Davies is quite taken with the idea of alliteration. It’s been covered in Relax Max which we finished yesterday. So when we were discussing today about costumes for a Superheroes party we’re going to next weekend he was very keen to be someone alliterative with ‘Davies’. I think he’s settled on Dynamic Davies and logo for his t shirt has been planned :). Scarlett wants to be ‘Super Sparkly Scarlett’ which should also be easy enough :lol:.
Yesterday morning I worked which was uneventful and then came home at lunchtime. Ady had boiled up a chicken carcass to make a divine soup which we scoffed with oven warmed rolls . The threatened bad weather was showing no signs of being present so we decided to head out for the afternoon. On our list of local NT properties to visit was Petworth House, which is pretty nearby and has a massive list of events, many of which look really good so I was keen to have a visit there to check it out and see how long it takes to get to. The house is a walk through the gardens to get to which are currently easily the biggest carpet of daffodils I’ve ever seen, all varieties, big and small with colours from palest yellow to the most vibrant orange all nodding softly in the breeze. Photos didn’t capture the essence of it so you’ll have to trust me on it’s loveliness :).
And here’s Davies, trying to count the rings on the tree trunk :).
It did start to rain as we walked through the gardens so after a brief look at the lake we walked back to the house for a look inside. I hadn’t realised but the house closes for the winter and yesterday was actually the day it reopened this year so it was fully staffed by very enthusiastic volunteers. Unfortunately the one on the door was keener to sell us guidebooks or audio tours than to give away information about the free resources so we didn’t realise there was a sort of junior tracker trail type activity to be done for the children until we left. Never mind, we can do that another time.
The house is only partially open but the rooms available to walk through are amazing. I’m sure I very vaguely recall going there as a child although whether it was a school trip or one with my parents I’m not sure and the chances are either would have been conducted in such as way as to turn off any interest in a child anyway 🙄 History was something I sometimes really enjoyed and sometimes had no interest at all in, depending far more on the teacher and how they delivered it than the actual period being talked about. I think it needs to be relevant, alive and somehow believable for children, even more so in an age where fantasy and imagination are all around us in films, tv and video games. What seems to get Davies interested in is the age of stuff, numbers mean enough to him for him to be able to work out how many lifetimes ago stuff happened and Scarlett enjoys picturing real people living to bring it alive for her. Petworth House managed to do both for them.
There is an amazing area with a very wide staircase (we stood on it in a row and then the end person ran cross to the other end and then the next end person ran to that end to work out that six people could walk up or down it side by side) which has a completely hand painted wall, ceiling and landing. The figures are life sized and very intricate and detailed so we sat on the stairs and looked up for a bit imagining the people who painted it and how they managed. Scarlett thought it would have been a nice house to have friends over to play in and we talked about how children were viewed very differently back then and would have only been permitted in certain areas and had a nanny or governess with them rather than their parents. I think Davies was doing the maths of how we have slept 24 people in our tiny house therefore his mental list of just how many friends, and who they might be, would fit into that house for post birthday party sleepover weekends :lol:.
There was a ballroom with amazingly intact black and white tiled floor, a room with entirely handcarved wooden walls depicting fruit, flowers, cherubs and busts of real people including the children. In that room Davies talked to the tour guide about the age of the house and the sculptures and their restoration. We learnt that very few sculptures have their original noses as they seem to be a very weak and vulnerable point so we spent the rest of the time there checking out the suddenly obviously visible to us nose repairs :lol:. There was one head which was from 400BC which was just staggering, it wouldn’t have meant anything to Scarlett but such numbers are starting to make sense to Davies.
Then we looked at the chapel which is the oldest part of the house dating back some 800 years and in there we discovered the tracker trail which had things to spot and some coloured paddles to hold up to the light to see how stained glass windows work and colour mixing too. That took us out of the main house so we walked across to the smaller house where servants quarters and the kitchens were. That was an excellent part of the house where loads of original features remained and the kitchens had been mocked up with fake food and so on to really recreate how it would have been. The house was used for evacuees during the war and had a very sophisicated set up of cold room for pastry making, ice house for making ice creams from fancy moulds and cold food storage, spit for roasting, washing up area using river water and steam and room just for making jams and preserves. The volunteers in there were very friendly and talked to us for ages, asking if Davies and Scarlett are twins (I get that a lot – I seem to be saying ‘no he’s short and she’s tall’ more and more often these days :roll:). We left there and came out of the house altogether for a quick look round Petworth village, which is very pretty, and a chocolate stop at the newsagents. We walked back through the kitchens and the ground to get back to the carpark.
