Chickens in a box

Decided to defect to WordPress, which is much easier to use.  My new home is Chickensinabox.com .  Come and find me! 😀

The context Will has been working towards his DoE Bronze award for most of this year - no mean feat given that for the most part we've been in lockdown and he hasn't been able to get out. In addition to a two day expedition, you have to show that you have learned a skill, been volunteering and also undertaken specific physical activity.  The skill was quite easy, he did beekeeping with me; helping set up for spring, inspections and extraction. For the physical he'd already got signed-off for his boxing. Unfortunately the volunteering he wanted to do for Newbury Mencap just wasn't possible with Covid. I thought maybe he could help as part of a working group at Snelsmore, but they weren't running in lockdown either. The volunteering has been put on the back burner.  The expedition To the expedition. William's team had to plan a two day route from Hungerford Common back to St Barts via Linkenholt and the Wayfarers. About four weeks ago (when it became apparent tha...

On 24th March William was sent home from school with flu-like symptoms as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, and both he and James have not set foot back since that day. All that changes tomorrow when they are finally going back to school for the start of the autumn term. William now in Year 10 and James is Year 8 can you believe it.  It's actually James I feel for, because he wasn't at St Barts long enough to make proper mates, so has pretty much spent the whole of the past six months at home on his own. William at least left with friends he's been able to keep in touch with over the X-Box and WhatsApp.  To be fair, James is very self-contained; comfortable in his own company. I worry that, because I work full-time, he misses out on playdates because I don't pick him up from school, don't go to the gym, or run, or make it to coffees, or anything like that. It's a sort of mum FOMO that because I'm working, we're out of the social circle. It was really nic...