NotSheep

YAWWWWWNNNNNNNNN

Sorry about that. I was out for more than twelve hours yesterday and drove well over 200 miles. Not the ideal thing to be doing at a time when driving three miles to spend five minutes in a small shop is usually enough to leave you tired - but for a good cause. Barney had the first portion of his French GCSE exam - the “speaking” component. We stopped by the home of friends who live (relatively) locally to the school first, where Barney had a snack and then he and I drove to the school. He was a little bit nervous, but okay. The teacher who has arranged all of this has been amazingly supportive - talking with Barney and telling him what he needed to work on, sending me text-messages to remind me of the date for the exam etc - and he greeted us in French and set about putting Barney at ease. He explained to both of us exactly what format the test would have, exactly how it would be conducted etc. Then Barney was given information about which role-play situation etc had been selected for him, and left for a few minutes to prepare.

Barney feels it all went well. There are three separate sections to the speaking test - a conversation on several topics, a role-play scenario, and a presentation on a subject of the candidate’s choice, which is followed by a discussion during which the examiner asks questions on the presentation material. Barney did his presentation on the book “Stormbreaker”; I’ve put up what he wrote and presented here - I think he hit all the requirements for using different tenses and a variety of sentence structures etc He felt he might have lost a mark or two because he hesitated once or twice in the conversation part - this would be his normal speaking-style, but could be interpreted by an examiner as due to uncertainty about French vocabulary or structure. But overall, he was happy with how he’d done, and glad to have it over.

So there’s another milestone: he’ll never have the first bit of his first GCSE exam ever again.

Since Barney was the final candidate of the day, the teacher chatted with us for a while afterwards - just general conversation, not about the exam itself or how Barney had done. I don’t think he’d have been allowed to give us any idea of how Barney had done anyway, and had mentioned to Barney that if the teacher didn’t offer any information about it, he shouldn’t ask. The examiners from the Board can always adjust marks anyway - the whole thing is recorded. We were planning to go pick up some fast food, then come back for my friends’ sons who are pupils at the school, but by the time we were ready to leave, it was only fifteen minutes before they were due to finish, so we thought we’d better just wait. The teacher, on hearing we were taking them home, offered to go and get them out early though, so he did that, and they didn’t object very strongly, and we all headed back to their house, where the boys played and talked for a few hours before we had to leave for home.

The next component is the “listening” bit, which consists of a tape-recording being played and the candidates writing the answers to the questions on the exam paper. I’m not at all concerned about this bit - Barney’s French is well above the standard required, and every time we’ve done a past-paper for this bit, he’s achieved full marks. We’ve a full month before that paper, so we’re going to take a break from studying for a few days now. After the listening component, we have another week, then two papers in one day: reading and writing. Reading is basically comprehension - they get a text in French and questions on the paper and they write the answers to the questions. The writing bit will be the challenge for Barney, because he writes very slowly, and also because it requires more organisation - he’ll need to go in, make a fast-but-good plan of what he’s going to write, and then get it all down on the paper in the time allowed.

There has been other stuff going on here in the last few days, of course - it’s just that the exam has been very much in our minds. On Saturday, we acquired a new set of bunk-beds from Freecycle - the kind with a double on the bottom and a single on the top. The idea was that Toby might sleep on the bottom - being wider, he’s less likely to fall off, plus if one of us ends up in with him, it won’t be so cramped. So far, that’s gone well: he’s started off in that bed on four nights and has stayed for the whole night twice. I’m not bothered about him coming in to us during the night at all, it’s just that when he insists on being in the middle of my bed (rather than in the bedside-cot), I do wonder if he’s going to flatten the new baby

Since that has replaced one of our sets of standard bunk-beds (i.e. two singles), I put them on Freecycle, and got a reply from someone I know through the home-ed group - very glad to hand them over to her!

On Monday we went to a birthday part for one of Jack’s best friends. It was very nice to be greeted at the door by this six-year-old spotting us and yelling “YES!” Barney stayed at home to revise, but the other boys all had a great time, and we arrived home hot and tired. Toby had slept in the car, so bounced about a bit longer than the others; I did laugh when Scratchy said to him, “Are you going to sleep or what!” and Toby replied, “What!”

And finally…for those who follow me on twitter and were wondering why I was chuckling at a billboard ad for the zoo - our local zoo has a monkey with a reputation for escaping. Their new billboard ads feature a big close-up of the monkey and the words, “Are you coming to see me, or do I have to go and see you?” Well it made me laugh. Maybe I don’t get out enough

I’m trying to think of what has happened in the past week, as this blog has been populated almost entirely by twitter updates (I usually have them set so they’re not visible on the front page, but since I’ve been away from the internet so much recently, I changed it on a temporary basis), but for some reason I’m having trouble remembering anything that happened prior to Friday night. Odd, that…

Okay, so let’s resort to the tweets again to aid my failing memory. Monday was spent catching up on things which needed done - like phone-calls to the mortgage people (I can’t believe we’ve been here three years already) and organising mobile phone contract cashback documents. George started to sew on Freddy’s new ju-jitsu badge - why the heck do they need to be so gigantic? They really are unreasonably huge. George wimped out part-way around it and someone else finished - I’m assuming Scratchy, since Barney doesn’t sew unless sat on, and my hands were much too numb to be poking needles through ju-jitsu gis with them. We had Toby’s last speech therapy appointment for a while - the therapist is now off on maternity leave, and in traditional NHS fashion, no replacement has been arranged. She’s pleased with Toby’s progress, however, so he’s down for review in August or September when she returns - although how long it will take her to catch up is anyone’s guess.

In the evening Barney went to Air Cadets and came home with a camp permission form with no dates. I’m told it’s sometime in the summer. Freddy went to ju-jitsu, did his grading, and came home with a brand new shiny green belt - although he did hide it and try to fake me out that he hadn’t qualified, but just as I was about to commiserate and say he’d do better next time, his serious look fell apart

Tuesday - ah, now that I read my tweets for last Tuesday, it all comes flooding back in glorious detail. I’d a slow start, with my body not particularly keen to cooperate with my head’s intentions, but we did manage to pack for the caravan and make it out of the house around lunchtime, when Scratchy brought the car back from work. I left him back, then went to the library to return books, but found the library closed until 2 p.m. - since it was only about noon, I wasn’t waiting. Then I went to the bank, only to discover that the most convenient branch had closed - or, as they euphemistically put it, “transferred”. But I don’t think it counts as a “transfer” when the branch it has transferred to already existed, and I had no intention of fighting the horrendous parking situation around that branch. My next errand involved dropping off a letter which had been delivered to me instead of to the person who needs to deal with it, except that I couldn’t remember her address and couldn’t get hold of her on her mobile. Thwarted again. I stopped to buy fuel for the car, and carefully made my way in beside the pump on a small, busy forecourt - bear in mind that I had four bicycles attached to the back of my car by way of a carrier designed for three - got out of the car to find a sticker over the pump saying it was out of order.

Briefly considered going home and back to bed, but decided to press on. I’d hoped to arrive at the caravan in time for a late lunch, but having wasted so much time on unsuccessful errands, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to buy lunch on the way. That, however, required cash - of which I had none (having not been to the bank yet…) so I needed both a cash machine and a food outlet. I found the cash machine and asked George to do something, only for him to say in a rather pathetic voice, “I can’t, I’ve thrown up all over myself.” This led to an exchange on twitter between me and several other parents who were somewhat incredulous that he had not said anything and that I had not noticed. As I pointed out, he was two rows behind me and the only person beside him was Freddy, who was immersed in DS-play so might well have missed the entire episode.

I got George stripped and cleaned up as much as possible by the side of the road, found a clean tee-shirt in his bag and got him back in the car wearing that and nothing else. He was adamant that he was hungry, but it was clear that lunch was going to be a drive-through experience - fast food restaurants might not be very formal, but they’re a little more formal than tee-shirts with naked boy-bits hanging out below them. So drive-through it was.

