A very ‘back to the real world’ day today. We needed food, petrol and a long list of other stuff so made a start of ticking some of it off. Tescos was first for food supplies – we’re now stocked back up with tinned and packet basics, some fresh fruit, emergency supplies of things like chocolate, peanuts and chai latte, rations of peanut butter and marmite etc. Then to Boots where I needed a few bits, to Argos for head torches for the kids, to Pets At Home for Scarlett to look at the rabbits and gerbils and to Carphone Warehouse for a new phone for me. We still have phones on contract and given our credit rating are tied to that provider but want to keep them as it is at least building our credit rating a little. On that basis we may as well get the reward of a decent phone from being locked into the contract so I upgraded to a HTC Wildfire S which I am really pleased with :). I was in there for over an hour getting it all set up and sorted so the others went back to the van for some lunch leaving me to it.
When I finally rejoined them I had some lunch too and we looked at a couple of outdoors gear shops at shoes for the kids but found nothing right. It was getting late by then so we decided to call it a day and find somewhere to park up for the night and head back in to Inverness again tomorrow for shoes and laundrette before leaving for Skye. The loose plan now is Chanonry Point for morning coffee and then back to Inverness and then heading off depending on the time we are finished. We’ve found a great overnight stop on the road to Rosemarkie – off the road and next to the water.
Some interesting conversations in the van the last few days – one last night about Rosa Parkes, Martin Luther King and civil rights, civil disobedience and terrorism. All sparked off by hearing Nina Simone on the radio singing my one of my favourite songs ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free’ and Scarlett recalling the story I’d told her years ago about Nina Simone refusing to play at a piano recital until her parents, who had been moved to the back of the room to make way for white audience members had been moved back to the front again. We talked about how everyone has something they feel strongly enough about / for to die for and whether it is justified to hurt others in the name of a cause or not. We compared non violent forms of protest and talked about how we had participated in lobbying parliament and making lots of fuss about Home Ed a couple of years ago to terrorist attacks and wars. Interesting and stirring stuff.
Today we were talking about one of my jobs in Retail Management and discussing what Retail is and jobs and careers in general. It makes me realise again how very much I missed spending time with the kids while we were WWOOFing and I was working all day and we were sharing mealtimes and evenings with hosts. I know a community where family time was curtailed so much really would not be for us. I always miss them when we have been at camp or staying with friends but can justify that as we are all temporarily enjoying spending time with others, a lot of the time with hosts felt like biding time instead.
In sorting out the settings on my new phone I cleared loads of old emails from my gogglemail account which I really don’t use and discovered several emails from a friend who has gone WWOOFing abroad with her family including the email where she sent me all the quotes from around the room at our Bye Then party. She had taken them away to type up into a word doc for me and I had since slightly regretted letting them go as I’d not recorded them anywhere, now I have them in a word doc all beautifully formatted. I am really pleased 🙂 🙂