The Girls and I have been busy ...here are some of the things we made for a local art fair in Cheltenham





Our Artisans group stall

  

Eldest daughter -  'Kettle Kreations' Cushion



Middle daughter's 'Glamour Chick!'



Teen Troubles

Having good days and bad days with eldest at new school. Although quite what she’s got to complain about is seeming to escape us. Both Husband and I think her school is so much nicer than any place we were ever dragged - kicking and screaming - to, and as Husband keeps liking to remind us, he was sent in home-knitted jumpers with the wool thinned out and hand-me- down trousers which flapped well above his ankles, as he has been 6ft 1” since around the age of 11. (Eternally glad I never knew him then.)

Well, we’ve actually attended our first ‘Parent’s Evening’, together. (Yes, its still a novelty that bit.) God! If there is anything that is designed to make you feel that you really should be a grown up by now, it’s the parent’s evening at a secondary school. All the other parents look like grown ups (are they pretending too?) They’re doing it better than us though, and seem to know what queue to be in to see the right teacher at the right time. (Think it might have helped if I’d remembered to fill in the little time slot schedule the school sent us two weeks ago.) Those poor teachers, with about 150 kids they’ve got to try to first of all remember, and then, say nice things about. By the end of the evening they all looked a bit grey and withered with the strain.

Still, off we went to see them and introduce ourselves as the ‘new kid’s parents’, with at least a chance they’ll remember who she is as she still has the ‘new kid’ label stamped on her forehead. Yes, we know she’s only been here five minutes but please can you say something nice to us as we’ve had a week of strops and intermittent tears, punctuated by glares that we know are silently and menacingly saying ’I HATE YOU FOR MAKING ME DO THIS JUST SO YOU CAN PLAY HAPPY FAMILIES’ and ‘I PREFERRED IT WHEN WE LIVED APART, I HAD FRIENDS AND A SOCIAL LIFE THEN.’ She’s getting very good at it, you can just feel it now, that is, when you dare to look at her.

Her teachers were actually very nice, mostly young and apparently quite interested in her (but then again, maybe they’ve just been on some really good training courses and learnt what facial expressions and gestures to use at the right times- ooh, thinking about it, now I am suspicious, they were good.) But I have to say, absolutely nothing about them compared to the old teachers we used to have – I might mention a few names such as ‘Streaky’(who threw chalk board dusters at you), Tree-Trunks (had bad leg circulation problems and used to slope off to the book cupboard mid-lesson for a quick fag), ‘Bat-man’(the Head, who thought he could make himself look friendly and approachable to the pupils by wearing his academic gown and cap around the corridors - this was a comprehensive) and ‘Pick-and-Flic’(just don’t ask.) Compared to that lot, anyone seems normal.

What exactly is there for her to be so unhappy about?

Marital Bliss?

Things seem to be settling – we may even be settling in - slowly. Husband doing well –getting used to the 40 minute commute to work – early starts and all that. Do we actually see more of him? Not sure ….there seems to be a lot of vital evening football and cricket matches to attend after work. Do we actually want to see more of him? Not sure about that either….kind of got used to the family dynamic of ME in charge, making all decisions about what we do, where we go, when we have tea etc. Obviously, not being woken at 4a.m by him clambering about noisily trying to find his trousers on a Monday morning before the 4 hour drive to work is a bonus. But, puzzlingly, the monosyllabic Monday evening conversation ritual seems to be continuing. Are we supposed to have proper conversations now we live together again?

The Move

Well, we’ve finally done it. After talking about moving for the last two and a half years (yes, really….. we’re very good at the talking bit, not quite so good at the actual moving) we have somehow managed to install the whole family (that is, two big people, two little people, two cats and a rabbit) in the most idyllic, picturesque chocolate box cottage in an equally quaint chocolate-boxy village in the Cotswolds. Although the relocation was for ‘practical reasons’ (can be taken as a screamed ‘I AM NOT HAVING A BABY WITH YOU WORKING 2OO MILES AWAY FOR THE 3^RD TIME!’) the area we have tumbled into just happens to have been recently named as one of the most desirable places to live in the country.

Don’t know quite how we managed that – well, other than eldest daughter finally deciding that she liked the school, as far as she could possibly like a secondary school- (yes, she’s on the verge of adolescence, we really do like to pile it on ourselves.) Then finding a house to rent (wonder who can actually afford to buy these types of houses…. just what do they do? or a high-pitched how much? have they inherited) in the catchment of both secondary and primary schools before I had the baby in a service station on the motorway.(In case of future reference, we had decided on Leigh Delamere services, at least they have a Marks & Spensives, as its known in our house, so the girls and I could stash a supply of clotted cream shortbread biscuits and Percy Pig sweets to help us cope with the delivery if need be.) And, despite having now been here for the last 3 weeks, we still have the vague feeling that people like us don’t live in places like this. It’s almost like a game of ‘Let’s Pretend’ – we’ll pretend we live in that beautiful cottage opposite the posh manor house by the village church…. O.K….but then, well we actually do live there - Very Strange. We do walk down the gravelled path through the mature tree-lined garden that is more of a park than a lawn. We do have the key to the old oak door and that really is all our stuff (and there’s a lot of it) inside.

Can’t get our heads around it at all, yet. It feels like we are on a strange holiday.

Intro.

Hello. I'm introducing myself as I'm new to the joys of blogging, and my first posts were written as a kind of diary when we made a big family move from Wales to England.
My husband could no longer stand the lonely 4 a.m commute from where we lived in the welsh wilderness back to work on a Monday morning and I was expecting child no. 3, so it made sense to move. It may not seem that big a move to many, but to me and the children, it felt like we were emigrating!
We descended on a pretty village (reassuringly just over the border from our homeland) and my blog will fill you in on the details and dramas of our day to day life, living in the Cotswolds....