One word? When seven would do…

Thursday I was at work all day. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t feel like I have much to blog about on my all day at work days. Today was no exception really. I had an okay day, some banter with colleagues, spent some time writing up an account of the Chatterbooks session on Monday and preparing for next Monday’s session. I talked to Cara, the childrens librarian who came and ran it with me and we agreed it had been a good first session. Another colleague has just handed her notice in to leave and there is rather a feeling of rats desserting a sinking ship at the moment with even senior members of staff pretty disillusioned and insecure in their jobs. It’s far from a great working environment at the moment but that all makes for easier decisions elsewhere I suppose.

Davies and Scarlett had been out with Ady for the morning, back here for lunch and to meet my Dad and then home here for the afternoon with him while Ady went back out to work. I’m not sure what they’d been up to but they’d not seen Dad for a while and had enjoyed spending the afternoon with him :).

As I left the library K, from Reading Group called me over as she had just pulled into the car park. She is a nice woman who is very difficult to make conversation with so we had a strange ten minutes or so struggling to think of things to say before I finally said I needed to be getting off and left. Back at home the kids were starving so I made them a quick dinner and caught up with their day. We’d half been planning to go to the allotment but it was cold and grey and looking like it might rain so we decided not to. Ady was late home having delayed his days work in the morning.

The kids and I started reading Alone on a wide, wide sea which we have had home from the library several times but just not started before. Having finished The Scarecrow and his servant I was looking for another good chapter book to get stuck in to and this, as Morpurgo always seems to, filled the gap nicely :).

I cooked dinner, we watched the final of Junior Apprentice and although we all had the best of intentions of getting to sleep early I don’t think any of us actually managed it.

Friday The South of England Show. The kids and I have been for the last five years or so, sometimes with all the family, sometimes with my Mum, sometimes with Ady and once just the three of us. This year Ady had booked the day off work and when I mentioned it to my parents a couple of weeks ago they said they’d come too. They are having one of their fairly regular periods of not talking to each other and there is lots of friction between them but they did come along today albeit ignoring each other.

The weather had been dreadful all night with very heavy rain and it was still grey and drizzly on the drive over there but when we arrived it stopped and although it remained overcast all day it was dry and warm and actually perfect for walking round outdoors all day.

The price was a bit of a shock – £35 for a family ticket which has gone up loads since last year 😯 – Dad very kindly said he’d pay anyway though :). We started with looking at the hounds, Scarlett’s favourite and watched some of the judging of them for a while. We looked at the Countryside Alliance stand where Tarly impressed one of the staff by naming all the stuffed birds – she came over to tell Scarlett the names of the actual ducks aswell when she couldn’t name the Teal and the Shoveller Ducks (she did jay, magpie, pheasant, partridge, crow and so on).

Ady and I used the saved admittance money to get a waxed jacket (me) and pair of waterproof boots (Ady) :). We looked round all the usual stalls and did the same activities we’ve done before – this time I got to be the Beekeeper which was ace :). Suited up I had to go in to the demo area, help smoke out the bees and take the hive apart, bringing over the supers to show the audience. The overwhelming things were the noise – 20,000 bees make one huge buzz, you actually have to raise your voice to be heard over them and just the amazing industry and focus that bees have. I am in awe :). I wasn’t at all scared, even when I suddenly realised I was covered in them with several hundred all over me. I chatted to the beeman for a while about how to get started. We have definitely pushed livestock keeping to the utter perimeter here at Osborne Drive but bees are high on my list for the next venue – Chris (Goddard) would be my resident expert though as he already has two hives. I bought some honey and beeswax based creams (lavender lip balm and some barrier cream and pollen cream) from the woman I’d bought stuff from last year who said she remembered me :).

We spent time at the stands for Plumpton and Brinsbury colleges which are argricultural, farming, animal and equestrian courses and I chatted to some of the students about their courses, what they were learning and where they wanted to go with their qualifications. We picked up information about Young Farmers Club, Small Farm Training Club and several other interesting looking places to join or get more information.

We looked at the livestock – lots of ducks, chickens etc. and we bought a dozen hatching quails eggs which will go in the incubator tomorrow. Tom wants quails so had asked us to hatch some for him but depending on the success of the hatch we might keep a couple. We were surprised anew at the prices of chickens and bantams and ducks and may have to think about hatching to sell again – it looks rather like we’re turning down easy money by not doing so. Scarlett should be breeding them rather than us looking at other small animals I reckon.

