Feeling uninspired about a title.
Another early start this morning to be in Newhaven for Davies’ Young Archaeologists Club at 10am (hereby known as YAC). The programme said “Managing water – the old Tide Mills. We will be visiting the Bishopstone Tide Mills site whose history and archaeology stretches from the 1760s Tide Mill through to World War II. We still look at evidence that remains for World War I seaplane stations and how the Canadian army adapted the roads and the beach in order to load ships with army tanks and trucks to go over to France during the second World War. There are also the remains of the Chailey School for CHildren as well as the Tide Mill and Village.”
Davies was greeted by the leader as ‘ah yes, Davies, with the mop of hair!’ and Ady, Scarlett and I headed off for a walk along the beach. It turned out quite a few parents stayed this time and Davies as a bit put out that one of us hadn’t so as and when I am not working / there are other parents staying one of us might, probably Ady actually as he seems to be far more interested in archaeology than I am ;).
They worked their way through a spotter sheet and Davies was full of BobFacts about the place and enjoyed it loads so that was good. I keep thinking this must surely be a passing interest he showed once in a fossil that I have jumped on far too enthusiastically and he will confess to not being remotely interested in the whole YAC thing but as I keep telling the kids how boring it would be if we all liked the same things I should probably just believe he really does enjoy it ;).
The beach area was lovely – the cleanest UK beach I think I’ve ever been on with not one single scrap of rubbish. There was loads of dog poo on the approach to the beach which was a great shame but nothing on the beach itself other than pebbles, stones and shells. We learnt a bit about Tide Mills then I got to enjoy the relative peace of Scarlett choosing to walk along with Ady rather than me leaving me to walk right along the line where the waves were breaking (the tide was going out) listening to the soothing sound of the waves punctuated by my own footsteps crunching along the shingle. I have no idea what I was thinking about other than how lovely it was to have noone making any demands on me at all. Sometimes I really like the idea of the Anti-Cheers theme tune where nobody knows my name.
I was searching for sea-washed glass. I love blue or green glass fragments that have been stone and sand washed smooth and opaque. We found a couple of tiny bits but nothing very large. Scarlett was looking for shells and latterly for the biggest rocks she could find 😉
We walked back to the carpark for midday and the YACs came back, Davies carrying a carrier bag full of feathers, interesting stones, seaweed and other ‘treasures’. My kids are such wombles 😆
Home for a speedy lunch for Ady and Davies before they headed back out again to Tom’s for more logs. We’re not far away from not lighting fires in the evening but it’s good to build up our store of logs for next season and having them ready chopped and seasoned will be something our future selves thank us for come autumn. We’d all go but Ady puts all the back seats down in the car to fit a full load in and we thought Davies would enjoy some time with Ady. He did 🙂 He got to ride on the tractor, play with the dogs and see two of our hatched and reared here cockerels that now live there. He also spent some time playing hide and seek with the young daughter of one of Tom’s friends who was there and was commended on being so lovely with her. Tom and Ingrid adore Davies and Scarlett :). He did say he missed Scarlett when he came home though.
Scarlett and I had a lovely few hours together. We first of all set up the rock tumbler that we got at a car boot sale last year but have never set up. We read the instructions and graded some stones we collected at the beach as similar then put them in and set it going. It’s fairly noisy and has to be going for a couple of weeks so I don’t know if it will stay in the house all that time or if it will drive us mad and get moved into the garage. We also need to get some more grit for it if we want to do more than this first batch of rocks in it.
Then we did some baking – we’re getting a good supply of eggs from the bantams now and it’s nice to use them while they’re fresh so we baked as many cakes as we could with them and got enough for three layers of cake. We did one plain sponge (which is very yellow thanks to our eggs), one pink and one blue and will frost and construct some sort of triple layer mothers day cake for lunch tomorrow. We also made some snickerdoodles at Tarly’s request.
We hung some washing out and checked for eggs and then came back in and debated what to do next. We rummaged through some materials thinking about rag rugs, played some DS, did lots of tickling and cuddling and finally settled on having a bath with facepacks. While it was running we made a small needlefelted ladybird together.
Ady and Davies got home not long after we got in the bath and Davies did some needlefelting. Scarlett and I had a very happy hour in the bath washing each others backs, applying face packs and scrubs. It was lovely :). She then got out and I topped it up with hot water and settle back for another hour to read my book. I was very wrinkled when I finally got out!
The kids had been angling for a sleepover for the last few nights so they went up to Davies’ bedroom together armed with DSs and the Mr Gum audiobook. I cooked a lovely curry and have a warm fuzzy glow from my wine, which coupled with 3 early mornings in a row is encouraging me to go to bed.
I ran out of patience with the rock tumbler after the first two weeks, when iIRC you have to wash them or something, and then tumble again with a different size of grit. The entire house seemed to tremble. We tried it in the garage, but I’m convinced we could still feel the vibrations. Eventually, I hid the damn thing.
Comment by Joyce — 22 March 2009 @ 9:53 pm
giggle, i keep feeling tempted by rock tumblers, as we collect rocks! [well, the girls do!]
Comment by HelenHaricot — 22 March 2009 @ 10:28 pm
I’ll let you know the results Helen. I suspect it won’t offer nearly enough instant gratification for us 😉
Comment by Nic — 24 March 2009 @ 7:11 pm