Human Kitty Play Centre

Emily has become one of Voldermort and Severus' favourite toys, rofl. They love playing with her hair and anything dangly on her clothes. Here's Voldemort a few days ago showing off his growing skills:


While he was busy being a loon, Severus had fallen asleep in Buddha pose being cuddled by Jon, then he snuggled up on one of Daddy's shirts:
I've had to fiddle about turning up the brightness and turning down the contrast in these photos, so if the tones look a little odd, that's why. Only way I can find at the moment of avoiding the black blob syndrome!

The big cats are settling down now. Romeo's very partial to eating the kittens' food. I think he wants to "mother" them actually. He gets right up nose to nose with them as in this not very clear picture: Romeo is also condescending to sit on "his" bed even in company with the babies now. Although they do keep a respectful distance - probably wise given how big he is and how weeny they are!
Juliet hasn't quite plucked up the courage to go nose to nose with the babies yet, but she did come and sit with me and Emily in the dining room (Emily's "work" room) all afternoon yesterday, even though the kits were there too. She even went to sleep on the rug just a couple of feet away from them, so that's a big improvement. Cassie-cat doesn't see much of them as she's busy doing her own thing, but this morning she went nose to nose with Voldy without incident, so I guess she's fine.

We're letting the babies go more or less wherever they want in the house now. In theory. In practice, even though we've got all the doors open, they have yet to go downstairs of their own accord, and when taken downstairs all they want to do is follow me and Emily into the dining room and play there. Bless them, they really do seem to love being around people. They're extremely cuddly and you only have to sit down to have them both climbing up onto you. Emily has made a book about Burmese cats, researched from the net, and she found out that they're sometimes called Velcro Cats because of their desire to be held and to be close to you. Awwww! It does seem that way so far. When they get restless, the two of them come up to us miaowing just wanting to be picked up and cuddled to sleep. Extremely endearing.

The other big news of the last couple of days has been our butterflies. The first one emerged late on Thursday night, although we missed the actual emergence and only spotted it several hours later when it already flying about. Here he or she is:
Two more emerged yesterday and one more this morning, leaving only one to go. We didn't actually see the chrysalis breaking open for any of them, but we did catch this one only just as it had crawled out of the broken chrysalis, with its wings still crumpled up:
It's been really interesting, although I have to say I wasn't expecting the emerging butterflies bit to be quite such a blood bath. It said in the instructions that you *might* notice a few drops of red liquid coming from the butterfly's tail initially - our netting thing has huge red stains all the way up the sides and from one butterfly the meconium was literally running down the side in droplets as you watched. They don't seem to be eating at all, so I think we'll let them go as soon as the last one has come out and his wings have hardened. Although it's cold and rainy outside, not exactly butterfly weather :-(

Meanwhile, we've had the pleasure this week of waving goodbye to Royal Bank of Scotland, after all our hassles with them this last year. They unceremoniously withdrew our overdraft facility a week or two ago, without even giving any notice, which I'm sure must be against every banking code there is. They refused to give a reason why or reconsider the decision. We've now moved banks however, to Alliance & Leicester Commercial Banking who (so far) have fallen over themselves backwards to welcome the account and without a single quibble gave us an overdraft twice the size of the one RBS had had a paddy over. So - sticks out tongue and waggles fingers - goodbye and good riddance Bank of Scotland. You very nearly drove us to despair, you know. It wasn't funny at all. When I think back to how many hundreds of hours of tears and anguish that place caused us, I almost want to spit with fury, quite frankly. Not to mention how many thousands of pounds they stole from us in the end, between their exorbitantly illegal fees and everything else, and the harm they did to our business reputation by bouncing items and then apologising far too little, far too late.

We've also booked Jon into a week long mediumship seminar early in September, so hopefully he'll get some more good experience there. It's not that easy to keep the positive momentum going regarding his spiritual development - there's no much negativity in the atmosphere in this house, and so much spite and belittlment from some quarters, it's sometimes hard to move past that, so I'm hoping this course will be a real boost :-))

On the education front, Emily has been working mostly on history this last few days, finishing up some bits and bobs about Egypt while I've been reading Egyptian tales to her. We're just about all set now to start on Ancient China, which she's really looking forward to. After lots of recommendations on a newsgroup, I bought Suzanne Strauss Art's "Story of Ancient China" - much cheaper to get from the US - and I'm really impressed with it. Every chapter ends with dozens of discussion questions and loads of really interesting and engaging activity ideas too. If Emily gets on well with this one I think I'll invest in the others in the series too.

