Those unaware of having our picture taken photos are always the most telling. We all seem to have a pose. Ros, obviously unconsciously sticks one leg out whenever she is in a kitchen! I, tend to fiddle with my necklace a lot so unexpected shots of me often have my hand resting on my chest (well it’s not like I am after hiding my cleavage is it now!), Ady is less a pose more a uniform as he is Never Photographed Without a Pompey Top.

And then there are the slightly odder poses!

It came to light yesterday that Chris and Alison have certain poses you will often find them striking. So, if you have the song Vogue by Madonna, stick it on now, have a look through these sets created in their honour, strike your own tribute versions of these classics and post them on flickr 🙂

Ladies and Gentlemen, we bring you The Chris and The Alison

It’s been a Piccadilly Circus of a weekend really. I once heard some idle urban myth type about if you stood there for a length of time you would basically come into contact with everyone in the world by virtue of them knowing someone, who might know someone, who would also know someone which would eventually mean you had an association to the entire population. Or something!

Anyway we’ve certainly done family and friends to a great degree. And very lovely it’s been too 🙂

So today, we were off to Chris and Julie’s. I went to Sainsburys first thing as we are totally out of all sorts of food and drink and this week is also looking to be rather on the busy side (tomorrow Ali’s coming over in the day and Mum and Dad are over for dinner, Tuesday I’m off with Ros to the Boden clearance sale and other ladies who lunch style gallivanting (10am outside the Brighton Centre btw Ros?), Wednesday is the whole Tumble Tots, Home Ed Group, Tumble Tots sandwich (featuring Jenny and Julie again – you too Ros?), Thursday is either Drusillas or Fun Junction with my friend Lucy followed by Richard Herring in the evening (and chance of you coming C&A?) and then Friday I’m fairly sure I’ve committed to something but can’t remember what, Saturday I have a basket weaving course with Julie and then a housewarming party in the evening. Somewhere during all that I also need to get my car to a garage for an MOT!).

Arrived there and had lunch before heading off to the nearby fields and woods for a lovely walk in the Autumn sunshine. A beautiful day today, so weather and state of mind were perfect for a content amble. Of course being us it was not without event 😉

There were blackberries along the way which the children enjoyed eating, we chatted about dyeing (thanks Merry, might be doing that this week, in a spare five minutes ;-)!),

there was a very steep, water and mud filled ditch to clamber over…

Julie just about managed it:

I, erm, didn’t!

Ady did some arty shots, inspired by Chris 😉

Which ended up looking like something from Lost!

And Ady, clearly was very at home with the whole woodlandy thing, with his jumper worn casually around his shoulders and his big stick!

Left Chris and Julie’s and to my Mum and Dad’s where we found them in the garden where Dad is making a pond extension. Freud would have something to say about this actually. They bought the house in 1978 as a two bedroomed bungalow. Within months they had knocked down some outhouses and a larder to create a kitchen and put in a seperating wall in one bedroom to create two. Then they build another two bedrooms and a bathroom on top of the house, then they knocked through the lounge into the garage to create a huge lounge and built a new garage at the other side of the house, then they build a utility room on the side, then they extended one of the bedrooms upstairs over the new utility room, then they put in a dormer window to make the hall lighter. You could fit our house about 12 times into theirs! So having finally run out of things to extend and additional rooms to add they have started to extend the pond by building a new, larger one alongside it which they are going to knock the original into (actually now their pond is probably bigger than our lounge 😉 ) If we’d had 11 children and 6 adults there at the weekend we might have had to use Chris and Alison’s GPRS thingie to find each other!

So we played in the hole that will be the second bit of their pond for a bit and then went indoors to eat the chocolate cakes we had brought as bribery for the four babysitting requests I had to put in to them! Bribery also included the dinner invite for tomorrow 😉

Then we headed for home, pausing only for the children and my Mum to have some sort of jumping competition!

Kids are now bathed and bedded, we’ve had a lovely roast lamb dinner (finally persuaded Ady to get off his arse and do something!!) and having decided that red wine is Very Good For You we have moved onto drinking that in an unspoken agreement that we might give up on the drinking rota!

Ah yes, it was hiding in excerpt instead of post!

Two hama bead boards, one with a festive scene, one with a girl – will keep them safe until your return

Pair of socks – blue with words written on them (not sure what words as they are currently in the washing machine) but assume they belong to offspring of Ros or Kirsty

McDonalds pedometer (I’m Lovin’ It!)

Notebook with bird picture on the front

pencil for writing in above notebook

But I was fine 😉

Had a lovely weekend so far. Chris and Alison arrived around 5 pm last night, followed not that long afterwards by Ros and Kirsty. And them plus their assorted children added to my two meant we had 11 children in the house for the evening. Well I say house, they spent a fair amount of time in the garden actually!

We’d had a nice low key day in preparation for what I forsaw to be a late and full on night (and oh, how it was!) and had been to Tescos in the morning for last minute supplies – mainly alcohol 🙂 Then home for lunch and some film watching for the children while I brought all the veg into the lounge and sat and peeled and chopped it there with the children ‘helping’. Got two vats of beef stew cooking by about 1.30pm – one with wine for adults, one without for small people, made copious amounts of dumplings and put them in the fridge, did some half hearted tidying and then learnt all about humanism! Had also purchased a ready bed each for the children in Homebase which was the source of much excitement and delight.

