Thank goodness I'm going back to work tomorrow.

Having just had one week off with Flu that drained every last iota of energy from me, and then Monday and Tuesday of Half Term off with Alex, as the Holiday Club refused to take him because he can't be trusted on trips out, I am really, really ready to go back to work.

Today I spent 2.5 hours at Kidz Planet in Cheriton which is a massive indoor soft play area on several levels. Alex ran around it with a friend he met there and I sat drinking coffee and tea and knitting the welt on the front of the Aran Jumper I'm making for my brother. And yet it's 6.40pm, Alex is still full of energy and I feel like he's been using my energy, not his !!! That would explain a lot of things come to think of it.

Now Daddy has him for the remaining three days and Amber will be back from her trip to my sister in Bristol with her Grandma, tomorrow evening - which means that he gets an extra babysitter which is not fair - I had to do it all on my own :)

One thing I was struck by at Kidz Planet - the huge number of pregnant women - boy are we in for a baby boom.

Where has the time gone?

I've suddenly realised how close it is to Christmas and I'm only on the first of the many knits I had planned for it.

Having had a nasty dose of Flu, which I'm just beginning to recover from, has put a spanner in the works somewhat although I have been able to devote a wee bit more time to knitting. No effort needed - housework is very tiring don't you know?

Looking out of my window I'm suddenly struck by how lucky I am to be living where I do. It's raining hard and the garden's a mess but beyond that I can see the lovely colours of Autumn painted onto the landscape by the many different trees. Some still defiantly green others shyly yellowing and the big bold here I am red and orange. There's a tree so full of red berries that the branches are drooping under the weight of them. And even the couple of trees that died last year still have their place in the picture I can see - standing out in stark contrast to the leafiness of the living trees.

Here, so close to the Romney Marshes, there are also so many birds. I have had at least two broods of sparrows in my nesting box next to the bedroom window this year. We've been woken so many times during the summer by the cheeping of hungry babies.

We often get a blackbird couple checking out the garden. I've seen Thrushes and Robins, Sparrows in abundance, and Great Tits bobbing around on the remains of the Sunflowers. We've had the ubiquitous Magpies with their raucous calls, unfortunately trying to get the Sparrow babies out of the box, but luckily the neighbour saw them and scared them off. We get frequent visits from collared doves who decimate the brassicas and sit on the fence in the pouring rain looking like feather dusters. They're not the brightest birds to be honest but I love watching them hopscotching in the garden. Next door has white doves and although they look so very graceful in reality they're as thick as two short planks and fly like the aforementioned planks as well.

Now I'm supposed to be doing something, but it's completely slipped my mind now. Oh well if it's important it will occur to me again sometime, probably when it's too late.

First week over .............

I don't know what I was worrying about - as you pointed out to me - he was fine at school - loved it - behaved impeccably - thank goodness.

Next week he's on afternoons and after school club and then he goes full time.

My clever 15 year old did her English GCSE a year early and got a B for Language and an A for Literature. It's given her self-confidence and enormous boost. I want to buy her something as a little prize for doing so well but can't think what to get her. The only thing that springs to mind at the moment is some kind of charm bracelet, then everytime she passes an exam I can get her another charm. The in thing at the moment is those Pandora bracelets - might get her one of those.

I'm having a moral crisis at the moment.

My lovely son, Alex, starts school tomorrow for the first time. Not that he's not used to being with other children all day as we both work full time, so he has been going to nursery five days a week. So why do I feel like I'm failing him?

We've arranged for him to attend the breakfast club at the school, a really good one with a wonderful person in charge. Then I'll be picking him up at lunchtime and taking him back to his old nursery for the afternoon. For the first two weeks he is only doing half days at school.

For the second week he'll be at nursery in the morning and school plus after school club (with the same nice person) in the afternoon.

He's already had a taster session at the school and knows his teacher's name and can't wait for Monday so that he can go.

