One of the things that i find intrinsically interesting about running a retail business, is trying to second guess what is going on in peoples minds and what it is that influences people. Having had BM for a good few years now, i’ve got plenty of stuff to look back on and the things that alter and even more the things that stay the same, completely fascinate me.

For example, May is always utterly awful on BM; i assume that people are either outside, if it is nice or trying to make their kids concentrate on exams and SATS. It normally picks up at the end, for half term, but the bit between normally excellent April (rubbish this year as Easter was early) and the end are extremely unpleasant and this year has felt even gloopier than normal. I’ve had uncomfortable moments.

But i find these graphs just amazing….

These are the weekly sales levels for the weeks in May 2007

And these are the same weeks for May 2008

I mean, is it me, or is that frankly weird? How can several 100 peoples shopping habits add up to something that similar over 2 months in a year?????

I am very chuffed that PM has met my sales level (outside Xmas months) that i wanted it to be achieving when it had been going for a year, 3 months early. It hardly takes any sales from BM either, it doesn’t seem to impact on it, so i’m very pleased about that. I love it when i manage to predict something realistically and then exceed it.

In home stuff…..

I’m thinking about getting a science and geography curriculum for the big 2 girls… we aren’t quite getting it with Sonlight somehow, the book bit is fine, the science bit is not so much for us. Any suggestions?

Maddy learned to do handstands into forward rolls in the garden today; she is funny, when i described it, she just couldn’t do it but after i got her to stand up and slowly roll forward into a ball so she could feel how her back needed to go, she was perfect and did some great ones. Fran is getting to be very good at round offs, which she showed off royally at R and E’s party (DAMN, i KNEW i forgot something in the blog below!) but it is good to see Maddy getting into doing some things that need some control.

Maddy and Fran have started learning the parts from “The Bluebird” the play that is quoted in Ballet Shoes and which Pauline and Petrova act the main parts of. They rather like it

I swear i didn’t make them pose

Amelie insists a put a pic of her Beedibie “on blog” as she calls it.

And this is the family challenge dinner. If there had been Liver for me, and a glass of milk for Fran, it would have been even more threatening. Who knew a grill up could have so many hated components for one family??!?!!?!?

Can’t really think where i was. I don’t think we did much the rest of Bank Holiday (though i could be woefully wrong.)

EDIT: *blush* Oh yes, i remember, we were invited to R and E’s gym party and had a lovely time there, once we found it. Damn aaroutemaster for having the wrong postcode in it and taking me, very accurately, to a completely different business park carpark over the other side of the city. PAH! Very nice to see lots of people i hadn’t seen for ages and the girls had a great time. I rather enjoyed being able to gossip all afternoon while my 3 big girls were off doing their thing. Josie stayed at home all day and played wall-to-wall NickJr.

Now, that feels familiar… did i blog this already????

I took Fran to work with me on Monday (darn these staff who are entitled to Bank Holidays!) and she played Sims until they got taken into care, which made her little heart pound with horror. We employed the “quit without saving” technique, something which provokes outrage from the Animal Crossing: Resetti trained generation of gamers, but she was relieved to get them back and subsequently managed to make them do their homework and not get taken away again. Tricky concept for the HE’d child!

On Tuesday we had a variety of small dramas; i had an agent from Wild Republic to see me in the morning and if you think having a serious business conversation with a man who has a bag full of cuddly toys is easy, you are wrong! Just as he left the neighbours found a small wild rabbit in their garage who appeared to be half choking on a water balloon he had chewed on. Managed to pull the bits i could see out of his mouth but either there was more, or that wasn’t the problem. He had blood round his mouth and kept arching back and kicking, so i wonder if perhaps he had eaten poison. He was a poor little thing anyway and i felt very bad, but we wrapped him in a towel and tried to keep him breathing till the RSPCA arrived. Dunno what happened in the end.

After that i had to take them all to work for a bit but they read, played etc quite happily and i made some space re4ady for my delivery of new and rather beautiful Rubens Barn soft dolls.

Wednesday i think Max took them into town and attempted to visit the Peterborough Green Festival but it appeared to have rolled off somewhere. I think they had a bit of a frustrating day and i wasn’t much better, i was NOT in the mood for work at all. Not quite sure what else happened.