So the house and garden gradually filled with people, we drank, we laughed, we ate, we drank some more, Ros and Kirsty rounded up their children and headed off, we drank some more, Scarlett keeled over asleep (the drinking that did it! 😉 ), Chris, Tilda and Ady went off to sleep, Poppy sort of went to sleep and Lije and Davies ran up and down the stairs, Lulah wandered about and me and Alison continued to drink and chat. At 3am the boys finally went to sleep so shortly afterwards I staggered upstairs to bed and Alison and Lulah went to sleep too.

This morning was a very s l o w start. Ady and our two children were up first. (Davies on a grand total of about 5 hours sleep!), Lije was sleeping in Davies’ bed until Tarly stood on the stairs yelling ‘Lije is sleeping in Davies’ bed, Lije is sleeping in Davies’ bed’ Lije is…Oh! Lije is awake now!’ By the time I got downstairs, feeling surprisingly un-hungover but rather tired – everyone but Tilda and Poppy were up.

Ady made endless rounds of bacon sandwiches and tea and coffee and we all very slowly came to. Eventually we were galvanised into getting ourselves together to go out. Chris and Alison had brought along gadgets and instructions for a geo cache expedition so we headed off to Shoreham for it. Had a good play in a truly excellent playground there for a while before heading off with the gadgety thing to find the stash of stuff. Don’t know what the etiquette is of even talking about it further so I won’t (seems to be cloaked in secrecy and free mason style handshakes and don’t want to offend the high elders of geo caching by inadvertantly refering to something I shouldn’t!) but it was fun. 🙂

Home again for further playing, chatting and some slightly more reserved drinking. Watched X Factor, enjoyed a very nice indian takeaway (despite me spilling mine on the sofa and then scooping it back onto my plate!) and then they headed back home as the children began to get tired and fractious. Scarlett had already gone to bed, Davies was the living embodiment of the head, hit, pillow phrase falling asleep probably before they reached the end of the road.

We’ve done some putting the house back together, Ady’s just had a bath and headed to bed, I’m about to do the same.

Thanks for an excellent weekend guys, really enjoyed your company and looking forward to doing it all again very soon :-).

This is funny 🙂

Have been thinking a lot about funerals and stuff of late and was googling around to find out more about non-religious ceremonies when I stumbled across some websites about Humanism. I sort of knew the word, but TBH had it linked with Naturism in my mind somehow and as (despite opinion to the contrary!) I do not tend to wander round naked I had not really considered it in relation to me.

So I’ve been reading a bit about it and it’s very interesting. I also did a quiz and the results I think, are pretty accurate.

Haymaker

You are one of life’s enjoyers, determined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on Earth. Probably what first attracted you to atheism was the prospect of liberation from the Ten Commandments, few of which are compatible with a life of pleasure. You play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent approach to your philosophy.

You can’t see the point of abstract principles and probably wouldn’t lay down your life for a concept though you might for a friend. Something of a champagne humanist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards and your Hollywood hero is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful, irascible and aimed for goodness in his own tortured way.

Sometimes you might be tempted to allow your own pleasures to take precedence over your ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance between the good and the happy life. You’d probably open another bottle and say there’s no contest.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

That’s me!

A pretty good day today all things considered. We had another rough night with Tarly up and down the stairs several times but I did persuade the small people to entertain themselves for the best part of an hour after Ady left for work so I could at least snooze with an ear open if not drift totally back to sleep. Still feel pretty wasted though 🙁

So first thing we had some wildlife programe on and had breakfast, then we tried out one of the cdroms I got yesterday. They are SATS based tied in with Key Stage One and produce a certificate based on what a child ‘should’ be doing when you enter their birthdate and age. Not my normal sort of thing at all really but I thought they looked quite fun and might pick up a few no so obvious to me gaps in the early years stuff which could lead onto other discussions and interests.

Now Davies actually prefers to be on the PC without me hanging over his shoulder, and I prefer to have him happily doing something which then frees me up to either get on with other stuff or have some one to one time with Scarlett. Sadly these are not the software solution for such times. We onl tried the colour and shapes one but as you have to answer questions (written questions – tricky for someone not yet reading) and then work out what to do by using the answer it is a bit over complicated and dressed up as a game unnecessarily. The questions were pretty basic such as ‘what is a circle?’ answer choices being ’round, square, rectangular or triangular’ which Scarlett could happily answer verbally, but written down in different coloured boxes. You then had to try and work your way through a maze to find the correct coloured door and click on it. I know! We’ll give one of the others a go tomorrow and see if it’s any better.

Then we did our usual dashing out of the house with moments to spare act and arrived at soft play at the same time as Lucy. I had also invited Julie (who I always used to see on Thursdays and we agreed that we should not have let it slip and would start doing so again) and Vickie (who I had also semi planned to do something with today but she had not been able to confirm one way or another and I didn’t want to keep the day free on a maybe) but neither of them came in the end.

So it was Lucy, Rebecca (slightly younger than Scarlett) and baby Richard (six months old, sitting and very smiley and content, ok as babies go!). Davies and Scarlett immediately headed off into the maze playing some complicated game about lions and after a short warming up period Rebecca joined them. Lucy and I sat in the ball pool with Richard and chatted. As usual the conversation revolved mostly around HE – she is really looking forward to the Halloween party and to meeting some other HE folk – with a list of questions she had thought of since we last met and general parenting chat too. I feel slightly fraudulent in her company as she has decided that Davies is so intelligent and such a wonderful example of Home Ed that I must spend all my time ‘teaching’ him stuff. I have tried to explain that we don’t live like that but she still doesn’t believe me when I tell her that I spend most of my day on the internet or meeting up with other HE mums to chat and drink tea while the children are mostly left to their own devices 😉 .

