Business as Usual

Golly. It's like he's never been away. The yelling at his siblings, the demands for food, the wrangles over whether he gets computer time, the lamentable lack in his life of an 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' DVD . . . I am SO HAPPY he's home. (I think he is too.)

The Goat Centre was just wonderful. It's a family-run affair, small and slightly frayed at the edges, but lumme - goats were the least of it. Lambs and llamas, pigs* and peacocks, a potoroo and a wallaby and a rhea, a cane toad and a caiman, tree frogs and trampolines, and a Holy Cow.** We met up with friends, and the children ran amuck for more than five hours. By the end of the day it took remarkably little to bathe, brush and bed them.

We also have seen remarkably little of Jeremy this week. (The week I start having milk delivered, two MAJOR consumers are not at home. I am currently Very Long on Milk.) On his way home from Germany, Mr. I'm-too-cool-to-carry-a-mobile-phone watched as all the other passengers on the cancelled-after-a-VERY-LONG-WAIT-on-board flight called their travel agents and got tickets for the next flight. Still, I'm sure the hotel was very comfortable. And now - it's like he's never been away. The yelling at the children, the demands for food, the wrangles over whether he gets sit-down time, the lamentable lack in his life of a beer . . . I am SO HAPPY he's home. (I think he is too.)

*Yesterday there was one EXTREMLY pregnant pig, and now, apparently, there is one exhausted pig and eight sausages-in-waiting.

** It is an escapee from a Welsh Buddhist community!

Man, it's quiet.

I do not know where the noise has gone. Oh wait - yes I do. It's gone to Norfolk.

WHY SO FAR AWAY! Why Norfolk? Why not just down the road? I could have had them right here! Sixty kids? No problem! Activities? Race down to the village and get my newspaper! First one back gets a fun-sized Mars Bar! Meals? Pot Noodles! YAY! Games? Let's play Tidy-up! First one round with the hoover gets an old Doctor Who magazine!

*sigh* Perhaps not. I do leap for the phone though, every time it rings. You know, just in case. Given that I never answer the phone EVER if I can help it, at least I'm getting a tad more exercise. It's more than slightly irritating that Jeremy, who is a pathological phone-answerer, is more than usually away this week.

And tomorrow we get the day off. Our teachers are striking (ha ha ha) and we are off to the Goat Centre. Don't tell Kit.

The Lost Last Weekend

No, not Ray Milland on a four-day bender, but the end of the school hols. Weather not so great, but on the days we didn't find ourselves some company, we found that a Kellogg's Variety Pack did just as well.

A passell (passel? passle? pastle?) of children spent a cold afternoon hurling themselves around the maze at Chenies, with me firmly outside flapping my hands and bleating ineffectually, begging them not to lose themselves.They dis- and re-appeared at will, showing absolutely NO fear of being lost, finding no way out, the tall yew gradually closing in, all sound muffling as the light leaches from the sky.

Or maybe that's just me.

Today's Country Show at the Open Air Museum diverted us with terrier racing, falconry, and folk in mediaeval armour having at each other with socking great mediaeval swords. We were joined by Jeremy's ma and three of her other grandchildren, and I was tickled when all three children, on a day which included a golden eagle, some flambards and lots of ice-cream, voted, as the best thing of the day, 'Cousins'.

Kit has been hopping with excitement because, instead of a classroom, five days at an activity centre in Norfolk await. This evening has been all about packing and checking and labelling and unpacking and packing again. I think he's finally ready - I'm not sure I am.

Red Nose Day, or: The Biter Bit

Last Red Nose Day, a year ago last March, a troubled diva had the idea of collecting blog posts, publishing them and giving the proceeds to said Day. He invited submissions, got a lot, whittled them down to some, and Shaggy Blog Stories sold extremely well. Being something of a blogeuse myself, of course I bought a copy. Haven't read it yet, mind. I'm familiar enough with the blog-o-verse, I read some of the blogs included in the book, so I've felt no immediate rush to acquaint myself more - shall we say, intimately with the contents. I know what these blogs are like - funny, wry, angry, foul-mouthed, profound, intellectual, frothy-light - - - - - - - -

Foul-mouthed.

Oh yeah.

This morning, I awoke to the voice of my five-year-old son, a precocious reader, who was sitting next to my head, searching out The Rude Words and reading them to me.

There was a SHOCKINGLY small gap in between each lovingly enunciated word, and I am slightly appalled by the suspicion that he may not actually have learned anything new.

Nothing Doing

I haven't posted for a few days, and you might be forgiven for thinking that's because we haven't done anything. Au contraire, the days have been just PACKED with incident.

After the last post, I decided that indoors was all very well, but actually outdoors should have its attractions too. (Like green beans. You keep putting them on your kids' plates, in the hope that one day, having exhausted all the dropping-them-on-the-floor, hiding-them-under-the-gravy, feigning-their-own-death possibilities, they might actually eat one.) So I yelled, WE'RE GOING FOR A WALK! One yelled NO!, another gave me a pitying look, and the third ignored me.