Oh, and we've both been watching a lot of Teachers TV Channel - for anyone having doubts about home education, I hugely recommend this! Every programme we watch does nothing but reinforce why home education is a hundred times better than anything school can offer. It's really interesting to see how the other half lives, though, and they do have some good ideas for resources etc. What really gets me, though, is the plethora of programmes about school efforts to "involve parents". I know some kids aren't fortunate enough to have parents who give a monkeys about their education - but the way the teachers on this channel prattle on, you'd think they were the only ones on earth who have the faintest idea how to educate a child. It's so patronising and condescending towards parents and families, not to mention towards the kids themselves. Has me shouting at the TV a lot....but it's fun ;-)

One of Emily's home ed friends, slightly older than her, is thinking of going to senior school next September, and will be taking the 11+ next year to see if she can get into the Queen Elizabeth High School in Gainsborough (just about the only even half way decent school within miles, so far as I can tell). Emily did mention at one point that she hasn't ruled out secondary school completely for herself. Eeep. Obviously we'd respect her wishes in letting her attend and see what it was like, when the time comes, should she still feel that way. Long time to go yet. However, you see, I have an ulterior motive with the Teachers TV stuff. I defy any sensible child to watch that channel and then think they actually WANT to be in one of those classrooms ;-)

Nearly 14 Months

That's how long ago Emily made the modroc Tutankhamun mask she finally got round to painting today - we're nothing if not organised! Looking back on the blog I can see she made it on July 2nd 2006 and it's been hanging unpainted on our wall ever since. Recently, someone mistook it for a cast of one of my breasts....um, so we decided it was time it got painted! (For the benefit of anyone wondering...I may be a "large lady" but it's taken from a big balloon and even I'm not *that* large so I wasn't quite sure how to take that case of mistaken identity!!)
We had a lovely afternoon yesterday, as Romy, Hazel and Tansy came to play and to meet the new kittens. Emily and Romy played on the balance beam in the garden and made potions out in the rain, as you do, while I got to indulge in the highly recommended pastime of Tansy-cuddling.

Think we've had a bit of a breakthrough in tiny kits-big cats relations. Having finally pushed me to the brink of despair last night, JuJu then decided to come upstairs and see Severus and Voldemort. She sat and ate very calmly, albeit not in the same room as them, but in sight of them. She wandered around with her tail up, nuzzling and looking serene, then she jumped up on a chair and stayed there for ages, just watching them. When one of the babies came too close she hissed and growled for a bit, but stood her ground and he stood his. Today she's slept on Emily's bed and eaten up here again :-))) Romeo had his little breakthrough the night before when he came up here and started rolling around on the floor under a step the kittens were sitting on. He's not bothered in the least now, and just stalks right up to them, nose to nose, for a bit of a sniff. This evening he came strolling upstairs and the next thing I knew he was in the sitting room eating from the kittens' bowls - think he learnt that from Merlin, as that's exactly what Merlin used to do when Romeo and JuJu were baby kits :-)

Cassie-cat, the elder matriach of the house, has seen this all before. She's not hugely impressed still, but she's dealing with it in her own inimitable style, mainly by ignoring the babies. Now we have a new pair of kits in the house, though, it does underline to us how much we miss Merlin. We have Sev and Voldy in a pair, Romeo and JuJu, but Cassie-cat's lost her brother and it's very noticeable now. We miss you, Merly :-( As it happens, all three of the bigger cats had taken to curling up and sleeping next to Merlin's grave just before the kittens arrived. Maybe he was handing out advice on how to deal with them!

The babies are getting more adventurous now. Today, we left the connecting door downstairs open so they could go downstairs and into the room where the back door is if they wanted to, which meant we had the keep the cat flap locked all day and the big three had to ask to go in and out. Typically, Severus and Voldemort weren't remotely interested in going downstairs. So I opened the cat flap again about half an hour ago and shut the downstairs door. **Now** they want to go down and are being very vocal about it too. Double trouble indeed.

Finding Their Paws

It's Kitty Day 4 - well, three and a half, really, since we didn't get home with them until late on Friday. Severus and Voldemort are settling in really well and they've finally found their purrs - really loud ones, too. Their miaows are very loud too, especially considering the tiny bundle of fur the noises of coming from! They're part Burmese so the breed is very vocal in any case - looks like Romeo, the talkative one of the household, will have some competition.It's hard to get photos of them, though. Being all black, we have the same problem we have taking pictures of Cassie-cat - most of the time they just look like black blobs! Took some with the flash on and that's even worse, they look like freaky alien skinny kits, the way the flash reflects off their fur!! This is Severus on Saturday morning sat in my hand:
..and Voldemort having an early morning cuddle from Emily.
And a very, very, very cross Juliet on one of her extremely rare upstairs visits.
Think I may have spoken too soon when I said the three big cats would settle down in a few day's time. Cassie-cat's not that fussed, so she's OK - but the other two, well. Neither of them will come upstairs unless physically taken upstairs now. Romeo runs straight back down again as soon as he sees a kit-bit. JuJu is surprisingly aggressive towards them - hissing, spitting, arching back, fluffing up tail, the full works. And of course then the babies hiss and spit back at her, which doesn't help. She's even attacked me, Jon and Emily when she thinks we're going to take her upstairs :-(( I've been quite upset about that today, but we WILL get there in the end, we'll have to. Since we live mostly upstairs (grandparents downstairs) it's distressing if the big cats decide not to come up here any more. We shall see.