Recently he's been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome which explains a lot of his behavioural issues. Maybe, that's why I'm feeling so guilty !!! I'm actually having bad dreams now about leaving him somewhere, going back for him and not being able to find him. How bad is that?

Still I suppose once he's got his first two weeks out of the way we will be able to settle into a routine. There's nothing wrong with his intelligence, in fact he is extremely intelligent and I think he will thrive at school. It's his behaviour that can be an issue as his Asperger's means that he doesn't interact well socially. He has loads of friends and knows everybody, but all games and interaction have to be on his terms. So I can see some conflicts coming up at school !!! Luckily the school are aware of his problems so I'm hoping they will have some strategies in place for dealing with it.

Oh God, I'm waffling on here. Can you tell I'm nervous? Alex isn't, bless him. He thinks it is all a wonderful adventure - maybe I'd better go with that.

I think I need a new knitting challenge - to add to the several I already have - to distract me. I've signed up for Debbie Abrahams mystery blanket club which she will be signing on for in October and starts in January 2010.

Wish me luck.

Isn't it amazing what relaxes you?

I've just spent a couple of happy hours - interspersed with getting tea for the children - removing sequins from one of my tops. You'd think it would be boring, but I parked myself in a comfy seat with a nice breeze coming in through the window behind me and patiently picked away.

The top is a really pretty black and white floral print, and it wasn't until I received it that I realised that some of the flowers had been surrounded by small black sequins and beads. It was remarkably uncomfortable to wear. Why don't designers think of practical things when they're coming up with these ideas?

Everytime I rested my arm against my side, the sequins scratched and dug into me. The simplest of tasks was impossible to do without an accompaniment of scratching and itching. Honestly, I sometimes think these people must live in LaLa land.

Anyway I think it's time for Alex to have a shower and go to bed.

Ta Ta

Day 5 - last day of holiday from home and ....

Drusillas Animal Park in Sussex - sort of inbetween Eastbourne and Brighton.

We ummed and arred about driving this far, but it was so worth it. We even managed to get there fairly uneventfully for us. Didn't get lost or break down.

Drusillas is perfect if your children are under 12 I think. Huge amounts of things for them and adults to explore and interact with. The zoo is very cleverly laid out so that visitors are channeled through the exhibits towards the play areas and cafes at the end.

Animal Spotting books were handed out, and the idea was as you saw each animal you found the corresponding stamping station and stamped your book with a big red tick. The last thing in the book was Thomas the Tank Engine and you got a sticker for that once you'd had a ride. And that's what I forgot to mention as probably the main attraction of the zoo for its younger visitors - a passenger sized Thomas the Tank Engine along with Annie and Clarabelle his carriages (plus one more carriage) Much to Alex's delight the Fat Controller was there to personally oversee the loading and unloading of passengers.

The animals at the zoo are mainly small mammals, farm animals and birds. From cows, goats and pigs to marmosets of all shapes and sizes, lemurs, meerkats, flamingos, owls, Penguins, a Serval and so on. I've already managed to forget the names of most of the animals there but they were all cute. And Llamas - don't forget the Llamas.

Probably my favourite animal though, was the tiny baby Meerkat tottering along looking as though if he slowed down his oversized head would topple him over. For such a tiny animal though, he had a fair turn of speed although I'm not convinced he was in full control of his legs. I think he just aimed himself at where he hoped to end up at.

One of the Meerkats had us in stitches as he'd obviously decided that the top of the infra-red lamp was the best and most comfortable place to be.


I've got a fair few, actually 148, photos of today but not a lot of the animal ones are all that good as I was shooting through glass most of the time and the reflections tend to blur the shots. I did manage to get a reasonable shot of the Fennec Fox with his huge ears - spot the difference. Now one of these cute Foxes is in actual fact Alex in disguise and the other one is the real Fennec Fox. Have you spotted which is which yet? There were loads of these photo sets around the zoo and I think they made for a much more special experience for the young visitors.