We made it to the big town near the caravan without further incident and I stopped to buy food supplies for the next few days - and also bought new tee-shirts for me, as none of my old ones cover my bump. I asked where the men’s tee-shirts were and a staff member took me there and tried to help - asking what colour I preferred etc, but frankly the only thing I was bothered about was that they were the largest size available. I spent £8 on four tees - living it up, as usual and then we drove the few miles to the caravan, where I put George in the shower (once I remembered how to turn on the water) and told him to get clean underwear and socks from his bag. “I can’t, I didn’t pack any.”

Deep breath. Several hours earlier, I had stood on the landing, looked George in the eye and said, “Do you have clean underpants and socks in your bag?” - and I’d asked at least three times, because, you see, I know George. And each time, George had replied in a very definite and here-I-am-being-sensible-for-once voice, “Yes.”

So there was George, sockless and commando for the next few days - and wearing the same denim dungarees for the next few days too, as he’d only packed one extra pair of trousers. About five sweaters, but only one pair of trousers…

Why do I do it? Well, here’s a view from the road approaching the village where the caravan lives. See that gorgeous blue sky? See that thin dark blue stripe at the bottom of it? That’s the ocean.

And here’s a view of part of the beach - the busy end. Admit it, you can see the attraction.

The boys spent the rest of the day scooting about the site on their bicycles, playing in the playground, etc - all of which left them very ready to go to sleep when bedtime arrived (and I can’t say I wasn’t grateful!) Mostly. Barney took Toby to my bed to cuddle him to sleep, as he often does in the caravan. Ten minutes later, Toby came trotting back to me at the other end of the van. Investigation showed that Barney was fast asleep. Toby, however, kept bouncing about for another hour…

They didn’t even wake up early on Wednesday morning - it was about 8.30 before anyone started to emerge. It didn’t take Barney long, however, to start being annoyingly pedantic (I can’t think where he gets that from…) so I thought of something we needed from the shop in the village and sent him to get it. I offered him the choice of cycling on his own, or walking with Toby - he chose the latter and the two of them had a lovely outing together. Meanwhile I fixed the sweater I was knitting for the baby (the sleeves weren’t wide enough when it was made according to the pattern), and added a hat to match:

We went down to the beach in the afternoon, well wrapped up in coats and hats, but it was a tad windy down there so we didn’t stay long. Back at the van we had hot chocolate to warm up. The difference in wind-strength between the beach and the van was quite amazing, given what a very short distance it is and that there’s really only one row of buildings between them!

On Thursday morning the making of my breakfast (by Barney) was rudely interrupted when the gas ran out - I tried to move the thingy to a different cylinder, but wasn’t sure it was properly connected (it can be quite difficult to connect at the best of times, and having hands that couldn’t feel much of anything wasn’t helping) or if the second cylinder was also empty. Having checked the forecast before leaving the internet home, I knew that this was to be the dullest part of the week, with the possibility of showers, so had planned to go into the big town. I finally found a bank to go to, and we topped up our supplies (bread and milk - and smoothies, to make up for the fact that I really don’t do fruit) and went to the library, where the boys had a great time exploring a new-to-them library, and borrowed every Doctor Who book they could find, as well as a fair few others.

Back to the caravan for lunch, followed by hunting around the caravan park for the bloke who maintains it - he’s a very pleasant, helpful man (and, according to Barney, looks like Bruce Willis) and when I explained the problem he came straight over to check. Both cylinders were indeed empty, and he put one of them in his white van and went to get me a new one, then attached the new one for me.

At about 4.30, I was feeling a bit shaky, so I asked Barney to watch Toby and went to lie down for a little while. I woke an hour later. This unplanned nap led to a bit of a burst of energy after dinner, and after hearing the weather forecast for the next 24 hours (cold overnight, windy with showers for Friday), I decided to drive home on Thursday night rather than wait until Friday (and have to pack and load the car, including bicycles, with even-number-than-usual-because-it’s-early-in-the-day hands). Barney helped me clear the caravan out, and when the others returned on their bikes, they all helped get everything into the car and get the bikes on the back - I was very impressed that within 45 minutes of the decision being made, we were driving away. Most of the children fell asleep on the way home, although not until after Jack had thoroughly discussed infinity with anyone who’d listen to him - except that he kept calling it “insanity”.

Friday was largely uneventful until 8.33 p.m. when I had what at first appeared to be the world’s strongest Braxton-Hicks contraction but which rapidly turned into sweating, fainting and feeling at least as bad as I did a few years ago when I had septicemia. That whole story is already on the blog, a few posts down from this one (or one post down, if I’ve altered the twitter-feed settings again), so enough said. I spent the weekend taking it easy, peeing on sticks and encouraging Barney in his efforts to polish his presentation for his French GCSE aural. I finished my fingerless gloves, and having been nagged throughout their production by Toby - “Dees too big for me! You make me gloves now?” - I also made him a pair of mittens, shaped like little mice - except that I haven’t a scrap of pink yarn in the house with which to make the knots for the noses, so they’re not quite finished. On Sunday morning I was playing a Mika CD in the living-room when Jack came in looking angry and said, “Can you turn that off, because it’s annoying me!” Erm…hang on, isn’t it supposed to be the parents who say that to the kids?

Early in the evening my neighbour K (the one who was so helpful on Friday night) came in to see how I was; about ten minutes after she arrived, George came into the room to tell me Freddy had swallowed a magnetic rod. He’s supposedly the sensible one… in accordance with advice from the children’s hospital, we’re still waiting for it to re-appear…

Today, I’ve been very tired. I can’t think why…

Friday night, I’m sitting on my bed finishing up a phone-call. And I feel really strong tightening across my lower abdomen - really strong. And I’m thinking, “Phew, this is a heck of a Braxton-Hicks!” And it gets stronger, and stronger, until it’s really painful. This isn’t right. I call Barney and ask him to go fetch Scratchy, who helps me to the bathroom. Moving hurts, but then so does staying still. So I sit on the loo, and then I realise things are going black, so I lie down on the floor. I don’t realise I’ve actually passed out until I hear Scratchy calling me and saying so, and telling me I was shaking and breathing oddly while I was out. I’m feeling dizzy and sick. I ask for a cold wet cloth, and put it on my forehead, on my neck. I get back on the loo, then feel dizzy again and lie down again. I pass out again. I get a drink of water and get back to bed. I’m drenched in sweat. I can’t get my words together, my thoughts together. The abdominal pain is still really bad. I’m feeling absolutely dreadful. I phone the maternity hospital but I can’t talk properly - feeling too ill. They tell me to go in. Scratchy says he’ll drive, but I’m not happy about that idea - and I’m still in so much pain that I’m thinking an ambulance will have entonox on-board - so I phone an ambulance. I get as far as saying “ambulance please” before I have to hand the phone to Scratchy and pass out again.

Ambulance arrives, paramedics try to get me out of bed to get me downstairs. I manage to get up with help, but immediately feel I’m going to faint again, so lie on the floor. Paramedics saying “you need to stay with us”, I’m trying to tell them I’m going to pass out. They decide to put me in a chair and carry me down the stairs; I’m only vaguely aware of what’s going on. Barney has been sent next door to ask neighbour K to come in and sit with kids.

In the ambulance they tell me we’re going to hospital M, I say no, no SCBU there and if I’m having a 29-week gestation baby, we’ll need one. Hospital R has excellent SCBU and is only a minute further away, I convince them to take me there and paramedic spends time on phone convincing dispatchers to let him do it. Blood pressure low, even for me. Blood sugar fine. Pulse fast. Pain in abdomen subsiding but now coming in waves and more involvement of upper uterus. Paramedic convinced I’m in labour and clearly worried that he’s about to catch a 29-week baby but also clearly reassured that having had five babies before, I at least have a clue about what I’m doing…

Get to hospital. By now I’m feeling more with it, my brain function and speech more restored. Onto monitor. Regular contractions, enough to distract me but not very strong. Abdominal pain less. Baby’s heart on the fast side, but going up and down with contractions as it’s meant to. Things much calmer now.