*sigh* They were right - who was I fooling? Luckily the lovely Oliver commented that, provided I brought the wine, we were welcome at their place any time. So that afternoon off we went - the kids to join in the scrum, and me to enjoy some adult conversation. Within half an hour I was gently smashed, and the rest of the visit passed in a very pleasant haze. Luckily the car pretty much knows its own way home, and by the time Jeremy arrived homeI had at least a nodding acquaintance with sobriety.

This afternoon, we told the babes that we were going on a surprise trip. Jeremy had booked tickets for the Doctor Who exhibition, and yes, they were ALL thrilled when they realised where they were. No touching the exhibits, of course, so my looked-forward-to pictures of my little treasures stepping out of the Tardis are going to have to wait until I have a better acquiantance with Photoshop, so all I have is a bunch of pix of them looking gormless in front of K9 and the Face of Boe, of interest only to themselves and their parents. No Empty Children, thank goodness, but Beri scurried past a stone angel while hugging Daddy's leg very tightly, and a display of daleks which came to life VERY SUDDENLY startled the wossname out of all of us.

Topped off with an Indian take-away, it was a pretty Grand Day Out.

And the evening and the morning was the first day

The school holidays have begun, and yesterday was the first day when no-body had to do ANYTHING. (Apart from poor Jeremy who had to go to work. Never mind - he would have HATED how we spent the day.) So - no school, no lunchboxes, no commitments of any sort. The only thing we kinda had to do was whizz down to the bakery for some bread.

I've always felt slightly - disappointed? Nah - far too strong. Put out, maybe. No, that's wrong too - maybe just been conscious of my own failure As A Mother to raise outdoorsy children. (Which isn't to say they won't ever go outside! It does make me grateful for all our lovely friends with outdoors children who entice mine out with them.)

The fact remains that, compared with practically every other child I know, I'm surprised mine aren't extremely tall and thin and pale and weedy, they prefer indoors so much. But they aren't - they are robust and apple-cheeked and sound of limb. And even though the only outdoors we had was the trip to the baker, they are also three children who get on extremely well together, and they spent the whole day playing arcane and rococo games in various combinations.

Today is shopping and our usual suppertime at Grandma Rose's, and tomorrow we hie ourselves into town to meet friends at the British Museum for lunch. I'm going to have to come up with more stuff to do, otherwise blogging is going to be thin on the ground.

Where's the saucepan? THERE'S the saucepan!

I'm really trying hard not to get concerned that we may already have had summer. You know, last week? That Sunday afternoon that was so lovely? I've been sowing seeds in the cold half-dark (it says MARCH on the packet. Right there) and planting tubers in the snow, and having to stash everything in the greenhouse, (I say greenhouse, I mean framework of plastic-coated metal, with three shelves, and a zip-close plastic cover. Bleurgh. Not only is it DEEPLY unsightly, the zip won't even close. I want a proper little greenhouse, and I don't have a birthday for AGES. Bah.) and bringing them out again when the weather gets lovely, and putting them back in again when it goes horrible AGAIN. The poor little planties don't know whether it's lunchtime or midnight in Moscow.

To while away the dark hours, the kids made brownies. After the measuring, the mixing, the greasing, and the licking clean, and then the face-wiping, Sid felt a bit of bling was called for. And I LIED TO HER. I asked if I could take a picture of her with her lovely alice band on, when what I wanted to do was to capture her (temporary) resemblance to the Laughing Cavalier.



And the saucepan? I have no idea how often I was in and out of the house this last week, lugging green stuff back and forth, before I saw the saucepan I had been missing all week.
And it still had the burnt-on chicken carcass inside, from when I forgot the stock.

It's a boy thing

All this collecting, this putting into order, this uncanny ability to spot which of about 300 Pokemon cards is the one that was left behind by a careless guest. I blame Aristotle. (I'm not suggesting for one New York minute that girls don't - I remember a certain box full of die-cut pictures of kittens and ponies and cherubs, all flowered and bespangled, with impossibly large eyes, over which, at the age of about eight, I obssessed. There. Happy now?)

Nevertheless, I did feel a certain tension when Kit announced that he had put all the Mums he knew - about 30, I guess - in order of excellence.

*ahem*. Drum-roll please - AND IN FIRST PLACE, I BRING YOU

Mrs English!
Mrs English is the mother of one of Kit's good friends, and also Beri's teacher. Also one of my favourite all-time top mums - she says her children were quite scared of her until they were about seven. She definitely gets my vote.

AND IN SECOND PLACE,

Me!
And I was delighted and relieved to get second place, I can tell you.

AND IN THIRD PLACE,

Anisa
Who, when she brought her lot to tea at ours, came bearing such quantities of pudding, vast in variety and amount, that Kit still dreams of that day.

In other news, to the left we have a picture of Beri eating his lunch. That sandwich looks delicious, no? Well, what's not to love about grated mature cheddar on top of chocolate spread?

And to the right - I told you the box was beautiful, didn't I?