We started the day with nothing planned other than swimming later this afternoon. But I was fretting about not having a dress for being Fiona in and had realised from my brief foray into dressmaking yesterday that a proper garment for me to wear is way beyond me – fleece puss in boots costumes no problem, dress that will hold up to being worn by me for 3 hours? Not so sure.
I went out to check on the chickens and ducks, heard a tweeting from the henhouse and on investigation found a very fluffy cute day old chick nestled under the five or six broody hens in there :). We all cooed over it for a while, the kids decided it will be called ‘Harry’ and we came back indoor again. Davies wanted to ring Ady to tell him and I realised that the rather hi-tech phone Davies has been using is far above and beyond what he needs. Scarlett’s phone managed to go through the washing machine and is now deceased – which offered a cautionary tale to both Scarlett and I ;). So I decided to look at cheap handsets for them both that they won’t be scared of pressing buttons on, I won’t give a monkeys about getting lost or kept in a pocket whilst paddling in the sea or any of the other likely fates for a phone in the care of a 7year old! I feel I should qualify the fact they have phones at all at this point by saying they have them not because they particularly want them but because it gives me confidence to let them roam knowing they are contactable when still out of sight / hearing range. Neither of them know any phone numbers (other than 999) or how to do much more than ring the numbers programmed into them or answer a phone call when it rings.
So we did the rounds of Asda (nothing – handset or Fiona dress), Matalan (Fiona dress ditto), Terrible Tesco (nowt), charity shops and Peacocks in Portslade (not a thing) and finished at Sainsburys which had no handsets or dresses but we did stock up on food for lunch, dinner and cereals. We got a handset from Terrible Tescos but realised on getting it home it was a T-Mobile specific handset so Tarly’s existing, still has nearly a tenners worth of credit and survived the washing machine even though the phone didn’t SIM card won’t work in it. Fixed that by putting credit on the T mobile card it came with and when Davies runs out of credit he can have that SIM card in his and use that credit.
Home for lunch, another chick had been born so we cooed over that, ate, I read and agonised further over lack of Fiona-dress. Eventually we left early enough for swimming to nip into town first when I found a sundress and shrug which will be perfect to be Fiona in and I will actually wear afterwards. Hurrah :).
Swimming was very hot. I didn’t go in and sat with a book sweltering while the kids had their lessons – very good both of them.
Back home we finished off the sourdough starter and made it into a loaf. I cooked it tonight while I was doing dinner and it looks lovely. We’ve set aside some of the starter for the next loaf if everyone likes the taste. The loaf looks fantastic and smells divine, hoping it lives up to itself when we try it tomorrow. D&S have LOVED breeding wild yeasts though and really enjoyed making bread (soda bread, commercial yeast and now their own sourdough yeast) and pizza dough. Next is home made pasta and pastry 🙂 . Sadly I don’t think we’ve said goodbye to supermarket sliced white just yet but at least they know what the decent stuff is, can recall the ingredients, know what it should look like at each stage and understand the pros and cons of processed verus home made. That puts them infront of plenty of adults I know.
Ady came home, the kids had tea, they both did some drawing, I read some Alone on a wide, wide sea, they went to bed, came back out of their rooms again, went to bed (repeat x 23). And that’s all I have to say about that.