Anyway. The kittens' personalities are starting to emerge. Voldemort is, not to put too fine a point on it, a nutcase. Very brave and bold but very nuzzly and affectionate too. Severus is quieter and lets Voldy be the boss, but Severus was the first to snuggle up and purr and he also nibbles your fingers a lot.

Have made an appointment with the vet for their first vaccinations next week. She didn't understand the names, lol. Mind you, when Jackie asked Emily what she was going to call the kittens, she wasn't too keen on Voldemort either. Reminds me of when I was pregnant with Emily. If she'd been a boy, we wanted to call her Damien - but so many people were horrified by that and the name's associations with The Omen. It's a bit daft, really - a name's what you make it, and in this household, thanks to hundreds if not thousands of hours of delightful play and make believe, Voldemort is a very much loved name (and character). He's not real, folks. It's not like naming your cat after a serial killer in the hope he'll turn out to be a mass murderer. *Shrugs* Anyway, we like it :-)) Good job Severus turned out to be "a goodie" in the end, otherwise I expect we'd have raised eyebrows about that one too.

We did attempt some education today, but got rather sidetracked since I had to go out and fetch Grandad's latest prescription from the doctors. Turns out they missed something off it, which couldn't possibly wait a few days until I have to go back again (oh yes, it could have done) so Jon had to go straight back out all the way back there to fetch the other item. By the time we'd dealt with all that and the laptop downstairs had had a hissy fit and so had the downstairs printer, I was in a foul mood and it was nearly three o clock. So bye bye education.

We *were* going to look at the life and work of Giotto, and Emily was going to do some egg tempera painting with ground up coloured chalk, but we got stuck on the printing off some of his paintings, I say, which were going to go in her notebook. I'm sure we'll get round to it one day when her education is allowed to be our top priority. Rolls eyes again, and shuts up.

Welcome Home Kitties!

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our the two newest members of our family: Voldemort is on the left as you look at the pictures, and Severus is on the right. In between is a rather over the moon Emily :-))

The kittens are a lot smaller than I remember from last time I saw them at Jackie's. Tiny, in fact, even though they're eight weeks old now, which is two weeks older than Romeo and Juliet when we got them. They're quite confident and very playful. They're also very hard to tell apart, so in this next picture I'm really not sure who's who!! This one is a bit clearer, it's Voldemort on the left as you look at it and Severus on the right. The only way we can distinguish them at the moment is that Voldy (!!) has more white flecks on his legs than Severus does.
New tenants of the leopard pattern kitty igloo Emily and I bought last week.
And alseep in it, at last - although they only stayed alseep for about ten minutes.
We haven't introduced Cassie-cat to them yet, but we have introduced Juliet and Romeo. Neither were very impressed, and there was quite a bit of hissing and spitting from Ju-Ju in particular, although she did condescend to spend five minutes sitting at the back of the settee glaring at them:

Romeo went and hid at the side of the TV (don't look at the dust if you're of a nervous disposition) but he did come out once they'd gone to sleep and went for a nuzzle with us in his favourite spot on our bed. They'll be alright in a few days time, I should think.

Oooh, and - breaking news - Voldemort's just done a poo (in the right place)!!

Kitten Day Minus One :-)

Picking up the new kittens tomorrow. Eeeep. I'm a bit worried about how the three existing cats are going to take to this, given how badly Cassie-Cat in particular took to Romeo and Juliet when they arrived. It took absolutely AGES for her to settle down with them, so perhaps she's passed that onto them now that it's their turn, and hers again, to greet new arrivals!

Our caterpillars finally became chrysalides - three of them days ago, then the fourth the day before yesterday and finally "slowcoach" made his move, so we now have five chrysalides which we've moved from the "pot" to the rather more upmarket residence of the mesh thingamijig.

Education has been haphazard again all week, but we did squeeze in some maths yesterday, with Emily eventually getting to grips with word problems along the lines of "Voldy spent 84.20 sickles on an elder wand and a holly wand. The elder wand was 9.50 sickles more expensive than the holly wand. How much did each wand cost?" which I guess covers a bit of logic and some basic algebraic thinking in terms of understanding that you can't just do 84.20 - 9.50, and why that doesn't work, and how to actually do it. Emily also finished up her work on Ancient Africa, so we're nearly ready to move onto the much anticipated Ancient China section of History Odyssey.

