One word? When seven would do…

Ady was off at 4am to QVCland where he was on air for 6 minutes, sold out both his lines and made about £10K worth of sales. He was approached by yet another company about selling their product for them. The ‘going rate’ for this is £250 a time plus commission so it is fairly lucrative work although no expenses are covered so you’d need to factor in travel. You can stay at QVC rather than a hotel though so it is something he could still think about longer distance travelling to London for. He’s building a list of contacts of potential clients for that for next season as if he could do one or two days a week and get five or six appearances on each of those days we’d be able to live the rest of the dream financed by that alone for nearly half the year. Things to ponder on…

Our seventh chick hatched today – four are from our bantams eggs and three from Tom’s. One of ‘ours’ has deformed feet but is otherwise healthy and although I think it might walk ‘funny’ it can definitely walk – it would be culled in normal circumstances so hopefully it will prove to be a hen so we can keep it. At most we could have two more hens here, certainly no cockerels so we will have to see what happens with these seven. I’m fairly sure that is it but will give the remaining eggs another 24hours in the incubator to be sure.

The children and I watched Ady and then they went off to play. There was all sorts of games going on today, none of which I payed a great deal of attention to but they did get the car mat and cars out at one point so I took the opportunity to get a comedy chick photo to add to my collection from last year:

Why did the chick cross the road?

and from last year:

chick lit

and chick flick

I have some fab ones lined up for tomorrow, after all what are children and animals for if not comedy photo opportunities 😆

I also did some baking – some chocolate brownies and some ill fated honeycombe. Scarlett wandered in and out helping at various points.

It was lovely and sunny so the children and I decided to walk over to my parents and meet Ady there as we’d arranged to go over there for lunch. He pulled up just as we were leaving though. They still both wanted to walk, Ady was not so keen having already been up a full days worth of hours so he drove and we walked :). It’s just over a mile and a half and I made them walk fast so we did it in 25minutes 😆 It was nice to be out in the warm sunshine without coats feeling hot though and we talked about it only being a fortnight since the snow 😯

We had a nice couple of hours with my parents but they’d had a late night last night out with friends and were fading fast and I wanted to get home to get dinner on early enough for Davies and Scarlett to eat with us so we left about 4pm ish. Davies and I decided to walk home again and Scarlett went with Ady in the car. It was lovely to have time with just Davies as we’ve had a rough week here and there and he is fab company when it is just him. We talked about spelling, reading and writing and he had a go at spelling various things we passed starting with ‘daisy’ he got ‘d’ ‘a’ and ‘i’ straight away although even he wasn’t sure how he knew about the ‘i’ and then he went for ‘z’ and ‘either e or y, probably y’. He then commented on how the start of his name and the end of cousin Maisie’s name made the word daisy. He then had a go at car (got that one right), sneeze (missed the last e), blossom (missed the second s and the second o but I think most people would read blosm as blossom fairly easily) and a couple more I don’t recall. We talked about how when I was his age we had to do ‘news’ first thing on a Monday morning and write a bit about what we’d done at the weekend. By 7 my Mum had a cafe opening Saturdays so our weekends followed a definite pattern of visiting my Grandma (Dad’s mum) with Dad in the morning, at her flat in Worthing and latterly in a home before she died when I was 9, then over to Mum’s cafe at lunchtime which was in Lancing. We’d be allowed money to buy sweets or similar from the all purpose shop next door to it which sold sweets, books, toys, stationery etc. and was where my entire collection of Mallory Towers and St Clares books came from over the years, then we’d go to the local park there. The hairdressers shop in the same square as my Mum’s cafe was run by a man with a son a year older than me so he used to be around to play with us too. Freedoms I’d not give Davies and Scarlett at the same age just yet despite or perhaps because we still live in that town now. There were other local Lancing kids who used to be part of the ‘gang’ too and I sometimes wonder if it is their offspring coming to Baby Rhyme time at the library now. Because we didn’t go to school with any of them we only ever knew each other’s first names and I doubt I’drecognise any of them 25 years later based on a few years Saturday only acquaintance. Anyway I was telling Davies about that and how writing is a really good way of improving your reading and maybe that is something he’d like to do.

Ady and Scarlett were in the garden when we got back so Davies joined them and spent some time riding his bike up and down the pavement. Ady is helping him learn to ride his bike, aswell as doing more stuff with Davies and they have done lots together this weekend which is good :).

I made a start on getting dinner going along with some faffing getting washing in before it rained and collecting some herbs from the garden to go with the lamb. I had one pot of potatoes boiling for roasting and another ready for mashing and the handle of one pan with in the heat of the hob so when I picked it up it burnt my palm and the ends of two fingers. 🙁 My fingers blistered straight away and my palm was incredibly painful. I think I am normally quite good with pain but my skin is very sensitive to hot and cold – a slice of toast out of the toaster will burn my fingers and I often have to keep putting down something like chilled chicken from the fridge while I’m cutting it up as the cold is too painful. This meant I couldn’t run with the usual run it under a cold tap trick as that was almost more hurty than the burn so Ady slathered it with cream for me and told me to sit down while he did dinner instead.

I read a couple of books to the children, Ady produced a lovely dinner and for some reason despite all the walking and running round the garden both the children took forever to get to sleep. My hand is still sore but not unbearable now and I’ve suddenly realised just how late it is so I’m off to bed myself.