The zoo did have several shops dotted around, and I managed to restrict my spending to a Drusillas Park cuddly Penguin for Amber and Alex's name made up of alphabet cards with various Thomas the Tank Engine characters on for Alex. Unfortunately the one thing that blew that completely out of the water was the dedicated Thomas shop at the end !!!!! Needless to say the old plastic had to come out for that one.

We left the park round about 3.30pm and headed off to look for the Long Man as I'd seen a brown sign pointing to him not far from the zoo on the way in.


After grabbing the above photo of him, we decided to explore the lane we were in and quite by accident came upon some lovely tea gardens offering cream teas. Well we couldn't very well ignore that could we? So at 4pm we had tea in a Victorian garden - with the wasps.

There was a little gift shop at the tea gardens, and I bought myself an old fashioned wasp trap - we get loads of the little buggers in our kitchen. It's basically a glass rounded jar with a dimpled base with a hole in it. The idea is that you smear jam around the rim of the lower hole, the wasps fly in and become trapped. Not sure what stops them from flying out again, but it works - so I'll give it a try.

After tea we pootled off back to the A259 through Eastbourne - well round Eastbourne - we're not that daft - and past Pevensey to pick up the A27 back towards Hastings. We then proceeded to spend 2 hours stuck in traffic jams which melted away suddenly with no indication of what had caused them !!! Don't you hate it when that happens. Where do all the cars go? Is there some sort of genteel black hole that scoops up all the cars in front of you, when it somehow senses you have reached the end of your tether and are about to hotwire the carhorn to the brake peddle? Does a hole open up and swallow them all? Or are they some form of hallucination created by the local tourist board in order to persuade you to pull over and spend even more money at the local Beefeater? That's what we did in the end, and despite the beefburgers and fries at lunch and the cream tea at 4 we still found room for Rump Steak and chips (OH) and minted lamb with dauphinoise potatoes for me - which was delicious. That, with added drinks and sausages and chips for Alex who at that time was hyper from the jam he'd scoffed at the cream tea, cost us £41. So an expensive day it was although, as far as I'm concerned, totally justifiable.

Anyway that's it for this year. We're planning the odd away day at weekends for the rest of the summer and beginning of the Autumn, but nothing on the scale of this last week. Which I am sure is probably very good news to our bank accounts.

Do keep a weather eye on this blog as I'll update it from time to time with the further adventures of the mad people from Kent.

Day 4 - Row, row, row your boat gently down the canal

Today, we both decided we needed a rest day as the last three days of frenetic up-ing and downing have reduced us both to whimpering wrecks.

However, in the true tradition of our family on holiday, we didn't just doss around at home all day. For lunch we toddled off to Pizza Hut in Ashford to partake of their all you can eat buffet - which probably would have been better if the icecream machine hadn't have conked out.

Ivan packed away 11 pieces of pizza with me coming in second at 6, Amber at 4 (she's slacking) and Alex at 2 and a cup full of sweeties from the defunct icecream machine. (Ok, ok I did have profiteroles as well)

The plan after that was to come back to Hythe and visit the Royal Military Canal whereon flocks of ducks have learned that Alex can bomb them with bread extremely accurately.

But this time I had a cunning plan (Milord) and Ivan found himself in the driving seat (so to speak) of a rowing boat whilst Alex and I pursued the ducks on their own ground or water.

What you need to know here is that Ivan hasn't rowed for probably 30 odd years and the last time was in a canoe. So we spent a lot of the time spinning gently round, to the amusement of onlookers on the bank. We proceeded up the canal in a series of zigzags and collisions with the bank, the bridges, other boats, reeds and tree branches. The only reason we didn't mow down the ducks and swans is that they were obviously very used to inept humans bumbling around and skillfully kept out of harms way whilst staying near enough to field any food that accidentally found it's way into the water.

Further down the canal a lone Cormorant posed on the bank for photos from his adoring public before diving into the water and proceeding to keep ahead of us at all times despite Ivan's frantic efforts to catch him up.