We came home from my mum's on Saturday, having had a lovely time. I hadn't worked at all, but had a job to do Saturday evening, which I managed OK.
I then spent much of Sunday sending and receiving e-mails to do with the final organizational stages of an event I was organizing for Tuesday.

A couple of months ago on the Brighton and Hove home-ed Yahoo list, I had suggested a 'Flash Mob' style event as a protest against the Badman Review. Eventually I'd proposed a mass bubble-blowing on Tuesday 4th August in Brighton. D of the Greenhouse produced an excellent bubble-themed flyer especially for the occasion, for us to give out. I chose bubbles because they are very simple, even young children can blow bubbles and enjoy them, plus they are aesthetically appealing and embody such concepts as 'childhood' and 'freedom' quite well.

Sunday, then, I sent out lots of e-mails to people who had expressed an interest, asking for final confirmation - it was wonderful to get back the replies as almost all of them were confirmations, along with thanks for doing the organizing. So although sending lots of e-mails was a real slog, I soon started to feel very rewarded and a lot less worried, as I checked off names and numbers of participants on my list. I also sent out e-mails to local paper and local BBC newsdesks, not sure if anything would come back from them.

Monday, more e-mails continued to come in and a couple of the media people got back to me and took my mobile number. Latish in the afternoon, somebody arranged to phone me for a live radio interview by phone an hour before the event the next day. I was very pleased at that - one radio interview seemed a good response really. I worked on Monday evening and at 2am realized I'd just finished the wrong job! So had to start the right one and carry on until 6am to deliver on Tuesday morning! Got 2 and a half hours sleep - not ideal really...

Tuesday was the day of the event and a flurry of incoming calls on my mobile in the morning represented a big increase in media interest! Suddenly I was having chats with a local paper reporter and local TV news reporter in turn, then several ringbacks to confirm arrangements. In the middle of all this, as I was thinking 'when am I going to get a shower?' and 'where can I buy bubble mixture, a magpie flew into our gate and we had to spend half an hour helping it to recover. Bizarre, that was! We had to negotiate the logistics of keeping the kittens away from it, not letting it bang its head on the window, etc. I held the poor thing, it was in shock mainly, did have a few pecks at my fingers, but then calmed down when wrapped loosely in a towel in a cardboard box. Eventually it started to move again in the box and flew across the room (and, as I realized the next day, shat ungratefully on my laptop!). We then walked down to the ditch (winter stream) with it and let it go. Missed several calls whilst doing magpie-calming but got back to them later and still managed a shower!
So by midday (the event was due to start at 1:30) F and I were finally heading into Brighton with, by now, definite arrangements with a TV news reporter and a team from the local paper. The timing of the TV interview meant that I probably wouldn't be able to do the radio interview, so as soon as we arrived in the gardens for our pre-event picnic, I was delighted to see Nic there and to quickly explain and ask her to take the radio interview. Left her with my phone, so that she could pretend to be me and then F and I went over to do TV stuff!

Stopping here for now as it's too long and I need sleep!

... ... ....

F and I were with the BBC reporter for about half an hour. First of all we just had a chat. A really nice thing was that we completely blew away the 'home-ed kids don't have a social life' issue as first F was telling B, the reporter, that 'my best friend D is just over there, can you speak to him too?' and then A, P and L popped by on their way and stopped for a quick chat, so we looked very 'connected' to a social network (which we are!). Then she recorded some 'establishing' stuff - which was a bit crap really as she wanted us 'looking at some flowers' (in the gardens) and talking about them. She miked me up and we did it, but it was very false and maybe was just a good way of warming up and getting past nerves. F was better than me, I kept doing stupid things like looking at the camera and stuff! It was quite funny and I'm not surprised she didn't use that bit. So yes, we looked at some flowers and talked about their colours, shapes, similarities to other flowers, fragrance, etc.
Next we filmed the bit on the bench with F looking at her encyclopedia and having her eclipse moment (should have tied her hair back!) - this was a bit more like how we actually do operate, so I think it came across quite well.
Finally I did my interview (should have washed my hair earlier, then it wouldn't have done quite such a bad centre-parting thing, but blame the magpie for that and it doesn't matter anyway). I waffled on a lot, but am quite happy with the bit she used.

By that time it was 1ish, so we went over and had something to eat with Nic and a few others just arriving. Nic debriefed me on her radio phone interview and I got a text from J saying 'listened to the end of your radio interview and thought you sounded like Nic, then it finished and it said it was Nic and she was in charge... what happened?', which gave Nic and I a good laugh, wondering whether he thought she'd carried out some kind of coup and got me tied up in a cupboard somewhere.

Over the next half hour lots more people arrived and we then gathered outside the Museum as arranged - estimates of numbers have varied between 60 and 100, I reckon about 60 but anyway, it was a good crowd. Lots of the children were wearing their T-shirts produced by L, which say 'The world is my classroom and life is my curriculum' and 'I can't go to school... I'm autodidactic'. Had a quick chat and some arm-waving direction-pointing and then we set off in 3 groups to walk away from the area in 3 directions, then turn back and start blowing bubbles walking back to converge on the pedestrian priority street near the gardens, where we would continue blowing bubbles for a further 5 minutes (which turned into half an hour!)

The kids were really lovely - they did so well. Really proud to see them all, blowing bubbles, giving out flyers, talking to the media people and members of the public. They did the most excellent job.

The BBC tv reporter followed us and did lots more filming, including interviewing Nic and talking to the children. The Argus people turned up and took pictures and spoke to people and the sun shone and the bubbles went up and it was all very lovely and I was really really glad and so so frazzled and tired, I would have liked to just lie down in the gardens and go to sleep! Some of us finished the event off by winding down in the gardens and gradually people left and we went home.

It was very exciting to hear Nic online on the radio when we got home:

Nic on radio near end from time index 02:34ish I think
And even more exciting to see everyone on the telly that evening:

This is the copy with proper sound synch
The original one where our lips don't match our words has got nearly 800 views and I was just contacted by a Swedish group of home-educators congratulating us (I think - need to run it by a Swedish friend) having seen it on YouTube.

Hoping to see good coverage in tomorrow's local paper too as they've done phone interviews with several of us and are putting some photos into a double-page spread.

It was a great experience, I'm still a bit bemused by how well it went. Really pleased to be part of such a wonderful community of families who are capable of so much and who pull together so well. Thanks everyone who came along and everyone who supported us in other ways and everyone who has heaped so much praise upon us - I spent yesterday morning reading response posts and comments and e-mails and blushing a lot!
F really enjoyed the whole thing and got a lot out of it too, she was so excited watching the news that night! Back to her encyclopedias today though, of course...