Took Grandad to the doctor on Tuesday morning. Oh yes, the saga continues. Hull cardiology unit hadn't been in touch with his GP at all. The GP states that his kidney function is better than it has been for ages, and that he can't understand why the angioplasty didn't take place. He also states that in any case there isn't a drug he can give to improve the kidney function, and that it needs someone to go through Grandad's 418 existing tablets step by step either varying the dosage or finding alternatives. He also states, very firmly and categorically, that this isn't the GP's job and that it needs to be one under a specialist consultant's supervision. I can quite see his point. Needless to say, my father in law can't and is not remotely happy. As far as I can see, the reason the hospital haven't been in touch is because *they* aren't expecting the GP to do anything, they're dealing with it themselves and he's just got to wait to hear form them as to how they're going to proceed. He wasn't asked/told to see his GP, he just decided he wanted to. Anyway, GP dictated a strongly worded letter to the hospital asking for clarification of what's going on, and stating that the patient is anxious, which is probably doctor's code for something entirely less tactful.

Anyway, Grandad insisted he wanted another blood test done even though the GP said it wasn't needed. He got his way, and we went back first thing yesterday morning for a blood test. The nurse told him that he should make an appointment to see the doctor immediately the results come through, which would be tomorrow. So, good girl that I am, as soon as we got home and I'd checked the calendar, I rang to make an appointment with the doctor for Monday. Hurry down to tell Grandad, to put his mind at rest that it's been dealt with. Wrong. Turns out Grandad doesn't want to see that doctor, having figured out that he's not saying what Grandad wants to hear. He wants to wait and see a different doctor when that doctor gets back from holiday.

It would appear that there's very little I can do right these days.

So, I've cancelled the appointment I made and will have to try and get one with his doctor of choice ASAP. Honestly, I could scream. If I hadn't immediately made an appointment, he would have been chasing up to ask why it hadn't been made yet. Hello wit's end.

I shall refrain from writing anything else on this subject for the moment, since it really winds me up so much and I'm sure I come across as as not very nice person to boot. Actually, I am a very nice person who cares a great deal, as does my husband. We're just rather battle weary.

Emily went out to a friend's birthday party today and apparently spent most of the day in their huge pool. I'm sure that child would live in a paddling pool, given half a chance. I shall now go and attempt to tidy up the sitting room. I'm not sure why on earth I'm tidying up for the sake of two bundles of fluff who will no doubt have wrecked the place within minutes of arrival, but somehow it seems appropriate! Expect kittie pics over the weekend :-))

Lovely Lammas

When I got back from the Hull hospital on Friday with Grandad, Emily had made me a beautiful Lucius/Draco/Severus card to cheer me up, together with a rather splendid and fully usable version of Lucius Malfoy's cane :-)) Bless her heart, I was rather chuffed with these!
Today we finally got round to celebrating Lammas. Emily baked some rather scrummy cheese rolls to honour the first harvest:
This afternoon, we spent a while in the garden making patterns with a huge variety of seeds, for tree decorations:
We also lit a little fire in Emily's cauldron; she wrote down her fears and worries on slips of paper and dropped them into the fire to burn away. We'll bury the ashes in the garden so that symbolically, new confidence can grow from the ashes of old fears. Or something like that ;-) Worked last year anyway, according to Emily!


Finally it was back inside to decorate our festival tree, this time round with the seed designs and some ears of wheat and barley.

I'm very pleased we've managed to establish a tradition of celebrating the pagan festivals. Well, it's early days yet - started with midsummer last year, and we've had the festival tree since Imbolc this year - but Emily really looks forward to each festival and the decorating and the activities and the stories and the lore. Since we're not religious in any other sense of the word, it also provides some much needed structure to the year, and forces us to take a break approximately every six weeks or so and reflect on what's going on in the seasons and the natural world.

We were accompanied all afternoon in the garden by this lovely dragonfly, which rarely moved from its spot at the tip of a bamboo cane. I'm not sure what type it was, since we've temporarily lost our insect book and it's not like any of the ones on this dragonfly identification page (although granted we're nowhere near Milton Keynes!) but anyway, it was interesting :-)

Tomorrow I'm off to the doctors with Grandad, just for a change, then Emily and I will go out for some retail therapy in the shape of choosing a cosy kitten basket and new scratching tree thingy for the two new arrivals, who we'll be picking up from Jackie's on Friday. I'm not at all convinced that Romeo, Juliet and Cassie-Cat are going to be very impressed!

Just Drifting

Emily's been drifting around in her pool most of yesterday and today, deep in thought about who knows what. I think she's got a lot on her mind at the moment. She's happy enough but very....thoughtful. We've missed out on a lot of time together recently and I don't think she's taken her semi-abandonment very well!! There've been more than a few cross words in all directions as she's obviously frustrated at our time being taken up elsewhere, and we're feeling guilty about that but also hassled and harrassed to the extreme trying to take care of stuff. Patience is wearing thin in all departments, sad to say :-( Hopefully things will improve soon if we can get back into a routine after an awful week.


