Monday

Swimming first thing followed by history - starting the Romans today so she was happy. She loves the Romans :-).

Tennis was cancelled as her coach is in Rome doing the marathon. She didn't want to go out to Club Night. So she made a little fabric horse and stuffed it;



We then played a French game a few times before we decided we were both tired so slumped in front of the television to watch a programme about rats. The four legged variety.

I'd decided too long a break from guitar has been had so have booked a lesson for next week to galvanise practice. She did consequently do some.

Tuesday

She got a Bond Maths paper finished and did guitar practice. Not altogether happily :-(. Too long between practices so it's frustrating.

Then the day improved immeasurably as we visited Merry for the day. I oohed and aahed over lots of fabulous Djeco stuff, drank tea and chatted all day long. Children did their usual disappearing act. Some lovely Djeco mosaic type craft kits were employed - made me laugh when I went in at one point to see they'd turned the art into a production line with each child doing a different colour square. Appealed to my desire of ensuring time is used to maximum efficiency :-).

They then spent all afternoon playing some convoluted game in the sunshine. C never wants to leave, so it is much easier that they have to leave the house to get to their evening things.

Wednesday

Latinetc. Chloe didn't want to do French so she read a book and then was floating in that irritating way until I told her to get her needlework out as I think the sampler work should be used as a filler activity rather than the loitering she was doing. Or she could be using the time to reinforce music theory as we'll attempt grade two next term (whether she's passed grade one or not).

Science was excellent. Helen had brought some rather fancy flowers for putting in dyed water. I usually use celery as cheaper and Katy said she normally uses daffodils for the same fiscal reason so these were very pretty :-). After observing the white flowers turning pink or green as the morning progressed, Helen then put segments of the stems on the microscope to look at the stained cell structure.

The Beans had been growing a bean maze that they brought along to show us, demonstrating how the plant will twist and turn to access the sunlight only entering the box through a small hole in the top. We will recreate that.

Also in science the children finished bacteriology, looking at the bacteria growth or mould in their petri dishes (those which had had nitrofurantoin on them had grown bacteria. those with amoxycillin had grown a mould - discussed again antibiotics and effectiveness on different bugs), and then each child made their own slide from what they'd grown (bacteria slides easily off the agar whereas the mould was more difficult as it grows into the agar)to look at in detail under the microscope.











Chloe and I then got home and had 20 minutes for a quick pick up and vacuum before Rachel arrived to give us our first Yoga session. Was good. Have booked a series of 6. Am hoping for C's posture to improve - it was when looking at Rachel's daughter at maypole dancing that I noticed how lovely her posture was compared to the other children. I can only put it down to having done lots of yoga with her mum.

We then headed down to attend an IoP Faraday lecture;

"The lecture on the life and work of Michael Faraday will be given by Frank James.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is one of the major scientific figures of all time. His discoveries, made in the basement of the Royal Institution, of electro-magnetic rotations and induction laid the foundations for electrical engineering. His discoveries of the magneto-optical effect and diamagnetism paved the way for his enunciation of the field theory of electro-magnetism which became and remains one of the cornerstones of modern physics.

But Faraday was also heavily involved with the practical application of science and in communicating science to a wide audience.

This illustrated talk, with a couple of demonstrations of his key discoveries, will examine all these aspects of Faraday's life and how they relate to each other.

Frank James is Professor of the History of Science at the Royal Institution and editor of the Correspondence of Michael Faraday."

Was very good, we all enjoyed it. Nice to see lots of home edders there. C then spent ages talking with the chap from a local astronomers club.

Thursday

Ruby arrived nice and early as she and Beccy were brought in by someone who lives on their slip that has a daughter at our village school. The girls played with the musical bells set, then did a piggy line up, uploaded photos and started printing them out. During the printing process, a mum who is newly HEing her 8yo son arrived for coffee. C took the opportunity to ask to make polymers so the borax was got out again and all three children were very happily occupied. They stayed for lunch too and I was given more school horror stories for my collection, this featuring a school that I have not heard bad things about before, so a bit of a surprise there. She is also taking her 13yo out at Easter from his school (for completely different reasons). Was very interesting chatting to her. I have a project for her 13yo that I hope he wants to drive and run with. It's a make your own film box that M wanted to do but quite frankly he just hasn't got the time and the box has been sat in the dining room for over two years, so if the 13yo is keen, I think it will be a good project all round. To mollify M I have said he will be needed as camera assistant and tech support, so he still will have involvement in the bits he wanted to do the most.

