Just us girls

Tonight is a ground breaking moment for me – it has only taken a year but I have finally lit the most amazing fire.

Yes, home alone again as the boys are at the coast with their Pa for the Easter holidays. We travelled down last weekend with the express aim of the lads staying there until I have some time off from work, and me travelling back up on the Sunday night – but – it was so gorgeous and sunny there and the beach so beautiful that my heart ruled my head and instead I have spent the last week commuting to and fro from the Van to London everyday. In total 5.5 hours a day journeying but worth it!

I may have slightly overdone it though as I have spent Friday and Saturday morning without a voice and it was only brought back through the excitement of a girls’ weekend. The boys and men were dismissed from the caravans on Saturday morning and trouble arrived! 2 x Claires, Paula and me (oh and the dogs) spent all weekend laughing. My legs and bum hurt from peddling backwards and forwards from the pub and my tum muscles are still in shock from laughing so hard all weekend.
Some highlights (sorry if you had to be there for these to be quite so amusing – but these are going down for posterity)

1. Claire cycling in pitch black along the road after a rather boozy day – peddling in a straight line arse over tit into a bush
2. Getting stopped by WPC Smith of Chichester as we rode along the road at midnight. She suggested we might need to invest in some lights and some reflective jackets and could we please walk back to the caravan park for our own safety.
3. Jenny (my caravan neighbour who had been recruited at 6pm as part of our gang) deciding to ride so slowly in an attempt to make the police woman think she was walking and then very silently falling off the bike into a ditch
4. P peddling like fury on a shopper bike with a flat tyre singing hits from the Sound of Music
5. Telling some 23 year old beautiful girl that she could do so much better than the 43 year old tattooed bloke she was with and then wondering if maybe we had gone too far!
6. My bicycle bag of bling

Anyway, it was a ball and I felt like I was in my twenties again as today we sat stuffing our faces with pizza in the sun with friends...

Alfie could not understand why girls like girl company especially me as surely I have enough female companionship with Dottie the dog...mmm....

So how goes the shed. As you now know I haven’t been here for a week and it was glorious to come home tonight in the last light of a very sunny day. All of the hawthorns are in blossom and so the left hand side of the garden is white with their little flowers. It looks like it has snowed in the sun. The primroses are out in the woods and the wood floor is covered in the rich green of the bluebells leaves – ready to burst soon into their blue carpet. The river is low and the water lilies are under the surface and the fruit trees have their blossom – this really is the best time of the year here – everything looks so full of spring.

Building work has stopped while we have our Easter although the last act was to pour more concrete into a flat area outside the back of the house – this will become a patio. It is to give us somewhere to soak up the sun in the summer. The only weird thing here is we have to always do things on an industrial scale and I forget this. The patio (or what will one day become one) took another 2 loads of concrete and we haven’t even got anywhere near buying any paving slabs to go over the top. It does look good though in a weird way (promise!).

Just checked the fire...still going strong!

Happy, spring springing and warm

weeeeee........

Just completed a game of competitive Antiques Roadshow!! How middle class is that!

The cement has been poured around the house but not without some form of trauma...goes without saying!

The 8 tonne wagon arrived with the last load of cement to complete our solid moat. The young lad driving got a little bit ‘devil may care’ and misjudged the width of the turn. Before we knew it 8 tonnes was dangling at a 45 degree angle in the front garden. Jeffers had to run out to get the guy to change the rotation of the drum as with every turn the wagon was getting closer and closer to falling over and crushing the house as it fell. He then found the chap under the wagon’s wheel with a spade trying to dig the blighter out...one false move and it would have been him under the load as well as the house. 4 hours later...3 different diggers and loaders... and Jeff and the guys from next door (not the nasty ones) had managed to pull all of the cement off the machine and into the moat.

We had a magical weekend at Sandy Balls (good name - the pub next door is the Fighting Cock!) !

The workmen have decided not to come on Fridays as this seems to be the day of fun!
I have developed a new passion. Guitar hero! Ow, that is fun. The Ow is as I have got Guitar Hero wrist, a little known ailment of those with a wii. We spent the day with Sarah and John yesterday, and I sneaking off to play The One I Love and Band on the Run.