Jon's father has now announced that he wants it fixed up for him to be admitted to hospital to sort out his diabetes readings. He "wants something done about it" but seems oblivious to the fact that his diabetes control is in his own hands. After living with diabetes for god knows how long now, you'd think he'd have a handle on it, but it seems not. When he was in hospital for most of May, his blood sugar readings were practically perfect apart from ocassionally being too low at night. That's because they clearly knew what they were doing in there, and fed him properly and controlled his insulin properly. But he did nothing but complain about the way they handled it. He comes out of hospital, his control goes back to being crap again (readings of 22 at night and 14 in the morning, for instance). The diabetic specialist sat with us for 40 minutes last week trying to explain to him what he needs to do. But he's now dismissed all that, and claims that he needs to go back to hospital in order to have it sorted out. The hospital and the sorting out that he complained about so bitterly previously, presumably. So now it's up to me to sort out a hospital admission, with all the crap that entails.

I'm getting to my wits end about this, to be honest. He won't listen, he won't be told. Anyone, specialist or not, who says anything that doesn't match what he wants to hear, is dismissed as not knowing what they're talking about. He automatically dismisses anything and everything Jon says to him, to the point that Jon's given up even trying to reason with him. He's more polite to me to my face, but still ignores my advice. He lies to the medical professionals about how much he eats and how much exercise he does - claims he eats practically nothing, when in reality he eats huge portions and often adds ice cream, biscuits etc. Without the truth and without any effort on his part to co-operate, I'm at a loss to see how they're supposed to help him, or indeed how we are.

It's good here.

Hospital Week

With three hospital appointments for Jon's Dad in the last week, we always knew it was going to be stressful. It was.

We've done next to no home ed work and next to no business work and poor Emily's been largely left to fend for herself. Let's call it her feral child week. Raises eyebrows. We didn't even get time to celebrate Litha on the 1st August, which is a little upsetting, but we'll try to fit something in next week, albeit very late.

First appointment this week was for a heart scan, which has to be the fastest appointment in the history of the world ever, in that we were in and out before the half hour free parking elapsed. Needless to say, the rest of the week made up for this little oasis of joy. The following appointment was for the diabetic clinic, yet again, where we spent a solid three hours waiting for the appointment and a further 40 minutes in with the actual doctor. He was a lovely man and tried his best to sort Grandad out, but Grandad, needless to say, doesn't want to do what he was told to do. So that was a productive use of everyone's time.

Then yesterday I got up at 4.30 am to get Grandad up at 4.45 am to leave the house at 6am for an 8am admission in Hull Castle Hospital for angioplasty. No, we're not that far from Hull, but he wanted to go at that time. We were there by 7am. We then spent the next three hours sat in their waiting room because they didn't have a bed. Finally he got a bed at just gone 10 and I came home again. I'd been home for a whole half hour when the phone rang. Grandad needed picking up again immediately, because his blood test from that morning had shown a kidney problem, so he wasn't going to have the angioplasty after all. By the time that was all sorted out, well bye bye Friday. Grandad is, understandably enough, very peed off, and so are we, probably for entirely different reasons.

I'm at a loss to explain how come the diabetic clinic hadn't picked up this kidney problem from the blood tests they perused earlier in the week. That is kind of their job, after all. I'm also at a loss to explain how it was only a month or two again that we were back and forwards to the kidney clinic at the hospital, who pronounced everything absolutely fine. Whatever. Anyway, Grandad has to go to the GP again next week to get tablets for his kidneys (nobody seems to be telling us exactly what the problem is, so that will be fun) and then he'll get another appointment in a few weeks' time to repeat the Hull hospital saga.

The one bright point of the week was that we did get to see our Polish friends who came over on Thursday afternoon; Emily was very happy to see Kate again. Oh, and our caterpillars arrived from Insect Lore too, and are now huge. Four separate deadlines on Monday mean this weekend is yet another round of manic typing on my part, which hasn't improved my mood one jot. Jon put Emily's paddling pool up today and she's spent nearly all day in it, although punctuated with rather too many hysterical screams when a bee or wasp ventured near. Thought she'd grown out of that. Apparently not, although I can't help thinking that the lack of attention she's had from us recently, due to circumstances, isn't helping. So add that to my list of woes/grievances/complaints/moans/irritations.

Next week Emily has an all day birthday party to go to at her friend Kayleigh's house, and on Friday we'll be picking up our new kittens, so I'm fervently hoping for a better week than this one. Just call me Mrs Fed Up from Lincolnshire. ---grump---

Deathly Hallows - Sob

We've only got five chapters left now. Yes, I know, we're quite possibly the last people on the planet who are interested but yet to finish the book. Just in case anyone else interested has been even slower than us, though, I won't mention names. Emily was devestated by the death at the end of the Elder Wand chapter :-// It's quite odd, really - there've been deaths aplenty so far, and although I've cried at several of them, reading it aloud, she's been more astonished and fascinated than actually upset, but this one - I think she's spent so long bound up in the fate of this character, I guess she was really holding out for this being one death that JK Rowling wouldn't go for. What with her being so tearful about that death and then the helpful appearance of a spider on her duvet, we had an "interesting" night.

