you put your whole self in, your whole self out…

We went to a car boot sale this morning, a different one to normal. But the children (and I) were tired and not really in the mood for it so I took them back to the car while Ady finished walking round. On the way home there had been a car accident on the bridge resulting in a very smashed up car although no one seemed to have been hurt. When Ady stopped behind the car infront at the roundabout a lad on a pushbike went to cross without looking past our car to the second lane, where unfortunately there was a car still travelling. He was knocked off his bike, onto the car bonnet and bounced onto the road. The whole thing happened in slow motion with Ady shouting ‘Noooooo!’ as he saw what was about to happen before it actually happened but with no time to actually prevent it. Luckily the car was travelling really slowly approaching the roundabout and the lad landed on his thigh / bum rather than any more delicate part. A few scratches to his bike and the car bonnet appeared to be all the damage done. Ady leapt out and there were scenes of shock with the poor woman driver of the car looking utterly shocked (I imagine she is still replaying the whole thing now and will be for years to come), the lads friends who had already crossed and watched the whole thing in horror and of course the boy himself who had the sort of lucky escape most kids who ride out infront of oncoming cars don’t live to tell the tale of. Davies and Scarlett witnessed the whole thing too so maybe they learnt some future lesson. Very scary and very pleased we saw him leap straight up and shout ‘I’m OK!’ in an embarrassed fashion rather than being another statistic for a 999 call.

We came home for lunch and menu planning for September before they dropped me back to Shoreham to work. I’d been asked to work at Shoreham library this afternoon as they were shortstaffed but when I got there they were actually very well staffed with 5 of us there. I spent the first hour gossiping with E, a very camp, bitchy, 40-something man who works there and I have met once before when he came and worked a day at Lancing. We were chatting about the differences between working at the library and working in retail management (he used to be a retail manager too), which led to him talking about the lack of budget for things like marketing and displays and explaining his idea for a Doctor Who display he’s putting together, so naturally I mentioned the dalek and Davies’ party and showed him some pictures on flickr. He was really complementary about the whole thing saying how great it was, how Davies will always remember it and how sad he always feels when he sees kids having their birthday parties at McDonalds. So that made me feel good 🙂 Then we talked about our chickens and then we got onto Home Education and autonomy. He ended up saying he’d like to come and live with us as our life sounds so cool 🙂 If we ever realise our self sufficiency dream of a large house and land with livestock I think E and his partner could make an ideal addition in the way of doting ‘uncles’ 😆 and of course they could help us tick some additional demographic boxes ;).

There was then a phonecall between the senior at Shoreham and Wendy back over at Lancing which resulted in them realising that Shoreham was overstaffed while Lancing was struggling so I rang Ady to come and collect me and take me back to Lancing for the second half of my shift 😆 I was very welcomed back there for further discussion about Davies’ party and chat to T, the Saturday lad about his trip to Reading festival. I was rota’d on the enquiry desk so I sat and worked my way through some training on all the library’s subscriptions to various electronic resources such as Brittanica Online, newspaper clippings search engines and so on. So I spent some time trying to find out answers to my questions about where the English Channel ends and other ocean related ponderings as a result of my conversation with Tarly yesterday morning.

At 5pm Ady and the children collected me and we headed off to Sainsburys to do our mammoth monthly food shop. It was all very laid back with the children being really helpful, we got everything, they loaded it onto the conveyer belt while I packed (and Ady went off to get some brandy which we’d forgotten) and then the children went off to look at the magazines. Ady twitched a bit at that (other end of the store, out of sight) but as I said, we can’t let Davies go to the shop or postbox on his own but refuse for him to go to the other end of the same shop as us. They came back with a Doctor Who magazine which Davies got bought (they really had been not just well behaved but genuinely helpful 🙂 ) while the cashier was joining in with Ady and I’s game of guess the shopping bill total (2 full trolleys only £165 but they’d run out of 6 pint milks so we still need to get them and the meat for the month from the butcher next week). Ady took Davies to start loading up the car while Scarlett and I chose a magazine for her (based almost solely on the free gift on the front :roll:). Home for a production line of Ady bringing the shopping in and me putting it away, an incredibly late dinner for the children while watching X Factor (tears tally just twice this week 🙂 ) before having an incredibly late bedtime.

I’ve really enjoyed it being September today, it is easily my favourite month and probably my favourite time of the year, it feels like every thing is ahead – the autumn, which I love, the winter, which I possibly love even more and the knowledge that sometime eventually spring is around the corner. It’s the beginning of birthday and anniversary and Christmas season for us, which I think everyone knows by now I celebrate to the max so that’s good. Also it’s been such a crap summer in terms of actually having summery weather that it’s something of a relief to draw a line under it finally and accept that it all happened way back in April (and luckily our lifestyle allowed us to enjoy every bit of April on the beach when it wasn’t packed with everyone else, so we’ve no need to feel cheated).