We had lunch there and then headed back in for a second play. Unfortunately Tarly was getting tired and on one of her and Davies’ tandem slide falls (massive slide which they sit at the top of, hold hands and come crashing down together) they collided with each other’s faces at the bottom and she came off worse 🙁 . Davies, bless him, was really upset and tried to comfort her but she pushed him away and then I had to deal with her sobbing so he got all stroppy with me too :-(. I finally sorted her out and she went to have one more go on the slide and fell over again so more wailing.

We left shortly afterwards!

They both perked up sufficiently for us to pop to the library on the way home where I gave them free rein to choose whatever books they wanted and grabbed a couple for myself. We were just about to leave when I found The Grinch (Jim Carey version) in the dvd area so we grabbed that too. Came home and they sat watching that with popcorn while I sorted out the pens, pencils, crayons and felt tips, paper and crafty bits like glitter and glue in the playroom. Another bin liner full of rubbish lost from there, and a list of supplies we need ready to be ordered from Baker Ross later 😉 Davies came in and drew some lovely pictures – a witch, a castle, one of him and my Mum which he has put in an envelope and written the address tidily enough for me to think it’s worth sticking a stamp on and hoping it gets there (I’ve written the postcode so I’m sure they can work it out – their house doesn’t have a number, just a name so with the postcode correct the writing should be able to be made out). He also worked out almost all by himself how to spell ‘Nicola’ with me helping him to break the word down into syllables and saying it carefully. We’re getting there 🙂

They did some more playing about going on holiday to Centerparcs when the film ended and then Tarly went and got her pjs on and announced it was night time and she was ‘tired-y’ so packed her off to bed and sat cuddle up with Davies until Ady arrived home.

Tomorrow promises to be chaos but not until the late afternoon / evening so we plan a quiet morning with much stew preparation for what has become an impromptu last minute blog bump session.

Continuing on from previous post(s) 🙂

Group was pretty good today, always helped by having two fellow bloggers (Jen and Ros) my own sister in law and the friend who’s son attends Tumble Tots with Davies there. All slightly incestuous but nice just the same!

The theme was Autumn so Jen had brought a selection of autumnal leaves and other tree droppings, some paper and some tissue paper although we never actually got to that, Ros brought some paints, Julie brought a circle of cardboard to be decorated with harvest grains and cut out pictures of fruits and vegetables, Vickie brought gingerbread apple shaped biscuits to decorate with writing icing and I brought the (dun dun derrrr!) killer salt dough.

The dough had not actually hardened at all so we mostly just dipped our hands in it, attempted to make it into shapes which s l o w l y melted back into puddles again and washed our hands a lot. The dough did managed to block the sink in the bathroom, make it’s way into the hall, into the carpet, onto the stage, onto the bottom of every child’s shoes and is probably now mutating and regrouping in the home of every person at group today. I ended it’s time with us by ceremoniously dumping it in the bin at group, where no doubt it is planning it’s next victim as I type.

Actually given all the activities were somewhere on the messy scale group did have the feel of a therapy session for OCD sufferers today with a sort of relay of people constantly going back and forth to the bathroom smelling of liquid soap and with splashes on their shoes and bit of paper towel stuck to their hands.

My two both produced a couple of paintings each, at least four decorated biscuits, a nice harvest grain picture and did some salt dough beating which gave them licence to spend about half the time up on the stage playing with the other hoard of children present. A nice feeling to see them all running around in packs playing highly imaginative games and enjoying being together. 🙂

Left there for Gym Bobs and Davies went in to do that while Tarly and I played with a make a scene kit (the ones with reusable plastic stickers that you can position in different places on the card background). I’d found them long since forgotten in the bookcase and we had a house scene (with kitche, bathroom, bedroom and lounge) and a farm one. We did that for a while and then she carried on playing with it afterwards. I love listening to children when their own self entertainment and imagination kicks in. I do wonder why we’ve spent so much money on large plastic toys when I watch them use something very simple (and often as simple as a couple of twigs from the garden!) and give them personalities, characters and play out scenes.

Home for tea and I now have to catch up on last week’s Lost which Julie’s lent me on video before tonights episode airs. Ady has decreed mid-week alcohol ban lifting, so quite why I am still here blogging when I have such attractive options waiting for me, I do not know!

Here I am sitting with moments to spare before I need to start getting stuff together to head out of the door to group so I thought I’d see whether blogging in the middle of the chaos was any more exciting!

Tumble Tots for Tarly was ok. She was not really in the mood for it for some reason and about half way through just decided she wanted to go home. Davies had crept into the hall to sit and watch and so I asked her if she’d do it for Davies and she said ‘yes!’ So I stood to one side and Davies went round with her doing the cheering, coaxing and holding her hand on the balancing. Very cute – although possibly viewed as the reason I keep him out of school by some of the muttering mothers! 😉 (so he can assist in childcare rather than head off and get himself an education!).

Left there and headed into Town centre which is only five minutes drive from TT. It took forever to park though so we only had an hour to get as much done as we could. I decided to make this the first time I tackled town centre without the pushchair as we need to start working away from it otherwise we’ll have her still in it when she’s 12 on the basis that she’s too giddy to not be contained in public places!