On a brighter note, our Polish friends are finally back in the UK, several months later than anticipated, so they're coming to see us next week. Emily's very excited about seeing Kate again. And who knows, with a forecast of sunny weather here next week, the long awaited paddling pool may finally get to put in an appearance. Which will hopefully distract a certain someone from the much put off finality of having, by then, finished the last Harry Potter novel ever. If only she'd discovered Harry Potter several years earlier than she did!

A Sciency Week

This week we have mostly been wearin' .....thoughtful, scientific looks. We had a couple of weeks without much science but Emily's been itching to get back to the RS4K Chemistry, Biology and Physics, so that's what we've concentrated on this week. Excuse long list of we've done this, we've done that, but since we have actually achieved some education this week, I want to make a note of it!

Biology was first, looking at how exactly plants grow, phototropism, gravitropism and plant life cycles. We've got an experiment underway with pinto beans in the light and in the dark, attached to blotting pape in jars, at various different angles, to see what happens when the roots and shoots emerge in different directions. Not much seems to be happening there, however. I don't think they're getting enough water via the blotting paper to sprout. May have to have a re-think on that one.

In chemistry, we were studying homogeneous mixtures vs heterogeneous mixtures, plus looking at how soaps and detergents work, colloids etc. Huge experiement mixing all kinds of stuff to see whether and how it mixed or not, plu finding out what happens when you add washing up liquid to an oil layer on top of a water layer.

Physics was hugely fun too; we studied the energy of atoms and molecules, including stored chemical energy in food, stored chemical energy in batteries and nuclear energy. Fabulous experiment making battery cells from 2p pieces, silver foil and salt water soaked paper towels. Emily absoultely loved, loved, loved that. We got up to 2.5v from five cells, but then it started to go a bit haywire, being so sensitive to movement of the wires, short circuits if the paper towel pieces touched, etc. We both learnt a lot from that, though, including working out why, if a 1.5v AA battery would light a small bulb, our 2.5v battery penny cells wouldn't, i.e. the difference between voltage and current. My Dad's cut us some proper copper and aluminium strips so next time we have a chance we're going to do a big battery fruit experiment for more fun and games.

In history we've finally moved on from ancient Egypt second time round, and we're onto ancient Africa now. Very interesting. Emily's been finding out about ancient African religion and myths, as well as mapping the area, comparing the similarities between ancient Kush (Nubia/Sudan) and ancient Egypt, and charting the rise of Christianity and Islam throughout the continent.

In maths we've started on So You Really Want To Learn Maths? which I absolutely love, and which Emily likes so far too (although that my be because we've only got as far as the roman numerals work in the first chapter, which she's always liked anyway, lol). We've also done tons more long division and decimals. English has been lots of spelling, and some great creative writing sessions where one of us comes up with a title (eg "The Graveyard") and then we both have a stopwatch timed five minutes to plan a piece of writing, ten minutes to write it and a further five minutes to proofread/edit/correct it. I write alongside Emily and then we share what we've written. We both really enjoy that, and Emily has produced some lovely work there.

Today Jackie and her girls came round for the day; Jackie carried on teaching them German, getting into some pretty complicated grammar. Then I helped the girls each make an "elements" themed cushion; Emily did earth, Mei Lin did fire and Jasmine did air - they made a lovely abastract job of these having brainstormed first to list colours, shapes and themes that they associated with each element. Lots of handstitching and sewing machine use, and was much enjoyed by all. Two weeks today until we pick up the new kittens on our next visit to Jackie's!

Oh, and I forgot to mention, we got a letter from Lincs Council when were on holiday, in response to the 13 page home ed report I sent them. They deigned to pronouce our educational provision "satisfactory" (hmmmrrrrppphh) although to be fair they were very complimentary about what we're doing in the body of the "report". Caused a few chuckles at this end that they phrased the letter as "following your meeting with Mr so and so, we hope you find this report an accurate reflection of your meeting, blah blah, meeting, blah blah". What meeting???!

Some More Piccies

Found the memory card, so here are a few more pictures from Jon and Emily's huge ramble around the bottom of Tomlin Head at St Bees. The first is the view of the shipwreck; apparently there's the keel and the boilers of the ship left. The tide wasn't particularly low that day, so you can't see anything all that exciting, but the point is you can't see it from the beach anyway, you have to go round the base of the rocks. Apparently it's known for its conger eels under water.

There were some very strange rock formations, presumably to do with the effect the tide has on the soft sandstone:

Lots of very old carved graffiti in copperplate lettering, lol. And two eerie faces carved into the rocks too.
It was an adventurer's paradise, with lots and lots of starfish and huge crabs to be oohed and aahed over too!

