All Change!

Another week that whizzed by at 100 miles per hour!

The good news ... after my interview on Thursday I was offered a part-time job as an archivist. This means that from the middle of April I will have TWO jobs in the same place - I will still be doing 2.5 days a week cataloguing and will also be working as an archivist for another 2 days a week. That adds up to pretty much full time, which is a bit scary! In September the hours will change to 2 days a week cataloguing and 3 days a week as an archivist, so will be truly full time. Fortunately that is only going to be a temporary thing. When my existing contract expires in July 2013 I will be left with the three days a week archivist's job, which is exactly what I was hoping for when I started out on this road. So, the next year or so is going to be pretty hectic.

Working full time isn't ideal but it is manageable, though I'm glad it is only going to be temporary. Fortunately Tevye works at home two days a week and will be able to get home early enough on one other day to collect Rose from school. I will be able to collect her on Fridays, and she will go to after school club for about three-quarters of an hour on Mondays until Helen can pick her up on her way home from school. Between my holidays from work (I get 26 days annual leave), Tevye's work at home days and some baby sitting help from Helen and Marie we can cover school holidays without it getting too stressful.

Oh, and I'm still going to be studying for my archive qualification. Eek! I'm looking forward to starting the job and getting the chance to put theory into practice though.

Checking In

Updates on the various medical matters ... the hospital discharged Mum on Tuesday, only six days after her op which is a record for her, and she is staying with us until we decide she is well enough to go home. Not surprisingly given the spectacular bruising her leg is still very painful, but she is gradually getting more mobile. We took her out for a walk to the end of the drive yesterday, the first time she has been outside since the op. It is still very slow as she is having to learn how to use her joints all over again - her walking was so poor before that even the leg that wasn't operated on is struggling to remember what to do! I was a little concerned about the incision on Saturday and took advantage of the out-of-hours District Nurse service. A lovely nurse came out, checked the wound over (all fine!) and dressed it. The first time Mum had a hip replacement a nurse came out on New Year's Day to put a new dressing on. Great service!

My chest is better. Not quite 100% yet, but the cough has almost gone and I didn't end up with a chest infection. Phew! Rose went back for her follow up appointment with the optician. This time her eyes behaved better and although she does need glasses for reading, school work, using the computer and watching TV, the prescription isn't as strong as the optician thought it might be and he expects her to outgrow the need for glasses in time. She has picked out "dark pink" (her description) metallic frames with a little picture of Snow White on the side. Very five year old girl.  The orthodontist is happy with the way Marie's teeth are progressing, and says that even with the current braces the wires should soon get more stable as the gaps where she had teeth extracted close up. I hope so!

Helen had a parent-tutor evening at school last week. Her tutor is very happy with her - she works hard, is making good progress, and is predicted decent grades. Quite a number of kids in her year had taken their first AS level exams in January and got their grades back. Apparently a lot of people were very unhappy with their maths results - there is a big jump in difficulty between the GCSEs they took last year and AS level and it showed - which has put her off the idea of picking up maths again next year and she is now thinking she will just continue with the three subjects she is doing this year (English Language, Media Studies and Photography) and add in ICT as an extra.

Oops! Just realised I should have woken the girls up quarter of an hour ago! Have a horrible feeling this morning is going to degenerate into a frantic rush.

Medical Matters

We seem to be going through one of those spells where every week has "personal maintenance" appointments of some type for someone. Between the five of us and my mother there seems to be a constant stream of visits to the doctor, the dentist, the optician, the orthodontist, the chiropodist and so on. Last week it was the optician for Rose and the asthma nurse for me, not to mention that my mother had her hip replacement surgery. Next week it is the orthodontist for Marie and the optician again for Rose.

Rose has surprised me. When we took my mother to the optician's a couple of weeks ago she complained that her eyes were blurry. She sailed through her pre-school eye check and is reading well, so I assumed it was either because she had a bit of a cold or just association of ideas because we were at the optician's, but I made an appointment for an eye exam just to be on the safe side. It turns out she was right, and her eyes really are blurry. She is long sighted with a slight astigmatism and is going to need glasses. She has to go back again next week to have eye drops to relax her eyes so that the optician can measure the prescription properly (apparently little people's eyes work so hard adjusting focus it is hard to get an accurate measurement without something to calm them down). We now understand why she has been reluctant to move up reading levels at school. She has tended to look at books from the next level and say they are too hard, though the lower level books are way too easy. Her teacher and I both put it down to lack of confidence and coaxed her along. It turns out Rose was right. The books are hard - not because the words are too difficult, but because she struggles to see the smaller print! It also explains why she doesn't often volunteer answers in phonics lessons - it isn't that she is too timid, she just can't see the board properly!  From what I have been able to dig out of her, it seems she didn't have any problem in her first year at school, last term it was getting a little blurry, and this term it has got worse.

