One word? When seven would do…

I worked this morning, which mostly involved lots of gossiping about Torchwood and Doctor Who, discussing chickens and me hobbling about on my foot. I am really surprised that more brusing hasn’t come out actually as it is really aching now and while I can walk pretty fine on it barefoot when I’m wearing shoes it does make me limp.

Came home to find four happy children having been out in the garden all morning (which also makes for a less messed up house, so all good 🙂 ), had a speedy lunch and then headed off to PYO for some strawberry picking. We met up with Julie, Jack and Maisie there too. Davies and Scarlett were off, picking fruit, pulling up onions and generally enjoying themselves with just the occassional reappearance for a cuddle or to show me their scratched legs from the straw and thistles, which allowed me chatting time with Lucy and Julie which was good. Ady rang me to say he was in the garden centre next door so he appeared just as we were making our way to the exit with strawberries and ended up taking Davies and Scarlett home, which was great as I got to play what I wanted really loudly all the way home 🙂 and eat strawberries too :).

A quick turnaround of bath, food and getting dressed for Badgers for Davies and he and I headed back out again, leaving Ady and Tarly here. I parked the car in a space alongside the SJA building so Davies kept appearing at the window to mime at me which was entertaining, while I read my book and enjoyed the peace and then was totally entertained to the point of giggling helplessly in the car when the Badgers came outside for the last 15 minutes of so of the session for a game of rounders. Davies had never played it before, and was clearly the only child who didn’t have an inkling what was going on. He was last to be picked for a team, but utterly oblivious to it and then totally flumoxed by what was supposed to be happening. He got distracted by the freshly cut grass sitting around in heaps, drifted off into his own little world, totally missed the ball thrown at him, had to be yelled at to run, dashed off in the wrong direction and had to be yelled at to go towards first base. He then stood there and was distracted again by the grass and got overtaken by both the next two batters round and ended up being pulled round by the third one. He was then offered to be backsman (not at all sure that’s the right term? the person who stands behind the batter) but was looking the wrong way so the bowler had to come and keep retrieving the ball even when it was at his feet. Finally someone yelled at him when the ball was literally right next to him, but he misunderstood and starting running towards first base when they called out ‘Davies!’ instead of picking the ball up. It was hilarious 😆 Fortunately the teams are so mixed in age, gender, size and sporting ability that is all very good natured and not very competitive so it didn’t matter, but I found it all highly entertaining to watch, showmanship and a sense of humour he does have big time, a serious threat to future olympic sportsteams, not likely 😆 And what is great is that he’s getting all the physical exercise he could ever need from running, clambering, scrambling and climbing round the garden, riding his bike, playing in the sea, picking strawberries and going for walks and getting loads of fun, enjoyment and pleasure out of it without any of the scheduled, nailbiting, doomed to a sense of failure, hatred for anything physical that I got from doing PE at school and demonstrating the same lack of aptitude for team games and organised sports as he seems to have. I don’t want to write it off, but in the same way as those things had no value and were infact quite damaging to be so publically crap at for me as a child I am so happy that they have no relevance, importance or place in his life. And that he was delighted to have entertained me with his vain attempts too.

We dashed onto the beach to grab some pebbles for me to do some more pebble painting to bring as examples to Kessingland and came home. Scarlett greeted us at the door saying ‘it’s very sad about the chicks Mummy’ which had my heart sinking. Ady had been upstairs and heard the chicks going mad, dashed downstairs to see a rat in the run with them dragging one of them about. He ran outside and managed to shoo the rat away (he was barefoot or he would have disposed of it I think – he was cursing not having time to put on the swiss army shoes first) and checked over the chicks. He’s not sure which chick it was but the rat had hold of one of the brown ones by the tail area and was dragging it back towards the hole it had dug under the run to get in. The chicks all seem fine, I can’t see any wounds on any of them but as they are only 4 weeks old today and still too young to be outside full time, but have really outgrown the tub they are in, are very stinky in the house and clearly not safe in the run after late afternoon (I assume the rat wouldn’t have struck in the middle of the day?) we’ve a bit of a dilemma really. I was planning to run with them being inside at night and outside for part of the day until we returned from Kessingland and then try to determine how many hens and how many cockerels we have so I knew how many we’d be keeping and could plan a rat-safe coop accordingly. Will have to think about this more, but I think they might be moved into the garage at night pretty soon. I’d worried about Candle or other cats, foxes and even seagulls threatening them but rats hadn’t been something I’d even thought of so that was a bit of a nasty shock.

I’m on a training course in Chichester all day tomorrow with Ady working from home to look after D&S so that will be good, I like training and it’s always nice to not have to worry about the children for a whole day and then I am working all day Friday with Mum having the children in the morning and Dad in the afternoon, so I will only have second hand reporting of what goes on at home for the next two days, you may have lots of work related wittering instead. 🙂