The weekend went by in a flurry; Saturday the children all started KYT (which means i now have those letters earworming in my head to the SKC tune) and pronounced it a great success, so that pleased us all. Amelie and i had a lovely couple of hours in town today, if you ignore the row in Vision Express over the fact that i couldn’t have a convenient weekday appointment for F and A because they only do children on weekday after school slots or last thing on Saturday We bimbled about looking in all sorts of places, having a bun and generally having quality time together. Very nice.

On Sunday Maddy started rugby. I think she liked it, she was quiet in some respects about it, but wants to give it a term and see how she gets on. She also fancies something like Karate too, so we’ll investigate that for all of them at some point as i would like them to have some self defence skills now they are getting a little older. Fran is extremely strong (she can stop me tickling her quite easily now!) but it would be good to know, as they all approach teenager years, that they had some idea of how to use their body strength to their advantage.

Monday i’ve blogged and Tuesday we did Gymmies and mostly got on with some bits of work and music. We seem to be able to fit loads into a day if we know the rest of the week is going to be busy and on those days it is normally easiest to just flit through music, EC, reading and some GP books. Josie and i started to read a P&J book. Amelie was reading Hill of Fire, approximately 18 months earlier than F managed it. Her literacy skills astonish me really. If i’d taught her, i’d still be impressed, but she’s done it all on her own! Big two did some good teeth work i must blog for the LA person next year (sigh) and Fran cooked lasagne.

Wednesday all 6 of us went to London by train and met up with lots of friends to go to a Royal Institute lecture called The Bigger Bang. It was excellent in lots of ways, much to look at and gasp at. Only real shame (certainly for all of us and our interested children) was the relative lack of actual explanation o what was going on. I guess all school aimed science is now reduced to entertainment rather than than education, perhaps with a slightly desperate “hey look kids, science is FUN! Come and do it at Uni!” – the lecture WAS fun but even Amelie aged kids from the home ed contingent would have liked to know some more whys, i think.

After the lecture (which Alison kindly took a scared Josie out of as she was revisiting the KS3 version later with Fran and Gwenny) our poor unsocialised children went in a group of 15 or so to Green Park to picnic, party and play. Was all very pleasant. Then we trooped back to do some of the RI basement while we waited for Fran, got back to Finsbury Park with plenty of time to spare and travelled home with the Beans.

Thursday Max and i had an appointment which left me slightly wibbly, so i took the kids for lunch afterwards as he had to dash back to work to manage a crisis. The middle two needed a healthy packed tea for Brownies, so we went around Tesco looking for healthy options, discussing food groups, balanced diets and the like – made it all very educational and sat nicely with the tooth stuff; almost as if i had planned it! Got the other two a packed tea too and Josie came with us to Brownies (and was lovely and very good and sensible) and Fran took hers to eat while she waited for gym to start. She has a 50 minute wait so we can get to Brownies, which isn’t ideal but she’s engrossed in HP6 atm, so quite happy. She’s completely thrilled as she managed to do her routine for the County Comp perfectly in front of the head coach, including her round off flic, so that made her very happy indeed. Once home, we pleased them with a surprise too – of which more another day

Friday (today) started with a sewing project for Maddy and various other bits and bobs of work and a lot of questions about various topics pertinent to the moment. Then we walked into town (from a convenient but pleasantly distant carpark) and discussed courts and the legal system as we passed that building, banking and business cashflow while in the bank and reasons for uniforms and the concept of conformity while buying Brownie uniform in the school uniform shop. Fran looked at the uniform she could have been wearing and decided it looked boring. Then bought lunch (tedious Macdonalds in the absence of anything intelligent we could imagine wanting and to counteract healthy packed tea!) and ate it on the cathedral lawn. Which prompted a conversation about cathedral school, choristers and evensong!

Took a trip into the cathedral to pay homage to Katherine of Aragon, look at the once burial place place of Mary Queen of Scots, discuss reasons for hanging effigies of men in agony on walls plated in gold and light a candle for great gran (Amelie insisted, bless her). Josie (child spawn of dark forces) started to mutter about how churches give her a funny feeling. Think i agree with her :/ Looked at the cathedral display and also at an “on tour” display about Henry VIII which had some good parts and also talked about relics after passing Chapel of St Oswald.

Was struck most of all by a panel listing all the Deans of the Cathedral from when Peterborough was Medeshamstede (i thought it was Guildenburgh, i will have to investigate) – up to and just beyond 1066 all the names are exceptional Saxon and then by 1098 all the Ethelfrics and what have you have just altered into Norman Henri’s and Williams. Really brought home to me what a catastrophic ethnic cleansing and complete take over the Norman Conquest must have been. I’ve never seen it so blatant illustrated before – it was slightly breathtaking. Wish i had take a photo.

Home via work to collect some puppet samples to try out tomorrow and then a bit of a rest and then started the dancing run. Popped into Halfords to recover from a muppet slamming on their breaks on the dual carriageway so they could reverse on to hatching and go up the sliproad they had missed (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and decided the most problematic thing about Halfords adverts is that you are then immediately disappointed by the surly nature of the real shop attendants.