What day is it again?

At 11am the doorbell rang, which could have been either of the visitors we were expecting at 11am but it was the estate agent. I showed him round the house, he exclaimed ‘whoa, oh wow!’ when entering Davies’ room which I thought was surprise at the size (last time someone came round to value the place they were amazed at how big the upstairs bedrooms are as apparently usually loft conversions produce small rooms) but actually it was the dalek! 😆 We had a brief chat and I explained that him coming to give us an idea of price was simply step one in a very long drawn out master plan but he left having given me an idea of price which he confirmed later on by letter. Which was good news :).

I’d made some cheese scones just before he arrived so Davies and Scarlett were tending to those while he was here, which later struck me probably appeared slighly odd actually, having school age children home (he asked their ages having wondered if they were twins and been told no (Scarlett bounced around saying ‘no, we’re brothers and sisters!!!’ just to confirm that for him :lol:) and then a bit later asked just how old they were) during school hours and getting them to manage baking in the kitchen 😆

Our second guests arrived shortly afterwards – Liza and Andrew. I’d always felt Davies and Andrew *should* get on as they have similar interests but they never seemed to make it onto each others radars really at MM so I’d invited them over to see if without anyone else around they did indeed get on. And because I like Liza and missed drinking tea and chatting with her now we don’t get to do that at MM each week :). The children disappeared off upstairs straight away and then asked if they could play outside, put their shoes on and did just that – for about 2 hours! Without coats, in January! It’s been a lovely sunny day here today and they totally made the most of it. There was plenty of getting muddy, leaping, clambering, scrambling, stick waving (in a non violent fashion of course ;)) and generally being kids while Liza and I did indeed sit and drink tea and chat. It was great :). They came indoors eventually and there was some DSing and some Xboxing went on in various combinations with Davies and Scarlett having goes on some of Andrew’s DS games, Scarlett monopolizing Liza’s attention to play some Dolphin game and general electronic bonding. Eventually when Liza looked in danger of falling asleep on the sofa and even declined another cup of tea (I never thought I’d see the day when I out -tea’d Liza, but she did then say ‘oh well if you’re having one yourself’ and managed another cup :)) they headed off.

Davies and Scarlett did some drawing and some hiding drawings for each other to find until it was time to get changed and go to swimming. Ady was supposed to be home to come with us but didn’t make it and then he was supposed to meet us at the pool to watch the lesson but he didn’t quite make that either. He was waiting in the foyer for us when we came out though. Davies did well, he’s doing more slow and steady progress now than the weeks of nothing followed by bursts of progress but that’s all good :). Scarlett struggled a bit today as she still keeps her mouth open and she was just trying too hard, putting loads of physical effort in and not really getting anywhere bless her. The instructor, Carolyn and I talked about it after the lesson and she suggested using arm bands next week just so she can actually focus on the whole kicking her legs stuff and being on her front or her back as at the moment she is struggling with the floats and the noodle and focussing on that rather than learning anything about the strokes. She also suggested a swimming hat or at the very least tightly plaited and pinned to her head hairstyles as Scarlett just has so much hair it seems to get in the way even though I tie it back it floats all around her and is probably quite heavy. There are a couple of children in the group who probably aren’t really classifiable as non swimmers anymore and she said she was conscious that she has about 3 ability levels within the group and doesn’t want to do a disservice to any of them, but it is a non-swimmers beginners group. I asked what I should be practising with D and S if I brought them swimming and got a few ideas so I might try and do that (in our free time, ha!) but the main thing she wanted to get across was that it should be fun, they should enjoy it and be water confident, none of which are remotely a problem for either of them, so that’s good :).

I took them both to the showers to strip down, shower and hair wash and where I’d been planning to swap cars with Ady so he could take them home and I could go straight to Southwick library I managed to get both my sleeves sopping wet in their showers and then kneel in a wet patch in the changing room so I took my car home on my own (they both went with Ady in his), nipped in, got changed and headed straight back out again.

The author Pauline Rowson was giving an author talk at the library. It was fairly well attended with about 50 people there I guess including several from our Lancing reading group and a few library staff from around the area. She talked for about 30 minutes, read the prologue from her latest book, offered signed copies at very cheap prices and then took questions. I spent some time chatting to Pat, who is a retired granny with a very interesting and enviable lifestyle of lunching, reading, theatre going and plenty of holidays with odd interspersions of looking after her grandsons, Mike and Rose the married couple from book group and Brenda who usually runs our Lancing group. She has asked me to run next months book group as she will be on holiday so the others have promised not to heckle me too much and I’ve threatened clipboards, proper reading group ideas for thought type questions and maybe a quiz at the end :lol:. I slipped away about 845pm when a few other people did as Ady was cooking and would be waiting for me to get home to have his dinner. Plus as I was driving I couldn’t have another glass of wine!

So a long, busy, but good and positive day really :). More of those please!