I was at work for the day. Dad was here in the morning looking after Davies and Scarlett. He’s not had them for a while as we’ve been managing with them going to work with Ady so both he and the children were pleased to be spending time together. I had a quick ten minute catch up with him during which I blurted out details of the whole Living The Dream Plan.
I had a good day at work. I’m rather enjoying something of an elevated status at the moment thanks to my contacts with more senior members of staff due to Chatterbooks and being part of the Reading Group. Fortuunately I get on well enough with the rest of the staff that it doesn’t seem to be causing any animosity although I suspect it would if I were there for more than my rather paultry 11 hours a week.
It was Baby Rhyme time and to start with we only had 3 children – one who has been coming since she was a tiny baby and is now nearly 3, her mother used to be my hairdresser way, way back in the day and I have long since diagnosed as autistic. She goes way beyond the worst toddler tantrums I have ever seen (and I’ve witnessed a few 😉 ), is really obsessive, has a very closed, angry look about her and despite having seen me fortnightly at the library for pretty much her whole life, being ‘Nicola the Rhyme Time Lady who could well go and work for Cbeebies if it doesn’t work out at the library’ still just glares at me when I say warmly ‘Hello X, how are you?’
The other two were mad, will be on the stage one day, X2 and her little baby sister. Mad,WBOTSOD X2 sat right infront of me, close enough to be inhaling my exhaling breathes, her little sister is still at glazed eyes while focussing all her energy on sitting up stage and autistic X grabbed *her* instruments and went to sit on the bench while studiously ignoring all the people singing nursery rhymes for the full half an hour. Her Mum ignored her and sat joining in with the singing and actions. We then got another three children and their mum join us 10 minutes late as they’d been stuck at the railway crossing so ended with 6 children and 3 adults. Not that you’d have known it as mine was the only audible voice again. I tried engaging the new arrivals with ‘Old McDonald’ asking them what animals live on a farm, noting one of the girls was dressed in pink so asking what pink animal might live on a farm. The only response was from M,WBOTSOD girl who stood right in front of me shouting ‘I know! I know what animals live on a farm! Ask me! ASK ME!!!’ so I did and got ‘Goat!’ in response. ‘And what noise do goats make?’ I asked and was told ‘Goat!’ again.
We ended up singing ‘with a goat, goat here, a goat, goat there…’ etc just because I was getting bored. Then MWBOTSOD girl got hold of my list of songs and started pointing to the one she wanted next. For some random reason I have ‘one finger, one thumb’ on there and she was adamant that she knew that and wanted to sing it. So we did. Well actually no, I did, and did all the actions, getting right the way through to ‘one finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, one nod of the head, stand up, sit down, keep moving’ while everyone else just watched. I made them all clap me at the end for my one woman show, drifted off briefly into a Simon Cowell fantasy again, collected up my instruments and was most pleased to note that I’ll be away for the next Rhyme Time and there is only one more after that before we break for the summer. My colleagues had very much enjoyed this week’s Nicola Goddard show, particularly my tambourine shaking during Grand Old Duke of York which they said was reminscent of the Mamas and the Papas, so we spent some time harmonising about when they were up they were really, really, like up and when they were down they were oh so very low, low down. I’m planning to do have summer holiday themed Rhyme time for the last one before the summer break so that at least if it is me all on my own singing I can have some fun with it and not just have to sing Twinkle, Twinkle all by myself again. Actually I think I might bring D&S along with me that morning, they’ll sing and play instruments with me 😆
The rest of my workday was all pretty run of the mill stuff and when it got to ten to six I got kicked out early to go home and get green :).
Ady had gotten home around lunchtime and so the kids had eaten and were ready for Operation Fancy Dress. Having had a great time at the Alice in Wonderland Gala event at the local cinema we’d booked for Shrek Forever After Gala Event. At Alice there had been a huge turn out of fancy dressed children and adults. Davies had beaten off stiff competition to win and both children had said Ady and I should have dressed up too. So we decided to for this event. The brief was to dress as your favourite character from Shrek or another fairy tale. Ady and I felt our physiques lent us perfectly to Shrek and Fiona as ogres so that was us sorted. After some debate Scarlett said she’d go as Puss in Boots and Davies as ‘Gingie’. A charity shop find of a walking stick, some end of roll fabric, scraps from my own material stash and face paints later Davies was indeed Gingie 
. Scarlett became Puss with material from a cheap fleece blanket, hair tied into ear shapes, the same hat that served as the Hatter’s for Alice, the boots she wears for Badgers and a sword from a Captain Hook outfit. The feather was fashioned from yellow paper. Ady wore his own trousers, belt and shoes, a top of mine, a waistcoat I made from offcuts of Davies’ outfit and lashings of green facepaint. I wore a green sundress from the cheap shop (that I will wear again), more face paint and a tiara from the pound shop!
Suitably Shreked up we headed into town and fortunately found a parking space right outside the theatre. They had costume characters of Shrek and Fiona and a real live donkey from a local farm there. We quickly realised nowhere near as many people had come in fancy dress, and NO adults at all. We collected our drinks and boxes of cakes (ginger bread man, some chocolate mice, cupcakes etc) and went to our seats. They had laid on face painting, nail art and manipulated photos but the queues were pretty big so we sat and chatted to people instead. The photographer and the manager of the theatre came and found us and asked if we’d go back downstairs and have some photos taken with the donkey. We agreed so trailed back down again to the street, had loads of photos taken with the donkey and a load more infront of the theatre which they got our permission to use as publicity photos.
Back inside it was time for the fancy dress competition. We’d already deduced there was not much in the way of competition and sure enough Ady and I won (jointly, once they’d ascertained we were together), two very small children (one dressed as Shrek and the other as Puss) won and Scarlett won. There had been some confusion and actually the real winner was Davies but the whispered deliberations from the judges to crown the ‘gingerbread man’ had been misunderstood by the man with the microphone and Scarlett got it instead. Which was fine as Ady and I gave Davies our goody bag and they all contained the same thing anyway – a gingerbread cookie cutter, keyring with film cell from the Shrek film, bag of sweets, Shrek ears, voucher for two free cinema tickets. Links to follow of coverage in local paper / theatre website.
The film itself was pretty good we thought. Plenty of funny, sad, exciting, tense and poignant moments. The 3D is pretty good too. Scarlett was flagging rather by the end, I think she’d had quite a bit of sun during the day, not enough to drink and by 1030pm was tired and thirsty – must remember to take water to the cinema next time. But she snuggled up with me and really enjoyed the evening. Back home the kids went off to bed having been wiped clean of fancy dress faces and Ady and I enjoyed the curry he’d put in the slow cooker earlier in the afternoon.