The people who lived here before us were a bit of a bad lot. They left without paying 6 months rent, the house was trashed, i’m still fending off debt collectors and baliffs for around £25,000 worth of credit card and various other debt and, not surprisingly, they left no forwarding address. Equally, they had rather a lot of people who just came to stay for a while, for whom post occasionally arrives but i still have no addresses for.

I’ve got into the habit of opening post now with no address to return it to – on several occasions this has avoided us having to have our chattels removed at 8am by baliffs, it has got rid of the worst of the debt letters and i’ve been able to return some personal post to the sender when there has been an address inside it. Which, while not legal, seems slightly more human than not bothering.

So today a letter for one of the “friends” came. It had old lady writing and was thickish and it turns out to be a card from a loving auntie. It has photos, absolutely no return address, surname or anything else and £30 in it.

So here is my dilemma. I know what happens to unreturnable post, it goes to Belfast thewn after 6 weeks it gets incinerated. So i could do that, but it seems a feeble option, given i know it has money in it.

I could hang on to it forever and ever and hope this loving aunty, who the girl hasn’t bothered to let know where she is, eventually writes here with an address in it. But the chances are are i’ll lose it or forget or something. And i am fairly sure this aunt wrote last year too and no one came looking for the letter.

I could donate the money to charity and decide that in the circumstances, that is the most useful help i can be.

I’m not going to spend it, obviously, that would just be wrong. But which is the most right?

Read several Roman myths.
Make a list of Roman Gods to compare with greeks.
Add Roman Empire to Timeline book.
Look back at some Roman stories in OIS
Get out mosaic squares and play
Look at Rome in Cross section.
Have a go at some clay columns?

Look at Detectives in Togas and see if it would suit for us soon.
Look on Audible for suitable stories.

Max and i spent a bit of the morning revving the car up; he diagnosed black-black smoke to be less bad than blue-black. (Well he would know, if anyone can read smoke signals from an exhaust pipe, he can.) We stuck some cleaner in the fuel and then needed to drive it. So we went. We think, having come back today, that it is slightly improved but it’s going to have to go into a garage, something is clearly NOT right.

Had a nice time, shortened as it was and got to see everyone. Girls had a ball playing retro-amiga games, or something of the sort. Maddy is very into the Egypt Cross sections book, they all went mental around their uncle and his girlfriend and Josie and Rowan faced off and tried to work out who was alpha-baby. (It’s Rowan )

Amelie, Josie and i are down with some lurgy now; i feel a bit shivery and spaced out, Amelie itched all night and managed to wake up every hour at 22 minutes past, for the whole night So some sleep is now in order i think. Josie is managing the odd set of step, normally about 3 at a time and babbling away but a bit grumpy to say the least.

Can’t decide what to do with the week. Amelie is adamant she doesn’t want to go to nursery so i guess we’ll have to see how the wind blows.

a) Black smoke coming out in large quantities from the back of your diesel car.
b) Your diesel engineer husband going green.

No need to ask if it’s going to be expensive then

And there went our weekend, approximately 5 minutes after setting off.

We’ve got a hefty weekend of family contact this weekend. I’m really looking forward to seeing my brother and sister, mum and dad, sundry partners and niece mark 3. It’ll be just the thing to keep my mind occupied.

We’ve had a productive day; more reading and maths from both big girls this morning. I gave Maddy a split page exercise book and she wrote about 6 sentences, all really comically illustrated. I must do photos. Breezed through her maths, as did Fran. More Titchy-Witch too.

We had group this afternoon, slightly disorganised but actually it came off okay, with a general art theme. My favourite thing though was that Fran and Maddy were insistent that they should run an activity on their own; they chose it, we planned it and practised it, they packed their own little crate and carried it into the hall, set up themselves and told people what to do. I was very proud of both of them. Fran did wax resist firework skies and Maddy did blow painting. Suddenly i have gone from having very needy girls to having these big independent people. I must admit it was a welcome flavour of things to come.

Group was quiet but pleasant and everyone seemed to have fun

www.flickr.com More photos in Hama Bead Inspiration

Is now up and running. Would be very delighted to get entries to it; if you would like to join it, you’ll need to let me know your Flickr screenname. As long as i know who you are, i’ll accept

No education today.

Didi manage to get them all bathed and hairwashed by 9.30 (me as well) which was fairly impressive. No nits either, i combed in vain. Excellent.

Dashed out to see Hannah and Linzi. Spent a pleasant couple of hours discussing maths books and so on. Kids did play but eventually separated out into packs again. Lol.

Hurried home, everyone got their hair cut by the lovely Anna then hurried back out to Sainsbury’s to spend Nectar points on Halloween costumes. Maddy and Amelie chose identical ones, which is not going to help distinguish them from each other.

Fran looking very gorgeous in hers.

Josie being adorable too.

I’m off to parcel now and hopefully get more done to BM and MPO tonight, while i feel motivated. Josie went to bed at 7.30pm last night, which made a huge difference to my evening.

Local people – random art theme for tomorrow, since we are all being a bit wimpish!