Things Don't Always Go The Way You Want Them To

You may have noticed that I haven't posted for a while. I have a really good excuse – I mean reason!

Last week my friend Ursula with her daughter Banana (Ram's best friend) and son Sheepy came to visit. For more info on them see my previous blog on the He-special website.

We normally all look forward to these visits, especially this time as it has been six months, but unfortunately this visit wasn't up to the usual standard. Quite possibly because it has been six months.

But there could be all sorts of other reasons. Ram and Banana are getting older, as is Sheepy. It was quite obvious that Ram and Sheepy went off together on the first day leaving Banana out, something that hasn't really happened before.

Also the mums were busy. Ursula brought down her laptop so that she could keep up with some marking she had to do, and I was busy trying to keep up with the http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/update.htm government consultation on home education guidelines, not to mention rather a lot of cooking!

The house was also a bit different as we were having work done on the kitchen the following week. We arranged this just after Christmas, and they said it would be done before Easter, then after Easter, then they assured me it would definitely be done before the second week of July when Ursula was due to come. Time was marching on and I started ringing them once a week. It looked like they were going to do it the week before she came which would have been fine because we could have put everything back in the kitchen together. But no, they finally gave me the date of the second week of July!

We had started packing up the kitchen months ago, and Ursula helped me do a lot more of it too. So we had boxes all over the place, resulting in people having to step over things and I think this really unsettled the children too.

Finally on the last night Banana suggested we all play the card game Cheat. We really should have tried to do something like that sooner as the kids really enjoyed it. In fact we ended up playing the following morning before I took them back to the station!

We did have some nice moments. We took everyone over to the special needs play-park one afternoon. Dxh had come for lunch. Actually that was an interesting learning moment for Ram because at first he couldn't understand why his Dad would want to come and have a visit with his mum's friend! After lunch we bundled into two cars, with Ursula taking her knitting and me taking my drop spindle and some brown Jacobs fleece to spin, plus some yummy chocolate macaroons called cow pats, and some coconut ones too.

We must have looked the idea picture of domestic harmony. Well, for a little while at least!

We also went over to the farm as Petra the duck that lived with us two years ago before moving to the village pond had produced 8 ducklings right on time for their visit! Banana and Ram seem to have lost the excitement of the Farm but Sheepy was very please to go over the wall and we actually went twice with him.

We also did some tie-dyeing with carrot tops, which gives a yellow, and nettles for green. Unfortunately Banana's didn't turn out the way she thought it would which was disappointing for her, but that is the way it is with natural dyeing. It can still be a hard lesson to learn.

We also spent some time watching Doctor Who. The only episode that they didn't have on tape was The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, so we watched those one day. That night at supper Sheepy said: 'Mummy' in that voice! It really sent shivers up my spine! We also watched a really old Doctor Who film Daleks'Invasion Earth: 22150 AD too, with the mums spinning and knitting their way through it.

Although this visit wasn't the greatest, we are still looking forward to going up to York to visit them soon. I think for some reason it seems to work better with us going their than with them coming here.

And of course it is one of life's hardest lessons to learn: things don't always go the way you want them to. And that lesson is one for adults as well as the children!