just another morning here

Channel Five are repeating the Different Life series at the moment, Anna’s episode is being shown again next Sunday (19th June) at 11.30am, if anyone is interested!

**edit – tomorrow!!!**

If anyone’s interested, C5 seem to be running repeats of a Different Life – still at 11.30am on Sundays. Next week’s episode is about a child who lives on a commune! I’m not sure which series it is, but it was a good programme in its own right even before we were on it so just thought I’d mention it. Wonder if ours will be on again … I’ve only found listings for the next couple of weeks so far so can’t tell yet …

Well, we really enjoyed watching the programme here this morning. Laughed at a lot of it, but mainly we thought it was brill. We were really pleased with the Castle Drogo snippet and the other children who were involved – Chelsea was so shocked to be on that she came over all emotional! I think I always knew that it would be a positive thing … it was never going to present home education as an educational philosophy, just to present our lives – mainly Anna’s life – the way it is, and I think it did that relatively well.

One of the cameramen said to me on one of our days filming that it would be a lovely family souvenir to have, and I think he was exactly right. It was an interesting process to be part of, the end result is something I’m sure we will watch over and over again, and enjoy as a record of what our family was like at this point in time.

It was interesting to see (from my point of view) the way different bits of the programme reflected how comfortable Anna became with the camera and with talking to it/the director – not only that, but how his ideas for the programme actually changed as he got to know us, and the light about home ed dawned on him. I’m quite sure that if the London ‘meeting up with Poppy’ thing had come off, then that ‘playing schools’ snippet (they *never* play schools, that was completely set up!!) would have been axed and more would have been made of the London/HE friends thing. Still, never mind – we’ll remember that day well anyway, won’t we?

After the TV had gone off and Steve & his parents had disappeared, we had a lovely lunch/play/chat with the Pollards – Jules and I agreed that we really must be more organised and get together more often … time will tell if we actually manage it!

We then went into town for Anna’s cello Christmas carol thing … she was quite nervous about it, and I had been afraid that she might not manage in a bigger group, I knew she could play her parts well, but thought she might get flustered and stop/get out of time with the rest, but she did brilliantly – kept her place in the music, and more importantly, at the end she told me how much she’d enjoyed doing it. Abbie and Joe were a complete nightmare though, fighting with one another and generally being nuisances the whole time, so once home we had a quick tea and an early night all round for the children after watching A Different Life again with a friend … I’m on my way to bed now too in the vain hope of sleeping off this headache.

A Home Educated Different Life

The level of excitement in this house this morning is quite astounding! Jules is coming over later with her children, I invited her to keep me company and to celebrate with the kids a bit (!!), but as it turns out Steve has decided to stay home to watch the programme too, and Steve’s parents are coming as well – they bought a freeview box yesterday so that they could get Channel Five, but it didn’t work, they couldn’t get reception! So they’re coming here instead. And a couple of other friends said they might bunk off church early and come round here afterwards!

Don’t suppose we will manage live webchat after A Different Life because we’re having lunch together then Anna is going into town to play carols in a shopping centre with the Young Strings group … but we’d really love to hear what you all think of it, honestly!! Part of me is still dreading it!

I was awake early with the same headache I’ve had for the past couple of days. Steve reckons it must be something viral, I dunno – and probably drinking last night didn’t help, but what the heck. Typical, really, we were very late to bed last night so we were planning a lie-in, but I can never manage them … especially as the phrase ‘yes, you can come into my bed as long as you lie still’ is perpetually misunderstood by my son, who appeared upstairs at 6am. I want to know how his feet (and bottom, pyjama trousers have usually been discarded by this point too, rofl!) manage to get so cold just walking from his bedroom to mine?!! Lie-ins are over-rated unless you have a good book, in my opinion. Or no children. Or both, better still!

And why, why, WHY is it that when I actually go to the trouble of changing the sheets on the kids’ beds, that is the night that Joe wets the bed? I’m reverting back to my ‘only change the sheets when someone has an accident’ policy, it works far better …

Anyway, only a couple of hours to go, and for now I need COFFEE!