Today Baby Ben turned one. I cannot believe that time has flown so fast. He is absolutely gorgeous!

Alf was a super star at the footie yesterday - scoring 4 goals and loving every minute.

Oh, and I thought I would show you what our children get up to when they feel they are not getting enough attention from their parents...

Swimming in concrete

Work has begun again on the shed...

This week we have had a moat dug out, one metre deep, all the way round the shed. Work began on Thursday and when the guy with the digger came back on Friday his first thought was to check that we were still standing and that the shed had not become a lean-to over night. It was slightly disconcerting when the bucket of the digger scrapped along one of the walls a bit of wallpaper - well, wall really - fell off in the bedroom.

As the digger man and J had been digging the trench at one point they thought that they may have hit a main drain as so much water gushed out from under the house. About 5 minutes later when the water had finally subsided it became apparent that this was all the water that had been trapped under the Shed. We have effectively been floating here for the past year.

The concrete arrived on the Friday and three loads were gushed into the moat. Poor old J was up to his knees in it making it all level out and so I decided that the nicest thing I could do was offer a good workman a cup of tea. On opening the back door the dogs bolted for a run and fell straight into a metre of concrete...

Hen tried to swim in it and in a panic Dot then joined him. Thankfully the two digger men helped me pull them out and then I had to spend the next half an hour hosing and then bathing them clean. I have to point out that this was no mean feat as having to lift a five stone dog covered in concrete into a bath when he has absolutely zero desire to play ball is quite an struggle.

Mother of invention this week...as the concrete had to be poured right round the house the pipe work for the bath had to be removed. This meant that I could fill a bath and not empty it. Once I had washed 2 cement ridden dogs into the bath you can imagine what the water and bath looked like. So I wanted a bath...I got the washing up bucket and for 15 mins loaded the water out of the bath and into the only piped in basin to flush it away. I then mopped up the rest of the water with a cloth and wrung it out. I then scrapped all of the remaining concrete out of the bath. I then cleaned the bath and underwent the same washing up bucket labour to rinse it. Half and hour after beginning this...I got a stinking hot bath! It is not just J who works things out here you know!

Bed

I should not be typing this at this time of night as my new hobby is going to bed early. It is not a sign of age rather that the sheets on the bed have been put through a brand new process and ebay purchase. We are now owners of an ‘elnapress’. Now for those of you not around in the 70’s and 80’s or the owner of a small B&B go and look them up. For the grand total of 5.99 English squids the elna sits pretty on top of the washing machine almost begging to iron your newly laundered washing. You just turn it on and away you go...everything is now steam pressed within an inch of its life...but when it comes to sheets nothing can bring back that snugglomatic feeling the way it can.

It has been bloody cold here – apparently the coldest for 18 years – but more importantly it snowed! We could not, as couldn’t the whole of Southern England, get into town for 2 days. The trains could not run the boys could not go to school; the car could not get down the driveway. We were surrounded by white soft snow and it was fab. Both dogs went wild and as they are both white at night we could not see where they were in the garden. It was only when a spotty black eye appeared to move up and down on the grass that I could see that Dottie was there.

The little boys and I spent our annual Saturday in Brighton as Mummy and the lads the weekend before the snow came. We booked into the Albion Hotel in Brighton and set off for our adventure. We had the best room going. To me – sad old eyes that I have – it was a slightly unloved and run down room with 4 beds in it – to the boys – fresh and fun – it was a palace. The curtains (cutting out the view of the scaffolding) were a magnificent 20 feet long and the beds with their valances and bedspreads were the height of decadence as they did not have boring old duvets. Having checked in Alfie became Keyholder General and off we went to spend time and money on the Pier. We had a ball. Every driving and flying game was taken on and far too many doughnuts eaten. The next day we went to the Aquarium and just had fun! I have determined that a mum and sons day will happen every year – this is number 3 so I must mean it!
I finally officially turned 40! Another clever tactic I will continue. I had my birthday party 3 weeks after my real one and so for many – I am only JUST 40...

