Right then, are you ready to lose another 20 minutes of your life to this blog? Don’t say I didn’t warn you, not that you’ve got anything better to do, let’s be honest. Grab your beverage of choice (I recommend something with caffeine or, if you’re Matthew, a suspiciously large glass of Mighty Morphine Power Stranger) and brace yourself for the latest instalment of my batshit-crazy existence.

Yesterday was Thursday, which around here means three things: the sun was shining, the pantry doors were flung open to the masses, and Nanna Bambi sweated off approximately two stone running our not-at-all-sweaty sweat shop (sorry, I mean pantry). Seriously, the woman works so hard she’s considering a side hustle as a sauna attendant.

But I digress. Which is a bad habit of mine, if you have not noticed. Any-hoo, Thursday is also Forest School day at NPLCC. This is our way of giving frazzled parents four hours of freedom, poor buggers; I know how they feel. We have been there, done that and worn the fucking holey T-shirt. Forest School provides parents with enough time to pretend they’ll clean the house, but not quite enough to actually achieve it before the kids return to trash it all over again. Forest School started as a shoestring childminding operation in my backyard, back when I was a broke childminder and determined to prove you don’t need to spend a fortune to keep children entertained. Nature wins every time, and that’s before I lost my marbles and the council decided I was just the person to take over NPLCC. Cheers, local government!

Now, Thursdays are also the day when our little slice of carpark is transformed into Glastonbury, minus the music, mud, or A-list line-up. By 3am, a queue of tents lines the path in front of the yellow gate, full of eager campers hoping to snag a Hagandaz ice cream from our freezer. Andaz, if you’re unfamiliar, is the sort of ice cream so expensive you have to contemplate a small life of crime just to afford a taste. I mean, who hasn’t stood in the shop aisle, calculator in hand, wondering if a criminal record is a fair price for a tub of creamy, delicious, cold heaven? No judgement here.

Forest School has grown from strength to strength, to the point where I can now blissfully stay at HQ while my heroic team take the kids out by coach for adventures. Yesterday: twelve children, a beach trip, and a staff team with nerves of steel. Meanwhile, Nanna Bambi heroically fed the masses, helping countless households with cheap grub that would otherwise be landfill fodder (and, look at that, helping the planet too; Greta Thunberg would be so proud.

Meanwhile, at home, Matthew was busy morphing into a beetroot. Yes, he seems to be developing a red rash,  possibly a side effect of increasing his Mighty Morphine Power Stranger dosage. He’s shrugging it off, of course, but he’s looking redder than a well-boiled lobster. I’ll leave him to decide when to acknowledge it because, in this house, medical advice from Matthew is usually “It’ll be reet!”… Okay, you keep lying to yourself, beetroot man.

Tonight, we’re off to visit Matthew’s mum, Musie-Bear/Mer/Pam/Pam-a-lam. (Honestly, she’s got more nicknames than the average MI5 agent, and I can’t keep up.) We’ve been summoned for pizza in the garden, a few jars (that’s drinks, not pickled onions), and a catch-up with Agent Poppy (the labra-doodle) and Agent Megan (the spring-a-poo). If you’re not already familiar with these characters, it’s a fair sign your attention span is on par with a goldfish, and you need to go back and read a few previous posts. Go on, I’ll wait……………… too late, I need to pee.

So, after a hard day at NPLCC, I was really looking forward to an evening in the sunshine, listening to birds tweet and pretending we’re the sort of people who don’t immediately leap at the offer of free food. Matthew, naturally, will be there with bells on. Any excuse to be in the countryside, especially if there’s pizza on offer and a chance to avoid further beetroot transformation.

Now, before I get too carried away with dreams of pizza, let’s talk about Matthew, his dad, and their shared obsession: fire pits. Give these two a summer evening, an old wooden pallet, and a box of matches, and they’re happier than pigs in muck. The blokes could host the Olympics of burning random bits of wood, and I swear they’d take home gold for Team GB.

Speaking of burning things, let me tell you about the time I had my gallbladder removed. I was told to rest for two weeks, so I sensibly suggested we finally get a microwave, something we’d never needed before, as I’ve always cooked from scratch like a good domestic goddess. I figured even Matthew could manage a ready meal after work if we had one. So off he trots to Aldi or Lidl (honestly, I can’t remember which), and comes back late September, proud as punch, without a microwave. No, no. He comes home with a fire pit. Yes, you read that right. A bloody fire pit. “Thought it would cheer you up!” he says. And you wonder why I write? Because if I didn’t, I would be in a padded cell by now. Naturally, I asked him, “How the fuck do you expect to warm your ready meal up on that?” His face said it all; clearly, he’d not thought that far ahead.

In the end, the microwave dream died, and Matthew spent the next fortnight gleefully incinerating anything remotely flammable in the garden, while I survived on soup and sarcasm. Who needs a microwave when you’ve got a man with a fire pit?

Anyway, all this goes to show that with this lot, even a simple recovery period turns into a comedy of errors, and that’s just a typical day in our world. So, as the sun sets and the smell of burning wood drifts through the air, we get ready for another evening of countryside chaos, pizza in the garden, and the usual cast of characters popping up for free food and a bit of banter.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more tales, because you can bet your last 2p that something bizarre will happen before the night is out; nothing is ever straightforward in our world. By the way, did anyone actually manage to catch the eclipse on Wednesday evening? As you may have guessed, we didn’t. The lure of my Solitaire app and the siren call of my bed proved far more irresistible than burning my eyeball sockets out with the sun.

Right, that’s your Thursday update. Because these blogs are a day behind, a bit like my menopausal brain right now, but if you’ve made it this far, congratulations; you deserve a Hagandaz ice cream. Just don’t ask me to bail you out, cos I don’t get paid enough for this shite as it is.

Until tomorrow, stay dodgy, and remember… I have taken over your life now for a whole week now!!! Yes! That’s right …Hahaha … The power is mine!!

Sorry, not sorry!

Love ya, Bye

Kate x