Trace on monitor looks like early labour, but exam shows cervix closed. Swab taken. Protein in urine - was clear a few hours ago. Baby’s heart-rate normal - still going up and down with contractions but no longer on high side. Doctor insists on ultrasound to check baby’s position - I can’t see why that’s relevant since it’s clear I’m not in labour, but agree to very fast one - she takes much longer than I’m happy with, but everything looks fine. Baby is “breech” - again, not relevant unless I’m in labour. Doctor says if baby breech and I’m in labour they will “have to” do a c-section. I think “that’s an argument we’ll save until I’m actually in labour”.

Hospital wants me to be admitted and to have steroid injections to mature baby’s lungs. I’m not keen - I don’t feel the baby’s coming soon. The contractions are regular but don’t feel productive, I’m not dilated at all. Talk it over with Scratchy and suggest we decline steroids, go home, get a night’s sleep and I get community midwife out to review in morning. Hospital doctor not very happy with this, but will see midwife in only ten or twelve hours and can return to hospital then if necessary - and if contractions start getting somewhere before that, we can be back in under 30 minutes.

No car at hospital - Scratchy came in ambulance at my request, though he couldn’t have followed us anyway since the ambulance didn’t know where it was going until half-way there! So Scratchy phones K (neighbour) and asks if she would mind coming to pick us up.

Hospital gets me to sign AMA form (to say I’m leaving against their advice), then kicks me out of exam room as fast as they can…

Saturday morning: home shortly after midnight, had a reasonable night’s sleep. No more abdominal pain. Can feel uterine tightenings if I pay attention, but not enough to distract me from anything else. Phoned midwives’ office at 9 and left a message, midwife showed up at door less than an hour later, not having received my message yet, but having had a phone-call from the hospital. All looks fine this morning. She suspects UTI with very fast onset, suggests getting antibiotics to have in house in case things start again (UTI can cause pre-term labour). Baby active and well. Me too. She thinks we did the right thing in choosing to come home.

Plan: prescription for antibiotics arranged, will collect them this afternoon but not start them. Will continue to check urine for protein and leucocytes; if anything suspicious or any more contractions, will start antibiotics. If contractions feeling productive or anything else happening that’s slightly worrying, will phone midwife on-call, or head to hospital, depending on how worrying it is. Otherwise, help Barney work on his French GCSE presentation, relax and knit.

Ending up at hospital on two of three weekends was not in the game-plan. And nobody but nobody ever expected me to be suspected of pre-term labour. Ain’t life a blast?

…that’s what happens when you spend most of the week in an internet-less place. When we’re away at the caravan, twitter is my only contact with the outside world

So in the last week - well, last weekend was not fun, as I’ve said before. Once Jack’s breathing eased, he was more his usual self - posing when a camera was pointed his way, for example:

On Sunday we brought Jack home from the hospital and spent the rest of the day lying around and playing. On Monday morning, Toby had speech therapy, and rather than spend the afternoon at home and falling asleep (and consequently being unable to sleep on Monday night), we went to visit friends, one of whom is one of Jack’s best friends. He spent the afternoon running about like a mad thing, showing absolutely no sign that he’d been hospitalised less than 48 hours earlier. So we felt it was safe to head back to the caravan on Tuesday - making sure to pack Jack’s inhaler and spacer, but fortunately he hasn’t needed them.

I spent the next few days watching children in the playground, or as they cycled around the site. A couple of weeks ago when I was twittering about the wild wind and rain, Merry wondered why we were there - well, here’s part of the answer:

Barney sleeps in the living-room in the caravan - it’s not a very big caravan and he has far more room there than anywhere else - so rather than have him stay up late and be grumpy next day, I often get him to go to bed with Toby in my bed, then I wake him to move him when I’m going to bed. Neither Toby nor Barney seems to mind at all:

And then, when I get up in the morning, this is what I find:

When the weather is bad, you stay inside and play games and knit. Hats, among other things:

And if you’ve any sense, you don’t teach your 13-year-old to knit, because he’ll get addicted and want to stay up late doing it, and nothing will ever get done until he’s finished his row…

Like Jack, Toby also often poses when a camera is aimed his way - but in his case, his intention is often to be cheeky and wind me up. But I can sometimes still manage to get a good photo when he’s busy laughing at himself for the previous one:

We drove home on Friday, taking the coast road, which is longer than the inland route, but much prettier. We had all kinds of weather during the drive, but when it was sunny and bright, we stopped to buy lunch at a chip van and ate it by the sea:

A fitful night last night for several of us, I think. Certainly I didn’t sleep well, and I suspect Barney - on the other side of Toby, who was beside me - didn’t either. I did wake him to try to get him to move to his own bed before I went to bed, but he was a bit sleep-stupid and looked at me as if he didn’t know who I was, so I left him. I wished later that I’d made him move though, as he kept stealing all the duvet - we were using one that wasn’t big enough for the bed, because Jack had thrown up on the big one earlier. So every time I woke and stole the duvet back, Barney woke too, and grumbled under his breath. Scratchy, sleeping in a recliner chair beside a hospital bed, certainly didn’t get a peaceful night, and Jack didn’t go to sleep until 10.30, then was woken twice to give him a nebuliser treatment - or to try, as he’d decided he was having nothing to do with it. His oxygen levels remained good throughout the night though, so they decided not to force the issue, and this morning he was up and cheerful by 8 a.m.

I headed into the hospital soon after 8, stopping on the way to pick up breakfast for Scratchy (who I figured wouldn’t have been fed) and me (who I knew hadn’t eaten) and Jack (who I figured would be put out if I brought breakfast for everyone except him ) I wanted to get there early to see Jack, of course, but I also wanted to be there before the consultant did his rounds, as I wanted to ask about the oral steroids and antibiotics, and I know better than to expect Scratchy to get the whole story. Hearing that Jack had had a good night oxygen-wise made me optimistic that we’d be able to bring him home, so I took clothes for him, but just in case, I also went prepared with books and toys, as well as my knitting, and arranged with a friend for her to take the other boys later in the day if Jack was kept in for longer.

I arrived to find Jack eating his fourth slice of toast - but he still perked up and said “Thanks Mum!” when he spotted the pancakes I’d brought him. That was about all I got out of him, however, as he was much too busy watching the Cartoon Network to be bothered about things like talking to parents. Shortly after I arrived, a nurse came over with two syringes of meds - steroids and antibiotics, so I asked her about them and then, when her only real reply was that the doctor had ordered them, I asked if they could wait until after rounds, so that we knew more about what was going on. She was fine with that, and we didn’t have long to wait for the consultant. He examined Jack and asked us all the same questions everybody else had asked in the last 24 hours. I questioned the oral steroids and was told they hardly ever gave IV steroids on the ward - so Jack could have had the IV line out last night, but anyway…I also asked about the antibiotics, and the consultant looked a bit at a loss, and asked the junior doctor on rounds about it. She said that she had felt they were unnecessary, but the other doctor who’d been on duty last night had ordered them. That was the same doctor who’d told me, an hour or so earlier, that it was almost certainly viral - so much for avoiding the overuse of antibiotics! The consultant agreed that they really didn’t seem necessary, so at least Jack avoided the second dose of those. He did get a second dose of oral steroids though, and we got to hear the words we’d been waiting for: “I think he can go home today.”

It took a while to pry Jack from the television screen in order to give him the final (we hope) dose of steroids, teach him how to use an inhaler and spacer, remove his IV line and get him dressed, but we were out of the hospital by about 10 o’clock. Jack didn’t stop talking the whole way home in the car, so we were reassured that he was on the mend! He’s to use the inhaler for the next couple of days and then play things by ear. He seems much, much better now though, and has spent the day full of energy as usual - I thought he might sleep this afternoon after missing so much sleep last night, but there was no chance.