So we managed a trip to Clarkes to check their feet are still OK in their shoes (they are), a quick peep in The Works where I picked up six cdroms on 2 for a fiver with various educational stuff on them (will link to them properly later) and four packs of 20 piece geomags (rods and balls) which they are selling at £3.99 (real live geomags too, not pretend ones at pretty much half the normal price – hurrah!), and then a quick trip to Woolworths where Davies has been desperate to go and get some Robots toy he spotted with the last of his birthday money (we’re watching the dvd lots so he is back into it again). Also picked up fancy dress outfits for me and Ady while we were in there so we now all have our outfits 🙂

Right, about to grab all the various things we need for the second leg of Mad Wednesday (Davies’ gym bobs outfit, stuff for group including the killer dough and things to entertain Tarly while Davies does his Gym Bobs session and maybe a book for me to read too).

Back later.

the salt dough headed out of our house. In some sort of weird moral and honourable way it chose not to destroy it’s creator (me) and left my family intact also – although I believe there was a 2am scuffle between it and Tarly – obviously she won (well it was Tarly! 😉 ) and it’s gone. Not sure whether it took out any of the neighbours (clearly we’ll get a thank you card if it got as far as David’s – where it would have enjoyed kind hospitality whatever hour of the night it arrived. They would have offered it sherry and probably defrosted some voluvants for it) but I imagine it is out there now, oozing towards another part of the country. Keep your eyes open and you might want to store your flour and your salt in seperate cupboards, just to be safe.

The salt dough didn’t quite mix into the firm but pliable ball of modelling material I had anticipated (I have made it before but it was a while ago now, before I started using Katy’s recipe for lovely soft play dough and nicked Jan’s idea for colouring and scenting it) so I chucked it all in a big bowl and bunged it in the chiller to erm, settle.

Dinner was delicious (I’m quite a good cook if I do say so myself, it’s just that I can so seldom be bothered at the end of a day to start creating masterpieces when I could be sat on the sofa drinking wine with my laptop instead) and all finished by 9.30 so I thought I’d get the salt dough out and make a few pieces to show the children at group tomorrow for ideas for them to make.

It had somehow morphed, while in the chiller, into a writhing seething mass of salt, flour and water and grown bigger and bigger.

So what did I do to remedy this monster of modelling materials, this devillish disaster of dough? Well I added some more flour to it first, and when that had only served to make it worse and both my hands were glued together and to the ever growing lump of it I sent Ady to the kitchen to ‘bring the salt’. We added a little, we added a little more. We tossed the whole tub of salt into the middle of the blob and I worked harder and harder, more and more frantically trying to knead it in like some sort of demented pizza chef.

We have no more flour or salt in the house (should the need arise in the middle of the night to have such store cupboard staples – an invasion of large slugs for example who need salt to kill them off, a need to create papier mache mixture, a yearning to bake anything requiring them as ingredients or other such incident we will be forced to pop across the road to our neighbours and borrow some from them (Oh god, think of the thank you card exchange frenzy that would set off!)) and the ‘thing’ is now oozing off the sides of the tray I have got it plonked on. It is too big now to fit back in it’s original bowl. I will need to take it to group tomorrow in a bin liner or suitcase or something. When I lifted it I would judge that it is heavier than Davies!

I do have some, not altogether groundless, fears that it will gather speed, power and some level of intelligence during the night and we may have to run screaming from the house in the early hours of the morning, in our dressing gowns, in the style of a 50s black and white movie, clasping our hands to our cheeks in silent screams as it oozes out of the house, down the street after us and slowly covers the south downs, the Sussex beaches and all the surrounding towns and villages. Local landmarks will be shown on the breakfast news tomorrow slowly disappearing under a pile of salt dough. Beachy Head and the lighthouses will be engulfed, the bright lights and dazzle of Brighton Pier will dim as they surrender to a covering of goo. It will be too late for Sussex but Kent, Hampshire and Surrey will be gridlocked as ‘Tone’ urges people to evacuate their homes. London will come to a standstill as goo starts to ooze from out of plugholes in sinks and baths, from the pump nozzles in petrol stations, out of the taps in kitchens and bubbles out of the phone recievers across the land.

Run now my friends, run now while you have the chance.

The salt dough, it’s gonna getcha!

Or perhaps it will harden off slightly overnight and I’ll make some pretty little ornaments with the children at home ed group tomorrow with it after all.

but then, when you least expect it, they will wobble off mantlepieces and start to congregate again together to reform a large blob of goo….

or not.

and yes, that’s right, tonight was a wine -free evening. The lunacy this evening was brought to you in association with Appletize and Home Pride!

For just not paying any attention the first time they were asked nicely, the second time perhaps with a slight edge to my voice, the third time with threats of getting cross, the fourth time with the threatened crossness, oh and then back to the beginning again half an hour later 🙁 Grr!

One of those days which could have been saved perhaps if I’d been able to stop everything i wanted / had to get done and dedicate myself to dealing with every skirmish as it arose. But then again that might still have resulted in putting them up for adoption, considering breaking them down for parts and flogging them on ebay or simply running away from home myself!