After 18 months of not having any asthma problems and feeling I had it well under control, I got overconfident. In December I got a chest infection, and now a slight cold has turned into an evil cough. Throwing everything I had at it (stronger preventive inhaler and maximum dose of reliever) was just about holding things together but wasn't really making any headway, so now I'm on the first course of steroids I've had in two or three years. Two days in and I'm still coughing and puffing, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will work and doesn't turn into another chest infection.

Marie and braces is turning out to be a complete pain as the wires keep breaking. In the six weeks she has had them we have been back to the orthodontist twice with broken wires. She has now broken two more, but fortunately has a routine appointment booked for Tuesday so can wait until then. I presume the breaks are because the wires have to stretch unsupported across the gaps where she had molars removed to make space for the rest of her teeth. Apparently she will get a stronger type of brace after six months, but I can see us trekking backwards and forwards to the orthodontist ridiculously often until then.

All of which makes me incredibly thankful yet again for the National Health Service. Out of all that lot, all I have had to pay is £14.80 for two prescriptions. Rose's glasses will be free, as is Marie's orthodontic treatment (though I seriously hope they don't cap the number of times they will deal with broken wires!). I was able to book my medical appointment online with my choice of doctor or nurse (I picked an asthma specialist nurse). It saddens me to see that the US election year is beginning to trigger outbursts against "socialized medicine" in general and the British NHS in particular, which according to the Republican candidate Rick Santorum has "devastated" the UK. Huh? I picked up on this from William Oddie's response at his Catholic Herald blog, from which I also discovered this staggering statistic:

The US spends 7.4 per cent of GDP on healthcare (to which very few are entitled). We spend 7.2 per cent of GDP on the NHS for a system to which everyone in the population has an absolute right, and which most of those (I am one) who actually have any real experience of it, consider pretty effective

I think that alone is enough to indicate that our system is not a disaster. I wrote a bit about the different perceptions of healthcare in the US and UK in the aftermath of the last US presidential election here. For what it's worth, I don't think our system would be possible in the US and the changes Obama is trying to introduce are not even remotely similar to the NHS, which was a product of particular historical circumstances - not just the aftermath of the Second World War as I mentioned in my previous post,  but also a long history of social provision though the Poor Law in this country, dating back over 400 years. I don't know what the answer is for America, but I do know that holding the NHS up as a devastating and disastrous example of what could happen there as a result healthcare reform is just ridiculous. I know there are many Americans who would love to have our health service. I don't know anyone here who would wish to replace the NHS with a system based on private health insurance.

Too Much Stuff, Too Little Time!

Life here is busy! On that edge between very busy and crazy busy. My mum is waiting to have her second hip replaced, which will probably happen either the end of this month or early next. Meanwhile she has been needing more help than usual. She had a stairlift fitted in her house on Monday which should make life quite a bit easier for her. Getting upstairs had become a mountain to climb. We weren't sure how easy it would be to fit a stairlift as her stairs are narrow with an inconvenient bend at the bottom. After consultation with the nice man from the stairlift company I (yes, me! Apparently I missed my vocation as a stairlift engineer!) came up with a neat solution that worked - so I am feeling quite pleased with myself now it is successfully installed.

The last couple of weeks have been a marathon of school appointments for Marie and Rose (still can't get used to this name change!). There was an information evening about how Rose's school teaches numeracy, a GCSE options evening for Marie, and parent-teacher consultations for both. I'll write about those later. In amongst that, Marie has been having trouble with the wires on her braces, requiring two extra visits to the orthodontist. Helen is in a state of wild excitement as she heads off on a five day school trip to New York today.

Meanwhile I have been busy with work and study. I am still working an extra day a week, which for complicated but good reasons may increase in the spring rather than decrease as I expected. Fortunately my current archive course module is palaeography (reading old handwriting), an area where have already have a fair amount of experience. As a result the course is not too time consuming. Just as well!

