Purple guitar

This is A's new guitar:

and she is one very happy girl :-)

She seems to have gone a bit purple-mad just recently, which is a bit of a problem as its my favourite colour too, so we are now fighting over purple stuff (or rather she is now pilfering all the purple stuff I already have!!)

We decorated A's room (guess what colour!?!) and she is now rearranging all the furniture, so it will have a totally new look. This has put me in a rearranging frame of mind for the rest of the house. I have plans, just need to find the time to do it...

We also had a lovely weekend away in Edinburgh with Granny. Visited A's favourite place - Camera Obscura - which had some new exhibits. Also went to the National Museum of Scotland, spent a good couple of hours there. We had an excellent veggie meal at David Bann, I had noodles and smoked tofu in a ginger & red pepper sauce, yum. And we took (a rather reluctant) A on an evening 'ghost tour' of the underground vaults - very spooky! I don't believe in the supernatural and even I was scared! I think we picked one of the better tour companies, some of them seem to be very gimmicky and rely on gory effects, but our guide was good fun, and there was a lot of actual 'history' as well as all the spooky stuff (although there was a 'jumperouter' near the end).
Got a little bit of Christmas shopping done too, and generally had a great weekend, the only bit that spoilt it was our train being cancelled on the way back which caused some stress, we ended up on a bus for part of the way, and not sitting together, but we got home in the end.

I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by life, not sure if this is to do with xmas approaching. I think thats part of it but there are lots of things affecting me just now. I've started to get that panicky feeling again (I tend to go through phases of this) where I feel I'm just not doing enough. I'm working, but I'm not actually earning very much, and that makes me feel like I should be doing more. All the stuff in the news about welfare reforms makes me edgy too, as I do rely on a certain amount of help from the state, and probably will do until A is independent.
Of course the other BIG area I'm worrying about is home ed (deja vu, anyone?) Am I doing enough here? To motivate? To offer opportunities? Should I push more? Should I stand back more?
I always have this sneaking suspicion that we're not doing half as much as everyone else.

I suppose this is common for a lot of people (well, I tell myself it is to make me feel slightly better!) and I know I will come through it to a more balanced state soon. I do have some exciting/scary plans for something I want to work on, so maybe just need to focus on that rather than panic about all the things I'm not doing.

We are back

Hello!!
Feels like we've been away for months. Had a busy time, mostly fun, visiting and staying with various people down south. Struggles with certain elements, for both of us (yes, I'm being deliberately vague here) but hopefully we'll learn from it. All in all a good holiday with lots of happy times and good people.

Started off in London with my oldest friend - M, (she's not old - I've just known her a long time!), a lovely, lovely person, who put us up for a weekend. Its always easy with M, we don't actually keep in touch very much, occasionally email, but whenever we meet up we seem to slot back into that old friendship as if we'd just seen each other last week. Very much on the same wavelength.
On the Sunday the three of us went into town, firstly to the V&A, then to see 'Stomp' in the West end. Really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure how they would make a show out of what is basically a load of grubby looking men banging stuff (which incidentally is one of my favourite fantasies) but it was very slick and clever, and also very funny.

I haven't got too many photos this time, but here are a few from the V&A :

Some squashed trumpets etc hanging from the ceiling

A strange glass sculpture

This is my favourite - its title is "Guts"

Glass lollipops

Some vases

Last photos of York (I promise)

Barley_Hall is a restored medieval town house.

A feasting in the Great Hall

Where the fire place was in the middle of the Great Hall

A plague doctor, nightmarish figure, part of the 'Plague, Poverty and Prayer' exhibition.

The Roman_Baths_Museum was tiny, but full of fascinating stuff, like this Roman equivalent of toilet paper.



This was a great little place - we had a wander round, looked at some of the art work and chatted with the very friendly proprietor. Would have been nice for A to do a bit of painting there, but she felt a bit conspicuous as no one else was painting when we went in.

York again - lots more pics!

We visited the Minster , but only went up the tower as the rest was too expensive (we were running low on funds at this point!) Lots of steps, but great views.


Clifford's Tower - part of York_Castle , and site of a horrific anti-semitic massacre in 1190.

We went to the Castle museum too, the prison exhibition was really interesting.

Spotted these on the wall of an old church in the centre of York - gorgeous!

More York

We went on a guided walk one morning, which I had been really keen to do (A less so) but it was very much aimed at adults and A found it quite boring. Don't get me wrong - I hate it when children are acommodated by being patronised and treated like idiots - but I have to admit that this guy was very dry. He was factual and informative, clearly from an academic background and definitely knew his stuff, but it was a bit like a lecture really, and quite hard work. The worst bit was that he charged for A as a student rather than a child which would have been a lot cheaper, I didn't realise this until later on. I know she's getting tall, but surely he didn't think she was over 16?!

We also visited Yorkshire_Museum , which was pretty good, but lacked the more interactive elements A had enjoyed at some of the other places. I think its really difficult to get it right, because if there is too much of the hands on stuff, particularly computer based, then it actually detracts from the whole experience as that becomes the focus, but A certainly seems to engage more when there are relevant activities to get involved in. There's only so much 'looking' and 'reading' she can do before she wanders off to find something to draw!