There were the usual cows, pigs, sheep to look at too, ferrets, tortoises and other more ‘exotic’ animals such as cockroaches and snakes. We spent some time sitting next to the horses jumping and being paraded round the rings resulting in the hilarious (and loud) comment from Tarly that ‘I didn’t know horses had such big willies – that’s HUGE! It’s like it’s got five legs or something!’ to the amusement of everyone nearby and the further embarrassment of the poor woman leading the horse round the ring 😆

We had a very full day there and did the various tents for food, drink, crafts, flowers and the always impressive WI tent with various crafts. This year the theme there was ‘fun and frolicks’ and there was a fab display of bras, quilts, cupcakes, limericks, papier mache models and more. We finally left just after 6pm as things were winding up for the day.

We had a really good day there but the entry price of £35 was very high, I felt there was less there than usual in the way of information and activities and far more stands of people trying to take yet more money off us by selling things, very few of which had any real relevance to the agricultural roots of the event. It was a good day out but in direct contrast to River Cottage last weekend at considerably less cost with far more of interest and none of the commercialism I guess we were slightly disappointed this year. Ady and I both said we probably wouldn’t bother going next year.

Back home Dad stayed long enough for a sandwich before heading off as he was going out with a friend for the evening. The kids had some time in the garden with the ducklings before coming in for dinner, bath and a begged for sleepover which had them still awake past midnight. Mum stayed for dinner and some full on moaning about my Dad. I gave some advice and maintained my position of not getting involved or dragged in but saying I would support and love her no matter what she does and always be there for her regardless of what happens in my parents marriage. It did rather like the sort of pep talk a mother should give to a daugher than the other way round but I guess that has always been the case with us….

Mum finally left about 1am which is why this blogpost is brought to you on Saturday (maybe, I’m cutting it fine for that deadline too :)).

Saturday I was up for work. I’d been asked to go to Burgess Hill library for the morning as they were short staffed. When Brenda had rung me to ask she’d checked if I’d be okay to be on the Enquiry Desk and I’d been slightly surprised at the question. I found the library okay and was given a quick tour round before being left to my own devices really. I covered the desk for the whole 3 hours while the other staff looked at me in awe. One of them asked me if I was a manager and when I said ‘no, I’m just a library assistant like you are’ they were shocked as apparently the library assistants there don’t go on the desk. I actually really enjoyed my morning, it was busy enough to stop me from getting bored and the enquiries were nice and varied. I spoke to someone on the phone who wanted details of Playaways (inbuilt mp3 players with batteries and headphones and just one audiobook on them) for children, I found details on the library intranet about them being introduced, found out how to get a list and then emailed it to her, took some childrens books off the ticket of a woman in her 70s who said she’d not taken children’s books on her ticket for about 30 years and helped a guy who wanted to tax his car online.

Back at home Ady, Davies and Scarlett had walked into Lancing and been at the library here for a storytelling session this morning as part of Adur Festival. David Arthur was the storyteller and they had had a great morning with him at the library. I arrived home with just enough time for lunch before we were off again to the local Children’s Centre for a second storytelling session. I caught up with the library staff running the sessions and had a long chat with David himself who had been impressed with Davies and Scarlett and found out we were HEing and wanted to chat about that. The second storytelling session was equally as good – David chatted to Ady in the refreshment break and also spent some time talking to Davies about learning and education. He did make me laugh by saying he felt HE was great but worried about getting qualifications to ‘make it in the real world’ to which I replied that as he makes his living travelling round telling stories perhaps we don’t all need to go out to work in an office wearing a suit – he had to agree 😆

We had a quick look in a charity shop on the way back to the car which was being staffed by one of the regular old men who use the library. They had a box of marbles for sale on the counter and he chatted to the kids about marbles and stuffed loads of free ones in the bags they bought for 50p each.

Davies had found a wallet on the path outside our house this morning and it had a nhs card with an address in it along with various other stuff so we dropped that round to the owner, bought a portable tv / video combi from someone else local out of the local free paper for a fiver so Davies now has a tv in his room for watching videos and playing x box on when friends are over.

Back home again the kids played in the garden with the ducks and chickens who had their first day integrated into the same pen today and seem to be getting on just fine aside from the chickens eating all the ducks food. Ady and I watched a couple of episodes of The Good Life and then I made the kids some dinner and Ady nipped out for some food shopping and the kids and I watched Doctor Who.

Davies made a heroic effort to care about / be interested in the football and watched it with Ady. He got to half time which I thought was quite commendable ;). I offered Scarlett the choice of doing whatever she wanted and she chose a bath with me so we had a long bubble bath with face packs, hair treatments and foot and back rubs for each other :). Her hair now looks fabulously shiny and gorgeous although she says she has full intentions of getting it matted, tangled and full of moss and mud again by this time tomorrow 😆

Everyone went to bed far later than they should have done but although tomorrow is another full day it does at least have a slightly later start time. I didn’t get anywhere close to posting this while it was still Saturday thanks to an 1130pm dinnertime. I never have quite worked out where all the hours in the day run away to…