My Life in Facebook Updates

Haven't posted one of these for a while (apologies to those of you who have already read these on Facebook):


Why is my life like a series of scenes from Outnumbered? The latest one involved the car, toast, crumbs and the frustrations of a 5 year old who can't grasp the concept of lending money.

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Oops! Slight fail. Took Rose to school for the second time since September. Have maintained my 100% record of getting her there late ... Me: "Are you ever late when Daddy takes you?" Her (shocked): "No! Never!!!"

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Just found a Christmas tree bauble in the back garden. Why????

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Just started watching a period drama about a midwife in the East End of London, then realised it was set in the year that Tevye was born, also in the East End. Suddenly "period drama" doesn't seem quite the right description!

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Why do all three of my daughters have to hold conversations with me simultaneously on entirely unrelated subjects. This morning one wanted to know if I had any spare plastic folders, another was trying to work out what clothes she wanted to take to a sleepover, and the third was explaining the difference between digraphs and split digraphs (that was the five year old - she takes her phonics lessons very seriously). *Head explodes*

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And in sequence, the tale of Rose the rabbit-lion-rabbit:

Rose came home from ballet yesterday bursting with excitement about being a toy rabbit in her dance show. She has written down instructions to remind her what she has to do and pinned them up ready to practice before school ... "All the time. Bend down and jump." Not that tricky to remember for a rabbit!

Oh dear. Dance show disappointment. After a week of excitement about being a rabbit, Rose is now a lion. She is decidedly not impressed! Apparently lions do not get to jump.

Update on the Rose dance show casting saga. Sympathetic ballet teacher has reinstated her as a rabbit. Not only that, but she got to try on her costume last night and she is a PINK rabbit. A very happy pink rabbit.

And for those who asked on FB - I will try to provide video, but the show isn't until the end of March / beginning of April so expect a long wait!

Taking Stock

I haven't blogged enough to look back at posts over the past years, so I am doing a little family stock taking  instead. Littlest first.

Cherub - has had a good year. She is still loving school, maybe even more so now she is in Year 1. She likes learning and likes rules, so school is a good fit for her. She is much more confident than a year ago, though still extremely cautious about anything new and reluctant to confront anything that might be even the slightest bit scary. Reading and writing are coming along nicely. She isn't ready to read on her own yet, but I can see the skills slotting into place. Her spelling is pretty much entirely phonetic - mostly legible but entertainingly wrong.

Star - loves her new school. Long may it last! Star and school are in some ways not a natural fit (rules? what rules?) so feeling positive makes it easier for her to deal with the constraints. She has made two new close friends, as well as keeping up most of her old friendships. It's hard to believe she will be starting her GCSE courses next summer. She has to choose her options next term and is thinking of French, Art, Child Development and possibly Business Studies (in addition to compulsory English language and literature, maths and science).

Angel - this has been the year when she has become a young adult. She passed her GCSEs with creditable grades, is tackling A levels with her usual competence, loves being a sixth former and being at her new school, has proved herself working in an adult's job, and has managed to juggle school, work and a social life. Oh, and has acquired a boyfriend! She is stretching her wings and getting ready to fly, and though it is a little bittersweet to see her moving away from us into the adult world I am very proud of the capable, independent young woman she is becoming.

Tevye - mostly more of the same. Overall he has a good work-life balance which makes up for the frustrations that sometimes go along with his work, and the recession hasn't had any noticeable impact on his company. His eyes have been up and down - he has a condition affecting the cornea which is not degenerative but fluctuates in severity and gives him some vision problems. A separate pair of occupational glasses for computer work and reading has helped, and glasses with a new prescription he collected this month seem to have improved his vision significantly.

Bookworm - lots of changes for me! This time last year I was about to start my archive course and now I am already half way through. Getting a job has been a big change, but I am absolutely loving it. I find it hard to imagine anything I would enjoy more. The content of the documents I am working with is fascinating, the working conditions are good and I like the people. It has been quite hard fitting in an extra day of work each week over the last couple of months while still trying to fit in my study time, but I have enjoyed the variety of doing something different and getting to learn more about how the archive ticks. I will probably be doing it for another month or so, after which I will be back to working my usual mornings only routine - which is now going to seem beautifully easy! The other big positive from this year has been that I have managed to get into much better eating habits, which have had the nice side effect of causing me to effortlessly lose weight. I have no idea how much as I have no scales, but I am a size smaller and have had to throw out clothes that got too big. I have been eating lots of fruit and veggies, sticking to wholemeal and wholegrain as much as possible and mostly avoiding sugar and junk, which I compensate for with a couple of squares of dark chocolate and a small glass of wine most days.

