eye is looking clearer every day and I thought when Ady took a photo of her the other day the flash made the pupil dilate so I think there is still hope of some vision. Fingers crossed and we wait and see I guess. Davies and I chatted about all sorts of things on the drive home – he’d had Malice in her carrier on his lap on the way there and been giving a comforting monologue to her as we went to calm and comfort her which was very cute. On the way back we chatted about stuff the vet had said, some of my own ‘when I were a lass’ stories and finally I told him about how me, Ady and our friends who have since moved to Ireland played a very silly round of pitch and putt at the park we drove past for Ady’s birthday when I was pregnant with Davies. I remember loving those sort of stories when I was a child and D & S seem to aswell. On the long drive home last week I was talking to Scarlett about how she was inside my tummy once – someone that seems ever less possible as time goes by…

Once home Ady did loads of garden stuff, tidying up, a couple of runs to the tip, some strimming and so on. The children played inside and out, watched a couple of films and disgraced themselves by throwing sand at the lounge windows just after Ady had cleaned them inside and out (Ros, you’re redundant! 😉 ). I wrapped an ebay parcel and Tarly and I walked to the post office to send it on it’s way which was a lovely half hour. She talks constantly that child. Much of it simply chatter, but all relevant and with astonishing detail. She is very easily distracted from her topic as Joyce witnessed last week and can easily be sent off on a tangent. Actually I suppose she talks the equivalent of my blog posts really! 😳 😆 She brought two handbags along for the journey with a small selection of soft toys packed in them and two tissues for blowing her nose which we had to stop so she could do every few minutes. She knows the name of loads of plants and flowers though and is very observant. Ady’s car was collected and he was presented with a courtesy car of a two door Corsa – and I thought the Golf was small! On the upside we aren’t able to go far this week anyway due to Malice and because it is petrol it does mean we can fill my car up on his petrol card and use that instead if we want to go out. 🙂 Clearly I won’t be driving it!

Walking home we made friends with a ginger tom which followed us for quite some distance. Tarly was all for bringing him home so we could have ‘three cats Mummy’ and I was starting to think we might need to shoo him back to where he’d come from for fear of him roaming too far and getting lost, when some other people walked by in the other direction and he started to follow them instead. 😆 When we got home we made some tissue paper flowers from an ELC kit that’s been kicking around for ages, Davies played with the geomags and even put them all away himself and then I had to go and collect Malice while Ady gave them their tea.

When I got back Davies and I went off to Badgers. We’d not planned to be here today obviously – we were supposed to be at Barbara’s 🙁 – so they were not expecting us, but having come home it seemed silly for D not to go. He had a great time as usual, I enjoyed my hours peace reading in the car and he surprised me by bringing out a ticket to where he’d liked to go on holiday. He’d chosen America but a Centerparcs holiday 😆 but what really amazed me was that the train on the front was clearly not his work and he said someone had helped him with it! This is Davies, who draws at home on pages and pages of paper every moment of the day! It is one of his biggest ‘things’, not to mention something he is really quite good at. I made nothing of it but did wonder if it was a confidence thing for him or whether he just likes someone helping him.

Davies has got into a new routine of sleeping late and waking late – which sort of suits me and fits in with my own body clock really, whereas Ady and Tarly are more larks than owls. So he’s only just gone to sleep, but despite that, been as it’s my turn to be up with our lark in the morning and I’m feeling pretty lousy I’ll be off to bed myself I reckon.

Happy 6th Birthday Marcus!

Hope you had a fab day, lots of love, Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

Malice is still doing OK. Not really eating or drinking but fine in herself and getting more adventurous with where she’ll wander. I’m still holding out a bit of hope for some vision but that might well be me and my wishful thinking. We’ll see what the vets say tomorrow but fingers crossed we can keep her at home and maybe try some syringe feeding / watering. She’s clearly far happier here than she would be there and I would imagine that is the most important thing (not to mention continuing cost of residential treatment…).

So we’ve stayed home today. Ady and Davies had a lie-in, Scarlett and I did not :roll:. I’ve done baking (peanut butter cookies and chocolate fairy cakes – peanut butter cookies recipe called for way too much peanut butter so although they are lovely you *have* to drink them with a slug of milk between every nibble and the kids don’t like them – Ady loves them though, oh peanut butter fiend that he is 🙂 ). Ady’s done some gardening and emptied his car out ready for collection (we hope) tomorrow along with delivery of some sort of courtesy car. When the rain from this morning cleared up I did several loads of washing and finally unpacked and put away all the stuff from last week’s holiday.