We had some interesting conversations in the car about parents and couples and what your responsibility is to your partner and your children. We talked about whether you should stay married to someone forever even if you didn’t love them any more, polygamy and bigamy and whether we thought it should be illegal to be married to more than one person at a time or not. Whether couples who split up still love each other anymore (Scarlett likes to think they do ‘just a little bit’) and why I think it’s ok to break up with your husband or wife but not ok to shirk your responsibilities as a parent. They have both, Scarlett particularly been asking lots about Ady’s mother lately (for those who are not aware she split up with Ady’s dad and did a crap job of looking after her three children to the point that they all ended up in care. She remarried (she’d left Ady’s Dad for someone else) and had another child. Ady’s dad also remarried and had two more children. Ady had no contact with either parent or siblings for years having only a brief meet up with his father before he died about 10 years ago. His sister also passed away 7 years ago and he now has a relationship with his brother. His mother lives fairly locally but Ady has no desire to see her and I am adamant that Davies and Scarlett do not see her, although Ady’s brother sees her so Davies and Scarlett’s cousins have a relationship with their grandmother which I am sure will make for ever more interesting political conversations as the children all get older.) so I once again talked about why Daddy doesn’t see her and why I don’t want Davies and Scarlett to see her.
We got a McDs for the children on the way home, partially because it was past teatime and they were hungry and partially for the Spiderwick Chronicles toys they are giving away with Happy Meals atm.
At home we finished off the end of Relax Max and then started The Famous Five. Davies and Scarlett are now completely convinced by the idea of books without illustrations and books that we don’t finish in one setting and really enjoy a few chapters of a book (although they always beg for just one more). I remember reading Famous Five to myself so it’s not something I think I’ve ever heard aloud. It’s funny to recall with such clarity my own imagined pictures in my head of what George, Julian, Dick and Anne look like – despite some 20 odd years passing I think I still have them pictured exactly the same. I must get Davies to draw for me how he’s imagining them and see how closely our ideas match.
Today was a ‘depending on the weather’ day. We have a list of places to go but all are rather more suitable for a nice day, or at the very least one not following almost a fortnight of solid rain making ground everywhere soggy, muddy and slippery (some of us are not very sure footed and fed up of having muddy knees from falling over :lol:). Since telling me about seeing a trailer for it Davies has been very keen to see Horton Hears a Who. As the day had dawned grey and drizzly and a quick google found it showing at Brighton Marina we decided to head over there and see that today. We drove over and parked up and nipped into Asda to buy popcorn, sweets and fizzy drinks before going to the cinema. On the way over Davies and Scarlett had been speculating about how of our friends might be there today. I think Filmeducation showings with seemingly at least one family we know being at all of our most recent trips to the cinema have given them a false idea that the cinema is this little bubble which not only shows films but has a special guest star appearance from friends each time too 😆 I assured them that the chances of there being anyone we knew there was pretty small.
Which meant that when the trailers were on and I became aware that some people sitting on the next aisle were waving frantically to us and were Liam and Lily and their Dad (who we’d only been talking about yesterday as good examples of a couple who split up and were with other partners but still were very good parents to Liam and Lily) Davies and Scarlett had a real air of ‘foolish mother, we did tell her someone would be here!’ about them :lol:.
I thought the film was very good. I do love Doctor Seuss though and I though they got his message acrosss beautifully with scenes like a kangeroo going mad about children using their imagination, questionning the norm and not adhering to her belief that if you can’t see, hear, feel or touch something then it doesn’t exist! I think Cat in the Hat was a dreadful version of a Seuss classic and Grinch wasn’t much better but despite having Jim Carey (again) doing Horton’s voice this was charmingly like the book and took a couple of phrases from Horton Hatches An Egg too which I liked :). Ady thought it was ‘alright’ (not enough action) but the children and I really enjoyed it and predictably Davies came home and reeled off a few pages of Horton inspired drawings :).
I cooked roast chicken for dinner, we tried and failed to watch National Treasure which didn’t hold any of us so we gave up on it. I’m sure it was going to get better but it was just too slow a start. So we found an Attenborough programme about birds which was very interesting instead.
I read some more Famous Five and the children went off to bed, probably to dream about shipwrecks, islands, Timmy the dog and lashings of ginger beer :).