Swimmingly

Started the day with tea (I’ve been boiling the kettle once and then filling the camping flask for hot water for the rest of the day – working well and very green :)), chicken whispering and child feeding. I also made up a batch of bread dough , some of which I cut off for pizza for the kids’ tea later, the rest made a loaf which they both declared very nice although they claim to still want sliced white bread bought aswell. Will carry on working on that one then.

Tasha and Toby came over, her partner was off work so stayed at home with Vinnie. We’ve not seen them since before Christmas due to illness from them and us so it was nice to catch up. Davies, Scarlett and Toby disappeared upstairs to play but Scarlett came down after about half an hour in tears saying ‘they aren’t being very nice to me and I want Toby to go home’. She was easily placated and ended up staying downstairs chatting to Tasha and I and doing painting at the table instead. She was very funny and had us in fits of laughter with some of her Scarlett-isms, typically none of which I can remember now.

She did make me laugh by her original complaint which was they weren’t letting her be a seagull in the game. I asked what they were playing and she said ‘Ben 10 Star Wars’ as though that was an accepted phenomena. Quite why a seagull would be in that I don’t know, but I guess there is no reason why one wouldn’t given the queer combination of sci-fi several decades apart.

I sat and knitted some squares. I bought several single balls of wool from the shop in Helmsley with no real idea of what I might do with them but inspired by a couple of blankets / throws at Michelle’s I decided to knit lots of squares to sew together. Due to my irregular knitting it will be various shapes and sizes of ‘squares’ as well as various colours and textures – will either look cool and funky or very odd. Either way it should keep me warm :).

At 3ish we all left together and we headed off to swimming lessons. First one back after Christmas for us as we missed last weeks. Davies wanted to go in the big pool while Tarly had her lesson but I didn’t want him to as he’s out of practise and often knocks himself out in the big pool, gets a stitch and then isn’t at his best for his lesson afterwards. I relented after a while and he had about ten minutes in there just before his lesson.

Tarly’s lesson has changed with loads of new starters in it. She was at the top end this week and I really hope she gets moved up soon. It was a perfect illustration of why groups are a crap place to learn anything as even though they are all ‘non swimmers’ the scope of skill is vast. Scarlett was at the top end, totally confident, pretty much swimming but getting bored through lack of a challenge or any real attention. At the other end were the ones who needed help just to get into the water. I can so see how the children with plenty of ability either get bored and lose it or certainly don’t gain anything while the ones at the bottom end get disheartened and hurried along. I don’t think anyone gains from that environment yet it is one I recall being in daily at school.

The saddest thing though was the tiny boy, who must have been just five who had to be coaxed into the water, complete with swimming noodle and arm bands and just stood, face to the edge sobbing his heart out for the entire 30 minutes. The coach, the lifeguard and eventually his mother who was summoned down from the spectator area complete with tiny baby in a sling tried cajoling, encouraging and finally losing patience with the poor child. What they didn;t do and what I was itching to do myself was to help him out of the water, give him a big cuddle and apologise for putting him in a situation he clearly wasn’t ready for, get him dried, dressed and home and wait until he actually wanted to learn to swim. I would imagine the only thing he was learning was a dislike and even a fear of the water along with a feeling of embarrasment, being sad and not being listened to. 🙁 Made me feel very sad indeed 🙁 .

Back home again for tidying up of Davies’ room for the children while I cooked their tea. Tonight they had pizza as we were having a pheasant casserole (a la Hugh!) and Ady had yet to deal with the pheasants. They will have their portion of that tomorrow lunchtime.

Instead of stories we read Doomed Ships – Shipwrecks, Ghost Ships and Abandoned Vessels (Adventures in the Real World) which was interesting but one of those books with lots of text boxes and illustrations with notes which make it hard to actually read aloud to someone else. We need to get some more stories actually, all the books we’ve been borrowing lately have been reference rather than fiction.

They went to bed, Ady and I had our very delicious casserole (I think my favourite pheasant dish so far, we have a freezerful of them so need to find plenty of variety of things to do with them) and the evening just seemed to disappear.