Christmas. Hannukah. New Year.

All tumbling over each other this year, which is why I have not posted for a while. Hannukah started on the Tuesday evening before Christmas and ended yesterday, neatly running through Christmas, and now it is December 29th and New Year is looming before I am ready to think about it!  I apologise for not wishing eveyone a Happy Christmas beforehand, but as we are still only on the fifth of the twelve days of Christmas I wish you one now. I hope you had a lovely Christmas day and are still enjoying the season!

We have had a good time here with friends and family. My mother and brother were with us for Christmas Day, then on Boxing Day we all went out for a meal. This was a change of tradition for us. For nearly twenty years our family routine has been to be all together here on Christmas Day, then to go to Mum's on Boxing Day. She used to cook a lavish lunch and provide a buffet tea, until the cooking got too much and we started just going for the afternoon and tea. For the last couple of years even this has been getting steadily harder for her and she has been relying heavily on my brother to help. This year we noticed that the local Harvester restaurant (one of the larger chains over here) was offering a two course meal plus salad buffet on Boxing Day for £10.99. We suggested this might be a good idea as everyone from the five year old to the eighty four year old likes their food and it would save Mum and my brother feeling they ought to be catering for everyone. They jumped at the idea and we all enjoyed ourselves, so I think it may become a new family tradition.

On Tuesday we switched back from Christmas to Hannukah and held our usual Hannakah party for ourselves and our neighbours. This year we also added in Cherub's Little Friend N (whose poor mother was also supposed to come, but couldn't as she wasn't well). I cooked a mountain of latkes (fried potato cakes) which disappeared rapidly) and bought a matching mountain of doughnuts from Tesco. Hannukah recalls lights of theTemple in Jerusalem continuing to burn miraculously for eight days despite being on the last dregs of oil, so is celebrated with food fried in oil. Jewish food does not do low calorie! After Hannukah food for twelve on Tuesday, Tevye's sister and family and a couple of family friends came for the day yesterday which meant providing lunch and tea for thirteen. I cooked a mountain of baked potatoes, chicken and mushroom casserole, cauliflower cheese for those who don't eat meat (or in the case of Tevye's nephew's fiancee, non-kosher meat), various veggies, and a couple of apple pies using the pastry recipe from Linds' mince pies (delicious!).

If I had any sense today would be a restful, chilling out sort of day, but no - I am heading off to London on the train with four teenagers to hit the post-Christmas sales at the Westfield Centre in Shepherd's Bush. Eek! Tomorrow, I chill!

Random Quirkiness

There are days when I relish the quirkiness and randomness of family life, and others when I wonder how I ever manage to hold on to a thought for long enough to make it coherent. Then there are times when I just feel too OLD for all this, and long for a quiet, peaceful, predictable existence, particularly one without a constant background wail of "what can I EAT!!!!" (I knew teenage boys had big appetites. Nobody warned me about teenage girls.)

Sample randomness from yesterday morning:

• "Look! I drew a centipede with its make up."
• "Where's my PE kit?"
• "Don't put the bag on the dead moth!"
• "Where's my toothbrush?"
• "I wish I hadn't let Star use my toothbrush, it's all icky now"
• "Where is my flowery top?"
• "I'd feel safer if you put your unicorn down while we are in the car."

Most of this while I was trying to shower and dress. Is it surprising I have been known to take Cherub to school wearing items of clothing inside out? (Me, not her! Well, probably her as well, though I don't remember a specific instance - though there was the day she went to school knickerless because nobody thought to check she was wearing any.)

Then at night time, just as I was about to go to sleep ... screams from Star, who had spotted a daddy longlegs in her bedroom. Tevye caught it and flushed it. Cherub was roused by the commotion, just enough to decide that there was a spider in her bed (there wasn't!) and get hysterical. Star comforted Cherub then went back to her own room, where she spotted another daddy longlegs. Cherub howled because she had been abandoned. The daddy longlegs disappeared. Star refused to sleep in a room with a bug on the loose. Cherub refused to let go of Star. In the end I pulled a mattress out for Star in Cherub's room and she slept there. By which time, of course, I was wide awake and just about clinging on to sanity.