The ‘Plan’ was that I would spend an hour getting the last CVs done and emailed across first thing this morning. They were watching the dinosaur video again and then chose Robots on dvd so it should have all worked perfectly. Except, the kept irritating the hell out of each of by getting toys, not sharing them, trying to play with each others stuff, making too much noise and drowning out the video and so on. I got more and more hacked off with them and shoutier and shoutier 🙁 So I did get the CVs done but they had both been sent to their rooms at least twice each, my throat was actually sore from yelling and I had absolutely no desire to spend the afternoon doing nice stuff with them at all.

We headed off to Sainsburys to get various bits and pieces for the rest of the week and they managed to redeem themselves and behave there so when we got home while they played with some k’nex I made some salt dough for Home Ed group tomorrow (theme is Autumn and I have a half plan to do some sort of dough craft in the style of country kitchens and create corn dolly / scarecrow, faux bread and fruit wreath type creations which can be dried and painted) with the aim of bringing some out for them to play with and doing something with them. They actually played really nicely for about an hour in the end so I didn’t distract them and got on with making a toffee apple pie too (yum!).

By the time they had realised what I was up to they had blown their chances of salt dough play by misbehaving again so we ended up having early tea for them followed by apple pie watching Green Eggs and Ham.

Ady arrived home just in time to witness / instigate further irrational tantrumming from a very tired Davies who is about to fall asleep and then I will go and get tonights dinner sorted (toad in the hole with red onion, garlic and herbs, served with mini roast potatoes, sweetcorn and gravy for those interested in such things). Not even a wine evening 🙁

Tomorrow is mad Wednesday with something scheduled every half an hour or something so that will either distract them from their mardiness or blow up in my face as they melt down with a large audience! 😉

Liam and Lily arrived to a very tidy house in the end, although they then ably assisted Davies and Scarlett in re-trashing it 😉

Davies and Liam disappeared up into Davies’ bedroom to play with the castle and the pirate ship. Tarly divided her time between joining in with them and terrorising Lily who was trying to play with her babies. She is quite good at sharing, as long as it is on her terms and the sharing entails doing whatever she tells you to do with her stuff! 😉 I often idly wonder what she would be like if she had had her corners rubbed off more by other children. She and Davies view each other as equals and with lots of the other children they mix with she is either dominant (e.g. Jack and Maisie), a joint force with her big brother (and boy, can they be a force you wouldn’t mess with!) or the cute little girl which she plays to perfection. I actually think a lot of her charm is down to being valued for who she is rather than having to fight to claim a space for herself so I guess it would not have done her any great favours but I do think she would have been a different girl and certainly more aware of who her playmates ‘should’ be rather than who she chooses (her and Davies would do pistols at dawn over Ben Raine and in school neither of them would have actually come into contact with him at all!).

Anyway, so with children mainly otherwise engaged Mel and I set about catching up on various things. Its always odd to give head space to how others view me. For so long I either didn’t care or it honestly didn’t occur to me and every so often someone refers to having told someone else something about me and I always am surprised and think ‘Oh yeah, I suppose I probably do get mentioned as ‘my friend who doesn’t send her children to school!”. Turns out Liam has been asking her lots of questions about why Davies doesn’t go so she had answered them as best she could and then said to him that he should ask me himself. So he did!

He wanted to know why he doesn’t go, which I admit to sort of skirting round by explaining that although most children, like he does, go to school there are also lots of other children who do not and stay at home to learn things. He wanted to know how he would learn ‘anything’ if he didn’t go to school (which is clearly something he has heard a grown up somewhere say – you have to go to school otherwise you’ll never learn anything!’) so I explained that his teachers can only teach him once they have learnt things themselves so I can learn things the same as a teacher does and then teach Davies them, we can look at books, the TV, the computer and so on and learn anything we need to know. I said that at school he might learn about a river – we could go and visit the river to learn about it. At that point he pretty much lost interest but it is actually the hardest justifying I have ever done for the case of HE. Very tricky because his mother is sat next to him and it would have been totally inappropriate to put any doubts in his mind about him going to school, but I certainly don’t want him to think that Davies is in any way missing out on anything / weird / someone to feel sorry for. I hope I got across that it is just a different way of learning. He did insist that when Davies was bigger he would have to go to school though and I said that no, we didn’t plan for him to ever go to school. Davies who had been listening and being very smug about his HE status hopped off the sofa, went to the bookcase and got out two workbooks and showed them to Liam to show how he could learn without being at school, pointed to the picture behind Liam’s head of his space drawing and then got out a letterland book to show how he will learn to read and a science one to show him too. Actually if ever that was reassurance that he will be able to justify it to anyone all by himself that was it. He was proud to be Home Educated, keen to demonstrate just how it would work and actually a good advertisement for it in action 🙂 So that was good!

They stayed for tea and I felt like a real Mum when I made angel delight for their pudding – we always used to have that when we went to friends house’s for tea when I was a kid – so 70s! Then they left via the front door as Ady came in the back door, we swooped into action on Operation Tidy Up and got the kids into bed very early (which was good as they had both had crap nights), Ady has long since retired and I am putting off doing a CV – I have three left to do which need to be in tomorrow, but as they are only taking about 20 minutes a time I’m sure I can find an hour somewhere tomorrow. Yeah, sod it, I’ll do it in the morning! 😉

Traffic to Brighton was hell last night. Although I don’t really remember ever going to Brighton and it not being hell to drive into and park. We live a straight ten miles along the coast and in the dead of night you could easily drive there in about 20 minutes. Last night it took an hour 🙁

We had planned to arrive, park up, go and find somewhere to have an early meal and then go to the theatre for 7.45pm start. We arrived, spent bloody ages finding somewhere with spaces to park in and found the nearest pub! 😉 Had a couple of drinks and then headed to the theatre. I had worn some ridiculously high heeled boots so was very wobbly!

