NotSheep

We’re trying to get back into some sort of routine here. As I’ve previously mentioned, the personalities in this family are such that a bit of structure to the day makes life smoother and everyone cheerier. Usually in summer we leave aside any kind of academic portion of that structure, partly because many of the children’s friends are out and about and available for playing and I don’t want to say they can’t go out until they’ve finished their geography, if you see what I mean. We’d probably have got back on track last week if we’d been here, but since we were off gallivanting on the beach, that didn’t happen. So this week, I’m trying to re-introduce that structure.

We started yesterday with a bit of sit-down-study for everyone, but by lunchtime the headache that had been bothering me all morning had turned into the can’t-cope-with-anything-right-now kind. Once the new refrigerator was delivered (yay), I took myself off to bed, and put the boys in charge of the remote control for the recorder in my bedroom. They spent the afternoon watching Doctor Who and Friends, and I spent it hiding under the covers and feeling dizzy and nauseous. I’ve had cluster headaches on and off for years, but I’m wondering if my more recent headaches are actually migraines. Whatever, they’re not fun. By yesterday evening I was feeling so weak that I warned Scratchy I might need him to stay home today.

(It’s at times like that that I decide I definitely don’t want to do pregnancy again. But then at other times, like when I’m sitting in front of a gorgeous six-week-old at the Proms, I decide I definitely do. )

By this morning I was feeling much better - still tired, but quite capable of standing up and moving around, which was a massive improvement. Freddy and George read their way through a book on medieval history, with Toby sitting on Freddy’s lap for much of the time. Barney is working his way through a Key Stage 4 French textbook, to “catch up” with George: Barney’s French, having developed over his 4.5 months in France, is obviously much better than George’s, but it’s a pretty good textbook and working at it is a) preparing him in case he sits French GCSE next Spring (which he wants to do) and b) keeping his French fresh - and I find it interesting that when he comes across something that doesn’t quite gel with his experience, he’ll say “We say…” - as in “We, the French…”

He’s also trying to catch up on the German that George and Freddy began while he was away, though since we only made it to about page 9 of the book, I don’t think that will take long

This evening was the first Beavers meeting of the year. I’d planned the programme for the entire year; most of it’s flexible but the first few weeks are a bit crammed-in, since there are quite a few things I wanted to get in before some of our Beavers move up to Cubs, and before the end of Scouting’s Centenary Year. I’m a bit frustrated by the undermining response from other leaders to any new ideas though. Tonights programme went well: I had a game already going as the Beavers arrived, so they could join in as they came in, rather than running around the hall without much supervision as they’ve been doing to date. We did the opening ceremony at about 6.40 (meetings start at 6.30), but that worked well because of the coming-in game and because there were some new Beavers to get information from before we got stuck in - seven new Beavers, in fact. If they all return - and I think at least six will (the seventh is one of those kids who’s already been everywhere and seen and done everything - he thinks) - we’ll have recruited 20 new Beavers in the past twelve months. That’s a fantastic accomplishment for a group that was at risk, this time last year, of having only two Beavers left once the older ones had moved up to Cubs. We’ll have four moving up to Cubs next month - and I’ll be sorry to see every one of them go, they’re all great kids. After the opening ceremony, we got them all paired off and went out for a “listening walk” - listening for all the different sounds around the area: birds, cars, planes, bicycle-brakes, car-radios, the sizzle of the fryer in the chippy Back at the hall, everyone washed their hands and we made fruit salad - and if I thought my own children could polish off an astonishing quantity of fruit in a very short time, it’s nothing to what went down tonight We’ve a good bunch of kids there; if all the leaders get on board and work as a team, we’re going to have a really good year. If not - well, we’ll probably still have a really good year, but I’ll have to do a lot of biting my tongue.

George, being ten years old now, is moving up from St John Ambulance Badgers to SJA Cadets, so he and Barney were off there this evening. The lack of a second car complicates Tuesdays slightly - we used to do a lot of running back and forth on a Tuesday to get everyone where they needed to be. I hope we’ve solved the problem for the next few months anyway: one of our new Beavers lives across the road from me - I’m going to take him to Beavers and bring him home, and in the meantime his mum will leave Barney and George to SJA just before I get back. Once Freddy moves up to Cubs, however, he might well want to go to Badgers on a Tuesday, and that will make it all ever-so-complicated again