For your delectation and delight, the centipede with its make up - eye shadow and powder, I believe (drawn on Fingerpaint on the iPad):

More random quirkiness ... Cherub just spotted this picture and was inspired to add to it. The centipede now has chicken pox:

Beware the Ides of March!

If you wonder where I have been, the back end of last week was busy, and this week has been crazy! I spent more than half of Monday night in Accident and Emergency with my Mum and her red swollen foot - by the time she admitted to my brother and I that she had a problem, she had reached the point of not being able to walk, so we had to call an ambulance for her. Of course, it had to be a crazy busy night in A and E, so we ended up with a four hour wait, followed by an hour and a half of seeing doctors, blood tests and decision making. She was diagnosed with cellulitis and kept in overnight to give antibiotics a chance to kick in. My brother and I got home at 4am.

On Tuesday she was mobile again - albeit slowly - and was able to come home in the evening. We now have her staying with us for a few days while she recovers. The doctor visited yesterday, and feels the foot is doing OK, but is concerned she may have a blood clot in her leg, necessitating a trip to the surgery for a blood-thinning injection and another trip back to the hospital today for a scan. So, all in all, a crazy few days.

Of course, I should have guessed something like this would happen. Tuesday was Angel's birthday, and this is the third time in eight years that a family member has ended up in hospital on her birthday. Angel was born on the Ides of March. Clearly this was not a good thing and she should have waited for St.Patrick's Day when she was due. I have a lot of sympathy for poor old Julius Caesar.

Normal blogging will resume when I get out of chaos mode.

Termites

Playing Categories in the car today, Cherub asked Grandma to think of "a fruit that begins with T ... something that the big girls like". After a failed guess of tangerines, Grandma gave up. The answer, it transpired, was "termites". Termites? Are my daughters anteaters? Grandma and I cracked up laughing, and even Cherub got the joke after we explained what termites were, and that what she actually meant was pomegranates (!).

At dinner I passed the story on to Angel and Star, accompanied by more laughter from Cherub and myself. It turned out the joke was on us. Angel and Star looked rather sheepish ... then admitted that when they were younger they used to eat ants!!!! Eek!

In case you are wondering, they squashed them first. And insects are high in protein.

Then again, better not to think about it.

Christmas Newsletter

Every year we try to come up with a slightly different take on the family newsletter we send out with Christmas cards. This year we went with a culinary theme. With names changed to bloggy ones, I thought I'd share it here:

BOOKWORM TOWERS - CHRISTMAS MENU

STARTER
- Goulash Soup -
Bookworm and Tevye spent a weekend in Budapest in October to celebrate Bookworm’s fiftieth birthday. An amazing city, well worth a visit. We can recommend a restaurant that does the best goulash ever. (Did you know goulash is a soup? We didn’t!)
 
MAIN COURSE
- Cornish Pasty -
We all enjoyed a summer holiday in Cornwall, staying in a converted seaman’s mission in Penzance. The big girls surfed, the little girl played on the beach, the parents ate pasties.

- Cumberland Sausage - 
Tevye and Bookworm have been very spoilt this year, with two weekends away on their own. The first was to our favourite hotel at Appleby in Cumbria. Many thanks to the kind friends, relatives and neighbours who were prepared to look after the girls for us.

- Vegetable Curry -
As made by Cherub at school, where she joined a very caring and creative Reception class in September. This term she has been going for afternoons only. Next term it will be mornings, then full time after Easter.

DESSERT
- College Pudding -
Lots of school visits this term, as both Angel and Star needed to decide on schools for next year - Star  is in her last year of middle school, and Angel will be starting sixth form. In the end both have decided to move to the upper school on the other side of town, which they preferred to Angel’s current school.

- Bread and Butter Pudding -
Tevye is still earning a crust writing exam questions, with Bookworm joining in to write some of her own when Tevye and company get overloaded.

