One word? When seven would do…

We went to Safety Day today. We went two years ago and it’s a really good educational day organised up in Berkshire for HEors from various South East corners of Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire and more. It’s one of those events that looks good on paper, is nice and cheap and nicely encompasses the sort of visits to school assembly type experiences that I remember but Davies and Scarlett don’t get. I doubt we’ll bother next year but I think every other year is worth attending if only for the stranger danger talk, first aid refresher and fire safety stuff that gets reiterated there.

Ady was able to arrange his week so that he was visiting stores up in that area which made the day even more affordable as I didn’t have to worry about petrol costs. I knew Alison was going so I was looking forward to catching up with her and the day panned out precisely like that with Alison and I sitting around drinking an endless supply of tea (for bargain price of £1 per family for tea, juice, biscuits 🙂 ) and chatting with various people. Davies and Scarlett were in the group with Lije and Lulah and very delightedly bounced between the park and talks from the RNLI, Fire Brigade, Police and First Aid. Davies most enjoyed the fire brigade, Scarlett the police and their observations from the day on the way home were: RNLI – tha man had a High School Musical body board, Fire Brigade – don’t put Christmas and birthday cards on the mantlepiece above open fires, Police – the back of the police van is quite bouncy when eight of them are bouncing about yelling ‘we are innocent!’ and first aid – ‘nothing we didn’t already know from Badgers!’ 😆

I enjoyed chatting with Elizabeth who has been an online / blog / facebook friend for a while and an in real life met person only for the third time today and a fairly new to Home Ed woman and her nearly 8 year old boy who had been playing with our children and was all newly passionate and inspired by the whole HE thing – always lovely to hear someone new all enthused and zealous about the path :).

We drove home and managed not to hit too much traffic. We called into the Co op for a few bits and Davies came with me while Tarly waited with Ady in the car (she’d still been awake gazing at the ducklings when I went to bed last night around 1am so had struggled with the 730am start this morning, felt ill on the way to Basingstoke and then napped on the way home). We picked up various bits for dinner, snacks tomorrow and fruit and then Davies took over loading them into the checkout. As we were queuing I told him I often rearrange stuff in the order I want to pack it in to ensure stuff doesn’t get squashed so he did that putting tins and bottles and carrots first and crisps and grapes last. We had a debate about rice cakes and crisps with me saying I thought crisps should go on top of rice cakes as a pack of rice cakes is heavier and might squash crisps. When we got to the cashier (called Dan) he said he disagreed and would have put rice cakes on top of crisps as you often get broken crisps which are still edible but rice cakes need to retain their shape to be easy to eat. We ran out of space in my onyaback bag anyway so kept out the controversial crisps and rice cakes as a compromise for me, Davies and Dan 😆 I got a voucher for £3 off when I next spend over £30 and Davies straight away said ‘so you’d only spend £27’. We’d just been talking about how I feel learning through curiosity, relevance, asking questions is the right way to be educated rather than following a curriculum and how literacy and numeracy are of course important but I fail to see how anyone could grow up illiterate and innumerate in that sort of environment anyway so I explained that Davies had just done numeracy with that bit of mental maths and literacy in reading a cereal packet with ‘free feast of football’ on the front in that brief supermarket trip along with some numeracy in calculating weight, mass and volume of stuff in the whole placing it on the conveyor belt / shopping bag thinking along with forward planning, critical thinking and loads more. We then talked about what percentage of £30 £3 was.

Back home Ady got some tea on for the kids while we gave the ducklings their first proper swim. Yesterday was a shallow paddle introduction to water they stood and waddled around in, today was putting them out of their depth to test their swimming skills. We put a towel at one end so they had some semi-solid ‘ground’ to clamber on to and filled the bath to about 6 inches deep of room temperature water. They were straight in there proving the saying about taking to something like a duck to water :).

They had a lovely swim about being incredibly cute before going back into the brooder to warm up and dry off under their lamp. Am loving this learning alongside Scarlett and the ducklings themselves :).

I tend not to talk too much about all things political, knowing that that others mirror my own fairly strongly held political beliefs with contrasting views of their own. I can’t think of any issue I would feel strongly enough about to sway my vote or alligeance for one party on and indeed still hold the same political views I did at 16 when I embarked on my politics A level. True it is now tinged with a huge leaning towards anarchy and whilst I’d happily talk about politics in real life I feel it’s a lot like religious beliefs really, personal, deeply held and almost innate.

I do feel very strongly that everyone should vote, if only to go and spoil their paper in protest, I do feel very strongly that we are largely politically ignorant in this country with way too few of us knowing who we vote for, why we vote for them or questionning and challenging our ideas about who stands for what. I do have respect and tolerance for others views and a hell of a lot more so for those how have researched and genuinely discovered the party most in line with their views regardless of whether that is in line with my own. I’ve been quite dismayed at the HE community rather blindly following Graham Stuart and the Tories like some sort of messiah without looking at the bigger picture.

All that said I am happy at tonight’s news as it brings for me personally the closest to my political ideal I think possible at the moment. My local MP is the one I voted for and the one I feel both best represents me in parliament and is the best person for the job in terms of really making a difference locally. I’ve been impressed with the correspondance I’ve had with him and with his performance on Tower Block of Commons tv show. I like the fact we have a hung parliament meaning all of the extremes are diluted, all needs to be discussed, debated and compromised on, I am hugely relieved Ed Balls won’t have any position of great power any more.

So I’ve raised a glass, to resolution of days of uncertainty, to my personal best possible result and to getting on with life again having bought a big old chunk of time for my lifestyle to carry on as before. Selfish? Yes. Honest? Yes. Bloody relieved? Yes.

And there ends me talking about politics publicly.