After they left, C&R continued to play with their silly putty, cutting it into shapes, pressing it through kitchen tools. They also did some of a Makit and Bakit Jewelry set. I followed instructions but the pieces did not melt and turn glass like as in the picture, I upped the temperature a little and kept putting them back in, eventually I ignored the instructions and shoved the tins in the roasting oven where the beads melted to perfection.

Took R to Spanish, then C&I went to Morrisons where things were more expensive than Waitrose. I was buying Taut glucose drinks that Waitrose were selling for 99p and Morrisons sell for £1.11!!! Don't anyone tell me Morrisons is much cheaper now!

We then went to Lidl as the man from the astronomy club C spent so long talking to the night before had said a large number of people in his club had bought the £15 binoculars from Lidl for star gazing as they were excellent magnification for an excellent price. Sadly however there were no binoculars in stock - they are onto garden related items and motorcycle gear.

This short shopping trip took far longer than it should have so we got home driving through rush hour traffic and were very tired when getting in. C immediately started watching one of the two DVDs she'd bought Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories by Disney. She laughed a lot. It's lovely hearing her belly laugh :-).

Anglo-Saxon Scop at Museum of London and Royal Albert Hall for Primary Schools Extravaganza

"The Mystery of the Pronunciation of Scop Explored . . .

Merriam-Webster’s 10th edition: Scop [shōp] or [skōp] or [skäp].

Please note which pronunciation is listed first; it is the preferred pronunciation. Scop rhymes with rope and soap and dope, and its initial consonant cluster is said like the sh in shout! There is a good reason for this. [Shōp] is preferred (by the most highly intelligent people) because the cluster sc—originally pronounced [sk]—became changed in the West Saxon dialect when c was palatalized, which is a fancy term linguists like to use, meaning ‘to pronounce as or change into a palatal sound,’ which is absolutely no use, is it. A ‘palatal’ sound is formed with some part of the tongue near or touching the hard palate posterior to the teethridge (the \sh\ and \y\ in English and the \k\ of ich \ik\ in German are examples). You know your palate is the roof of your mouth. So put your tongue up there, and say [shōp]. You become part of that elite, highly intelligent group that knows how to pronounce scop. The long s is the linguistic phonetic marking used to represent this [sh] sound, like so: ∫. In becoming palatalized, which you now recognize in your vocabulary, sk probably passed through the following sequence of sounds: [sk > skj > sxj > sj > ∫]. [∫] = [sh], remember.

How to remember this incredibly significant piece of information? Easy. Pronounce the o in scop continentally, as in Spanish or French or German—a long o sound. Next, remember that you must “shop” around for that precise pronounciation. Shop; then add the long o sound. You get [shōp]. Easy!" [carmen-butcher.com]

www.merriam-webster.com for audio guide.

So I've learned something :-), though neither my Websters International Unabridged 3rd edition nor the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary we have say "shōp".

Anyway, the scop was excellent. Slight issues with the MoL not knowing where we should be and squirrelling us away in some distant classroom with mould growing on the wall and ceiling where water ingress is causing damage, such that we were very late for our session, but that wasn't the fault of either the home edders organising the session nor the scop himself. Marcus was beginning to get grumbly about the £34 train fare (due to people not feeling 100% we decided to just go into London from where we live by train rather than do the drive and tube option which is much cheaper) and day off work he'd taken to be messed about like this. Fortunately all was well in the end :-). C loves these storytelling type sessions especially as I got drawn in to be one of the characters in his third story.

A quick lunch and then realised that as the scop session had started late, it also finished late and we were a little short on time, needing to get across London to The Royal Albert Hall. Tubed it and then missed the bus we wanted (by turning right instead of left - grr!), so M made the decision we would get a taxi. C loved going in the taxi and being driven through Hyde Park, had we not grabbed the taxi we would have been later than the 1pm our letter stated, though in the end we had plenty of time and could have waited for the next bus. The event started later than stated and even then some school groups came in after the concert had started.

