EMP in the US

What makes a man want to write?

What story?

Well, if you are all sitting comfortably, I’ll begin.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a tree fell on to some power lines in Chandler Drive (the road behind our road) and much spark-flying ensued. The fire brigade, who are housed mere few hundred yards away rushed to the rescue. At least 6 different fire fighters asked the resident (my friend) where the main switch to shut of the electricity was. She had no idea, other than the fuse box, which contained no such switch. The situation was dealt with, and peace and harmony reigned.

Then a little while later yellow notices appeared in all the houses in Fletcher Circle and Chandler Drive:

Then a big guy with a big van turns up and starts installing lots of weird new pieces of metal all over the house and said he would be back later.

AND FINALLY this morning they came with a cherry picker (to impress the boys) and a generator to do the switch over. We now have a fancy new fusebox:

And our new and probably what-makes-it-all-legal-and-above-board mains circuit breaker:

I am also more satisfied that, if lightening struck our house, it would safely strike the tall metal hosepipe on the roof and flow straight down the nice thick copper wire to the ground, and not find other nasty ways around the house to get to ground.

Is it ok to post about this? I wanted to take pictures of the guy in the cherry-picker cutting the old wires to show you, but was overcome by a sudden preservation-of-dignity moment where I didn’t want these big burly engineery types to perceive me as a desperate fawning housewife.

I’ll just mention Thomas here, as he has been asking me all week how they would turn the power off (we were pre-warned). Finally his moment came when he asked the man going up in the cherry-picker, “how are you going to turn the electricity off?” he was answered rather uncertainly with, “well, er, I’m gonna cut the wire.”

People keep asking me how Thomas reads like he does. I never know what to say, but I think now I’m going to tell everyone that it’s all down to Ladybird books. Back in the 70s there was a series of ladybird books called “Key Words” which introduced the characters Peter and Jane. I ordered the set off ebay and read them with Thomas. I’m now doing the same with Ollie. Lately, there has been a real emphasis on phonics as being the key to reading, and this is what seems to be driving the UK curriculum, and all the children’s television programmes too. The Peter and Jane books are much more about learning the words in their entirety first. Ollie could identify the names “Peter” and “Jane” because of their first letters “P” and “J” but couldn’t “read” the words phonetically. These books are very well designed to repeat the words so that they are quickly memorised. I don’t know how it goes after that, as I cannot remember how Thomas progressed from these books – if I can observe it in Ollie, I will document. I’m no expert in pedagogy, but in my personal experience, I don’t think phonics on their own is the way to go. Maybe all the CBeebies Thomas watched ingrained the phonics system into him without me noticing!

Anyway, that said, here is Ollie working his way through book 1c. Oh, and James? Well for some reason, Ollie insists on calling Jane, James.

The boys’ artwork seems to have improved dramatically over the summer. I picked out the best ones to put on here.

Firstly, Thomas visited a friend while in the UK, and wanted to record the memory:

Also, he now threatens me that he will never draw me a picture ever again if I don’t do what he wants, so I’ve put this on to remind me of what it was like (in case he ever carries out his threat!)
“this is me and you, mum”

Ollie has also been impressing us. This was a ghost from him dream:

…and a submarine:

Thomas has also been trying to write a lot lately, you can just see at the bottom of this picture what this is supposed to be:

Something that made me smile, that I forgot to mention, was an occurrence at a play park in the UK. The boys were playing on the roundabout and talking to other boys, who were older, and they were all discussing how old everyone was.

Ollie suddenly looked at a boy and said, “what’s your number?”

I realised he was asking the boy how old he was! He did it again to me recently, which is what reminded me. Better get this sorted before he starts meeting the girls…

We weighed the boys on the electronic scales. They both weighed exactly the same: 15.6kg.

We went back to Ruislip Lido, which we are all in agreement is totally brilliant. There is a small lake with lots of wild birds,

an enormous play park on a sandy beach, including sand pulley tools…

a water play ground, which was ideal in this hot weather,

a miniature railway, which Bedstemor took Ollie on, but Thomas wasn’t interested in, so you’ll have to look at last year’s blog post for photos, here,

and a kiosk to buy ice-cream, teas and coffees. The boys had a good play, Thomas happily bossing people around.

This is also all free! (well the train ride for Ollie and Bedstemor was £4.50).

Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, we have been soooooooooo busy! I am going to publish all the photos first, then I will go back and edit the post to fill in all the details…

So firstly, we went to Guildford castle, which was more interesting for the boys than I had expected… AND it only cost about £2.10 to be able to climb to the top and peer out (boys were free).

There were flowers. (This year they are celebrating the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, hence the RAF circles).

