So this time last week we were back in the van in high spirits having been over here for the evening for the first Wednesday pizza night and met Jill. This week we were the ones lighting the oven and it feels like we’ve been here forever…
This morning Ady donned waterproofs and headed off to do various gardening tasks, the kids came along with me to the library for a bit but I quickly decided they were disturbing my peace and sent them back to the cottage. Scarlett hit a wall a bit today, getting upset at very minor and imagined slights and tearing up at things she would normally shrug off easily so a down day was in order for them. They have spent their day snuggled up in the warm watching films, DS / PSPing, chatting, drawing and playing Monopoly together.
I had a very happy and productive day in the little library here. This morning I spent a couple of hours going through all the leaflet stands and weeding out any outdated leaflets (there were loads, some from 2003!), there were five unopened boxes of new leaflets so if a newer one was available I chucked the old ones, along with anything with a date or obviously incorrect admission charge listed. I then took all the old ones to the recycling bin, dusted down the stands and arranged them all tidily. It looks like a Tourist Information Office now :). I then took all the books down, dusted the shelves and put them all back in order – fiction by alphabetical order of author, some foreign language books in one section, local history in another and all the rest of the non fiction in another. With more time I’d have liked to categorise further but I needed to let go of that and realise I would probably be the only person who would actually appreciate or realise I had done that. Oh the urge to apply Dewey decimal to it all ;). It does now actually look like a library though rather than a book graveyard and everyone who came in did a double take and ‘oh wow’ at the difference so it was a few hours well spent :). I then cleared out all of the random book selections kicking around in the cottages and put them in the library, removed all old leaflets from each cottage and put together a pack of current and relevant local information leaflets for each cottage.
In the middle of all that we had lunch, I spent time chatting to Jill about various things, arranging my massage for Friday afternoon and dealt with Tarly getting upset.
At 4pm I lit the pizza oven and Jill collected Davies and Scarlett from the cottage to help her chop wild garlic and mushrooms and grate cheese for pizza toppings. I slipped off for half an hour for a quick swim in lieu of a shower – I managed 60 lengths (which is probably 20 lengths of the pool I used to swim in) which I thought wasn’t a bad first swim not having swum since back in December.
Back at the pizza oven we declared it wine o’clock (Jill drinks more than I do!) and then spent a very nice evening chatting to the various local neighbours who came along including Tanya and Michael from Paddington Farm. Davies and Scarlett made themselves pizzas, spent some time on the trampoline and then said they wanted to settle down in the cottage so came in and got pjs on while we stayed out drinking cider with Jill and Sheelagh (who works and lives here) and being silly.
Jill has asked us to stay another week and we are seriously thinking about it. She has sent our blog address to a green kids clothing company she has contacts with who are interested in kitting out the kids and following the blog to see how their clothes stand up to the adventures D&S will be having this year. It’s a different sort of learning we’re doing here, networking and making contacts rather than learning new skills in farming but as I said to Jill earlier you can’t leave behind jobs and a house to travel round in a campervan and get too anal about clinging to meticulous plans – this year is very much about going where opportunities and life takes us. I guess we have to keep saying yes to the things chucked at us and see what happens.
Oooo, I say yes- go where the wind blows you! All sounds like fun!
Comment by Heather — 31 March 2011 @ 6:26 am
I hope you can come up with a decision easily 🙂
Will you be missing much that you all want to do at the place you’re due to be at?
I suppose it’s a fine line that you need some sort of plan when you have kids, it’s harder to just go with the flow as it might be with 1 or 2 of you, but at the same time it makes it a bit more of a problem when opportunities do come up. At least there have been opportunities though!
Have fun (not too much though 😉 )
Comment by Kirsty — 31 March 2011 @ 9:07 am
Still here reading and enjoying reading very much :-). Xx
Comment by Michelle — 31 March 2011 @ 1:22 pm
Loved that you had a librarian day 🙂
Comment by Jan — 31 March 2011 @ 8:35 pm
Wow – fab day and great opportunities all round, I am so impressed!
Comment by Sarah — 31 March 2011 @ 9:39 pm