It’s incredibly stressful having a child in hospital - not just because you’re worried about the child, but also because of all the extra arrangements that have to be made for who will be where when and what will happen with the other children. The two girls who were on Jack’s ward had both been in for weeks - I really don’t know how parents manage that or longer stays. Most of the staff were very pleasant - one of the reasons I usually head for the Children’s Hospital rather than the nearest Casualty is that you know you’ll find staff who’ve chosen to work with children rather than those who just tolerate them as a necessary part of the job. We really only encountered one nurse who was unwilling to do everything she could to help us, and one doctor who was less than communicative (the one who saw Jack on the ward last night). The consultant, when I told him I’d be questioning everything, said “That’s the right way to do it!” - which is an attitude I’ve noticed is usually found in doctors who are good at what they do and confident about their abilities - the ones who aren’t so great at their jobs are more defensive, in my experience. I did find it frustrating that most staff just did things without notice or explanation though - I know sometimes there isn’t a lot of time, but just a few extra seconds can make a big difference, and sometimes the explanation could even be given while they’re doing whatever it is - for example, when the nurse was putting anaesthetic cream on the backs of Jack’s hands while we were in Casualty, she didn’t tell us what it was or why it was being done - I knew what it was and figured out what it was for, but she wasn’t to know that, and it wouldn’t have taken three seconds to explain while she smeared it on and covered it - and knowing allowed me to prepare Jack for what was going to happen. Small things like that can make a big difference to patients and their parents. When Freddy was not much more than a year old, he fell onto some broken glass and split his forehead open - there was masses of blood, pouring down through his eyes and through all the layers of clothing on both of us - and when the bleeding had subsided in Casualty, the doctor said he’d be going for a skull x-ray. I spent the next two hours thinking they thought he might have a fractured skull, when in fact all they were doing was checking for fragments of glass in the wound. A second to add “…that will show up any glass that’s left in the wound” would have saved me those two hours of worry.

I don’t mean to complain - the hospital staff were very good and caring, and I’ve no complaints about the treatment apart from the unnecessary antibiotics. I’m just getting it all off my chest really. It’s been a very stressful weekend for all of us; I’m glad it’s over and hope we never have to repeat it or anything like it.

When it comes to blogging every few days, all I can say is, “Thank goodness for Twitter”. Because my memory is, uh, what was I saying?

Monday morning was spent running from one errand to another, including stopping to see the midwives and get blood taken to check my B12 level - and proving, once again, that I have horrible veins. Neither the midwife nor the student midwife was able to get a cooperative vein, and in the end they called a nurse from the treatment room to have a go. She managed to get blood - and only poked me once with the needle, which is good, but left a great big bruise, which isn’t so good. By the time we were through, I was late for Toby’s speech therapy, but the therapist being in late pregnancy herself, she was understanding. I also took the bicycle with the puncture (the one that was Freddy’s but was about to be given to Jack) to the bike repair shop, but they weren’t able to fix it until Tuesday, which wasn’t a lot of use since we were planning on leaving straight from there for the caravan. So I went back home and collected yet another bicycle - Toby’s smaller one - just in case we weren’t able to get it repaired. We did get it sorted out though, in the same shop that fixed it on Saturday, and they didn’t even charge for fitting the new tube or tyre (because of the running back and forth we’d had to do).

We got to the caravan and spent the afternoon outdoors, as it was sunny and reasonably warm - not tee-shirt weather, but certainly pleasant. On starting dinner, I realised we were out of bread, and then I realised I was out of cash, so I couldn’t even send Barney to the shop - so cheese toasties were out. I also realised we’d left the toothbrushes at home - there’s always something. So Tuesday morning found us driving into the big town, because although there is a chemist’s shop in the village, it’s not exactly large or well-stocked (they didn’t have Band-Aids when I went looking for those). I went armed with a meal-plan for the week and bought everything we needed. Back to the caravan for lunch, then the boys spent the afternoon in and out, as the weather allowed. They made friends with E, a boy about Freddy’s age whose family also have a caravan, and he ended up staying for dinner - he was kind of left hovering on our deck when I called my own children in for food, so I guesstimated how much spag bol there was and figured I’d feed him too, if he wanted. The dinner-time conversation was quite amusing - many home-educators find that people quiz their children to see what they’re learning, but my kids turned the tables and quizzed E instead: things like, “What’s the name for a number multiplied by itself?”

E stayed after dinner too, while they watched the rest of their movie (Spiderman 3 - really, really bad - I was almost praying for it to end!) and finally left about 9.30. I must have twittered quite a bit about the wind and rain, because when I said I thought there was only one other family there, Merry messaged me to ask where we were and ask if it was purgatory I think the answer to that is provided in the replies I got from the boys this morning when I asked when they wanted to go back to the caravan. Toby yelled “Yes!”, two voices said “Soon!” and the remaining two said “As soon as possible!” - so now we’re trying to make plans for the weekend and next week…

I woke on Wednesday morning to a very strange sound: silence. No rain beating on the windows, no blasts of wind…the silence didn’t last long when children started to wake though, especially with George, who was in chittering mode. Not chattering - chittering has a whole extra element of irritating. Never was I more grateful for getting-them-outside weather! I tried and failed to put my watch on - it’s usually quite loose as I wear it quite far up my wrist, but it was too tight, and when I looked at my hands, I realised how swollen they were. I’ve also got tingly fingertips, and I’m hoping it’s not the knitting that’s doing it, because I’m really enjoying knitting again

During the day on Wednesday the staff from the caravan park removed the caravan opposite ours, using a "big digger truck", as Toby put it, and thus provided great entertainment for small boys. We also spent a while down on the beach with bicycles - which Chris disapproved of because of the potential damage to gears and chains, but really, if you had the opportunity to cycle in and out of the Atlantic, wouldn’t you? In the afternoon, Barney asked to be taught to knit - he’s not usually the good-with-his-hands kid, but surprised me in how quickly he picked it up and got quite good at it. He proclaimed it “pretty fun”, and at bedtime was disappointed to be sent to bed because he wanted to stay up and knit (”it’s kind of addictive”).

On Thursday morning I’d a call from a midwife to tell me my B12 was now normal - which leaves me searching for some other explanation for my fatigue We walked to the shop in the morning - which usually takes just a few minutes, but took forever because my pelvis was so sore, and left me exhausted. We expected our friends K & J to be using the caravan from Friday, so planned to leave then, but I decided to leave Friday rather than have to pack up the car in the rain forecast for Friday morning. I spent the rest of the morning tidying and packing what I could, in preparation for leaving in the afternoon, while the boys cycled, skateboarded and playgrounded. I got the bicycles onto the car at about 2.30 - with difficulty, given that I have a big bump in the way of lifting them and that the carrier is designed to carry three bicycles and I had five… The boys played for another hour or so before we left, and Barney knit on the way home in the car. We arrived home at about 5.30 and the first thing I did was put on the water-heater - and oh did that hot bath ever feel good! Shortly after I went to bed, I got a text-message from J to say they weren’t going to be at the caravan this weekend after all - and I’d left the power, water and gas on…probably not a big problem, although the milk I left in the fridge might not be so good by the middle of next week. We could end up back there over the weekend, when the forecast is snow - now that could be an adventure…I promise I’ll take some photos this time if we do.

Yesterday afternoon’s sunny weather was promising, but never fulfilled that promise. The weather changed overnight: we had thunder and lightning, heavy rain and wild winds all night long. I didn’t know you could get sea-sick in a static caravan Several times I thought someone had climbed onto my bed, only to realise it wasn’t the bed that was moving, but the whole van. Slightly worrying! We made it through the night, however, and into the morning. I considered waiting for the weather to brighten before walking to the shop in the town, but when it got wild again, I decided to leave the boys here while I took the car. Since it was such a cold, wet and windy morning, they spent the morning studying - I’m a horrible mother, me. When the weather improved slightly (i.e. the rain stopped, though there were still gales blowing) and I told them to put the books away, I was still a horrible mother, because I made them go out to play - although their resentment didn’t last long when they met up with other children who had been turfed out of their respective caravans by their respective fed-up parents. We discovered that Freddy’s bicycle tyre was flat again, so I’ve had to promise to take him into the big town tomorrow to get a new inner tube. In the meantime, he’s been riding George’s bicycle, which looks like it fits him better than his own, and George has been riding Barney’s, which seems to fit him better than his own…and I’ve realised that Jack fits better on Freddy’s than on his, so it seems we’re ready for the trading-bicycles game again.