We hired the perfect little pub – the Skimmington Castle on Reigate Heath – and filled it with friends new and old. I had a great time and judging by my hangover, partied perfectly...

All happy, warm (now) and off to find those elnapressed sheets

Sunk!

The boat has gone down! Don't worry no hands on deck just the most amazing amount of rain...

Jeffers and I braved the downpour yesterday to walk to the river and have a look at our pride and joy and see how it was bearing up in the flow. The river had burst its banks over on to the opposite field and no sign of our James Bondesque motor boat to be seen. The tree that it was moored to is now right in the middle of the river. The only consolation we have it we definately know where the boat is! The fact that we may have to wait til the summer now to be able to see it again as the river shrinks and dries up, well that is not so good! I had to break the news to the boys yesterday as Alf has a friend coming to play specifically to have a go in the motor boat - they both thought it was hysterical.

We have actually only managed to take it out 3 times since Christmas, so they may have been the most expensive river trips we could ever have taken.

I was treated to a wonderful brithday 'week' - spoilt at home and at work too...I had made enough noise to even ensure that I was congratulated by the boys' teachers, their schoolfriend, and even the postman...very proud! I now begin the ancient art of aging backwards and look forward to being in my thirties again next year!

having fun, keeping warm and buying snokelling gear so we can plunge to the depths to see our boat again...

new year new blog

Well it has been a while!

Christmas and New Year were fabulous; with 18 days without a commute I slept in every day and had a little cat nap whenever possible. Charlie had 5 of the best days of his life. The first was the day the Christmas tree went up and he and Alf made a statement in gold red and silver. Jeffers bought the tree for £15 from the bungalow on the round about (a step up from the one we got from the heath last year – there is a Christmas tree farm that dumps trees there – we didn’t cut one down). He was massive (why are my Christmas trees male?) and an absolute beauty.

2nd best day of Charlie’s life was Christmas itself. The boys were in their element and, with a couple of little Alf hiccups, still believe St Nick makes it down the chimney. The day before Christmas there were 3 deer in the garden and the boys were be beside themselves at the thought that the Reindeer were practicing their landing. There was a little wobble when they thought the chimney in the Shed was not quite big enough for Santa to bother coming down.

The boat made its entrance on the 27th after Tom was called in to help launch it into the water. It was freezing so the girls (including me) stayed in the house as the lads went out on an adventure. Off they set along the river – round the bend and straight into a tree that had fallen over the water and blocked the path. It was only then that Jeff discovered he had not filled the tank with any petrol and so Swallows and Amazons (at minus 7 degrees c) took place with Jeff and Tom having to row home. Not quite the launch of the St Mary! Boat is still to be named, but current favourite is James in honour of his sleek 1960’s Ian Fleming look – got a feeling all boats are meant to be female so maybe Pussy Galore?

New Year’s Day was spent on the London eye eating marmite sandwiches – a very special request from Chas as he missed the school trip with the same motif. As soon as we went over the top I got my ‘head for heights’ and stopped having to hold on. Afterwards we walked along the Embankment all the way to London Bridge taking in the sites along the way. The boys nearly gave a street entertainer a hernia as he picked them up as part of his act – I don’t suppose many people expect a 5 and 7 year old to weigh the same as their age! We watched a chap make a sculpture on the beach next to the Thames and this little activity was the top of their list for the day.

Back to work and school and alarm clocks in minus 10 degrees was not the best fun I have ever had, but all seems normal again – although I am thinking about holidays already...

So tomorrow the BIG birthday beckons so let’s have a list

Married
2 brilliant boys
2 noisy dogs
2 elderly cats
A tractor
A van
2 cars
A trampoline
A motor boat
A caravan (static)
A job
A ride on mower (broken)
A river
A log pile
One SHED
Lots of land

Who would have thought a Mimi from Cheamy would do that!

And so finally, back to the Shed. There are piles of wood and Selotex waiting in the garden to become my roof and three bedrooms in an UPSTAIRS....I will have stairs again...and my own bedroom...and carpet...and a bathroom that doesn’t have the cooker in it...and ...and....and...

Happy, aging but truly enlightened!!!!