I think I probably was the first person to book tickets and we had row A, seats 1,2 & 3 which was excellent. A real mix of people there including the ones who laughed loud and hearty the instant he came on stage, those who appeared to not really too sure who Harry Hill was and sat looking slightly confused and certainly not amused throughout, groups of couples, some cool Brighton types of students, some curiously quite elderly people, a couple of groups of ‘lads’ who had clearly come to heckle and various ‘extras’ type people. Full house though.

Ady caught his eye almost as soon as he came on stage and was refered to in various parts of his sketch as ‘baldy’. Frazer was targeted for being one of the ‘youngsters’ (poor bloke, he’s getting on for 30 but so doesn’t look it. Only last year he was asked for ID in the pub!) and then helped in the grand finale bit by holding up his lighter at a prompted moment. I pretty much escaped aside from being picked on for clapping Ady when he called out the correct answer to one of Harry’s questions. He was very, very funny and I think we laughed pretty much non stop for the whole two hours. We kept trying to covertly take pictures with our phones – covert because he would, of course crucifyed you as part of his act if he’d noticed! We had another drink in the interval which no doubt made the second half all the funnier 😉 The heckling ‘lads’ were well and truly put in their place which is always amusing. A very good performance.

We left and walked round to Donatellos for pasta. I love that about Brighton, if you tried to find an open restaurant in Worthing at gone 10pm on a Saturday night you would struggle, but in Brighton everything is still buzzing whatever time of night it is. Really nice meal and then we headed home.

We’re going back there to see Richard Herring in a couple of weeks time and Frazer iis coming with us.

Today I had vague plans to head either to town or into the village and visit either library but we ended up sorting out Davies’ room instead. I have cleared lots of space so he can now spread his toys out and really play up there and set the fort and his pirate ship up ready to do so. I’ve taken loads of books from his book case which are just too babyish now and changed his bed as he had a nosebleed in the night which went everywhere 🙁 Now I need to do the same exercise in Scarlett’s bookcase and decide whether I am donating, ebaying or just skipping the unwanted stuff and go through the toys in the playroom for the same purpose.

The kids’ friends are coming round after school for tea so I really need to clear the place up a bit and dig something out to feed them all, tomorrow is also a free day at the moment so I am feeling quite ahead of myself for getting everything I want to get done this week on track.

As I was early to rise – and won’t be about tonight either.

Up before 6am this morning with Tarly, but I suppose it is still preferable to being up ‘in’ the night. I did manage to snuggle into her bed with her for a while though and get a little more snoozing 🙂

Davies was up shortly afterwards so we watched The Land Before Time on video that I had picked up yesterday. They both got really into that and sat snuggled up with me on the sofa watching it while I did the first of this week’s CVs.

Ady got up then so I went to get dressed, got the kids dressed and then I took Tarly out with me while Davies and Ady did some gardening. We needed to go to Sainsburys for a few bits (top of the shopping list was wine, obviously 😉 ), then we went to Boots and Tarly got to push one of the children’s trolleys which she has never done before. I always have Tarly either in a trolley or in her pushchair when we are shopping as her and Davies together are too giddy to just walk along beside me, but when she is on her own she is a pleasure to be out and about with and walks along holding my hand and being very sensible.

We walked all round Boots looking at all the makeup, perfumes and stuff. She saw some Barbie perfume so she had a spray of that and has been proudly asking everyone to ‘smell me’ all day ever since 🙂 Got several ideas for Christmas and birthday gifts for her just from that little trip 🙂 She’s so girly!

Then we called into see my parents for an hour or so. It was really nice to just be the two of us, the interaction and dynamic is so different. As much as I enjoy the fact that Davies and Scarlett spend so much time together I do really enjoy having one of them to myself at a time too. They become an interesting companion instead of just half of ‘the kids’ – something I swore I would always value in each of them, but we seldom get the chance to do. They have spent a lot of the last year seemingly at the same sort of level but suddenly Davies has streaked ahead again and the age gap seems to have stretched again – which means that they are often competing for my attention instead of being complementary to each other. Sadly Scarlett usually comes out far better from this as she has in the main identified that tantrums don’t work so she gets her attention from being either very clever or very cute – positive stuff. Davies does either very loud, very silly or very, very annoying – far more negative.

So Ady and Davies had some good bloke time this morning while Tarly and I did some girly shopping – oh how stereotypical! 😉

Came home and hung three loads of washing out, which I must remember to get in later otherwise it will get rained on and end up out there for a week like the load I finally brought in this morning! Made some lunch for everyone and then shoved some chocolate chip muffins with chopped up rolos in the oven too. Recipe I found on the internet and they are very yummy but due to it being an aga recipe I must have messed up either the timing or the oven temp as they have not risen properly. Still taste lovely but look a little flat!

Just as we finished lunch we heard the unmistakable sound of a motorbike pulling up and our friend Will appeared at the door. Ady had seen him at work (he works for B&Q still) last week and said to him to pop round sometime, so he had! Ady and he used to live together years ago and he and I were a couple for a while a long time ago (yes, that Will – for those who have heard some of my life story!) so lots of ‘have you seen x?’ type conversations went on while the kids showed off for the ‘visitor’!