- Dundee Cake -
Bookworm has decided to train for a new career as an archivist. In August she started working as a volunteer at the Buckinghamshire county archive for one day a week, which she is loving. In January she will be starting an M.Litt course in Archives and Record Management, by distance learning through the University of Dundee. As there are a couple of study schools to attend, she’ll be getting quite accustomed to the seven hour train journey to Scotland. Her first trip in November for an interview went like clockwork - hope the rail companies can keep it up!

- Brighton Rock -
In May we spent a weekend in Brighton at Angel and Star’s request - shopping, strolling along the sea front, enjoying the fun fair on the pier, and generally doing sea-sidey things.


DRINKS MENU
- Gatorade -
To fuel Angel and Star’s whirl of physical activity. Both girls have been spending three evenings a week at dance classes, and one evening at gym, though Angel has decided to stop dancing after Christmas - partly to give her more time to study for her GCSEs, and partly because she has gained her first gymnastics coaching qualification and now has a part time job at the gym. She is going out on a high with the dance school show just before Christmas. This will be Cherub’s first show, as a super cute snowflake ballerina and a tap-dancing mouse.

- Snowball -
Lots of those around this year. The coldest winter for many years meant plenty of snow days off school for the girls, and this winter looks to be heading the same way. Cherub loved the snow, but after watching The Snowman decided nobody was allowed to make one in case it came to life and got into the house.

- Champagne -
For the toast ... Here’s to a very happy Christmas to all our friends, and best wishes for a wonderful year in 2011.

Everything Flows, Nothing Stands Still

Everything flows, nothing stands still. (Heraclitus)

I have been thinking about change and came across this quote. It sums up for me one aspect of life with children: life is in a constant state of flux. There are the obvious big changes - a new baby, a child reaching school age, homeschooling, school-schooling, a child finishing school and leaving home. Then there are the continual little changes, as one or other child in the family grows into a new phase. Here, for example, Cherub is very noticeably more "four" than she was a month ago. Although technically she is not four until next week, she is suddenly doing things that are more four than three: she is doing a ton of drawing, she has started dressing herself, and has jumped on a notch in confidence. When we were homeschooling, I learned that whenever I thought I had it sorted, within a few months someone would move on a stage and things that were going well suddenly wouldn't work any more. Even without homeschooling or any major changes, our life now looks quite different to how it looked two years ago, just because we have a 15 year old, an 11 year old and an (almost) 4 year old, instead of a 13 year old, a 9 year old and a 2 year old.

Now we are heading up to another of the major changes, with Cherub starting school. Initially it won't make much difference as she will only go for half days. At the moment she goes to playgroup for two and a half hours four mornings a week; in September she will be at school for three hours every weekday afternoon; after Christmas she will switch to mornings; then after Easter she will start staying at school for full days. And that will be a huge change - for me, more than for her. For the first time in sixteen years, I will not have one or more children home for most of the day. Which means ... what? Work? Leisure? Volunteering?

I have been tentatively exploring a few ideas, and it seems as though doors are opening in one particular direction. I tried applying for tutoring work with the Open University that I could do from home. That got nowhere. I considered training as primary school teacher. That looked practical - I could do most of the training in local schools, and school holidays would make it easy to fit alongside our family life - but certain aspects worried me and there was something indefinable that didn't feel right. Then I started thinking about archive work, and within a week I had voluntary work experience arranged with a local record office. To train as an archivist in the UK you have to have prior work experience, either paid or as a volunteer. It is feasible to volunteer for two half days a week while Cherub is at part time school, and it will mean I can apply to study for the diploma of the Society of Archivists (the professional qualification here).

Last week I did a bit of digging around on the internet, looking in more detail than I had before at the various archives and record management courses. Three universities provide courses by distance learning. For one paid employment in an archive is a prerequisite; another has inflexible starting dates, takes a minimum of two and a half years, and sounds uninspiring. The third is provided by a Scottish university and sounds ideal. The course has three entry points a year, in January, May and September, is taught online, and can (at least in theory) be completed in less than two years to diploma level, with the option of adding a dissertation to gain a masters degree. Thinking it through, I realised I could start this course next January once I have some work experience under my belt, and with time to study while Cherub is at school, would have a realistic chance of being a qualified archivist by the autumn of 2012. I emailed the course administrator, who confirmed that one day a week of voluntary work before and during the course would meet their experience criteria and encouraged me to apply. I would have to go to Scotland for two short study courses in January and October, but that would be manageable.