There is a cage at the top, to stop people throwing themselves off in disgust at how rich everyone in Guildford is.

The castle was built by William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings in 1066, though the keep was build later in the 1130s.

There’s a small pond, with optional floating garbage.

On a different outing, we met up with my friends-since-childhood in Battersea Park. This was a really fantastic day. My friend Helen brought Pimms & Lemonade with loads of fruit and fresh mint, and also loads of food! (beat my marmite sandwiches anyway!)

Battersea Park has loads going on, and because it’s smaller than the big and famous London parks, everything is a short walk away, rather than a long one. There were fountains:

There was a band playing in the bandstand:
(Photo courtesy of Helen’s facebook uploads, without permission. (Shhhh!))

The boys got icecream:

They saw a BIG fish being caught:

Best of all, I got to spend time with friends that I hardly ever see, and who are essential for keeping me young, and up-to-date with all things modern. All for the price of a train ticket (kids still free).

OK, so yet another outing took us to Mizen’s Railway which is actually in Woking. Because Thomas can’t go near a railway line without saying “I _HATE_ trains!” we left him at home for this one.

Ollie, however, was in heaven. There was a lot to see, and a fire-engine to climb into, and of course, trains to ride.

A steam-powered one:

There is quite a lot of track, and they have strategically placed stuffed toys of all types around the route.

My favourite bit was the mini signal lights!

There was even a little bridge to stand on and watch trains. Ollie wanted to stay there all day.

A £3 ticket got each person 2 rides, and as it happened to be grandparent day, (or something like that) Bedstemor got a ride for free!

——–

Yet another outing took us to the paddling pool in Guildford. I blogged about this when we went last summer. It’s really a great place for kids, and totally free. Here’s last year’s post: Last year’s post about paddling pool

It also has one of the best playgrounds I’ve ever been to, including something where the kids can record and playback their voices, after turning a wheel 6 times to act as a dynamo to generate the electricity needed to power the electronics.

Then of course, while there is a lot of exciting places to go, it’s nice to stay home and enjoy the back garden. We have a smaller scale paddling pool, and Bedstemor and me can enjoy a GnT on the patio without having to worry about getting home!

We’ve been in Woking nearly a week and the boys are already settled into their new environment, and making themselves comfortable, well I think they’re comfortable… each to his own I guess.

We have been spending quite a lot of time at all the play parks around. There is a big playground in Woking Park. It takes us just under half an hour to walk there, which is good for keeping their walking stamina up, and they can manage it both there and home again, though there is always the opportunity of a lift home, if they get too tired. There is often an ice cream van parked there too, and the boys very graciously shared an ice cream together, which improved their joint chances of eating it before it melted all over themselves.

Thomas spends his entire time at the playground on the roundabout, chatting up the girls. Apparently he took one girl over to Aunty Jo to show-off his new cousin, and in the same breath said “Do you want to feel my muscles?”

Having an extra pair of hands at the park is really handy, and Jo was able to take a picture of the three of us.

On Monday we headed down to Boston to head for England. I was very excited to be able to meet up with an old schoolfriend on the way, who very conveniently married someone who’s folks live on the way to Boston.

We got to the airport where we were staying at the Hilton at Logan Airport. Ollie didn’t seem overly impressed. Hilton? Shmilton.

I, on the other hand, was quite impressed!

Now, every hotel corridor reminds me of ‘The Shining’, especially as we saw two small corn-blond boys staring silently at us in this one, though I thought it might be a bit dangerous to take a photo of them, so I made do with a photo of the corridor. I might start a “hotel-corridor collection”.

Overnight parking costs $30 (or $15 per hour!) and a burger at the in-house establishment cost $17. So we decided to venture out somewhere cheaper, and ended up at our new favourite “Chilis”, where it was fajita special night – two meals for £12.99, oh, and they do big drinks too!

Thomas displayed his true blogging heritage when I woke him up and told him there was a lovely sunrise to look at if he just looked out of the window. “I think you should take a picture of me in bed with the sunrise,” was the first thing he said to me that day.

The whole check-in business went very smoothly, with our boarding-passes being an image on my iphone. This was all good except at the gate, the stewardess said that it wasn’t a very efficient way to check-in 3 people, (I think because we would have to load each photo) but actually, she just took our names and it seemed quick enough to me!

Thankfully the plane ride was fine and the boys were really well-behaved. This was helped by good organisation, a near-constant supply of things to eat and some choice cartoons on my laptop to keep them quiet.

The main event of our visit was to meet our new cousin/niece, who certainly didn’t disappoint. She is all smiles and laughter, and particularly enjoys the blur which is Thomas buzzing around her at every opportunity.