Work, some shopping and a dash of bad-temperedness

I very nearly overslept this morning – I turned my alarm off and went back to sleep. Ady woke me at 840am with ‘are you not going to work then?’. Up, dressed, tea made with tepid water and at work for 9am still!

Did make me feel all wrong-footed all morning though. I did some general faffing around, some half-hearted planning for a Poetry Event I’m running in October, managed to send an email to someone it wasn’t intended for and then spent ages chatting to a colleage about camping. She and her husband went last week, very much based on me raving about it and thankfully the weather and campsite were on their side and they had an excellent week. She is now tent shopping and has appointed me her ‘camping consultant’. Her favourite tip of mine so far is a safety pin in the zip of her sleeping bag for nights when she wants to remain zipped up seperately from her husband! 😆 (a tip I could offer not from experience of sleeping bags but from a zip up dress I had when I was 17 that I quite specifically didn’t want any old random stranger unzipping for me in the middle of a nightclub!).

I came home to an empty house, sorted some washing, spent some time with the chickens, had some lunch and a cup of tea, checked my emails and then the others arrived home. They’d been to Wildlife Explorers. Scarlett’s session was first and she did some stuff on bird (although she claimed to have known most of what they covered already) – the leader made a point of coming out to tell Ady how well she’d done without Davies and that she’d not stopped chatting, telling the leader all about our holiday on Shell Island where the leader has also been. Davies and Ady walked round the reserve for an hour while Scarlett did that.

Then Davies went in – his first session with the older ones which is for 2 1/2 hours. This time they were learning about molluscs and did loads of stuff on snails including going off searching for some. Davies really enjoyed it and I think he’s going to get a lot out of being with the older kids and the more indepth nature stuff. Meanwhile Ady and Scarlett went for coffee and cake in the cafe, spent some time in the shop including chatting to the volunteers and getting some help identifying a soft toy bird Scarlett has which we now know to be a peregrine falcon. We get a lot out of our RSPB membership and I think we’re lucky having a reserve so close to home :). I wish the monthly Wildlife Explorers didn’t seem to fall on my working Saturday so very often though.

They all had lunch and we all chatted about our mornings, which reminds me I forgot to blog yesterday about how we’d spent time talking about public highways, the highway agency, why roads are called highways and where the word comes from anyway. That was what Davies learnt yesterday – Scarlett learnt the word ‘depression’ in context of a ditch of low point on a road aswell as the meaning of being depressed mentally. We’d not done ‘what we’ve learnt today’ for ages so it was funny that I’d been talking to Ali about it and the following day they both found something new out and attributed it to their learning for the day.

We’d planned to go and do some pre-camping food shopping for stuff to take with us and there is a new Morrisons opened locally we thought we’d try. I really wanted to get Davies a Morph set for his birthday from Scarlett – well I suggested it to her and she wanted to get it. I’d been looking online with the intention of buying from Merry but Hawkins sell it cheaper and we have one in town so no postage so we decided to combine the two. We parked up, walked along the beach into town and wandered around for a couple of hours. We went in the phone shops so I could stroke all the various phones on my shortlist – I think I’ve made up my mind now, Ady bought a carcharger for his phone, I picked up a couple of books in the Oxfam bookshop, Scarlett found a cuddly toy penguin in a charity shop, Davies got a Star Wars X box game from the second hand game store and I got the Morph thing for Davies. I’d also picked up the penknife he wanted on my way home from work so we have all his birthday presents ready now :).

Scarlett was being annoying by not listening to anything anyone said and I was feeling particulaly intolerant due to hormones so I snapped at her a few times which had her contrite for about two seconds before doing the exact same thing again :rolls:. We then went to Morrisons, along with most of the rest of Worthing – it was heaving in there. We got everything we wanted for the first few days catering and came home.

I’ve knitted a long strip to sew onto the edge of my blanket to make it wider; Davies played his new X box game, the kids had dinner, we all had baths (last for a week!), I watched X factor which made me cry twice (oh the hormones!), Ady and the kids watched The Cube and one by one the rest of them have gone to bed. Tomorrow the plan is a slow start, chucking everything in the car and heading off about 11am. Can’t wait 🙂