You’ll never guess where we went today…

yep, to a museum ;).

This time it was Amberley Working Musuem. We’ve been before a few years ago when the kids were pretty small and I’d remember it as good but pricey with not that much to do. We’d also been years ago to some bike thing back in the days when we arrived on a bike but I suspect we didn’t pay full price to get in to that.

Anyway it’s changed and grown and improved and although I still don’t really think it justifies it’s usual entrance fee they have been running a deal for locals to get in adults at kid prices and kids free. I’ve bene trying to get there for weeks but my Mum decided she’d like to come too and then we arranged to go last Monday and I discovered it’s closed on Mondays so finally we went today. I discovered last night that there was a local HE meet up happening there today as well which was a complete coincidence.

Shortly after we arrived Jack and Maisie came running towards us having also just arrived – neither Julie or I had mentioned to each other yesterday that we were coming today so that was a nice surprise. Mum got to meet Lorna as she’d not seen her yet. There were various other HE folks that I knew and a few I’d not met before in person but knew of and our paths all crossed at various points during the day but aside from being on the train and the bus at the same time as a few of them we didn’t actively go round with anyone.

We started off looking at the kilns and chalk and lime working area then moved into the blacksmiths forge. Mum and I chatted to him for a while – he was only a young bloke but really passionate about his craft and showed us pictures of some of his work – lovely to see such a traditional skill being used to create some fab modern pieces of art aswell as serviceable creations. Mum took one of his cards as she is interested in getting some things for their fire made (dogs, maybe a companion set).

Next we went to the printing workshop. This was really interesting and we got chatting to two of the volunteers who set up and ran a line printer for us with an indepth showing of how it all worked:

Then we went to have a go at printing using the children’s own names. They already had a plate with ‘Scarlett’ on it so Tarly got to do hers straightaway

Davies’ name unsurprisingly wasn’t there so they had to make a new cast for him and we popped back later to do that after lunch.

From there we had a look round the section on wireless radios and phones. We spent some time working out what number the children would have to dial to phone their names (Davies – 328437 and Scarlett – 72275388) which led on from a conversation we’d been having in the car at the weekend and was nicely demonstrated with the old dial phones.

In the same exhibition was a morse code card so they had a go at tapping out their names in morse code too:

As we came out of that area the bus (an open topped tour bus) pulled into the stop infront of us so we decided to have a ride round on that. We stayed on for the whole circuit and the kids loved getting tickets and having them stamped although I think they were disappointed not to get messages spelt out on them like in Polar Express 😉

Next we walked round some of the resident craftspeople on site and stopped to talk to the woodturning who was stripping sticks to make brooms, two men who were completely uncommunicative but we watched for a while anyway – one of whom was melting aluminium and then pouring it into moulds, the other was making a mould to our metal in for small numberplates:

We also watched a woodturning on a machine while the craftsman chopped into it with tools and he made a spinning top from a lump of wood which the kids then both had a turn of spinning. I would probably have bought it as it was so impressive to see it turned from a lump of wood to something so beautifully made but a group of school children came in and sort of elbowed their way in and were spinning it after us so the moment was lost (and I remained £2 better off ;)).

We decided we were hungry at that point so headed to the restaurant. If we’d been alone I’d have taken a picnic but as I’d driven and paid for us to get in Mum bought lunch. Personally I thought it was overpriced and not very good but I don’t recall the last time I ate out anywhere and thought it was worth the money or delicious so maybe I’m just picky.

After lunch we popped back to the printing press where they’d made the Davies plate so Davies could print his off:

Then we got the train up to the top of the museum (and ended up on it with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna and another local HE mother and daughter who I’ve spoken to by email but not met in person before). They all carried on the circuit back down again but we stayed at the top to do the areas up there. There was an electricity one where a couple of very friendly and helpful volunteers talked us all round the various exhibits including ones for static, chemical and magnetically generated electricity.

We also got treated to a demonstration of their 3 oversized examples which were increasingly more impressive with the last one being amazing creatiing massive lightning type bolts of electricity complete with exciting electrical crackling noises :).

We then spent ages in the connected section. We’d looked at some telephones earlier in the mock up rural telephone exchange where the kids spent ages ringing each other and I got all nostalgic over a cuddly Buzby

but this was a seriously impressive history of the phone type area with loads of phones dotted all around that you could ring each other from. Davies enjoyed doing this dashing about seeing how many he could make ring while Scarlett was utterly fascinated with a telephone exchange and sat there for about half an hour playing with it and transfering calls between lines 🙂

We had a quick look round the railway area and then jumped on the bus with Julie and co to say goodbye and collect our printing off them as they’d been to collect theirs, assumed we’d gone and forgotten ours so collected it for us. I was set to leave but the kids insisted they wanted to see the last little bit so we walked back up to the walking stick maker to chat to him while, the bus area where they both insisted I take their picture while they posed pretending to start the bus up with the crank handle

Finally to the fire station where we got a last couple of photos and watched a film taken from the dashboard of a fire engine with it’s blues and twos going that happened to be driving along the main road and past my parents house which was odd to watch 🙂

On the way out poor Scarlett managed to poke herself in the eye with a stick 🙁 but it seems okay now.

We were then going to struggle to get home in time for tea before Badgers so we called into drive in McDs for a happy meal each for the kids in the car, dropped my Mum off and got home in time for getting changed (them) and a quick cup of tea (me) before putting all the chickens away and going to Badgers.

I had a quick trip to Waitrose for ingredients for curry while they were in there and then spent the rest of the time sitting in the car playing picpic on Davies’ DS. I also took a phonecall from someone coming to the Wildlife Centre trip next week who I’ve not met before and really put my back up about why I’d not advertised it more widely and was I sure I didn’t want her to put it on some of the lists for me? Grr no.I explained I’d deliberately kept it smallish with people I was comfortable vouching for the behaviour of and it was predominantly a trip for friends that I’d opened out slightly for a few others. I know I’m not always as community minded as some HEors but I do hate this feeling of obligation that some people try to put on you as though you have some sort of responsibility for the masses. And the assumption that you might not know what you’re doing when she was telling me about what a thriving amount of families there are HEing in Brighton…

Back home I ran a bath, lit the fire and got the dinner on then read a couple of stories to the kids:
Stone Girl Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning of Lyme Regis and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs before they went off to bed.

Ady had said he was on the last few minutes of the second hour of the Gardening show which I’d thought was 7-9pm so had planned on being infront of the TV for 830pm to be sure. He rang me just as I was getting in the bath to say he was finished and on his way home. The gardening show had been 6-8pm so we’d missed it, despite, rather annoyingly actually being home and able to watch. Grr. I’ve watched it online now (for anyone wanting to watch, the best one is the potatoes because there is a big picture of Scarlett on that too 🙂 not sure how long the link will be active for as they don’t stay up for long but it’s currently here (click on ‘watch video presentation).

I watched The Apprentice and Ady was home before it finished bearing gifts of a huge bunch of flowers, a ‘ladies’ fork and trowel set and four huge slabs of the most delicious looking chocolate, all courtesy of swaps for samples in the green room :).

We had our curry, watched Grand Designs and Ady has gone to bed worn out from the glamous and pressure of his celeb lifestyle ;). Tomorrow I’ll be trading one public building (museums) for another (library) while Ady has the day at home with the kids.