Finally finished and some slightly strange conversations.

This evening we finally finished our major tidy and clear out of the playroom.  Hurrah!  It's certainly taken long enough, but K & M have agreed to part with quite a lot of 'stuff', which is something of a relief.  We have an agreement that they can sell it at a home ed group annual table top sale, but that if it doesn't sell, it goes to a charity shop or is recycled or thrown away.

The pile of 'stuff'.

Now the only issue is that we need to store all of this until the next Fun Club sale, which used to be every November, but the last one was changed to February.  I'm really hoping that it'll be November again this time!

We also finished reading Boy and K & M were very interested to hear that a HE mum friend, was related to one of the people portrayed in it.  Prepare to be quizzed when we next see you C!  The very last couple of pages of the book recount the voyage that Roald Dahl took when he left England for his first overseas job with Shell in East Africa.  So K & I got the globe out and followed his journey from London to Mombasa, via the Bay of Biscay, Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and Aden.  We also found Newfoundland, where he went on a expedition between school and starting work, and Norway, where both his parents were from and where he went on holiday every year as a child.  If Boy has opened up some discussion about what was in effect child abuse, perpetrated by adults and other children, encouraged by those adults, then Going Solo is certainly going to continue in this, and we started reading it this evening.

This morning the girls had their piano lessons, which they are both very much still enjoying and they are both doing practice, particularly in M's case when I have asked her to do something she doesn't really want to do, such as help with tidying up!  K had her lesson first as usual and M & I went to the park, then K & I went for a walk along the canal while M had hers.  During our walk we talked about various things, such as growing up (K would really rather not just yet), death (she thinks that she wouldn't be so bothered by it if she knew what it was like) and the universe (neither of us can get our heads around the idea that the universe is expanding but there isn't anything beyond the limits of it for it to expand into and K is clear that she doesn't want to study theoretical physics at university).  On the subject of conversations A told that recently he was talking to K and, in response to something he'd said, but he can't remember what, K told him that she could murder someone if she wanted to, but she doesn't want to murder anybody, so she won't!  I'm really curious as to how that subject came up!

Finally, M has been very busy today, making things.  She is, apparently, going to Hogwarts on the 1st September and is preparing things ready to go.  Today she made a telescope, by painting a kitchen roll tube and she made a cage for her owl, Pig, which she is 'very proud of'.

Inside there is a bowl, with half for water and the other half for food and a perch for Pig to sit on.  It is much bigger than the cage that K made for her owl, Wom, but that is apparently because Pig flies around madly a lot, so need more space.