I twittered how quiet it was while the boys were at the playground (their voices were only faintly audible over the wind), but spoke too soon, for within minutes Jack had arrived back covered in mud. He got changed into his clean sweater (hah! I told them they needed to pack two sweaters each!) and went back out. A few minutes after that, George came in - to say he was “covered” in mud doesn’t really accurately describe the situation, because it suggests the mud was all on the outside, when in fact it was through every layer right to his skin (and in fact he said later, “I think I even sniffed some mud!” LOL) So he got stripped and re-dressed from his underwear out, and he too went back outside. I know he got muddy falling off the Flying Fox, but I’m not really sure what happened to Jack. Whatever it was, he didn’t learn - he arrived back muddy again, saying “This time only my trousers got muddy, but I’m okay with that”. Right.

Jack’s second sweater was soon muckier than his first, and he couldn’t find his first, so he borrowed one of Freddy’s, with Freddy’s permission - which was okay until Freddy got his own sweater wet and muddy and spent twenty minutes chasing Jack around the park (Freddy on foot, Jack on a bike, so fairly pointless!) yelling, “I want my sweater back!”

The park started to busy up a bit as the afternoon progressed, with the arrival of people who presumably have jobs to go to during the week, though it didn’t get particularly busy. I suspect last night’s gales have put a few people off! By the evening, my lot were more than ready to come in for cups of hot chocolate before bedtime.

Toby woke me at 3 a.m. to tell me “Daddy’s head broke!”. Uh-huh. Go back to sleep. It was a dream. Cue scrunched-up face and questioning: “A dream?” “”"Yes, a dream. It’s like pictures in your head when you’re asleep. It’s not real, it’s like playing, but once you wake up, it all goes away.”

In the morning, Toby stood at a safe distance to check out Scratchy’s head, and appeared confused that it appeared to be intact. That was not the last I heard about it however; I was repeatedly told, “Daddy’s head broke in my dream!” throughout the day.

The boys’ things had all been packed last night, so that just left me getting my own bag organised and gathering some books to take with us. We left the house shortly after 9, which I thought was a good start, but after leaving Scratchy at work and doubling back to go to buy yarn (I’m back knitting, can’t go to the caravan without yarn and the internet!) Barney realised he didn’t have his Hogwarts bag with him - the one containing his mobile phone and all the GameBoy power-packs. The thought of no GameBoys at the caravan didn’t warm my heart, because in their absence, it would have been a YuGiOh fest, and at least GBA is usually quiet and doesn’t spread itself across the entire room, so we went back home again. Barney disappeared inside and re-emerged a few minutes later to say he couldn’t find the bag. He was sure he’d left it in the hall. I knew I hadn’t put it in the car. But I wasn’t prepared to stay for the time it would take to hunt through all the places it could be, so we left anyway.

We drove up in lovely sunshine, a calm, warm day, and everyone helped unpack the car - including the Hogwarts bag I’m always surprised when we arrive - we take everything inside, fill the entire living-space with bags and backpacks and various other things, and it looks like we’ll never all fit in. And then we start putting things away, and I realise how much a caravan is like a Tardis: bigger on the inside. All except the refrigerator, that is, which is quite the opposite. We always spend our first couple of days eating the things that didn’t fit in the refrigerator.

Freddy’s bicycle had a flat tyre; we knew this before we left home, but unable to find a bicycle pump in the garage, we had to hope we’d be able to borrow one from someone when we arrived. No luck, however, until the guy who looks after the park arrived to do some woodwork around one of the caravans near us (building the slatted base that most people install so they can store things underneath their caravans). He had a compressor in his van, and very willingly inflated the tyre, so we just hoped it was a flat rather than an actual puncture. The boys scooted around the park through most of the evening; I think the little corner of the site where we stay is just the perfect spot for a family. The playground is within sight (and hearing) of the caravan, and it’s in a little loop which doesn’t go anywhere, so there’s very little traffic, which is nearly all considerate of the fact that there are children around, so moves very slowly and carefully. Toby’s the only one of mine without the sense to move out of the way of cars; he does a sort-of standoff on his tricycle in front of them: “Nope, I’m going this way, you move!”

When it got colder and darker, everyone came in and we realised we hadn’t brought any DVDs, but there are a few here, so one was chosen (Spiderman 2 - again) and everyone settled down to watch before bed

A week since I last blogged. You know what that means, of course: missing chunks - though on this occasion there wasn’t much to remember, and much of what I do remember I’d rather forget, so we’ll just gloss over those bits…

I know we went to the Transport Museum on Friday. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to go - I’d much rather have lazed about the house - but it was the last day of our membership, and since I don’t really expect to be feeling like traipsing around large outdoor museums (the Folk Museum bit) or large indoor museums (the Transport Museum bit) for the next while, I’m going to wait a few months before renewing it. I posted about us going on the local home-ed list at the last minute, having thought about doing so for a couple of days but not actually having made it around to it, so it wasn’t very surprising that there wasn’t a huge crowd. One other family did come though, and it was nice to see them. I took my little camera and let Barney run amok with it, which led to some, er, interesting pics. (I also realised, when uploading these, just how much better photos from my big camera are, so I think I might be handing the small one off to Barney more often in future.)

Toby was fascinated by the model horses attached to the carriages and some of the trams etc - “Mum! Look! Animals!” - as usual - although he was initially a bit wary of standing next to them to have his photo taken. I tried to explain that they weren’t real, that they were like big toys, but in the end I had to agree with his assertion that “Hoss dead!” - well, it wasn’t moving…

After the museum, we went off in search of lunch - initially intending to eat at the Ikea café (nearby and cheap) but I decided that I’d rather do a drive-through to save the energy it would take to get out of the car. (Yes, I do know how pathetic that sounds.) It took ages to find a bank machine and then a drive-through, but it was worth it when, after passing fast-food back to everyone behind me, I was thanked in four different languages (English, French, Japanese and German)!

When we got home I decided to do my fourth B12 injection (still not looking as it pierces the skin!) but I’d have been better to sit down with a cup of tea first, as all the energy expended throughout the day had taken its toll, and immediately after the injection, I felt faint. I lay down on the dining-room floor for a minute, having learned from experience that when feeling that way, it’s better to place myself on the floor than to find myself on the floor. Barney brought me a glass of water and once I was sure I wouldn’t pass out, I disposed of the needles etc and went and fell asleep on the sofa.

On Saturday, I got up and decided to go and buy paint. We’ve been in this house for nearly three years(!) and I’ve never liked the colour of the hall, stairs and landing - it’s a sort of orangey-rust, which I wouldn’t like even if it wasn’t too dark for that area, which it is. Not to mention that with five children and two dogs in the house, it wasn’t exactly clean… I still haven’t decided on a colour, but figured that a first coat of white would help cover up both the dark paint and the dirt, as well as being cheap, so that’s what I bought. I thought maybe I’d get the hall done on Saturday, then tackle the stairs and landing next weekend…but I reckoned without The Team. No sooner had I started than I had a queue of children beside me asking to help - so I phoned Scratchy (who was out doing errands) and told him to bring back more small rollers. I did big-roller bits up as far as I could reach, and various children came behind me filling in the bits around the edges (lots of edges: door-frames, stairway, chair-rail…)

Since we were getting on so well, I kept going - and despite taking a break for an hour or so when a friend came by in the afternoon, we managed to finish everything except the top bit of the wall by the stairs - which I thought best done when there were no small children around, as it required a step-ladder on the stairs themselves…

So now the hall is white(ish) and I need to get on with choosing a final colour. I’m thinking along the taupe spectrum, but things could still change.

And I managed to do it again this morning - second B12 shot, still a bit nervous and feeling sick beforehand, but not nearly as bad as Friday. A midwife came out to sit with me while I did it this morning, but from now on I’m on my own - which I think will actually make it easier, as I’ll have nobody watching me, plus I’ll be able to do it first thing in the morning so I won’t have the waiting-for-someone-to-arrive bit to handle. Up, cup of tea, inject, forget about it until the next one’s due.

Apart from my attempts to puncture myself… The boys have been continuing with their usual work, getting through quite a bit. George had a very good couple of days towards the end of last week, even making it through two entire days without any kind of meltdown - but a late night on Friday, followed by waking early on Saturday, with a 3 a.m. conversation with Freddy in between, resulted in a very shaky weekend for him. This morning didn’t start well when he went into wobbly mode before he got out of his room, but I managed to pull him back from the brink, and while there was still lots of room for improvement, it’s been a better day than the last two. I have to admit to a smile when I heard him getting mad at Barney around lunchtime; Barney was allegedly winding him up, but George’s response to his denial of this was “Barney, I can see the smile playing on your lips!”