Years ago, BC, I had a client who was installing pipework in the Royal Albert Hall during an extensive refurbishment programme. I was privileged to go right up and to the outside of the domed roof to see the piperuns installed. I had not before then or since, seen a performance. The Classical Spectacular Schools' Matinee was certainly spectacular! Lasers, fireworks and cannons all added to the wow factor. We were so delighted to be in a box (though the family next to us seemed to forget that there was no sound insulation between their box and ours . . .), the venue is stunning and we were so delighted to just be there :-). The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played 11 pieces of music for us, supported by The Band of the Welsh Guards. Lee Bisset and Wynne Evans sang O Soave Fanciulla by Puccini, they were very, very good. However the most awe inspiring piece for us was Charlie Siem playing violin. Inspiring.

Home straight afterwards so that C could go to Badgers, then M went out a-drinking so C and I went to see a friend after Badgers as she had some questions for me regarding a reference. Left there later than I'd planned given how ill and sleep deprived we'd been over the week.

Cambridge Science Festival - "Daring Diversity Walking Tour", "IMAGINARY: through the eyes of mathematics" and "Burning Issues"

"Daring Diversity" Walking Tour. As part of the Science Festival a number of days had specially devised 2 hr guided walking tours available free of charge. So we booked :-).

It was excellent taking in so much I cannot possibly retell here. Notable moments were:

Sidney Sussex College where Oliver Cromwell attended (continuing the Cromwell "project" Chloe seems to be following ;-), she had a fine opportunity to demonstrate what she knew and take an active role in the tour.).

This is Chapel Court:



This is Hall Court:



Whilst standing in Chapel Court, there was a bang and a pigeon hurtled down to earth, landing on the shoulder of one of the other people in the group. Was definitely a startling moment! We think it flew into the flagpole and rebounded to earth. Was not a pleasant experience but quite a bonding one for the group!

The rooms of fictitious residents such as Sherlock Holmes were highlighted too:



We paused outside St John's College, of which we had explored the library on Saturday.

We then went into Trinity College, were told how the sceptre was stolen many years ago and replaced by a chair leg.



Told about the Great Court Run, to complete a full circuit before the clock finishes chiming 12, and spent quite a long time in the Chapel area talking about famous Trinity students - in particular Isaac Newton.



Rather liked finding the stone set amongst the cobbles outside the gate in memory of a past Senior Bursar, T. C. Nicholas, who was a Fellow of Trinity from before the First World War until he died in 1992 aged 101:



We stood awhile outside Gonville & Caius College, where we were given an extensive history and alumni talk, including; Sir James Chadwick - Nobel prize-winning nuclear physicist, discoverer of the neutron and Master of the College; Francis Crick - Nobel prize winner for discovery of the structure of DNA; Stephen Hawking - though no one in the group had read his Brief History of Time . . .

Finally to King's College where our guide largely talked about Alan Turing, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. We remembered seeing a fantastic slate statue to Turing at Bletchley Park over 2 years ago! Where does the time go?

We had all three really enjoyed the walk but by now were very hungry so went over the road to a cafe and ordered food. Unfortunately C's order was mixed up so she had a long wait for them to sort out the correct food order. She was told she could have a free piece of cake as compensation but she didn't like anything so I had to have lemon meringue pie instead. The hardships I have to endure.

We then decided to walk to Magdalen College to see Pepys Diary but it shut on Saturday and won't open again for a little while. So walked along the river a bit amongst the rather gorgeous Magdalen College buildings and consulted our Science Festival guide, deciding to walk over to the Isaac Newton Institute to see "IMAGINARY: through the eyes of mathematics - A travelling exhibition of beautiful mathematical images and artwork taken from algebraic geometry and differential geometry in which visitors are able to create their own mathematical art. This is the first time that the exhibition will be shown in the UK." [Imaginary-exhibition.com]

This was a series of initial shapes and their formulas, you could change the formula to see what changes you'd made to the shape. Clo spent ages on this, printing out some of her mathematical art to bring home and some to enter in the competition they were running. "The interactive SURFER program allows playful contact with geometry, i.e. it encourages the users to create formulas themselves or to change already existing ones in a creative manner. It is surprising to see how amusing it is and how you begin after some time and pondering to understand how formulas and forms, i.e. algebra and geometry, are connected.". You can download SURFER from their website to manipulate at home.:



This was the first time any of us had been able to explore the functionality of a 3D mouse. You could dive down through the shapes - was fun.