Thursday we spent a lovely day with Chloe, Michelle and Marcus and all the kids played beautifully. We barely saw them really. Fran wasn’t 100% and read some of the time but the others were fully into games pretty much the whole time.

Friday the kids split between cookery and craft with Auntie Sue and time with Max. In the morning Max and i locked ourselves into the boardroom at work and tried to re-motivate me. I think they had some good stuff going on but i’m not sure what; i’ve been a bit disconnected this week, not helped by various children not wanting to spend any time with me, not loving me or just being a bit mean with their affections. I’ve felt rather low about it; i’ve got full on working mum guilt

Saturday – today we went sofa shopping together, bought camping stuff and then everyone got books in Waterstones. Fran got Michael Morpurgo books, Maddy was caught reading Magic Treehouse books on the floor of the bookshop and Amelie and Josie chose Alfie stories and a Polar Bear book. This afternoon we’ve inadvertently had a rabbit scrap; Smartie was on the lawn and Fiver snuck into his run. Smartie charged in to defend his territory and they really went for each other, full on “go for the jugular” scrapping. Fortunately Max got in and managed to separate them… they were GROWLING!!!!

This evening we’ve had the long awaited family challenge… were we all had to facefood demons. Max ate a spoonful of baked beans, Fran, Amelie, Josie and i ate black pudding and Maddy tried hot tomatos! Josie REALLY liked the black pudding; she ate a whole one!

Now it is time for recorded Doctor Who

The fimo blog has had a makeover, thanks to SuburbanMum. I love it – and am really looking forward to having the PoP makeover done!

Speaking of which, it is still broken, i’ve not found the nerve to try and upgrade it yet as none of the files seem to be in the same places as i am expecting!!!!

I’m finding this “working mum” thing a bit of a mixed blessing. I do like having the unit and i certainly love having it all out of my house, i do like having separate time for work and home and i can safely say that it works better for all of us. I do like having me time and a little domain of my own and i think the kids appreciate the delineation of our lives. And it goes without saying that i like the fact that our lives are more flexible, i can take a day off for a birthday and they all see more of Max, even if i probably don’t.

I have to say though i am having some difficulty adapting to having a “working life” and perhaps being, for the first time, a a person who really is “my own boss”. Working in a business environment for the first time in a very long time, i am beginning to see how hard i find it to focus. All sorts of things bother me and stop me concentrating on one thing but most of all i think i get there and it takes me a while for my mind to get into “work gear” and start formulating a plan for the day; i seem fritter away time on small things and not see a bigger picture. I’m struggling to be my own boss, especially now i have time to be it! I think i was better at shoe-horning it all into tiny spaces of time.

Part of it is that it is actually time off, i get to relax slightly and stop being Mummy. I’ve forgotten how to be a working person, how to have a plan for the day and a structure. If anyone has any ideas on how to make this work better, how to get into a more professional frame of mind, i’d be grateful for it.

See!?!!?!? I so needed a blog last week.

Jax’s blog has just reminded me that we are enjoying “Ballet Shoes” very much at the moment as our latest read; it pulls some good strings given the amount of time we spend dancing, how much the girls love performing and the fact that the Fossils are home tutored for much of the book. Has, as books used to do to me, inspired the big two quite a bit and they’ve been doing “exercises” in the morning and being very studious. Fran has been asking for a while to have a chance at doing some auditions; i suppose that means we’ll have to do something about panto ones this year again. Must try and get sorted for those summer camps i want them to do as well. *adds stuff to list*

Although we have plans to do some Egypt over the next few weeks, i thought i could probably cram a bit of educational doodah into life the Fossil way; we’ve been planning a trip to the natural History Museum for a while, so we can do that and stare at Cromwell Road sign, find Sir John Lavery’s blue plaque for a bit of family history, “save the penny and walk” to the V&A and i thought it might be another good opportunity to look at some Shakespeare again; Midsummer Nights Dream is fun and i think the big two would enjoy acting bits of it out. I’ve just found a cheap copy of the script of The Blue Bird for them to look at too, since they loved reading out the snippet in the book.

Getting organised – We waste too much time looking for things in this house so i bought each of the big three an expandable box file this week so they can keep current reading book, maths book, lined paper, spelling sheets, current projects and things like workbooks and Explode the Code or whatever in them. It seems to be working fairly well and is helping a bit with communication between Max and i too.

