Working and Walking

I worked this morning and met a new colleague for the first time, Sarah. There are two Sarah’s at Lancing library, which actually makes me feel quite at home as I spent most of my school days in classrooms packed with Nicolas and Sarahs. The new Sarah has just left working in the school library of my old secondary school part time so we chatted about that. She has a daughter just started at uni and another in her last year at my old school so we talked about careers options for teenagers, how the hell you are supposed to know aged 15 what it is you want to be when you grow up when most of the 30something friends I have still don’t know and how careers options are so limited with none of the very real job possibilities talked to children about and people channeled into areas like ‘customer service’ which doesn’t mean a thing and is unlikely to make anyone feel passionate. I am passionate about customer service but in all areas – I expect it from everyone I meet as a customer as a matter of course, not as something they have chosen as a career. I didn’t ‘come out’ to her as Home Educator although I’m sure she either already knows or soon will but it nice to feel so free on behalf of Davies and Scarlett of crappy school careers advice and limited before you’re old enough to earn a wage what it is you might do to earn it when you are old enough.

I worked on the enquiry desk for the first hour and a bit and rather enjoyed the fact the photocopier was broken and the chaos it caused – people were vying to tell me their reasons why they absolutely MUST get X copied this morning as though if they had a good enough reason I would pull a magic wand out of the desk drawer, remove the OUT OF ORDER sign and declare it all fixed :roll:. I spent some time pretending to be Maddy from Moonlighting trying to find a newspaper article from 1951 about a man’s grandfather with very sketchy details, tried the proper library methods, tried google and eventually had to give up. I then spent some time rejacketing books and then did some shelving and reorganised the paperback spinner.

Home for a quick cup of tea, change of clothes, few mouthfuls of lunch and very brief chat with Lucy before they left very speedily followed by us off on an Autumn Walk. I like working just a morning, it doesn’t feel like it takes too long to get back into the swing of being me and the kids again like it does when I work all day, I think if I had a wish list of changing my hours it would be to 3 mornings a week rather than one and a half days.

We drove over to Slindon, and on the way had a very interesting conversation about parliament, government, democracy, consitituencies, voting, laws and the whole political process in this country. We then talked about universities – I must have a gleam in my eye and a covetous tone leftover from youthful days of yearning to be a MP as whenever I talk about it people seem to pick up on the fact I once cherished an idea of that. Mind you I also wanted to be a financial advisor, a teacher, an estate agent and an illustrator some of which are far more credible ideas now than others ;). We talked about who we know who has been to university, why they might one day want to go to one themselves and what people might look for when voting for a MP. This came about as a side step from talking about hunting and reasons for doing it – sport, food or culling. They both supported hunting for food, were both against hunting for sport and couldn’t quite decide what their stance was on culling. They quite liked the idea of myxomatosis initially and then we talked about why humans felt they should be the ones to decide everything and Davies said that crops should be grown for rabbits to eat so they didn’t eat people’s crops and then everyone would be happy. So I asked how he thought that would happen – who would pay for it, work on it etc. and he said there should be a meeting about it and surely everyone would see it was the logical answer, hence we talked about taxes and running a country. I often think that children have this unflawed logic that works in their world but just gets cocked up when adults get involved with our sense of ‘fairness’ and ‘control’. Children are much bigger into cooperation and teamwork than adults generally are. Or maybe D &S just spend disproportionate amounts of time doing communal living :lol:.

The walk was lovely – we met Julie, Jack and Maisie and the children all gathered sticks and ran straight off, it was beautiful there, loads of gorgeous colours, piles of fallen leaves to trudge gratifyingly noisily through and cold and crisp and clear.

We fed the ducks, Jack managed to chuck his paper bag in with his last handful of seeds so the children decided to fish it out. It was a long way in so they gathered long sticks, tried to work out if they could lash them together to make one long one and gave up on that idea and then suddenly a breeze lifted and the bag started to drift back towards them. Julie and I sat on a bench and tried not to look as we were convinced at least one child would surely end up in the pond. Davies was the most likely candidate but I figured it was very shallow, he wouldn’t be in danger of anything other than getting wet, he was wearing oldish clothes and actually falling in a pond while leaning too far in trying to fish something out with a stick is probably something every child should do at least once :lol:. So clearly with an attitude that relaxed coming from me he didn’t fall in at all and successfully fished the bag out on the end of his stick. He told me that ‘if you try hard enough you can do anything’ and the stick was christened ‘Champion Stick’ and came home with us in the boot of the car so it can continue to right wrongs, fight the good fight and save the world generally. I’m thinking of setting it loose on the table ;).

We then walked a bit into the village where Julie has a part loan on a little pony so needed to feed it and shovel horse poo about a bit. They’ve had it for a while now but it’s the first time we’ve been to see it, we’ve planned to go again next week if the weather is nice so Davies and Scarlett can have a ride on her. Very nice little pony although I’ve never been remotely interested in horses or ponies or anything like that and the kids were very enamoured with her and her field mates:

Back through the woods to the cars stopping for a brief look at the latest batch of wigwams built in the woods by people and then headed for home. On the way we talked about road signs, what 300 yards is, why my brother still lives at home even though he is 31, why some children swap bedrooms with their siblings and some children share bedrooms, how old I was when I met Ady, moved out of home and in with Ady, married Ady and so on, who has slept in all the various bedrooms over the years in our house and my parents house (they did a similar bungalow conversion into a house and Frazer now has my old bedroom) and various other chatter I can’t recall now. I loved the way our conversations twist and turn.

Tea for them and a cup of tea and chocolate for me as I suddenly remembered that I was feeling pretty crap actually and started to slump. Ady came home and Davies and I headed out to Badgers. The traffic was amazingly light and we’d managed to leave dead on time to allow for lots of traffic so we had time to whizz round the supermarket for various bits before Badgers which was good, he went off in on his own just kissing me goodbye in the carpark (landmark moment, he can be brave now knowing Scarlett starts Badgers in about a month so I’ll likely be back to being dragged in and not let go again anyway!) where I sat with my book and a packet of humbugs turning the engine and the heater on every so often when I felt too cold to turn pages.

They had a carol concert practise and Davies told me that they were given the choice as to whether they want to be in the concert or not and several of them didn’t so they stayed in the other room and did something else instead. I was waiting to hear him say he’d decided not to do it too (which would have been sad, I’m looking forward to going to see it) but he said he’d gone in and told me the songs they’re singing : Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, When Santa got stuck up the chimney and We Wish you a Merry Christmas – hardly carols but nice just the same :). So we sang them all the way home to practise.

Ady had run him a bath and was reading Scarlett Beatrice Potter stories in bed so I read Davies War Boy while he had a bath. Which was long and very wordy but he seemed to enjoy and I quite liked reading.

Tomorrow my Granny is coming over in the morning to see the children and tell me how fat I am looking, which will be nice, but as people saying things which can be hurtful without meaning to be horrible was one of the many other things the children and I talked about in the car I think they are both intending to tell her it’s not a very polite thing to say if she tries it tomorrow, which will be amusing :).