A enjoyed making a mosaic

The gardens outside the museum were beautiful, and there were plenty of these fellows about to keep us entertained!

We did get to the theatre one evening, and saw a wonderful production by Puppet State: The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees . It was a brilliant show - really funny in a very gentle way. We both enjoyed it a lot, despite A's concerns beforehand that it would be for little kids.

After our theatre excursion we went in search of a vegan restaurant I had heard about - El_Piano - and we had the most delicious tapas meal. Their onion bhajis are the best I've ever tasted (and I've tasted many!). Best of all was the selection of desserts - a rare treat for me :0)

Needless to say, we went back several times during our holiday.

Pea and potato curry; Albondigas (soya mince 'meat' balls); onion bhajis; rice.

Sticky toffee pudding and chocolate brownie

Lovely books!

My books arrived! For my birthday my Mum gave me her card and told me to order a few books I was after from Amazon (sadly she did give me a limit). So, being a new (and extremely enthusiastic) convert to knitting I got Stitch_'n_bitch_nation, The_Knitter's_Bible, Anticraft, and Domiknitrix. I bought Happy_Hooker with a voucher my brother and his partner gave me, to aid me in my struggles with learning to crochet. That lot should keep me busy for a while :-)

We had a fantastic day yesterday, decided to have a day out in Inverness as we both had vouchers and birthday money burning a hole in our pockets. First we met up with Granny for lunch, she was through for a tutorial for her Scottish history course at the college. Then me and A spent a good couple of hours at Inverness_Museum_&_Art_Gallery, very enjoyable. For me it is the perfect size - we managed to get around everything, but by then were ready to go.
We then went off and got some shopping, we both got a nice top for ourselves. I managed to find yet another book: Italian_in_10_minutes_a_day, so we will be getting stuck into that from next week. And A bought another fashion sticker book (she's very keen on these).

Tonight we are having a girlie night in together, which will involve: chocolate; coke (for A); cider (for me); a DVD; more chocolate; pyjamas; blankets; cuddles; a bit more chocolate; lots of laughter :-))

Folk Museum and other things

On Friday we went to the Highland_Folk_Museum in Newtonmore with some of the home ed group. Very interesting place, the first time I had been, although A went last year with the school. The children spent a lot of time at the 1930s style schoolroom, and the little old fashioned sweetie shop was a favourite. I found the early 1700s township fascinating (below).

There was a lovely mix of ages, and A really enjoyed helping out with a couple of the littlest ones. I got sicked on by a baby, but he was very gorgeous so I let him off.

An A-sized cottage

Granny took A to the theatre to see One_Giant_Leap, which they both thoroughly enjoyed.

On Thursday night we had dinner with A's other grandparents, and I had a good chat with Nonno about languages (as well as his native Italian he speaks several others). He seemed genuinely pleased when I mentioned that I wanted to do some basic Italian with A, and is quite enthusiastic about helping us out with it. It will be great to have someone to guide us with proper pronounciation. He's promised to dig out some old books and games he used with A's Dad and auntie when they were little.

A had her drama class Saturday, then played with a friend all afternoon, and in the evening we went to a fire party in the dunes at Findhorn. My friend was celebrating doing fantastically well in her RHS exams (clever woman - they are really hard!). There was some drumming and guitar playing, and a young lad doing some fire poi - amazing. Didn't manage to get any decent shots of the fire, but below is the path down to the party, lit with little candles (a bit of a pathetic photo - sorry!)

Museums and rainy river walks

We found this huge spiders web on our way to the Nairn_Museum on Thursday, the photo doesn't capture it brilliantly, but it was quite impressive in real life! The museum was great, we've been plenty of times before but always enjoy it, and there is currently a Russian Highland Connections exhibition which was very interesting. There were lots of leaflets about the Scottish-Russia_Forum which made me think again about learning Russian (I tried a few years ago but didn't get very far). I've had a long interest in Russian literature and have always wanted to go there, maybe learning some basics of the language is something I could do with A, and if she shows an interest we could look at other aspects of the country such as geography, art, literature, religion.




We have another visitor up from England at the moment, so after the museum we went for a walk by the river. Once we set off the rain started, quite heavily! But we had plenty of trees for shelter so didn't get too wet, and its just as beautiful in the rain.

Saturday was another museum day, this time in Elgin (inspired by By_other_means ). A much bigger museum than the Nairn one, and very good too. It was great to see some of the artefacts we'd heard about at our trip to the Birnie archaeological site. We were particularly interested in the section about the Picts, and now have a few other local places of interest we want to visit connected with this, not least the caves at Covesea.

This morning we were up at 7am (WHAT?!?) for a car boot sale. I really am not a morning person! The fact that it was cold and windy didn't help much either. However, A is quite happy with her takings for the morning (about £13, personally I don't think thats enough of a reward for standing in the cold for 3 hours on a Sunday morning, but maybe I'm just a miserable git!) and she's keen to do another one as soon as possible :(