I had an indoors morning today; making bread dough, flat bread dough, pastry, cookies, cooking the meat for a steak pie. Then assembling said steak pie, rolling out and cooking said flatbreads for lunch. All while chatting to Scarlett about animals, looking at her Animalia book and her Nat Geo magazines and talking about animals and reading. For a non reader (although she is gradually conceding that actually, she *can* read a bit) her animal knowledge is encyclopedic! She regularly astounds me with the amount of information she has learnt, retained and is able to trot out whenever. We were looking at a load of her Nat Geo animal cards the other day and she could name all these creatures that I’d never ever heard of, state facts and trivia about them and talk so confidently. I do miss just hanging out with the kids chatting and exchanging information like that. I know lots of the HE kids Davies and Scarlett’s age are now embarking on the exam route which I remain fairly confident we would not have done even if we’d not headed off here to live but this has definitely been a great introduction to the next level for Scarlett who now mixes with research scientists, ecologists and animal behaviourists. She chats to them about all sorts of animal and nature related stuff with such knowledge and confidence. Later today she was talking to Trudi about how if a planned boardwalk across some wetland were to go ahead it would need to be carefully timed to not interfere with dragonfly larvae or ground nesting birds in the area. I watched Trudi very visibly alter her stance and tone towards Scarlett not just recognising an equal but actually someone who could even teach her something! Go Tarly 🙂
Meanwhile Davies was catching up on some sleep in proper teenage fashion. To be fair he is up til crazy o clock in bed as he is writing and illustrating a book just now – he told me he was working on a story, then realised he had a really good back story to be a prequel so then decided to write that story first and make the original story the sequel. He told me a little about it and offered to show me what he’s done so far but I said I would rather wait and read it all when it is done. As I’ve already leapt ahead to Trudi with Scarlett above I’ll do the same here with Davies and say how he showed her up by knowing far more about tree ID this afternoon than she did and saying to me on the way home that he was really disappointed in her Ranger skills in that area. He then conceded that tree ID is a real interest for him having learnt lots at Forest School and from one of the guys he spent some time with at one of our camping weeks at the Sustainability Centre. That guy went on to work in a community woodland and I know Davies enjoyed hanging out with him but Forest School and Sustainability Centre days were five year ago  – amazed at how much he has retained too! Both D&S were praising Ranger Mike for how much he had taught them both here too – we definitely miss him 🙁
Back to this morning – we all had lunch, I finished my baking marathon, booked train tickets for our trip to Edinburgh and back to Fort William in a couple of weeks and then the kids and I went down to the village for Tree ID event with Ranger Trudi while Ady stayed behind to do some digging on the house plot. The Tree ID was ok, Trudi admitted trees are one of her weak points and she relied a lot on a tree ID book she had brought with her but it was nice to be out looking afresh at Rum’s woodland in more detail. We agreed to do another walk in a month and spot the difference in bud and leaf development. Also to try and tap a birch tree. We were soaked and really cold by the time we got home so all had hot chocolate and stoked the fire up. Ady was about half an hour behind us having done a good couple of hours digging.
After lots of debate about car hire vs trains we have booked more trains – this time to drop the kids off at their outward bound having realised there is an station in the actual centre. There is not a train for us to go and collect them so we will need to get a taxi for that but it will still be loads cheaper than car hire for all those days. Also booked a train to take us from FW back to Mallaig again for the ferry home after more debate. It curtails shopping potential and means no big food shop to bring home but saves a couple of hundred quid overall so is worth it. It will remove all the traffic stress too. And it is one of the most lauded train journeys going so will be nice to tick off as done. We can always do a food shop overnight run later in the spring.
Then back down to the village for me. I was really reluctant as it was very cold, very dark and although not raining it was not particularly nice out there but I had a directors meeting to go to. We met at Fliss’ and it was actually a very productive meeting with some good forthright decisions made on stuff. I marched home super quick as had promised to be home by 9 and it was about ten to when I left Fliss’. I was back just after 9 which was pretty good going up the hill on iccy paths I though :). I even had time for a quick shower before dinner.
We watched episodes 4-6 of Big Bang Theory which concludes the first disc we got. Ady and I thought it was quite good, Davies laughed a couple of times but Scarlett didn’t rate it at all so we will send that back and cancel the next disc on it. I suspect it would grow on us given a longer chance but there are enough other titles on our rental list just now to not keep going with it at the moment. At least now when people talk about Sheldon I will know what they mean though, it felt as though a whole cultural knowledge gap had occurred so I am glad to have fixed that if nothing else 😉