Playing with a Mobius Strip:



The Festival guide did not mention they were also screening the truly exceptional film - "MESH A Journey Through Discrete Geometry" at the Isaac Newton Institute. It was about 40 minutes long, had lots of humour interwoven in such that C happily sat through the whole film, even if a lot of it went over her head.

Blurb from the back of the DVD case; "Mesh is a groundbreaking computer animation that explores the advancement of discrete geometry from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary research topics that have never previously been visualised. With its synthesis of cutting edge visualisation, breathtaking artistry, storytelling and humor, Mesh presents complex ideas in a way that is palpable and relevant to even a novice audience. Along the journey, we encounter applications ranging from crystals and computer graphics to wine barrels and soap bubbles, and bring to life concepts such as the Schwarz lantern, Gauss curvature, surface optimisation and engineering, and minimal surfaces."

Was excellent.

We hotfooted it back into the town centre to have a rapid but delicious Chinese dinner. I am grateful we don't pay council tax in Feb or March as this month is proving much more expensive than usual.

We then walked past the time eating clock - always makes me smile, to the Chemistry School for Dr Peter Wothers' demonstration presentation; "Burning Issues - Fire and Flame". We had cut timings a little fine so were seated quite high, a bit disappointing until later when the lower half of the auditorium were coughing with the smoke produced :-). A Home Ed family we know then very kindly drove C and me to the park and ride carpark (I think we saw the last bus go past so very grateful for their offer as it's a long, long walk back otherwise!). C and I collected the car and drove back to collect M before heading home.

Another Manorborn long but excellent day :-).

Cambridge Science Festival - Robots, Cornflakes, Maths Fair, F1 Car, Astrolabe and Pixelh8

Up and out very early. So early we were able to catch the first park and ride bus of the day :-).

This gave us enough time to find a cafe for a full English breakfast (M&I) and chocolate croissant (C).

We then even had time to buy M some new walking/street shoes - his Timberlands had cracked across the soles and let in water. They also look horrible and always have reminded me of how M got us into such horrendous debt a few years back, buying things because he had money to spend on the credit card, without thinking about how it could ever be repaid. This was one of the last purchases made before he finally confessed. I clearly remember him asking if he should buy them and my response being if he's got the money and he wants them then of course he should. Obviously there was an interpretation problem in "having the money".

So bought new shoes that C spotted and he liked and finally disposed of those leaky, bad associated memory Timberlands.

Then time for the commencement of Cambridge Science Festival ;-).

We had thoroughly enjoyed the festival last year and had been eagerly anticipating this year's. It didn't seem to be as big as last year so I was concerned about crowds. Fortunately I'd got some sessions booked so knew we'd be able to do a couple of things at least. I'm glad we did as the queues for some events were apparently snaking around buildings and we would have not enjoyed getting caught up in all that, no matter how tremendously exciting the event sounded.

We started off with a Robotics Workshop. C says this was her favourite event. As the children entered the room they were handed a paper bag with all the components they needed to build their JiggleBot. At each workstation table there was a tray with everything tool-wise they needed (such as screwdriver, pens, sellotape, glue, scissors) except the glu guns which were at the front. There were lots of robots to look at including an impressive robotic arm (working) and the presentation was engaging, interesting and most importantly, not too long as the kids just wanted to get constructing!

The presentation covered Artificial Intelligence, Movement of robots and howHonda's ASIMO is the nearest robot to mimic human movement and Nano robotics.