I've only just discovered, researching the jelly fish finds, that St Bees head is apparently well known for sightings of dolphins and harbour porpoises too - definitely something to keep an eye out for next time we go.

***Harry Potter Alert - No Spoilers!***
Emily woke up very early on Saturday wanting to know if our copy of Deathly Hallows had arrived yet. I was sure it wasn't going to arrive until at least lunchtime, but it came really early in the end :-)) We read the first five chapters yesterday and another two today - taking it very slowly, deliberately. The grief is coming thick and fast - think we must be up to about four deaths already. JK Rowling wasn't kidding then when she said it was going to be a bloodbath, lol! I've already been sobbing several times whilst trying to read to Emily :-// She's going to read it herself after we're done, but we like to have the first read together.

I confess to having looked ahead in the book; couldn't help it. I'd already read the first chapter and the epilogue from the "spoiler" version, the one where someone took photos of every page, but of course I wasn't sure until the book arrived whether what I'd read was fake or real. I've now peeked ahead at some of the most significant parts and I'm enthralled. Not quite sure how the reading aloud's going to go, mind you, given my level of sobs already - looks like it gets *a lot* more emotional!

In other news, I forgot to say in the last post that my Mum's had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome on one of her hands - the other one is due to be done as soon as that's healed. She's all bandaged up but managing very well and is doing the physiotherapy movements to strengthen her hand. Meanwhile, Grandad's angioplasty hospital appointment has finally come through for the 3rd August, so he's happy. He has hospital appointments on the 31st July and the 1st August too, so that's going to be a busy week!

We've identified the culprit who gave Romeo his two nasty wounds - the huge tabby cat who visits our garden and who we used to laughingly call Ju-Ju's boyfriend, because he was at first *very* friendly to her, and she to him. Romeo and he had a huge fight this morning though, before Jon broke it up - looks like things have turned aggressive between the two of them. I don't know why it's happened now, since they had co-existed peacefully enough before. Anyway, this morning, Romeo ended up cowering and with a claw sheath embedded in his shoulder fur, poor thing. Think we'll have to remove the name "Ju-Ju's" boyfriend and start calling the other tabby "neighbourhood thug" instead! He never goes for Cassie Cat or Juliet however, although Ju-Ju is now terrified of him and runs indoors like lightning whenever he appears anyway, so that may be due to lack of opportunity rather than any good grace. I guess it's possible that Romeo is just as aggressive towards him on his territory, and we just don't see that, but at the moment our poor Romeo is very much a wounded warrior :-( trying to be the man in the house. At least the two new kittens will both be males, so in due course he'll have some support!

Back from Holiday to Harry Potter Mania

Well, it's two o clock in the morning of the 21st July. I've just been watching sky news reports about the midnight release of Deathly Hallows, and judging from the comments on mugglenet, the spoilers I saw were the real thing :-(( I know, a) my own stupid fault for looking and b) I'm far too old to be this caught up in a children's book! I'm just glad that Emily didn't see them. I can preserve the magic for her for a goodly while yet ;-) We've had a Harry Potter day all day today, and we've played endless pretends acting out parts of the plot we thought were to come. Eagerly awaiting our amazon copy tomorrow/today then. If it's not here by noon we'll be off to Asda to buy one there.

Anyway. We got back from holiday late on Monday and we had the most fantastic ten days away. The best holiday yet. Utterly relaxed, full on family time, just the three of us, it was beautiful. We spent most of the time playing on St Bees Beach, playing in the caravan (how did Emily get so good at scrabble and skip-bo??) and just enjoying being together in peace for once. We did enjoy a trip back to Trotters World of Animals, only slightly spoilt by the various school trips full of noisy, rude, disinterested children. On the same day we also visited the stunning and magical Castlerigg Stone Circle, again only slightly spoilt by people allowing their children to run around screaming, shouting and climbing all over this beautiful and special ancient site :-((


Emily was utterly bewildered and quite distressed by the behaviour going on - all she wanted to do was to touch the stones gently, to feel for the ancient carvings and to try to sense the energy and find out about the history. No screaming, running, climbing or yelling required, thanks. Why do people take kids to an ancient site and then let them behave as if it's the local council adventure playground? Surely it's instinctive in a place like this that you treat it with respect? OK, toddlers and very young kids don't understand, but that's the parents job to keep them in check. Children of Emily's age and over should certainly understand without needing to be told. You feel it, you sense it, common decency and an inbuilt awe tells you as much. Give it a few more years and they'll close it off like they had to with Stonehenge. Will everyone be satisfied then?

