Got up early this morning to get work done early again – i have a benchmark of a number of orders i like to get a day and i’ve beaten it every day this week which is great; makes me feel much better when that is happening. It is weird gradually morphing into a proper businesswoman, in a way i feel like i am and in a way i don’t. I’m incredibly proud of what i have built up though because i’ve done so much of it on my own. Not the coding bits admittedly, i’d be lost without Jax and Tim on a regular basis but the gradual building of a business, eeking it out of the profits is mine. There is so much i want to do though and so little time. Ideally i’d love it to be something Max and i do together eventually, something that takes our family to places new without relying on a full time job anywhere, but that is a way off yet.
Made me laugh this morning though, as i was hastily packing my 8 or so parcels with a very competent Amelie helping me. She suddenly said “mummy, are we a shop?” i said that yes, we were a shop, one on the computer that people could buy things from. “So, do these parcels go to people then?” she asked, apparently completely incredulous. Well yes, i replied, slightly baffled that she could have missed this. “Oh.” Amelie looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know what mum, you should make them pay for them. Then we would have lots of money!”
There are so many things that will seem incredible to our children, just like the shillings money system seemed incredible to me. Amelie hasn’t yet computed that you can pay for something without being there, but the idea of paying by cash as a normal exchange is going to seem extra-ordinary to them. There will always have been cards, they will always have been the most likeyl way of mum paying for something. As Kath and i said today, our kids will probably be openmouthed at the idea of a camera without a screen you can immediately look at the picture on; “but how did you BLOG if you had to wait for them to come back from the shop????” they’ll ask?
What was an equivalent mouth-opening difference from our parents childhood to ours? I’m trying to think what used to make me think “how could you live doing it that way?” – what was the equivalent of mobile phones now, phone boxes then? it hardly feels like life could get more gadget-ridden than it is now, but i suppose my kids will did my i-pod nano out of a box and go “it’s so HUGE!” 😆
Anyway, parcels done, basic economics explained to Amelie, we set off to see Kath and co. Roads were awful, so despite (technically) not getting lost, we were horribly late (sorry Kath!) Technically not lost because i only set off with a hazy idea of where i was going anyway and was in the right area but thrown by the lack of brown signs 😆 Still nevermind, Fran and i discussed collective nouns while we drove, i got thrown by the ones for horses (is it herd or something else?) and we tried to think of an appropriate one for a group of Raymonds 😆
Castle Acre Priory was lovely, if slightly cold and wet at times; we picnicked under a tree (cold, wet, outdoor eating in preparation for MP camp!), they ran about a lot, Kath and i practised the art of half-conversation while dealing with the needs of 6 children. We toured the grounds, climbed tiny weeny stairs, played in a river that isn’t and generally had a lovely time without pushing education on anyone 🙂 It is a great place to know about, but cold and wet isn’t the time. Then we went into the medieval crafts thing and had a lovely time making decorated tablets, dolls, playing games, using tiling shapes and so on. Got photos going up on flickr shortly.
Visited Kath’s home for a cuppa, saw Mr Kath in uniform 😉 and oggled her lovely Fisher Price nativity set, while having more random conversation. Easy journey back and then lots more Moomins (darn it, i’ve got the reading order wrong, anyone know it?) and garden play with the new bow and arrow and dagger 🙄 Oh and played with our rather lovely new fraction tiles from Fiona at Absorbent Minds – everyone likes those and they’ve arrived in perfect time for the section Fran is about to do in her maths book.
Right, time to go fruit picking in Puddley 🙂 I get Nookingtons tomorrow but am in urgent need of a decent turnip price.
Mine are 141 tonight if that’s any help, there’s still an hour of selling time left!
I’m on yahoo if you get this message in time, ping me and I’ll open gates 😉
Yes, it’s a herd.
From my parents’ childhood to mine – televisions in every house (my mum watched some of last week’s Dr Who with us, and reminded us that hardly anyone she knew had a tv, and she remembers all cramming into a neighbour’s house to weatch the Coronation. When I was a child we were the only people I knew without one), and telephones in every house too. Working mothers.
My brother has a friend only 10 years younger than him who didn’t remember ever having seen a record player, and was amazed at K’s.
yeah records and then tapes and then cds in our lifetime. I remember getting our first video recorder / player. Computers at home, or indeed at school.
our diferences:we listeded to music on the record player or my dad’s revox!
hmm, a black and white telly – eventually.
our phone was a party line – a special button to press to make sure OK before ringing.
hmm, microwaves,cd’s [i got one at 18 for a levels], videos, dishwasher, tumble dryer was a big thing too. duvets! [got one at 10 and it felt very modern!]
no ‘puter ’til uni – then a dot printer.
mum and dad’s – well everything. dad grew up in a house with no bathroom, a tap and warmed water in a tin bath. no telly,a radio and no household mod cons!
mum’s family had a bathroom, as a postwar house for heroes. still, coal heated, wierd washing machine and no tumbler, no tv but radio.
and my nan! she washed clothes in a copper!
I remember my mum using a dolly (pole thing) to wash clothes. we had an outside toilet for a few years – we were posh though as even though it was outside, it wasn’t shared, we had a key for it. We got a black and white telly in what turned out to be the week before Kennedy’s assasination, and I remember watching the funeral on it. We had the only phone in the street from when I was about 9. My granda paid for it as the phone box was a mile away, and somtimes we needed an ambulance urgently for my sister. It was a huge red monster, the phone number was “57” – nothing else – and it was a shared party line. Later on we had something called an “8 track” for playing music, but before that we had this vast thing in a walnut case called a radio-gram. Inside was a short wave radio, and a record player.
Oh yeah, duvets Helen, I remember getting a duvet after sheets and blankets.
My Dad grew up with no electricity, lamps lit by oil, cooking on the fire, tin bath with water heated by the fire, outside loo etc. My Dad is still staggered by the technology of the basic landline telephone – he thinks everything else is some sort of black magic I think! 🙂
Goodness! I think i only ever had a duvet, i don’t remember anything else at all and i thoguht party lines only happened in Cherry Ames books! We only ever had a colour tv too, though it was smaller than our current portable one. We had a few records, i had the PlayAway one, but seemed to move on to tapes quite early, but thne not to cds for a looooong time. And we had a betamax, then a vhs video but hardly anything to watch on it. Fran thinks it is amazing that our only three films were Mary Poppins, Grease and Dumbo!
We had a video recorder quite early on, and Dad had been collecting Tom and Jerry cartoons from the telly to watch after tea at my birthday party, I think it was my sixth. the other children were completely flummoxed by this “But Tom and Jerry’s not on at this time of day!”
And we would never have thought that you could buy pre-recorded videos back then.
jan, what’s happened to your blog?
Judging by the word “arse” i reckon it has been jonathan’d!
Hi Merry! The first book is Comet in Moominland, as far as I can remember – and then Finn Family Moomintroll. After that a bit hazy – I’ll ask Pearl.
Becca was amazed that my dad’s camera didn’t have a screen on the back. She was totally un-impressed with my description of my “state of the art” ZX81 that would print off (on some sort of odd silver paper that it burnt through) slightly odd looking pictures that took hours to program in assuming the thing didn’t overheat and shut down…