Then it was onto "JiggleBot" making and decorating:



Once our time was up and C had carefully gathered all the remaining bits of coloured card to finish off at home, we went off to investigate lunch opportunities, a process that left me ruing my failure to prepare a packed lunch. Eventually, after C dismissing options in both the restaurant and bistro in John Lewis and also rejecting Starbucks, me removing the batteries from the Jigglebot as it accidentally started up in the bag, surprising her, and me saying let's look at the bed department as I'm angling for a new bed, for M to have heart failure at £11,000 for a bed (it was divinely comfortable!), we eventually stopped at an AMT cart that had plain paninis. They weren't that nice but I think people were aware they had to like them and eat them as my tolerance was thin. I chose porridge that was disgusting - far too liquidy and so another was made but it was still revolting.

So we then headed off to the Pitt Building. I've never been in the Pitt Building before. It was commissioned in honour of William Pitt the Younger and is newly converted from its CUP past into a modern conference centre, including blu-ray capabilities.

We had some spare time to explore some of the for the Hands On Maths Fair before her booked session at HNR Food Factory.






"HNR Food Factory - where you're the chef" was misrepresented. We were expecting "Grab your lab coat and goggles and follow scientists from MRC Human Nutrition Research in an exciting lesson in cookery. Find out what really goes into processed food and have a go at designing your own food from scratch." In reality we got a make your own cereal box by cutting out and sticking on their preprinted data sheets, filling in product name and picture where appropriate, before going upstairs to the Percival Room to make cornflakes.

In the Percival room, there is a plaque informing you about Spencer Percival;

"Spencer Perceval was born in London in 1762 and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. Trained as a barrister, his friendship with William Pitt introduced him to political life and he became MP for Northampton in 1796. After Pitt's death he held various senior positions in the Tory cabinet before becoming Prime Minister in October 1809. His leadership was strong but turbulent, coinciding with the Peninsular Wars, King George III's descent into madness and the Luddite riots. He was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons on 11th May 1812 by John Bellingham and is the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated."

Howver impressive the conference centre is, their attempt to get anyone to recreate cornflakes in half an hour was doomed to failure.

Stage 1. Separation. Remove the bran and germ layers from the kernal. What is left is known as a corn grit. They had bags of preprepared ones as doing this by hand is timeconsuming so each child only needed to do one or two.



Stage 2. Adding malt syrup in solution with the salt and sugar.



Stage 3. Cooking and Drying - using a hairdryer. The assistant even said you need to make sure it is all dry and when C pointed out hers wasn't yet, she was told it was okay and hurried along to the next stage.



Stage 4. Using a rolling pin to roll out the flakes, or rather pound the grits into submission.



Stage 5. Should have been toasting but she was told to spray the B vitamins and iron fortification on before toasting as they found doing it afterwards made them too soggy.



Stage 6 (that should have been stage 5). After toasting we tried some. They were revolting.



Fortunately they had a couple of crates of Kelloggs Cornflakes for people to use to fill up their boxes they'd made.

So not a successful session in terms of end product but I suppose if you look at it in terms of knowledge gained, then all three of us learnt a lot about the cornflake manufacturing process.

After that, we had a quick look at the Formula 1 racing car,



then C wanted to go back into the maths fair:





Along to St John's College next for a mooch around their library and then a booked session to make an astrolabe. This was starting out to be an excellent session, the leader was enthusiastic and clear - very informative, C was very engaged. Unfortunately M had a low blood sugar and we had no glucose so we all had to leave. I was highly annoyed as although he cannot help having diabetes, he can help coming out unprepared for low blood sugar. I think it is irresponsible to come out without things he may need to raise a low blood sugar. I grabbed a couple of bottles of juice that we realised afterwards were warm and so may not have been very good to drink. M wasn't much help as he just responded it was a flavour he's not familiar with so how could he know whether it was off or not? I was suggested off juice would have a fizzy sensation but he still couldn't say. So when he felt ill later on, we put it down to the off juice.

Blood sugars restored, we wandered back up to the New Museums site to find everything had packed up promptly, but was very pleased to bump into Em and family and WF and family, so we all decamped to a pizza place to have dinner together - which was lovely and just about compensated for missing the astrolabe session. (except M's order was messed up - he was not having a good time of things!).