Tevye and I had a long discussion about the idea, and the more we talked about the pros and cons, the more positive we felt about the pros and the less worried by the cons. The ease with which doors are opening looks distinctly providential to us. The more I look into it, the more enthusiastic I feel about the actual work, and Tevye is convinced I would enjoy it a great deal. Archivists' jobs are thin on the ground at the moment, but this is at least partly due to funding being diverted into the 2012 Olympics (sports and culture both get a lot of funding from the National Lottery) which means that from 2012 the number of jobs should increase again. Also, although even part time work would mean working at least some of the time during school holidays, we could see ways in which it could work surprisingly well for our family, with a number of possibilities opening up as we talked it through. A couple of months ago the idea hadn't even entered my head, yet now it seems very much the right direction to head in. Where this road will take me I have no idea - there could be u-turns and crossroads ahead - but at least I now know where my new journey is going to start.

A Day In The Life

I haven't posted one of these in a long time. If you enjoy trivia read on, if not please feel free to jump to the next blog.

This was today ...

7.30 ... Get up. Shower. Dress Cherub. Cook and eat breakfast (hash browns and scrambled eggs)

8.15 ... Manhandle protesting Cherub into car. Drive four girls to school.

8.30 ... Build farm for Cherub. Put away yesterday's laundry mountain. Match up large pile of socks. Stop in Angel's room while delivering clean clothes to straighten hair (she has possession of the communal hair straighteners). Cull old history books I am never likely to need from bookshelves while waiting for straighteners to heat up.

9.10 ... Sit down with mug of tea and laptop to read blogs and knit.

9.20 ... Cherub gets bored of farm and asks to watch TV. Turn on CBeebies (BBC preschool channel).

9.50 ... Turn off TV. Print out pictures for Cherub to colour while I do half an hour of housework. Cherub refuses to be left. Give up on housework. Sit next to Cherub and finish off flip-top section of mitten while she colours.

10.30 ... Stack dishwasher. Get ready to go to Grandma's. Cherub now happily engrossed in Playmobil and not pleased at being interrupted.

10.45 ... Manhandle protesting Cherub into car. Again. She wants to walk. It's raining, and I don't. Arrive at Grandma's. Cherub throws a fit because I refuse to leave her standing outside the front door in the rain. Eventually calms down and has game playing marathon with Grandma. Meanwhile I sort out a printer problem (computer refuses to recognise a paper jam has been cleared ... why?), drink coffee, eat chocolate cream cake, and start yet another pair of mittens.

12.55 ... Head home via Tesco Express for oddments. Have run out of kitchen roll and need to feed the older girls' blueberry addiction. Cherub not pleased at having to go to the shop, but limits herself to grumbling.

1.15 ... Make lunch. Eat lunch. Watch The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Deal with money stuff on the computer.

1.45 ... Work on local history project. Trying to finish checking censuses for several generations of a rather prolific family.

2.15 ... Look at a numbers activity book with Cherub (her choice)

2.30 ... Cherub putters with toys. Make dinner (lazy chicken and potatoes). Hang ridiculous amount of pink laundry round the house to dry. Declutter a cupboard in Cherub's room. Clean bathroom while Cherub sits on toilet.

3.45 ... K-Next-Door comes round for mug of tea. Older girls drift in from school.

4.15 ... Play game with Cherub. Make hot chocolate for Star. Quickly tidy up. Read to Cherub. Tickle fest with girls.

5.00 ... Tevye home from work. Chat for a while. Star reads to Cherub

5.40 ... Cook vegetables. Eat dinner.

6.15 ... Sit down for fifteen minutes while nice Tevye clears up in the kitchen.

6.30 ... Take Angel and Star to dance classes, collecting an extra child on the way. Bath Cherub and get her ready for bed.

7.40 ... Go to brass band practice. Fall more deeply in love with my trombone.

9.30 ... Get home to find one girl in bed asleep, one girl in bed awake, and one girl on the computer cooing over pictures of cute fluffy lapdogs. Chill with laptop. Post this.

2009 In Pictures

Night Duty

Between 10.30pm and 1.30am last night I ...