Computer Time – with the addition of several new computers to the house, the desk top is more or less free for the younger 2 to use now. Maddy isn’t a big computer fan, though i have plans to make an old laptop more available to her but the younger 2 are enjoying various forms of Nick Jr gaming, CBeebies, some old disks that work on Vista and odds and sods of other stuff too. It is good to see them enjoying it as Fran has monopolised spare computer time for most of her life so far really!

French – we’ve had a bit of this going on in the background too, mainly games playing, but i’m starting to get Fran and Maddy doing some vocab too and simple sentences. They play the Usborne games we have very happily though and all manage to join in and when they last played, they seemed to spontaneously start trying to make it harder for themselves too, which was interesting to earwig on.

Continued….

Road Rage – 2 rather bizarre moments; one was the man who got out of his car at some lights and started pointing and yelling at the man behind him (who was in front of us) for no obvious reason at all and one was a man, in a left hand drive and extremely silly looking car, who followed me on the road to Northampton for about 10 miles with his bumper virtually touching mine. We were doing 60mph, on a 60mph road so i was hardly pissing him off with slow driving and there was plenty of traffic ahead of us too, so he wasn’t exactly being held up. He did a variety of odd things, including trying to over take me on a roundabout, waving his fist wildly at me, trying to over take me with a lorry bearing down on us in the other direction and most stupidly of all, trying to over take me while *I* was overtaking a motorcyclist. Eventually we got on to dual carriage way, and i let him get ahead (i assume his penis size required this) and then he slowed down so that i had to over take him. *bewildered.*

More maths – Max and the girls have been planning out lounges for sofas and planning out bedrooms for new furniture. Lots of measuring and planning and thinking there.

Rabbits – Fiver and Clover love each other, which is fortunate and have now moved in together. They are, in Sims talk, a little more than “roomies” – but Fiver doesn’t have too much inclination and Clover has learned the knack of sitting in a corner fairly early on for one so young! The girls are giving all 4 rabbits a huge amount of attention and they come in most days, or they sit and play with them in the run. Clover shows signs of being a feisty thing but Fiver has perked up lots and lots, which is great.

Fashion – gave Amelie one of the sets from this range of Fashion Angels Design Sets and they’ve all had a lot of fun with them. There is lots of info in the packs for drawing clothing and they’ve all tried really hard to improve. Colouring and looking and copying has improved lots and lots.

Watercolours – Maddy was given a set of water colour pens for her birthday and she has been experimenting with them. DWN is something she likes but her patience for colouring in is quite low. Discovering she could cover paper quicker with the watercolour pens has really inspired her and she has done far more.

London and Exeter – Exeter FC made it to the playoffs again and Max and Maddy went down for the game. They also did rather a remarkable amount of sightseeing in 5 hours or so…

I think this is my favourite; she has been wanting to see Buckingham Palace all year!

The entire set made me laugh, somehow it is reminiscent of one of those Flat Stanley projects… “Here is Maddy in front of *insert tourist attraction of choice*….”

Fortunately Exeter won this time; Fran read out minute by minute updates from my Blackberry while the rest of us drove home from our day out at…

Rockingham Castle – Determined to break the “stay at home” cycle, i took the rest for a trip out. Rockingham isn’t too far away and it turned out to be a great place; it is lived in by the family who have owned it for 450 years and is almost remarkable for its lack of disastrous historical events. In fact, its time line seems to be, more or less:- “Ordered to be built by William the Conqueror, stays happily undisturbed for 450 years, changes hands during Tudor times and becomes family home, stays same aside from the keep being pulled down after Civil War until now. The End.”

All that, or rather all little of that, made it very unspoiled. it had plenty to look at, a nicely fitted out kitchen, friendly guides (we’ll gloss over Frances snorting with derision when the guide said “hot pastry like your mum makes…”) and very enjoyable grounds. They had 2 good trails to do for kids and hadn’t made the mistake of dumbing down either. We did one at Killerton once which was just “hunt the teddy in each room” and consequently all the kids did was look for a teddy, whereas this one was a page of items for each room, many of which they had to hunt for quite hard, or ask the guide. It was excellent.