We then also all took the bus to the park and ride car park, to move cars to the Institute of Astronomy for the Pixelh8 performance. I was pleased to see Mimi and A there - having talked to Mimi about it during the week, she hadn't confirmed she would be able to come so was very surprised to see them there. The performance was OBSERVATIONS, using sounds from the Institute - people, lens caps, scope motors and such like. Very clever interpretation - you definitely need to listen to the presentation explaining how it was pulled together to fully appreciate it.

A good day - slightly marred by M being ill from the not good juice.

The bits I can remember or can see from diary that we did them!

Monday

Clo had history in the morning. We had been told it would be Romans but instead it was American Indians. It was also a rather noisy session and although I'm sure it wasn't chaotic - she felt it was out of control and she didn't like it. Then her tennis coach failed to show for her 1:1 as he'd put it into the wrong date. She didn't want to do Club Night.

So we came home earlier than usual and decided to use the time to watch the excellent "Empire of the Sun" programme, part of the "Wonders of the Solar System" series presented by Prof Brian Cox that we'd recorded the previous night.

Tuesday

Took C and Megan for a long promised trip to a pottery painting studio. I'd promised this 6 months ago when Meg couldn't attend C's swimming party due to breaking her arm. Finally fulfilled this promise :-). Was good although getting to the school to pick her up - AND NOT BE LATE - was particularly stressful. We ended up running for the last bit then she was one of the last out anyway.

Wednesday

Latinetc. Went well. More bacteria growing stuff in science, C joined the French class as there wasn't anywhere else to go as J&M are not here and SB was having an extra recorder session as she had an exam that afternoon. Usually, C would have been doing music in that group of four. C did say she enjoyed doing the French so she wasn't unhappy about it.

C and I then met my Dad to enjoy a 10 mile bike ride.



I hired a bike so I was driven to pedal hard by the desire not to end up having to pay extra because of exceeding the agreed 2 hour rental period.

Did the distance in plenty of time - I think 1 hr 45mins. Was good.

Cafe was shut for refurbishment. Not good.

Dad came back to our house and we had tea and hot cross buns at home instead. Was very good. :-).

Thursday

Italian - not much washing up for me to do this week. They took a gas camping heater we'd bought so we could camp non hookup in colder weather and didn't like, deciding electric heaters far less scary than anything gas related. So we'd never used it. So no charge for the lesson.

Stitch and Sew. Turned out unexpectedly to be the last session. The ladies who run it have been noticeably less enthusiastic in recent terms and think they just didn't want to spend their time doing our session any more but didn't have the courtesy to just say so, making excuse after excuse. We used to get print outs of dates and plans for the term and what the girls would be making but that all dropped off after a while and we'd received no communication, not even being told until the day before this term started that the session would be running. It's always been a bit odd as they want 6 children - having 3 attending, but they (the ladies who run the session) don't both need to be there and indeed, regularly only one turns up. They don't have to pay to use the rooms so are saving on costs there and taking £18 for the three children. They said it wasn't viable. I dunno £18 for an hour and 15 minutes ain't bad. So think there's some other reason. They gave B lots of excuses about it not fitting in with school (we could bring it earlier so they come straight after school drop off), not enough children (yet they refused to accept some who would have come as they didn't want them there) and essentially I think they see other avenues more interesting to pursue, not wanting to run the group for HE any more. They owed both B and myself money but said they'd send a cheque rather than having the money ready to return there and then. Would have been more professional to have been able to provide that at the time.

B asked them to explain to the girls as otherwise they would have just left without even saying goodbye - even ruder.

Then I received an email (as I hadn't been there for pick up) which annoyed me so much I decided not to respond as if you can't say anything nice then you shouldn't say anything at all. (blogging it here to the world instead ;-) - not that many people read here anyway).

To crown it, the cheque (when it arrived 2 days later) was accompanied by a "with our complements from X and Y" (sic) compliments slip. So I really can't respond as I would feel obliged to point that out too. I know typos get through here a lot but this is written quickly and difficult/time consuming to edit so I don't worry about it. It is not a professional piece of communication.

Just annoyed by lack of honesty and mixed messages. X sent an email saying they would expect C, R and new girl at start of term. Then at the first session they said "oh we weren't expecting you" to new girl and her mum.

