why in Latin did they insist on spelling everything with 'anus' at the end...?

Well, I have to say, I really enjoyed my mopping sesh tonight. Most satisfactory. About the most satisfactory thing that has happened to me all week. I’m about 2 steps forward, one thousand five hundred and eighty nine back these days. Whether it’s the befuddled ‘there’s too many kids, we should have watched more T.V, Alex’ trying to think swarmed by kids, or general lack of brain function due to me just being me, battling giant ostriches pretending to be chickens in my back garden, me. I have taken issue with my flock. They have not had any eggs for 3 days-we are going on an egg hunt tomorrow, I do hope I have not left the door of the caravan in our garden open. All hell would have broken loose. And we’re due about 9 eggs…

You know what? As I write, I frequently made outstandingly aware of my lack of knowledge surrounding fowl language. Is it a ‘flock’ of chickens? I don’t really care, I am using it anyway even if it is wrong, as it ‘fitted’. And whilst we’re on the topic of fowl, I opened up a whole can of worms yesterday in declaring firstly that peacocks pew, correcting myself after a Google search to find out they ‘lou-lou’. Now it seems that for half of you out there, this is your word for a girl’s front bottom. The equivalent of these majestic creatures with Turrets’ syndrome yelling out ‘front bottom-front bottom’ in all our faces. Even the queen keeps them-so are they in fact greeting the Queen, courtsying and yelling ‘front bottom!’ ‘Oh, do excuse me your Highness’? And then, there are some of you who correct me too. It is neither ‘pewing’ they do, NOR ‘lou-lou’-ing that they do, they do ‘sreeeeeeem’ noises, it turns out. To my mind this is crap. With a tail as magnificent as that, a peacock damn well warrants shouting ‘front bottom, front bottom’, not ‘sreeeeem’. So what the hell was I listening to? This is all getting too complicated. But I must give credit to that very knowledgeable lady with a life story you can read (and oh my golly gosh it’s so worth the read) here- http://fastandluce.blogspot.com/ . It was she, that let me into the fact peacocks ‘sreeeeeam’. I am forever grateful.

Still on the topic of birds (sorry, unless you’re a member of the RSPB, and you’ll be really enjoying my account, I should well imagine…) we went on a dog walk today, it’s been beautiful and hot here for a few days. Monty spots a bird in the field and tells us all to shhhhhhh and slowly creep up on it. It flew off, but I told him to hold a mental image of it, then ‘Google’ it when we got in. I imagine it set him off thinking for a while what ‘Googling’ meant. So Googling went well, we went onto an RSPB site, and discovered, after disregarding some suggestions which went from the ‘spotted skint’ to the ‘little tern’ to the ‘little ringed plover’ all of which sound like porn stars. I had no idea the RSPB were into that. It got kinkier, so Monty settled on the ‘frocolanus africanus’ bird, (which doesn’t sound kinky at all). Which turns out to be a wild turkey cross-bred, that live in South America. So I told him it must have got a plane over, just trying to keep my little boy’s dream alive…! Just a quick question-why in Latin did they insist on spelling everything with 'anus' at the end...?

This is an actual frocolanus africanus

I managed, finally , to get all the books covered and repaired and re-issued for Monty’s school today. We then made gooey chocolate cakes to take to a friend’s who lives in the house at the bottom of our dog walk, so we sometimes call in. Anyway, we were almost there, I had got the paddying Esmie to agree to go in the pushchair, not on my shoulders or the scooter, which were her ultimatums, oh, and she can ultimate! It was safer for her to be tied down strapped in somewhere, as I let the others take bikes/scooters. I could at least, worse case scenario, hoy the pushchair into the ditch and run down to rescue a fallen child this way. It took FOREVER finding shoes, too dirty to take out in public, although totally OK with it all day in the house quick clothes changes x 4, tripping over the insanely excited dog who can’t even see his hair’s so long, 45 minutes to get out. But I did it, we were ready, I place the cakes on top of the pushchair, and my friend drives passed and bibs and waves on her way out…still, at least we had more cakes for us!

Lola's 5th Birthday cake-this year, she's ordered Strawberry Shortcake, damnit, insects are so easy!

Talking of which, I am going to go and eat one now, although the kids did request I hide them from Daddy and not tell him we had been baking, as if he knew we had chocolate cakes, the kids would not have any the next day…!

See you tomorrow!

Tamsyn x