Right, the house is a state – although it does smell pleasantly of home baking! – and my parents will be here in about an hour ready to take over bathing and putting to bed of children while we go off out for the evening with Frazer.

What are the chances of that happening? 🙂

Can’t quite believe it’s happened but I seem to have run out of wine. Now usually I don’t let the alcohol level in my bloodstream dip below a certain level, let alone the supply in the chiller but oversights happen and this would be one!

So, I am two glasses in and nicely merry and craving more, listening to ‘vintage’ Robbie Williams while cooking dinner, doing my ‘two kids and I have to shop in Evans, but I’ve still got ‘it’ ‘ dance round the kitchen and I am faced with a choice between gin (had a bad experience aged about 17 on it and can only drink it when heavily disguised with a mixer – our mixer selection comprises mostly of ribena or petit filous yoghurt drinks!), ginger wine, brandy, mead or a couple of bottles of saki that Ady has stashed from some trade fair giveaway circa 1997.

Hmm, we’re having stir fry into which I have tipped a fair amount of ground ginger so in honour of that, and my hair, I think I will turn to Green’s in this hour of need 😉

A far better night with all children sleeping through but I managed to have a night full of very strange dreams including a few fellow bloggers which left me waking feeling more worn out than when I’d gone to bed 🙁

Headed off to Chichester where Ady dropped me off at his old school for the NCT nearly new sale and then he and the children went to Chris’. Last year I bought loads of stuff there, loads of clothes for both children, some waterproof dungarees, and plenty of toys. This year I only made one purchase of clothing – a jumper for Davies of the big and baggy style which makes him look Very Home Educated (he loves it 🙂 ) and erm, about 25 books! Lots of Ladybird classics, an enormous Richard Scarry one (it’s literally enormous, it stands about as tall as Tarly), a couple of nicely bound hardback classics (Peter Pan, Railway Children and Wizard of Oz, which have clearly never been reaed), some Usborne ones and a couple of collection books, one with spooky stories in it which will be good for Halloween. Also picked up a couple of videos but having done so well at last years I had higher hopes really. Jenny tells me there is the Worthing one happening next week so I’ll pop along to that and see if it makes up for it!

Julie and I headed back to their house and the children played in the garden while we chatted. I had still not really recovered from a restless night and my neck is sore and a headache was starting to brew too, so we came home fairly early from there and have spent a couple of hours at home looking at the books, watching X Factor and just sitting around.

Tomorrow Ady is planning the last gardening session of the year in the morning so I plan to either do some baking or some tidying with the children while he’s outside. Then in the evening we are going to Brighton to see Harry Hill. We bought tickets for us and Frazer as his birthday present back in May so we are planning a meal or at least a few drinks before the show, which should be very nice.

I think a pre-Christmas sort out of toys and books is in order, some of Davies’ birthday presents have still not found themselves permanent homes and the bookshelves are groaning again. It is hard to say goodbye to stuff which has been around for the last 5 years or so and the children always decide to suddenly start playing with toys again when I start to eye them up with a view to sending them off to the charity shop but Tarly is nearly 3 so some of the more junior puzzles, board books and stuff really could go on its way. Also I think the stash of stuff at my parents is probably a little outdated too so maybe some of the lesser played with stuff could head over there too.

Finally I am quietly and ineffectively seething having questioned Julie a little further on the whole willy incident of last weekend. It would seem that on discovering the tableau the mother of the flashee said a few things which I would have never dreamed of saying in similar circumstances infront of Davies. No wonder he won’t talk about it any further to me 🙁

Anyway, hopeful for an altogether less blah day tomorrow, and yes, Sarah, I’m glad we are able to have them without feeling anything other than blah about them. It would be awful to feel they were ‘lost days’ or anything other than the end of a long month.

The end of the week is nigh 😉

A blah day today really. Another truly crap nighgt, Tarly was in our bed from 1am, at 3am I sent Ady to put her back into her bed and he discovered that the cat had been in her room and pooed on her bed 🙁 So he sent her back up to me and had to clear all that up. Bloody cat!

Davies’ rash is still in situ although it has spread more outwards now and is leaving his torso and heading to his face more. Fingers crossed he will be on the mend tomorrow.

I had been going to see my friend Lucy today but I cancelled it in the end and my parents arrived at lunchtime, with lunch and stayed for the afternoon.

We’d spent the morning making some cookies, watching schools TV, playing with micro machines and polly pockets and generally snuggling up on the sofa.

We had lunch and then Dad headed off about 3pm and Mum played with the kids for a couple of hours while I did various things such as re-making Tarly’s bed with clean bed linen, tidying her room generally and clearing up the kitchen from the earlier chaos that is baking with two children!

Ady got home around 6pm, Mum headed off for home and both children were asleep shortly after 7pm.

Feel like I’ve not done an awful lot either with the children or with the benefit of having someone engage them for a couple of hours but oh well!

Tomorrow Ady and the children are going over to see Chris and the twins while Julie and I hit the NCT nearly new sale which usually turns up a few bargains. I’ve had four CVs from CV Lady which need to be back for Tuesday and there are piles of things in pretty much every room which are suddenly closing in on me so I want to feel like I’ve got something done.

Can’t say it’s been a good day particularly given all the various stuff going on but I feel remarkably unscathed considering.