However, has to be said - I think it is the activity that has always given the poorest return on investment, so I'm not sorry it's stopped, just think the situation could have been handled a lot better.

C was with B&R all afternoon, collecting her at R's Spanish time. C and I then bought a mirror to go in the back of the wardrobe. This will bounce some light around to make it easier to see in there as M couldn't be bothered to run lighting into it when he rewired the room. It will also prove to be a useful full length mirror. Once it gets put up . . .

C got very upset at my suggestion of watching Lambing Live slightly delayed by 20 minutes to enable her to eat our still not near being ready to serve out dinner with us before watching. "But then it wouldn't be Lambing Live!" went the wail. So she had a microwaved up pot of leftovers as that was quicker, managing to eat that before the 8pm start of the programme.

She's really enjoyed seeing that series, watching every episode live. (Handily enabling her to maintain her late bedtime choice).

Friday

Lazy morning. Lunch all together as for once we are all working from home (nice). C had tennis with Alex and then tried club night again as A had said he'd spoken to the people who run the club night sessions to try and stop the bullying. This made me nervous as I think intervention can make things worse. In the end club night only had children she likes in it so there were no issues anyway.

To T's then took girls to Badgers. I didn't have to collect :-).


Maths - she's done a couple of Bond papers this week. I do want to try getting into a little bit more regular practice on doing maths as we've let it slip again - as we have also with the guitar practice. Once the Science Festival is out of the way I think we'll do some reviewing of how to get to where we want to be.

West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village

Had a rather splendid day at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village with a rather splendid group of people. I loved the day. Although it was very cold, it was a fabulously sunny day (so you couldn't help but feel happy) and all children got along splendidly.

It's an experimental archaeology site, where they test theories of how they constructed buildings in Anglo-Saxon days, using the same tools and techniques. We (Clo, Beccy, Ruby and I) joined forces with Zoe and family who'd already arrived, we then all made our way over to the village. After being welcomed (very smiley welcome :-))at the reception desk, we were directed us to an exhibition and film area to set the scene before we could enjoy a guided tour of the site by one of the resident archaeologists that was due to start in 20 minutes. Perfect timing :-).

The guided tour was excellent. We certainly got a lot more out of the visit due to the tour than had we been left to our own devices (even if I do think Butser and The Crannog Centre (both in a similar vein to West Stow) are far more magical even if they don't have as good shop/museum and cafe areas - though perhaps it's the very absence of such facilities that adds to the atmosphere?. Tim, Big and Small joined us part way through the tour, Jax and Soa finding us towards the end. When we later saw WF and family, I did a time check and urged them to join the afternoon tour. I think they were one of just two families :-).

After the tour we mooched out for picnic lunch - we ate outside in the sun then adults chatted whilst children played ambush games in the wooded area. Meanwhile Tim queued and queued for tea / coffee :-(.

I managed to decide to want a cup of tea before Tim got to the head of the queue so got him to add mine to his order, I then sat inside with Jax for a chat as I had ceramic cup (that must not be taken from the building). I drank very fast as I was aware I had just rather abandoned C with the group in order to catch Tim before he finished making his order in the cafe. I was somewhat in the hope that surely one of the outside people would keep an eye on her - although I hadn't actually officially handed responsibility over to anyone. I'm a bit bad at that really - just trusting that the group will look after all the members but of course if I don't communicate that then it's possible that all the group thinks someone else in the group is responsible so no one does it.

After the refuelling we went back through the reception building to explore the museum. It's small but very well put together. I started by reading the first panel to C then Big joined her and I left them to explore and point things out to each other by themselves, then the group of children rather morphed into one mass. No adult direction, just the children seeing and spotting things, drawing each other's attention to things that interested them. Was great.

Back outside and let the children loose into the play area - an excellent range of play equipment that they showed no sign of tiring of. In the end each family had to peel their children away in turn at the point when if we didn't move, we would have frozen to the spot.

Thank you to all who joined us - it was only the excellent day it was because of each and every one of you.















C announced; "What do we know about this person? He worked for London Underground!" LOL.