Saturday

Not much going on today. I was supposed to be driving down to my Mum's to collect the dog from her, but after travelling nearly all day yesterday I couldn't face another 2 hours each way in the car, let alone not having any chance to start the washing mountain or put anything away. So at 10am, the time we were supposed to be setting off but we were all still in our pyjamas, I phoned my Mum and postponed till Tuesday.

So girl-next-door came round and played for much of the day. I attempted to make some order out of chaos, making very little headway until later in the afternoon when I have put aside some toys to be got rid of and put away a load of stuff that has been dumped messily into boxes for weeks. Also managed to make a healthy and frugal dinner (meatloaf recipe from Hillbilly Housewife) and get the kids into bed by 8pm !

In the middle of the day we went out to a nearly-new sale of kids' stuff, and managed to only spend £8 so that was better than I normally do! If we hadn't been on holiday for the past week I would have listed a load of stuff to sell, but didn't have time. Plan to do that for the local NCT sale in a couple of weeks instead.

This evening I have had a long conversation with another woman in my own town who is now HE-ing 4 of her 5 kids - the ones still at primary age. As we started talking (the EO helpline contacted me to ask if was happy to chat with her) I realised I had read about her story in the newspaper a few weeks ago. Her 8-year old girl was bullied at the local school and she was disgusted at the lack of action taken, so she has withdrawn her 4 girls and as she cannot get a place or transport to any other local schools she is HEing by default. Not that we talked about HE at all really - she talked at length about the lies the Head has told and the underhand tactics of the Governors and getting the police and lawyers involved and so on ..... . Still, even if it doesn't last long, that means that currently there are nine HE'd children in this tiny one-horse town!!!! (And that's not counting Shannon!!)

Now I come to mention it - I realise I didn't blog about meeting the other new family who have just moved here from Brighton. The family have 8-year old twin girls and a 5.5 year old girl, who were previously all at the Brighton Steiner School. Before that they lived in Eastbourne and were HE'd. She didn't know Nic but she did know Ros - somebody give her a nudge because she doesn't visit this blog!! They came to visit about 10 days ago and I think we're going to get on really well - all the girls are really lovely and they brought their new little puppy too!!! So I'm just thrilled about that. The girls and Jade didn't play together until right at the end, of course, but a few more visits together should put that right!