Barney had his own tantrum on Thursday evening, storming out of the house and slamming the door behind him. Well, actually, he slammed the door in front of him, because he didn’t like the idea of being out in the dark on his own, so he stayed inside, locked the door, pocketed the key and went and hid in his room. He fooled us too! We gave him a few minutes to cool off, then Scratchy went to find him, while I phoned his mobile to see where he was (assuming he had it with him). When I heard it ringing in his room, I hung up - only to find him standing in front of me seconds later demanding, “What are you ringing me for?!!”

Barney and Scratchy went to a St John Ambulance competition on Saturday morning, leaving me at home with the others. A man came to service our boiler - at no charge. He’d posted on our local Freecycle list about two weeks ago asking for help with getting a website uploaded, and I’d offered to provide that help. He said that if I got it sorted for him, he’d service our boiler for nothing - that’s his business. It turned out his site was written in MS Publisher and it was easier to rewrite it in a different program than to fix the errors, so I did that. It probably took a couple of hours altogether, but he’s very pleased with it - and he spent a couple of hours on my boiler and I’m happy with that, so a good result all around

A bowl of cereal at bedtime yesterday bought me a night without heartburn, for which I was very grateful, as I really needed the sleep. After coping with George, as the others woke up and came into my room to greet Toby, it was like the Waltons in reverse: “Hello Toby!”, “Hello George!”, “Hello Toby!”, “Hello Jack!”, “Hello George!”, “Hello Barney” - well, you get the general idea

You’ll already have read the first bit of this story if you’re a regular here and not one of the people who’s arrived as a result of me crowing about my accomplishments on an email list somewhere - in case you’re one of the latter, however, you can find the sorry beginnings of this tale here

After all that brouhaha, and after being told by a midwife that they were doing me “a big favour” coming out to do the injections at all, I’d had enough. I don’t need or want favours that leave the donors feeling resentful or like they’re owed something. I got so mad I decided that the best thing was to do the injections myself.

The other thing you need to know is that I am needle-phobic, and have been for as long as I remember. I’ve never even been able to watch people getting injected on televison. I remember three injections that I had before puberty, and I managed to pass out at every one of them - sometimes multiple times. After an appendectomy, when a particularly unsympathetic nurse was taking blood from me and I said I felt faint, and she responded, “Don’t be silly, you can’t faint lying flat on your back”, I promptly proved her wrong. When everyone else in my year at school got a vaccine for something (BCG? can’t remember), my mother signed the “no” bit on the form, because she knew what I was like. And so the rest of the class toddled off from Geography to get jabbed, and I and one other person stayed behind. And then we all went to English class, during which the boy seated next to Martin Somebody said “Miss, Martin’s not feeling well” and we all turned to look at Martin and he was green…and I, knowing that the cause of his green-ness involved a needle twenty minutes earlier, fell out of my chair and woke up in the hall.

So yeah, pretty bad about needles. Even working in a hospital lab - even in Blood Bank, even in Pathology, where you really do see some gross things - didn’t help.

Those of you who don’t have any phobias won’t understand this at all; you’ll think it’s daft and unreasonable - and you’d be right. But those who are needle-phobic will understand why this decision was, for me, a huge one.

Of course, never having even watched an injection, I was starting from a fairly, uh, uneducated position.

But google is my friend, as is youtube. And I read lots of websites and forums and watched all the youtube videos of people getting and giving IM injections - at least, all the ones that didn’t involve people getting their jollies from it (and really, what on earth is up with that? I thought the diaper-fetishists were bad enough, but injections? Eh?) And 5.30 this morning found me lying in bed, in the dark (so as not to wake Toby) watching and reading more. And feeling stressed as I realised that in less than five hours a midwife would arrive and I would a) have to have a needle in me one way or another and b) have to try to convince her to let me do it myself.

By 9 o’clock, I was tired enough that I wanted to go back to bed. By 10 o’clock I felt sick. And the midwife was late…

By the time the midwife and a student arrived, at about 11, I wasn’t in a fit state for anything. I had said on the phone yesterday that I wanted to learn to self-inject, but obviously nobody took me seriously, because they were surprised and worried when I said it this morning. The midwife didn’t know if it was legal for me to do it; I asked under what law it would be illegal, and how exceptions were made for women injecting fertility meds, body-builders injecting steroids, etc. I told her I’d read about lots of people self-injecting B12 IM. She accepted that it might be legal for me to do it, but worried that she might not be allowed to teach me. I suggested she sat next to me while I did it and told her what I was doing, so she didn’t have to say or do anything unless I was getting it dangerously wrong. She wasn’t going for it. She said she’d have to speak to her Supervisor, and she’d do the first injection today and come back on Monday and if it was okay she’d teach me then. I pointed out that I’d been working myself up to this and that a weekend of further nervous waiting wasn’t something I was willing to take. She tried to contact her Supervisor but the paging system failed. I phoned the GP (which I needed to do anyway to get a prescription for folate), and he said he was happy for me to self-inject if she was happy to show me - she was still hesitant (the GP, hearing her in the background, said to me, “it sounds like she just doesn’t want to do it”). I suggested we phone the Royal College of Midwives and ask for a professional opinion, but in the end she phoned the local fertility clinic (the irony!) who assured her that yes, it was perfectly permissible for a professional in her position to teach me what to do.

And so she did.

I already had the procedure of actually injecting well-memorised, but wasn’t completely clear on all the preparatory stages - getting the stuff from the vial into the syringe, etc. We got through that without any trouble though, and then I found myself sitting on the sofa, one trouser-leg pulled down past my thigh and a needle attached to a syringe full of cobalamin in my hand…

This was the point I had thought might take an hour - getting pysched enough to actually do it. But a couple of deep breaths and…I did it.

I shut my eyes as I started to push the needle through the skin, but had to open them to pull the plunger back to check for blood (which would have meant the tip of the needle was in a blood vessel rather than the muscle and I’d have to start over). I pushed the plunger in a lot slower than I’ve ever had anyone else do it, but in fact it hurt less that way so I’ll stick with doing that!

I am quite ridiculously proud of myself; I know that for a lot of people this is a minor thing, but for me it was a Very Big Deal Indeed. I still need more syringes and needles and a sharps disposal box, so a midwife will come back on Monday morning with those, and sit with me while I do the second injection, but after that I’m on my own - and I’m quite happy with that! The midwfe and student who were here said I did a good job, and you know, I actually think I did

Apart from my ranty blog of yesterday evening, I haven’t written a proper blog-post in ages, so here is a rundown of the highlights/lowlights/midlights/whatever. I should note that in creating this post, my memory has been greatly aided by Twitter

We returned to the vet on Valentine’s Day so that Andie could also be spayed. We couldn’t book both dogs on the same day, as the practice only does one spay a day - that way they can do it first thing in the morning and keep a close eye on the dog all day in the office. We figured it was no bad thing to spay our two a few days apart anyway, to let us make a fuss of them individually, but both recovered very quickly so it wasn’t really necessary.

While Andie was at the vet, we went off to the shops. We’d a book-token to spend - given to one of the kids so long ago that I couldn’t even remember whose it was - so they shared it. It took a Very Long Time to make a selection, and in the end I spent the last bit of it on a book of my own choice: Michael Morpurgo’s Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. I also bought a long-reach stapler, an item about which I am sadly excited.

We also all had our eyes tested. Barney didn’t need a new prescription, but got new glasses anyway, given the state of his old ones. What the optician doesn’t know is that the new ones will be in just as bad a state as the old ones within a week. In fact in the car on the way home, he asked if his new ones were lopsided - he’s been wearing a lopsided pair for so long that “straight” feels wrong We talked about him getting contact lenses, as he would like to go back to fencing but doesn’t like doing it without his glasses, and you can’t wear glasses with the face-mask. He’s too young for wearing contacts all the time, but if it’s a couple of hours once or twice a week, it could be do-able. None of the others needs glasses, although Jack has a mild astigmatism. I’ve had perfect vision ever since having laser surgery about seven years ago, but now my age is showing, and I’m very slightly long-sighted. No reading-glasses needed yet, but I was pre-warned that I’d probably need them in another two or three years. Just what you need a couple of weeks before your 40th birthday: to be reminded that you’re getting old

Toby added Bananaphone to his repertoire.

