Flopped like a bag of oranges back from the Natural History Museum - where I sigh with dreamy delight even before I get up the steps and spend as much time fondling the walls as I do appreciating the exhibits.
But today we had butterflies.
Big fuckers too.
Worth getting really sweaty for. Really really sweaty. We were fluttering our Butterfly Explorers passports more than the damned insects were fluttering their delightful wings I'm telling you. But in England that's a rare treat so I flapped with relish.
Simple pleasures. Heat, pretty things and happy pointing children.
Also skidded round the dinosaurs at top speed - with my tour guide familiarity voice piping out - 'Alligator skin! Troodon and oviraptor! Iguanodon thumb spike! Maiasaura nest! Buggy! Toilets! Yes you do!' before doubling back in rampage style to bundle into The Deep. Very dark, The Deep. From the Sunlight Zone - to the Twilight Zone - to the Midnight Zone...... Managed to lose 3 out of 4 children in there. Result!
(And then the nice tourist guide turns into a neck-vein-pulsing horror film tree-monster in the shop. Why do people make fluffy octopuses/octopi anyway?)
Well - we got out eventually. Now had 3 kids. Still missing 1. She's down the road at the Science Museum by now. Boys and I didn't have enough puff to get much further than the bag checker. Decided 3 exhibitions in 1 museum was enough for 1 day. Sorry Stephenson's Rocket. Sorry Space toys. Sorry V & A Quilts. 4 kids, 1 tube and 2 trains was entertainment enough.
But back at Base Camp they still had enough energy to spend another 6 hours rampaging around my prone carcas in the garden. I was ready for bed at 7.30. (Although obviously had to look up all the cool books we'd seen in the NH Museum shop on Amazon. And then there's them e-mails......... Mmmmmmmn - blooooogggss.............. )
But enough. Bed. Pop-Up Butterflies book. Cuddles. Pretending to be asleep so that they'll go to sleep.
And sure enough.........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Me that is.
But next day - there I am with my Spotters Guide to Butterflies in my paws saying 'Ooh!' alot. The kids have moved on. Butterflies was SO yesterday.
Minx is busy cropping and working on a photograph taken of her best friend and her boyfriend-to-be like a true Pap. Monkey Boy can do 9 steps when he's standing on his hands. Rock Godling does indeed put pasta and cheese in a paper bag for later. And Thuglet will now poo in our toilet.
Noone cares about little white eggs under a nettle leaf.
Life is fluttering by. No time to lose. Come on Mum. Time to fly.
======= W H O O O O O O O S S S H H H H ! ! ! ! ! ! =======
'Love you!!!'
'Yeah yeah. Where's the crisps?'
oh wowo now am jealous at your flutterbys and deep deep perils. must go, must go. life has great urgency, if only it too had great and infinite source of wealth. memo: must find gold mine, set kids to dig up garden this pm. plan A) look for gold / become rich / buy ticket for london midland train / see butterlies / bliss
ReplyDeleteI recall you hit butterfly jackpot quite recently tho' - pictures and everything (even if traumatic). And as for The Deep - it was interesting (and dark) but all the kids (we had quite a gang) spent the whole time twiddling dials and poking things in the submariney thingy. The rest of the exhibition was something to walk past on the way to the shop really as far as they were concerned. I was just happy to discover there really was something called The Twilight Zone. I'm easily pleased. Liked the glass models of sea creatures made by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka in the late 19th C best. If I could do that different coloured linky thing for you I would but I'm still a 'pooter dunce.
ReplyDeleteAw sounds like you had a fab day!
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about home edding is that you can go round museums at the pace you wanted to as a child, (but were stopped by your parents who wanted to read every bloody bit of information about every bloody object in every glass bloody case). Now you have to freedom to charge through like a hyperactive 6 year old on roller blades, looking at only the weird, the disgusting or the very very shiny.
Just remember, many an avid keyring collector was initiated in a museum gift shop. Some may even have made a career out of it.
But I do envy you...with eldest now 11 my museum visiting days are numbered. Put an 11-year-old boy in a museum and there is instant regression from intelligent modern day homo sapiens to knuckle-dragging grunting neanderthal-wookie creature, who periodically emits a groan of: 'I'm borrrrred.'
I know that creature believe me. Minx thinks all museums are Dungeons of Torture and suspects that I am trying to slip some 'educating' past her by stealth, but she will come if she knows her friends are coming - and then enjoys it by accident. She is way more interested by the fact that we are going to LONDON on a TRAIN. Same with Monkey Boy - we have our monthly session in the local museum tomorrow. He's already checking out which felt tips make the best measles. But the draw tomorrow is his favourite chips in the park cafe first. Then he'll put up with tables with pen pots - there's usually a little gang of refusnik boys on one table huddled together. I'm past caring. One less instantly squashable thing to balance on my head on the way home.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the obligatory bouncy ball for £1 in the shop on the way out. Things they will be superglued to for £1 I will allow. Things that will be hurled in the general Pit of Stuff for £20 - get real!
Yeah, eldest came back with a bouncy ball from the roman villa museum shop the other day. Could not be tempted by educational postcard, roman sword, soldier keyring or canon pencil sharpener. Nope. Just the bouncy ball, which no doubt the dog will eat and choke on and cost us a fortune in vets bills. (see, I'm a genuine pessimist, me)
ReplyDeleteRefusnik boys. Oh yes. Mine are fully paid up members. Though I think ds2 is creeping into the 'I'll do it if you bribe me' phase, which is a little more promising.
I admire you - last time I went (at half term - duh) there was a queue from the entrance halfway to Bayswater. No way. We fought our way round the science museum but everything was queues, queues, queues. Should have stayed at home and gone to the spooky Booth Museum in Hove. Stuffed animals in glass cases....
ReplyDeleteMmmmmmnnnnn.....Hove. Now why hadn't I thought of that?
ReplyDeleteI never ever ever ever EVER EVER E V E R E V E R go anywhere I have to pay for in school holidays.
NEVER NEVER N E V E R N E V E R N E V E R !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I avoid all places where other people's children may be. My children probably think that 'school children' carry untreatable diseases - the lengths we go to avoid all places of 'holiday' entertainment.
There was one place a couple of years ago when I foolishly found myself in a queue during a half term. We were surrounded by a sea of temporarily liberated kids going mental. The woman in the adjacent queue raised her to heaven eyes and sighed to me 'Roll on next week'. 'Huh - yeah' I agreed, hoping she wasn't psychic or she'd have realised what I actually meant was 'Yeah 'cos YOU lot won't be in my parks, museums, bowling alleys, shops, cafes, trains, car parks, sports centres etc etc........' Poor misguided fool!
May have to work on my uncharitable side. But 'tis the general feeling of most Home Edders I'm sure. As The Great Grit would say: Smug Home Educating Bastards.
I found you via your comment on DeerBaby's post, where you described me! Bloody shoes are never where you left them, are they?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I found your blog - think I'm going to like it here.
Come on in!
ReplyDeleteLeave your principles at the door.