On Wednesday we stayed at home; I thought about taking the boys swimming but just couldn’t muster the energy. We did some skool, then I sent most of them outside in the afternoon as the weather was nice and spring-like. In the evening there was Cubs for Freddy and Tim, and Barney and George went to what they thought was the final session of their Outward Bound course (they were wrong – there’s another session next week).
On Thursday we spent an hour in the morning finishing up this week’s skool, then we left to go swimming. I’d have hoped that by now I could simply say “pack your swimming bags” and rely on most of them to do just that, but they seem to interpret it to mean they should wander about with half (at most) of their swimming things, perhaps saying they can’t find their swimsuit but not actually looking for it. Eventually we got out of the house with all the necessary equipment, and spent an hour or so splashing about in the pool.
After swimming the boys ate snacks in the car as we drove to the Transport Museum, where we met up with my friend S and her family. We explored just a fraction of the indoor part of the museum, as we only had a couple of hours, but we’ll go back another day to see the boats and planes. I always forget just how much stuff the Transport Museum holds: as well as the absolutely huge hall full of trains, there are trams, buses, bicycles, motorbikes, cars and just about every form of transport you can think of. There are photos, but I haven’t even got them off my camera yet, never mind uploaded them. At one point I discovered Barney and George sitting with S’s daughter in the little tea-room, all of them eating and chatting and looking very, very grown-up. Home for dinner, followed by fencing for Barney and George.
On Friday we’d arranged to meet with my friend A and her kids at the science centre. While we were getting ready to leave, Barney suddenly stopped and said, “Is it Friday already? I need to have my Air Cadets uniform washed and ironed for tomorrow morning!” So that meant putting a load of laundry in, and that meant taking a load of laundry out, and that meant hanging up a pile of wet stuff, at the bottom of which pile I found the sweater I’d been planning to wear 
The weather was good so I hung laundry outside (for the first time this year) before we left, which made us a little bit late for the science centre, but only a little bit. Once there, the boys did their usual run-about-and-explore thing and I did my usual try-to-keep-track thing. There was only one school group in, so we almost had the place to ourselves – which is our favourite way of doing it. Again, there are photos, but…
For lunch we all (friends and us) went to Pizza Hut, where they are now so familiar with us that they got the tables we like ready for us as soon as they spotted us coming. I don’t know why, but the kids all seemed to be up and down all the time, jumping around instead of sitting at their tables, concocting solutions with water and salt, etc, and by the end of lunch I told all mine that next time we go to the science centre, we’ll be bringing sandwiches. We eventually finished eating, paid and left, and started to head back along the hall to the science centre – most children running ahead of the adults, as usual. But one of those children – A’s six-year-old son – didn’t see the big perspex curtain that hangs from the ceiling and surrounds the escalators, and ran straight into the edge of it. It stops a couple of feet off the floor, so his forehead bashed hard into it while his body continued on, and he ended up in a heap on the floor. We got him into the first-aid room in the science centre, with one of the trained first-aid staff, then I took charge of all his siblings so A could focus on him. We headed upstairs where a show about fireworks was due to start, and A took the decision to take E to hospital and made arrangements for her husband to come and meet them. He arrived a while later and said he would go to the hospital with E, so A came and found the rest of us and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the under-8s area. We ended up back in the first-aid room before they left though, because Freddy had fallen off a stool and a button on the leg of his trousers had torn off part of the scab from some previous mishap and left blood running down his leg
E is fine – beautifully-bruised, I’m told, but okay. The science centre staff told us that there had been three or four other children who’d done the same thing! Why those in charge of the building hadn’t done something about it, I don’t know – and A and one of the staff went out and moved a big pot-plant to cover the edge of the perspex, so that it wouldn’t be possible for anyone else to walk/run into it, so it’s not as thought it would have taken a lot of effort.
After an early dinner at home, Jack and Tim went to ju-jitsu, followed an hour later by George and Freddy, while Barney ironed his now-washed-and-dried Air Cadets uniform.
Yesterday morning Barney was out of the house just after 8 to meet up with the other Air Cadets to go and spend the morning inspecting Harrier jets, then came home for ten minutes to change his clothes before heading out to GY. George didn’t go, as he was in a very wobbly state – I ended up with him sobbing on my lap, which hasn’t happened in a long time. Meanwhile the others played, indoors and out, and I convinced Freddy, Tim and Jack to clean up the back garden by telling them that once it was done, they could put the trampoline up again (it spent the winter resting on its side against the fence around the patio). They did that, then spent most of the rest of the day bouncing on it. Tim managed to fall over and give himself a black eye – I haven’t taken a photo of that yet, but I will get one later on and hope his parents in Germany are understanding…
This morning there has been more bouncing and playing, and after lunch Scratchy took most of the boys to the Folk Museum, where there are lots of old buildings to explore, including a small town with bank, school, church etc and a number of countryside dwellings. I’m fairly sure he left without taking a camera (again), so if there are any photos of that, they’ll be mobile-phone ones. Barney has stayed at home to study, as he’s a week or two behind on his OU studies, and Louie has stayed at home to sleep. I’m at that barely-functioning stage of fatigue, so I suppose I should lie down next to him soon, because tomorrow it’s Monday again, and there won’t be another chance.
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