The children have played with the Film Education W&G disc that Kirsty lent us which has been an instant hit (thanks Kirsty, have not tried to copy it yet, will have a go tomorrow) and Davies proved really quite proficient at putting sound effects to a clip from the film and when I sat with him and read the script he was easily able to construct a story board from the stills images to choose from – so up his street. 🙂

They have also played together loads, done plasticine, eaten popcorn and watched Chicken Run and been out in the garden with Ady. Ady and the children also went through all our videos and we now have a pile ready to go on ebay. Our plan for this coming week as Ady is still off work is to go through the loft, garage and cupboards and ebay everything we can find that we no longer need. A massive declutter and money making exercise which is probably the best possible investment of our time really given all our current possible plans for the future.

Am just about to serve up dinner (roast lamb smeared with mint and rosemary, served with roast potatoes (tossed in flour, salt, rosemary and olive oil to make them extra crispy), carrots and parsnips roasted in honey and rosemary, fresh peas I popped from the pods myself, yorkshire puddings (courtesy of Sainsburys Basics range 😉 ) and gravy made with mint sauce for those of you interested in such things 😆 ) and that’s about yer lot!

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Nic’s Lurgy
Cause:	influence of the Devil
Symptoms:	vague regurgitation, slightly impaired vision, gurgling
Cure:	sleep
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

But I’ve had enough comments and texts about Malice to warrant an update so I will.

She perked up considerably when I arrived at the vets and despite her usually being a vocal cat the nurses were amazed to hear her miaow very croakily for the first time all week. Needless to say she’s not stopped since!

We’ve managed to administer pain killers and eye drops to her open eye, we didn’t even try with the antibiotics as I was told it would be very tricky (they’ve been injecting her, I’ve got pills). She has not eaten or drunk anything, which is what they were hoping she would do so that continues to be a worry.

She has passed urine and faeces – I suspect the first all week. Unfortunately her blindness means it was on the lounge floor rather than in her litter tray 🙁 But good signs I understand nonetheless.

She is still utterly Malice, which was probably my biggest concern. She might not be able to see but she is still the same otherwise. I am hopeful that she might eat something tomorrow so I have positive news to take with me when she is returned to the vets on Monday – if she doesn’t eat I imagine she will need to go back in for tube feeding, if we can get her to eat at home I guess she may be allowed to stay home.

The sewn shut eye is still an unknown quantity – the open eye is very bloodfilled but we think she may have severly limited but there just the same vision in it. She is cannoning off things round the house but using her whiskers and ears and front paws to feel her way around and has ventured round most of the downstairs of the house. I suppose her future and quality of life rely very heavily on some vision or her quickly getting used to blindness. Very heartbreaking to witness her obvious confusion and struggling though 🙁 .

Candle is bemused but seems far more settled to have her home. She went over and investigated all her injuries and even gave her a quick groom. They seem glad to be together again.

The children have been better than I could have imagined. Davies, who can sometimes be slightly cruel to the cats as it is ‘fun’ to tease or chase them has been fantastic – from a childlike bringing Malice some of his favourite toys to make her feel better, to a very practical and helpful sitting stroking her and talking to her gently. He was sobbing on the Friday last week when she was missing which made me realise that despite seeming to not pay much attention to the cats they have been a fixture since before he was born and he is actually very attached to them.

Scarlett is being noisy, careless and narrowly missing treading on Malice every time she walks past, but she is also being very loving and bringing her food, drink, toys and is happy to sit for ages trying to persuade her to eat something and stroking her and talking lovingly to her.

On the car front the news is all OK – as it was Ady’s work car one call to the work insurance company has arranged a collection and delivery of a courtesy car sometime early next week. It does look bad though and it was the single thing that tipped the balance for me today and had me standing on the pavement outside my parents house along the busiest road in Worthing sobbing and being gawped at by all the passers by until I was gently led into the house by my Mother. 🙁 I rarely if ever do helplessness and breaking down but when I do I like to do it in style with a large audience. 🙄

Tomorrow, tomorrow will be a better day.