This morning Ady was up first to open the pool, the rest of us at a more leisurely pace. I am definitely enjoying not *having* to go to bed at a certain time because Ady needs to and he is enjoying not *having* to stay up because I want to ;). My main task for today was covering the office from 930-230 because Jill gives two half days a week of her time to volunteer in the local tourist information office which was threatened with closure due to lack of council funding but thanks to the local businesses realising the value of having the resource has been saved by a rota of people prepared to man it. Of course Jill is not here, having gone back to London for a couple of nights (she is back tomorrow, we collect her from the station at lunchtime) so Shirley was covering her instead, which meant I needed to cover Shirley. We gave Davies and Scarlett the option of going with one or other parent each and they both chose Ady. I’m choosing to believe that is because he had a quad bike on offer 😉
So while I sat at the desk, printed off some signs, wrote some copy for the website, reworded some sections of the welcome pack information folders that go in each cottage and printed some new ones off, worked out a pets policy for the dog friendly cottages, took various phonecalls including a couple of potential bookings, arranged for someone from The Rough Guide to Britain book to come and look round tomorrow, dealt with the photograher, signed for a parcel, spoke to Jill on the phone three times and found train times for her, researched just what a ‘quart’ is in liquid measurement so Shirley could dilute some drain cleaner properly and did a spot of blogging too 
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(genuine expression, not posed, he caught me unawares. And those muffins, not mine!)
Ady and the kids moved a whole heap of cleared brambles, branches and garden waste from one area to another ready to burn when it’s not quite so dry and forest-fires are not on the news every day, using the quad bike and trailer. They graduated from this:
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to this:
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with Davies doing almost all of the driving, he took me for a ride and he really has it mastered, steering, braking, changing gear, ensuring he leaves enough room to turn with the trailer on the back and everything. Very impressed 🙂
Ady brought me a cup of tea and the radio into the office so we could listen to Popmaster :). They all had lunch and I succumbed to one of those muffins as I was stuck in the office.
Shirley came back and by the time I had been driven on the quad bike and had a go myself it was nearly 4pm and I’d not had lunch yet so I decided to walk down into Glastonbury and get bits like birthday cake candles for Ady. I also thought it would do Davies and Scarlett good to either come with me or be split up – I offered both the chance and Davies chose the lure of some one to one time with me, while Scarlett was still starry eyed about quad bike rides so that worked perfectly :).
Davies and I had a lovely time together, walking into town, wandering round the charity shops and the CoOp for the few bits I wanted then walking back again. We had some interesting chats, caught up with each other a bit and I got treated to some of the Davies-wisdom that so cheers me up. I love his thought processes and ability to frame things so positively :). Despite a fairly rough week or so he is very up about the whole adventure and considers himself so very fortunate to have this opportunity and chance to do something so adventurous and different. I adore how happy he is in himself and how secure he is in being different, hope he continues to feel that way :).
Back at Middlewick Ady and Scarlett were on their last quad bike run so Davies joined them for that and then they all put the quad away, locked up sheds and generally closed down and put away all the tools etc. Ady wasn’t up for a swim so he stayed behind for a peaceful bath and getting the kids dinner on while Davies, Scarlett and I had half an hour in the pool.
The kids had tea while I had a bath and then I came down with the intention of chasing them off to bed for an early night but Davies was engrossed in something on the TV and Tarly was looking at an animal book and drawing so they ended up staying up til 10pm anyway. Which meant that with putting the chickens to bed and stopping to have a drink and chat with Shirley when she dropped the pool key in to us that we didn’t actually have our dinner until pretty late – old habits die hard eh?!