• applied Vicks Vapour Rub to coughing child
• checked child's peak flow
• gave foot rub to insomniac child
• tucked up grumpy insomniac child
  
• comforted crying child and tucked her up in her own bed
  
• comforted crying child and tucked her up in my bed (child stopped crying)
  
• put child back in her own bed (child started crying)
• gave Nurofen to child complaining of hurting knee
• gave hungry child a cheesestring
• drank mug of Horlicks
  
• watched one episode of Little Princess and three of Peppa Pig
• put child back to bed
• gave up on trying to sleep and curled up on sofa with laptop
• went upstairs to give child drink of water (twice)
• managed not to lose patience
• dozed off on sofa

Sometimes I want a job with regular hours.

Kitchen Update

Today's minor disaster ... set fire to the oven glove I was using to hold the handle of a pan. No injuries. Also no oven glove.

Bonfire Night

• Wrapping up in winter coats and warm woollies to go out on a damp November night
• Spending time with old friends
  
• Eating hot dogs and sausages
• A blazing bonfire
  
• Ear muffs to soften the bangs for a nervous three year old
• A three year old realising she likes fireworks ("Look! Fairy dust!")
• Coming home to a warm house
• Eating a large bag of hot chips (fries) in our pyjamas
  

Pot Luck Dinner Menu

This was the menu we ended up with last night:

Starter: Bean, carrot, pea and mint, and aubergine dips, with flat breads (Morocco)

Main: Gedünstetes schöps (mutton stew) with Schwemmknödel (semolina dumplings (Austria)

Dessert: Kestane cicegi (chestnut meringues), Sekerpare (small cakes with lemon syrup), Kayisi tatlisi (apricots in syrup with cream and almonds) (Turkey)

Wine: eclectic, but heavy on Australian Chardonnay.

After each course those not in the know had to guess its origin. We got Morocco, but the closest guesses to Austria and Turkey were Hungary and Greece respectively. We were slightly handicapped by not being able to remember what countries we had put into the hat in the first place.

Great fun, and we are going to do it again next month. This time it will be our turn for the main course. After we picked our destinations we got carried away and added an extra sixteen countries to the pot for the next meal. That could get challenging!

Stuck in Mud

The girls (mine plus J and A-Next-Door) had a wonderful time at the pick-your-own farm yesterday.

Star did her best to get stuck in the mud. She nearly succeeded.


Cherub the Brave (not!) did her best to copy, which was fun until she discovered her feet had gone all heavy. Then she ran away from the mud squeaking in panic.


The wheelbarrow was too much of a temptation. Why walk when you can ride? Because the wheelbarrow is very unstable, that's why, as J-Next-Door (now recovered from her probably-not-swine flu) discovered.


Which, of course, did not stop Star from trying. Duh.


Some picking did get done, though mostly by myself and K-next-door. Cherub did her best, and Star contributed quite a bit. Teenage girls in giggly mode are not very useful, I'm afraid - though they did keep Cherub entertained.


We came home with a few strawberries (past their best now), red gooseberries, raspberries and peas. Today's to-do list includes shelling and freezing peas, making a couple of gooseberry crumbles, and thinking of something to do with a large tub of raspberries.

Swine Flu Central

Either we are stuck in the middle of a swine flu hotspot, or there is something else nasty making the rounds. It is hard to tell, given that the NHS is now into epidemic mode and treating anyone with swine flu-ish symptoms with tamiflu without bothering to test to confirm swine flu first. Both Angel's and Star's schools have confirmed cases (presumably diagnosed before they stopped running tests). Two girls in Angel's class are being treated, including J-next-door ... which given that all the girls flit between both houses puts us right in the firing line.

J is OK. She has had a fever and sore throat since Friday, but she is walking wounded with no complications or anything to cause concern. At the first sign of any fever here we will be straight in the queue for tamiflu, but other than that we are carrying on as normal - given the level of exposure there doesn't seem to be any point trying to avoid it. If, indeed, this is it. J's illness seems very like the one I had last month, which I'm pretty certain was not swine flu.

Whatever, I guess the flu is likely to catch up with us at some point (apparently in a flu epidemic they expect roughly a third of the population to get it), and we are being pretty laid back about it. While I am well aware swine flu can turn nasty - sadly a doctor in a nearby town died from it last week - for the overwhelming majority of people it is mild, and there doesn't seem much point in worrying unnecessarily.

In the immortal words of Dad's Army: "Don't panic, Mr. Mainwaring, don't panic!"