Woke ridiculously early this morning (before 7!!!) by Ady who was struggling to get himself ready for work and see to Davies who was up early also and in need of love and cuddles. As I was still eating dinner at midnight, blogging at 1am and probably turned off the light and went to sleep well after 2am I am feeling fairly removed from reality anyway 🙁

Sat with Davies doing cuddling and then Tarly came and joined us. Davies requested Green Eggs and Ham so we set that up on Ady’s laptop and they played with that, Polly Pocket and a rare moment of activity brought out their ‘going on holiday’ game which seems to be a favourite currently and has them packing themselves up and travelling up and down the stairs. The suggestion by Davies of playing it was greeted by great joy from Tarly so clearly I am missing some obvious appeal! 😉

I got dressed, sorted out which of the outfits I was going to wear, practised my speech infront of the mirror feeling very loony and did more cuddling duty. Also spent a while on the phone to Jenny while Tarly ‘decorated’ herself with a variety of my make up 🙁

We shared a couple of slices of the very lovely apple pie and then Ady arrived home so I went and got dressed and as Tarly was making a big fuss about coming with me Ady distracted them and I went to wait for Mum, Dad and Frazer in the garden.

I drove us all over to Doreen (John’s partner)’s house and met up with her son and daughter in law and several of John’s friends. We were in the second black funeral car to the crematorium and I have never riden in one before. Astonishing how many looks you get and what people’s reactions are to seeing the procession of cars. I watched one student cross herself, several people catch sight of the cars and their facial expressions change to one of sorrow or reflection and lots of glances full of pity for the mourners contained within.

A bit of background necessary if this next bit is to make any sense – John was married to my Grandmother (Mum’s Mum) from when I was 6 months old to when I was about 12 or so. So he was sort of my Grandad for those early childhood years. He and Granny split up fairly bitterly but drifted in and out of touch over the years and even got back together a couple of times. They saw each other perhaps once a fortnight recently although John was sort of ‘with’ Doreen who he had met through some sort of OAP social dating agency type organisation (I believe they both liked Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain!). They spent every evening together and went away for weekends but both went home to their own houses each night so their relationship was about companionship rather than any great romance. Granny and Doreen had never met although were aware of each other. My Mum and Granny have a strained relationship anyway and this whole thing has been very awkward as we were invited to Doreens, to go in the funeral cars and back there afterwards. Granny was not.

So she was there, with a friend for support and clearly feeling very excluded from everything and unsure of what to do. Coupled with the fact that she was totally devastated by his death as she truly did love him it was a very difficult day for her today. We all stood for a while and then I went over to see her. Frazer followed and then so did Mum and Dad. She asked who was Doreen so I pointed her out and then I got caught with the vicar doing the service.

There were 20 people attending and we were in a very small chapel. Granny ended up sitting directly behind Doreen and placed her hand on her shoulder and introduced herself and was pretty much blanked in return. Bearing in mind she probably knew all 20 of the people there and some of them would have attended her weddding to John 31 years ago it was very hard that no one spoke to her.

So the service was pretty basic, the vicar read out some words Doreen had relayed to him about who John was and then I said my piece. It was very well recived and jerked lots of tears, and very oddly lots of congratulations afterwards which seemed slightly inappropriate really.

Afterwards there was the same awkwardness with Granny returning to her car and Doreen being surrounded by her family and quite loudly being nasty about her being there and trying to introduce herself. I made a bit of a statement by going over to Granny and giving her the speech so she had the copy of it. I cannot bear the idea that an occassion such as a funeral is turned into anything more than a time of celebrating the life of the person who has died and joining together in your sorrow and mourning. They would both have been feelin dreadful saying their final goodbyes to him so to taint that with schoolgirlish nonsense seems very sad. For once I thought my granny conducted herself with dignity and grace today.

We went back to Doreens for the ‘wake’ where I got tied up with an old man who fought in WW2 and was stationed at all sorts of thrilling places and had been born and grew up in India. Very interesting stories to tell but told in typical ‘old bloke’ fashion of totally losing his thread midway and moving onto a different story. I could hear my Dad and Frazer in near hysterics behind me! The best moment came when he had started a very long and convoluted story and his wife called across to say they needed to leave to catch their train and he said ‘won’t be a minute dear, I’m just telling the tombstone story’ which of course was his punchline!

Mum, Dad and Frazer came back here and Mum has just gone to take Frazer home and get changed before coming back for dinner.

Davies is worse again 🙁 The rash has reappeared with a vengence and he is tired and irritable. He’s been piritoned up again and we’ll see how he’s doing in the morning. Ady, bless him has been doing the glass test, taking his temperature and after me telling him it was an allergic reaction to something rang me on my mobile to say he’d looked it up in a medical book and thought it was definitely hives! 😉

When we got home I made some Halloween mobiles with the children – sticks with ghosts, pumpkins and bats dangling off them which look really good and they really enjoyed making.

I guess I’m glad the day is over really, it has hung over me since before the holiday. Hopefully Davies will be better tomorrow and we can continue with our arranged get together with my friend Lucy at her new house.

The rash is back 🙁

But he’s feeling pretty okay and piriton is relieving the itch so I think we’ll give it another 24 hours before seeking medical attention!

Funnily enough it is looking almost exactly like a rash which Scarlett had in January 2004 which lasted about a week, looked really dreadful and had me with her at the doctors three times with them doing precisely nothing about it as we could not work out what had caused it and she was not ill so we decided it had to be an allergic reaction to *something* she had come into contact with which left of its own accord and never came back.