And my friend whose heart surgery went all wrong a few weeks ago underwent the second attempt, which appears to have been very successful

On Friday we had someone come and look at the garden, figuring we probably couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it but we might as well ask and find out. We were right the first time. It looks like we’re sorting it out ourselves. Now we just need a few weeks without rain to allow it to dry out enough to dig and roll flat, before putting down turf. Seed would be cheaper, but would take a lot longer to establish, and we’d really like to be able to use it this summer. So Saturday found Scratchy out there in his wellies, accompanied by various children at different times, some of whom were more useful than others.

Monday was a crazy day, but I’ve already written about most of it here, so no real need to go over that again! One amusing moment (rather than hair-pulling-out moment) was when Toby was having lunch - pizza and bananas - and singing, “Hit me baby one more time”.

Toby continued his unbearable cutess on Tuesday morning, sitting on Barney’s lap while he did his French and repeating everything he said. Later he was heard yelling at Jack in the kitchen: “Jack! Open! Bananaaaaa!” Yes, I think he’s definitely turned into a talking child now.

Yesterday was another one of those up-and-out-early days, completely unnecessarily, as recounted here. After leaving the office and sitting in the car shouting and crying down the phone at a friend and Scratchy, I drove back across the city so that Barney could be fitted with contact lenses for fencing. Unfortunately it turns out he can’t put anything in his eyes. In fact, he can’t even open his eyes if he suspects there’s a finger anywhere near his eyelids, so contact lenses are a non-starter, for now at least. He’s going to practise poking himself in the eye for a few months before giving it another try.

While he was at the optician’s, I walked down the main shopping street of the town with the others. Now for this bit, you need a bit of back-story. We used to live in that town, and three of my children were born there. One of the reasons I started considering a homebirth when I was expecting George was that the local maternity unit was so completely, absolutely, dire. The local Supervisor of Midwives actively discourages homebirth - she spent three hours in my home trying to talk me out of it, mostly talking rubbish about the dangers and describing physiological processes that could not actually happen. She lied to the National Childbirth Trust about local homebirth rates, multiplying the true figure by 50 - yes, it’s that bad that it could be multiplied by 50 and still sound low. She tried to intimidate me by threatening to remove care. The local maternity unit, despite having no SCBU and therefore taking no high-risk cases, has a similar c-section rate to the next nearest unit, which takes the highest-risk cases from the entire population. The unit is old, dirty and insecure. I’ve witnessed a baby removed (by a visitor) from the nursery and the fact not even being noticed for more than two hours. Confidentiality is non-existent. And so on…

Yesterday morning it was announced that the unit is to close in about a year. As a result, there was a news journalist and cameraman out on the street, looking for people to give their reactions. Well, when they saw me coming - visibly pregnant and accompanied by four children - they probably thought they were in line for an early finish and a long lunch. Unfortunately my response was not of the “shocked, appalled that they’re taking this service away” kind that they were expecting. Instead it was of the “good riddance, it should have been closed years ago, it’s probably the worst unit in the country” type… Scratchy is well-aware of my feelings on this particular unit (and shares them) and when I phoned him to tell him about being stopped, he roared with laughter

After our errands and meeting up with Barney, we went to our usual all-you-can-eat pizza-and-pasta buffet for lunch, where we always get our money’s worth During the meal, Freddy and George educated me about the different kinds of knights in the Middle Ages and what the various protocols involved. Then they all inspected and discussed the restaurant’s fire safety system. But when Freddy started to pretend to unzip his forehead and announced, “I’m a Slitheen“, I decided that was as far as I was willing to let that particular discussion go

We’d a quick playground visit before collecting Scratchy, then I left everyone at home while I took Cassie back to the vet’s to get her stitches removed. Soon after getting home, I went to bed - but the day wasn’t over for George, who was part of the team at the County Cub Quiz. Our team came third and George arrived home very tired, but happy

It’s been one of those very strange days when all sorts of unexpected things happened. I’ll tell you about Monday and yesterday first, because - well, because they happened first, and that’s what I’m like.

I realised over the weekend that my driving licence had expired. In November. How did this happen? Don’t they send reminders? Well, yes they do…but somehow my address change never got processed after we moved, and I was a bit busy having a baby (Toby) etc, so it never occurred to me that the new bit hadn’t arrived. I never use my licence - a bank teller asked me for photo ID once and I started to look for it in my bag, but the next teller over said “oh, it’s all right, I know her” so I never took it out and looked at it. If I had, I might have realised that the address was wrong, and then I might have told them again, and the reminder they sent out might have been sent to where I actually live.

I phoned the licensing people on Monday and a helpful man there told me what I needed to do and pointed out that until I did it, my insurance wouldn’t pay any claims. Oops. So getting it sorted out moved rather rapidly up the to-do list. One of the things I had to do was get photos taken and have them signed by someone who has known me for at least two years and is a “respectable” person - which made me think hard, because we don’t have a minister and the doctor I’m registered with has never actually met me and the only teacher living in the street has only known me since last summer. Eventually I remembered a friend who doesn’t live too far away and is a teacher (though whether he’s respectable is definitely up for debate, as he and his wife were the first to agree).

George cut out lots of circles in the afternoon, so that I could use them with Beavers for Pancake Puppets. Meanwhile I browsed for other pancake-related activities we could do, and phoned my co-leader to check that the cooker in the hall was working. And got frustrated with Twitter’s recent flakiness.

Barney went to Air Cadets on Monday evening - proudly wearing the t-shirt they gave him last week - and Freddy went to ju-jitsu. George announced he was too tired, then took great offence when I told him to go to bed right after Freddy left. But y’know, if you’re too tired to go out, it doesn’t make any sense to stay up until the time you’d have come home if you’d gone out in the first place. In the meantime, Jack and Toby played in my bedroom with a VTech phone thingy. Jack was ordering in: “Can I order two ice-creams? Cold, with a stick in one of them and a stick not in one of them.”

On Tuesday morning, Scratchy arranged to work from home for a while so I could run out and get photos taken for the driving licence application. Somehow he thought he’d be at work by 10. Given that the chemist (nearest place to get them done) doesn’t open until 10, I’m not sure how he thought that would happen. He also thought that he’d be here with five children and still get some work done…heh. I got home and did some work with the boys and got more frustrated with Twitter’s recent flakiness.

Tuesday evening: Beavers. I took all the cut-out circles and various other bits of equipment with me, including the ingredients for making pancakes. We split the Beavers into three groups to make their pancake batter. Then we took them into the kitchen and…discovered the cooker was not working.

We talked about pancakes, played games, made Pancake Puppets and sent each Beaver home with a cupful of pancake batter. We told the parents to look at it as an easy breakfast the following morning. Not sure how that fits in with using up all the eggs and butter etc before Lent, but there you go.

Afterwards I went to visit my maybe-respectable-maybe-not friend and he signed all the things I needed him to sign. By the time I got home, it was nearly time to collect George and Barney from SJA Cadets, so I dropped Jack at home and the neighbour’s son at his house. My neighbour told me that I’m “an idol in this house” - I’m not sure how much of that is because I have five children and how much is because we home-educate. We were talking about getting them all up and out in the mornings. I’m in two minds about this: both he and his wife work full-time, and I really don’t know how anybody manages to do that and also manage children and their schedules, but also - well, they’ve only got a six-year-old and a teenaged daughter, so it does look from my perspective as though it must be fairly straightforward. I suppose we’ve all got our own ideas about what’s difficult. Anyway, I went to get Barney and George and finally got everyone home and to bed, having warned them that we needed to be up and out early today.

