End of a lovely week... in The season for arachnids. Autumn 2016

It’s been half term and it’s been lovely. We’ve done very little and we’ve done lots. The best kind of balance. We visited my sister in London, along with our other sister who was also visiting and we went to the science museum. We had lots of fun, especially on the journey there and back. My (London based) sister lives on the western arm of outer London so the journey involved a bus, a train and a tube. The kids (my two girls and my younger (Yorkshire based) sister’s two girls) had so much fun travelling. As usuall L and her cousin R buddied up - there are only 8 weeks between them, agewise - and sat together, slightly separated from us; being Ladies Who Lunch together.

The queue for the Natural History Museum was immense, even longer than when we visited on a school trip in July, so we were glad to be going to the building behind which had a constant stream of people going in and out but no actual queue…

Like all the museum’s in that area it’s vast, so we had to agree where to go…

And I’ve become very good at taking control in these sorts of situations, you know, where all the grown ups are trying to ensure everyone else gets what they want.... So we went to see space hardware (I am a not-so-secret space nerd). There were many things but i got the most excited by seeing an actual real life Apollo landing module. You know. The one that screeched into the atmosphere, burning up, carrying three astronauts, before crashing into the sea, dragging a bunch of parachutes behind it! It wasn’t a mock up, it was REAL!! And my sister wouldn’t give me a leg up so I could jump over and touch it!!

Wet all turned ourselves into the opposite gender using a computer programme. It just made my face a bit fatter and more homely so I looked the age that people my age used to look when I was a kid! The best one was li’l sis’s boyfriend who, the day he turned 18, decided not to ever cut any of his hair again. He’s in his 50s and immensely hairy… The female version of him could have been in a Victorian freak show!

Anyway, this week we have also made butter from cream (arm achingly good fun!), visited Ikea without needing anything where L spent her £1 pocket money on some pavement chalk which she shared with T when they got home, creating art in the back garden. Of course, we ate meatballs and tried all the beds and all the sofas. We looked in all the kitchen cabinets to see what secrets were hidden there and pictured our perfect, Scandinavian lives before spending less than £20. Heh heh heh…

We went to hobbycraft to buy the ingredients for a gas mask for Ts latest school topic and she also wanted a painting by numbers kit - one from the adult section because it had information on various painting techniques - but it had no price so I coached her through asking for the price and her various reactions based on whether she wanted to spend that much or not.

And once again, seeing how (mostly) chilled T is when not in school (even when she’s outside of the home) brought it home to me how little the education system is designed for helping our children to enjoy their lives and learning. But hey. There you go…