We spent long happy hours rescuing little silver fish that were beaching themselves in the rivlets running out of rockpools, examining washed up jelly fish (compass and large lion's mane jellyfish in these pictures, I think) and saving the ones we could

finding crabs, sea anenomes and starfish and collecting enough beautiful shells to cover a flowerbed outside the caravan - a half hour's walk on the sandstone shelves in the first picture produced an entire tub full in the second picture, for instance.
Emily and Jon explored the rocks at the base of Tomlin head as far round as they could possibly go at low tide, looking at the carved out names on the rocks dating from the 1800s and taking pictures of what remains of the wreck of the SS Izaro, which ran aground off St Bees in 1907 (bottom of page on the link). I have some lovely photos they took on the rocks, but they're on the second (and at this very moment, missing, memory card, so will post later).

We also went for a picnic on the shores of Lake Ennerdale


and visited the very impressive little cinema in Workington to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on its release day. Loved the film, although I was a little disappointed with the lack of emotional intensity when it came to Sirius' death and Harry's reaction to it. What was a harrowing part of the book seemed to be very glossed over in the flim, but otherwise, it was certainly a good watch, and prompted hours of discussion about the parts they left out of the film and why.

In all, though, we didn't need to go further than the two minutes from the caravan straight down onto the beach, in all weathers (not that it rained too much, actually). Even at high tide (and at high tide in St Bees, you've barely a little bit of shingle left to walk on) Emily still had huge fun sitting on "Potions Rock" crushing up bits of sandstone and quartz to make potions.
A little selection of other pictures, including Emily at the old St Bees tidal swimming pool in the rocks, built in the 1930s but abandoned in the 2nd world war, just as the tide's about to start filling it up again:
and yet more of the beautiful beach with its miles and miles of sand, rockpools, streams and oooh, just about everything you could want from a British beach.



We'll be going back in October and we can't wait; I think this was the first time we'd actually been away together as a family for longer than five or six days. May and June were rather stressful months, so it was such a welcome break :-)))

Jon attended his level one Reiki course the day before we went away, and came home buzzing, so I was treated to reiki while we were away, which went down rather well :-)) Jon and Emily also practised tarot readings galore, with pretty accurate results, picking up on stuff I was thinking which nobody else knew I was thinking ;-)

Came home on Monday to find Romeo with two very deep cuts on his flank, though :-(( Weird marks, like a large oval and a smaller circle, close to each other but not touching, with the skin kind of gouged away quite deeply. He'd been fine earlier that day for my Mum and Dad, so he must have done it just hours before we got home. He wasn't a very happy chappy, bless his heart. We took him to the vet, who reckons it must have been either a very large cat or a larger animal. He's fine now, it seems to be healing well, and the vet fell in love with him, lol, as this particular one hadn't met him before.

And despite my words to the contrary....we'll shortly be welcoming two new kit kats to the household. Two of Jackie's black Burmese kittens are looking for homes. As if we could resist. I know Emily has some very Harry Potterish names in mind for them!

Off On Holiday

We're off on Saturday, rain or no rain. Now, I love the rain. I'm all for it. I never thought I'd hear myself say this though - I'd really appreciate it if it would STOP raining, just for a week or two! I was just looking back at my blog from a year ago - back then I was lamenting about Merlin going missing for 24 hours, bless his heart, and about it being way, way TOO HOT. Paddling pool pictures all over the show, throughout June too. Haven't been able to put the pool up yet this year, much to Emily's utter disgust. And now, according to the long range weather forecast, we're set for a week of rain in St Bees too. Oh well. I'm sure we'll have a lovely time just the same, but a little bit of sunshine would have helped!

We've had a fab week home-ed wise again. Emily's getting through a ton of stuff and she's really enthusiastic about it too, which is lovely to see. In amidst the English, maths, history, geography and science we've also done dozens of Harry Potter pretends, discussed every Harry Potter theory in the universe several times over, written secret prediction lists for the last Harry Potter book (anyone spotted a theme here yet?), played hours on the new Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix PC game, and been re-reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, having previously re-read all the others.

Today we rushed back from yoga to watch the live broadcast from the Order of the Phoenix London premiere although we only caught the last ten minutes of it. No more yoga now until September - time's racing by. When we get back from holiday Emily and I will be straight out to see the new film (wanting to get in quick before the schools break up, lol), and then it's only a few days until the release of Deathly Hallows. I suspect "reading" will be rather high up Emily's to-do list for a few days after that ;-)

On Friday our friends came round for the day; Emily, Mei-Lin and Jasmine had fun working on role plays about Lord Shaftesbury interviewing Victorian child workers, as well as doing some more maths, some German and lots of science experiments about density, plus a huge play. We were going to stitch some cushions on the theme of "the elements" but we ran out of time - next time. Emily and I are heading to theirs later this week before Jon attends his reiki course on Friday and then we'll hit the road for the long and not particularly fun drive up to Cumbria. Hey ho. It'll be worth it when we get there, even if it does chuck it down all week. I think we've already seen far more of that beach in rain-soaked weather than we ever have in sunshine. And caravans are rather nice places to be when the elements are unleashing their fury outside. Cosy :-))