We had to be up and out early because Cassie was booked in at the vet’s to be spayed. They only do one spay a day, and they do it first thing in the morning so that they can keep an eye on the dog all day, so you have to be there by 9 o’clock. I reckoned that leaving at 8.30 would be okay - and I’m sure it would have been. Unfortunately I was woken by Toby jumping on me at 8.29. I haven’t leaped out of bed as quickly as that in a long time. Much shouting at everyone to get dressed etc - poor Jack was rudely awoken and almost dragged out of bed. Older children dressing and chivvying along younger children, many orders being given. We were pulling out of the driveway exactly eleven minutes after I opened my eyes. So it turns out I could do it if I had to - but I really don’t want to!

We got lost on the way to the vet’s (it’s a very rural practice), but got there with just a minute to spare. The four parking spaces across the road were taken, so I parked across the back of one car and told Barney to come and get me if I needed to move the car. I talked to the vet, filled in all the forms etc - and then two police officers came in and said, “Is that your Chrysler Voyager out there?” It turned out that someone had parked on the other side of the road - probably marginally more legally than the way I was parked, if there are such things as gradiations in the legality of parking - and between us, we were blocking the way of a large truck. And a police-car. Actually I don’t know if the police-car just happened to come along or if the truck-driver called them, but either way, I abandoned Cassie and ran out to move the car - and give Barney an earful for not coming to get me. Oh, he’d seen the truck. Oh, he’d even told the police officer where I was. But did he come and get me? No. And just as I was turning the car back onto the road, the text-message that Barney had sent me arrived: Car needs moved.

I provided all the children with a drive-through breakfast and took Toby to get new shoes. He has reached the dizzying heights of a size 5. No longer will it be true that his shoes are almost as wide as they are long Next stop: play resource centre, where the pickings were slim but at least my membership card hadn’t (quite) expired. Conversation with Barney en route about the ethics of animal-spaying: “Isn’t it sort of like genocide?” Well, I can see the reasoning, but I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons. I realised I didn’t have the vet’s telephone number with me (result of earlier speedy exits) and that I was supposed to ring at 1 p.m. to find out when Cassie should be collected, so I phoned Scratchy and asked him to google for it. A few minutes later he rang Barney (on top of everything else, my phone battery was dying) and told him he’d phoned the vet. Uh…beginning to see where Barney gets his (in)ability to follow simple instructions! (Not shouting at all now. Oh no. Of course not.) Oh well, one more reason for the vet to think I’m a moron.

And then off to the driver licensing office with my forms and my passport and my photos and my cash. The licence will take about two weeks to arrive, but will be dated from today, so at least I’m now driving with insurance.

Hm, what did we do next? Home for lunch, I think. A game of 20 Questions in the car. Barney: “Hey, guys! I have a really good one! It’ll only take one question!” Jack: “Is it a frog?” Barney: “No! It has to be the question we usually ask first!” Freddy: “Is it alive?” Barney: “Yes! You figured it out! It’s a live. Get it? It’s A Live.” Uh, right. Me: “So what exactly is A Live?” Barney: “Isn’t that really a philosophical question?”

Home and found the vet’s phone number myself and phoned at 1 p.m. Cassie was doing well and would be ready to leave at about 3. Good stuff. Checked the post and discovered a letter from the Education Board - oh, had they finally noticed us after only nearly seven years of home-educating? But no…it wasn’t addressed to me. Or even my address. It was, however, addressed to the Scout Group where I take Beavers, with the actual postal address of the Scout Hall on it. Not that we get post delivered there…but how on earth did it make it to my mailbox, in the next town, when it didn’t have my name, house number, street name or postcode on it? The mystery was solved when I remembered one of the other leaders I’d met at the Cubs Quiz a couple of weeks ago - he works for the post office and apparently they get confused because they can’t deliver to some of the Scout Halls - so they just give anything Scout-related to him and he figures out what to do with it. He must have remembered where I lived and decided that was the quickest way to deal with post for our Group

Also in the mailbox: a card about a parcel delivery. What could that be? I haven’t ordered anything recently. It said to collect it tomorrow, but I don’t plan on having the car tomorrow, so I took the chance and went to the post office anyway - and noted with optimism that there was a ParcelForce van right outside it. And yup, there was my parcel. Remember way back in November when I bought something from Ebay Canada for George for Christmas? It was posted to me on November 13th, and the Canada Post tracking system had it on their website as leaving the country on November 22nd. But it didn’t arrive in December; George was very understanding when I explained to him just before Christmas and said that he’d get it when it got here - but by the end of January, I’d given up hope of ever seeing it. Well, we saw it today. George is now the ecstatic (his choice of words) owner of a pair of Vector Prime and Wing Saber transformers.

(Oh, and can anyone explain to me why in the UK, where we call it “the post”, it’s “Royal Mail”, but in Canada, where they call it “the mail”, it’s “Canada Post”?)

We brought Cassie home too, all shaven underneath and acting subdued. The vet brought her out to the reception area from the back of the surgery and said “She’s just lovely!” Yeah, she is

And now…George and Freddy are at Cubs, Barney is leaving soon for Scouts, and I’ve got a website to work on. It’s a simple website, but the person who wrote it did so using Microsoft Publisher, so the code is 95% rubbish. I volunteered for this - it was a plea for help on Freecycle - but the bloke whose site it is has said he’ll service my oil boiler for nothing in exchange, which I think works rather well all round

It’s been a very long day for Barney and me. I woke up to find that the baby had changed position overnight and that I now look about eight months pregnant, but no time to investigate that - Barney and I had to get out of the house bright and early. We arranged last week that we would go today to visit the school where he’ll be sitting his French GCSE. It’s about 2.5 hours away, so we left the house at 9.20 and after a couple of brief local errands, we were on our way. Barney is fantastically good company on a long drive; we had a wonderful conversation which included (and this is only a partial list): the kinds of careers he’s considering; how he could accomplish the things he thinks about; forensic science; robotics (particularly artificial limbs); what philosophy is about; his disappointment (his word) on hearing about the likely problems of human life on other planets due to differing air pressure, because that means that if there are extra-terrestrials, they won’t be able to land here and we won’t be able to land on their planets; a theory that life on earth is all a huge alien experiment; an alternative ending for the last Harry Potter book (Harry kills Voldemort, then James wakes up and is glad to find it was all a dream and that his son, who is after all only a year old, has not been through all that, then there’s a knock on the door, an evil laugh and a flash of green light…)

We stopped to visit my friend K, who is recovering from an unsuccessful operation on her heart just over a week ago; it’s the school her two oldest children attend that has agreed to let Barney do the exam there. After lunch at her house, we drove to the school and went in to meet with the French teacher and the Exams Officer.

Both were very welcoming and delighted to help. The French teacher spent nearly an hour with us; he looked at the past papers Barney has been doing and is very satisfied with the level of work in those, and repeated what I’ve been telling Barney for the last few weeks about the need to get organised at the beginning, watch the time, make sure he gives the information that’s specifically requested, etc. He spoke in French with Barney too, and again is very satisfied with his French, but says Barney needs to be more forward, more relaxed, and bring a bit of theatre to it. He gave us one extra past paper (the only one he could find in his stash that Barney hadn’t already done) and a couple of textbooks which have practice questions in them, as well as lots of information and hints about the aural exam. Barney also got to meet and chat with their French assistant, who is a French woman who has been in this country for three weeks. We were shown the gym, where he’ll sit the exam, and the seating arrangements for it were explained to us. He also gave us timetables and his email address and told us to contact him if there was anything at all that we needed or had questions about. The Exams Officer presented me with an invoice for the exam: £24, which is exactly what the Examination Board charges. In other words, the school is not asking for any reimbursement for the time the French teacher spent with us today, for the materials they’ve provided, for the time which will be spent on Barney’s aural assessment, or for invigilation.

I think we’ve been amazingly lucky to find them - after emailing and phoning from October to January, I was on the verge of giving up. I haven’t asked about Barney (or the others, when the time comes) sitting other exams there, but I’m hoping that once we’ve been through this one, the school will be willing to cooperate for other subjects too.

We finished at 3.20, which is also school-letting-out time, so we collected K’s sons, C and J, and drove them home. They and Barney then got to spend some time together before we left for the long drive home, during which Barney fell asleep (so it wasn’t nearly as interesting