A day in the life...

Ferdy and I decided we'd had enough of 2021 this week, so we transported ourselves to 960 AD to experience a day in the life of a Jorvik Viking.

To be precise, we transported ourselves to Coppergate, a street in the Viking-age city of Jorvik where we met a number of its residents.

We travelled along the river, past the fishermen with a broken net and an evil slave trader, and into people's houses, meeting blacksmiths, leatherworkers and market sellers. We encountered a weaver dying her wool, a trader selling silk from the East, shells from the Red Sea and soapstone from Norway and even passed a priest giving a dying man his last rights. Ferdy enjoyed the Storyteller recounting the Völuspà; the story of the creation of the world and its end at Ragnorok. I'm sure it helps that many of the Norse gods and places feature in the Marvel films.

In the museum itself, we watched coin striking and purchased our own version made from one of the Anglo Saxon coin dies found at Coppergate, which featured the King Aethelstan.

In boring 2021, we had been learning about fractions over breakfast and I was pleased to hear, when informed that this coin would buy about 16 chickens, and people cut it into halves and quarters if they needed less, Ferdy pipe up that a half would buy 8 chickens and a quarter, 4 chickens. It is rather nice to see that something goes in to that rather dreamy head of his...

Meanwhile, in a cardboard tube factory in modern day Birmingham there was serious work to be done; it was time for Gil to experience a day in the life of a factory worker.

Gil learnt about measuring the length and diameter of a cardboard tube, he watched each different machine and saw how it works (his favourite was the tube winder whose superpower is to make cardboard tubes longer and longer, otherwise known by Gil as the Groot machine - always a Marvel reference) and he met all the factory workers. He excelled himself in 'stapilising' lots of paper together and he even answered the phone and took some orders, totally unfazed by an order of 100 tubes which he replied would cost £100. Obviously.

Finally he managed to write and type up a story about the last dragon. Perhaps a factory in Birmingham is not so far removed from Viking-age York after all.

Under the Sea

We can't remember when Gil last went on a train, so it was thrilling to get the train to Birmingham today on our visit to the Sea Life Centre.

Gil learnt to use a ruler and measure centimetres this morning so on our way, we discussed how long things are, considering that the longest thing he'd measured was 10cm. He guessed that his foot must be about 15cm (pretty accurate) and that a train must be a trillion billion centimetres long.

We chatted to the Gentoo Penguins on our arrival at the aquarium, crawled through tunnels of tropical fish and Gil was happy to meet the sharks, despite being a little unimpressed by their size (was he expecting Jaws?)

The undulating rays were stunning, we could have watched them for ages and we also spent a lot of time spotting seahorses with Gil telling me all the facts he knew about each sea creature we saw. He knows that octopuses can get through tiny holes by morphing into different shapes and that they have three hearts. He also knows that Daddy seahorses have their babies growing in their tummies and that piranhas have scary sharp teeth. We encountered some turtles that looked like dinosaurs and Mo, the sea turtle who is 40 years old and was originally found in a lady's handbag at Heathrow airport!

After watching the sea otters (they were huge!) being fed we felt rather hungry ourselves so went off in search of lunch.

On our way back to the station, Gil proposed that getting wet in the fountains in the newly refurbished Centenary Square would be very much on topic. So he did.

Later on when Gil wrote about his day I was intrigued to see the order in which he recorded the events of the day..

I went on a train to Birmingham and went in a water fountain and I 
had three biscuits. I also went to the Sea Life Centre.

Into the Rainforest (part two)

After doing our work, we went to Wales this Friday and the boys ran through the forest in the rain and we visited Ferdy's slice of heaven on earth: Hay on Wye, home to over 25 bookshops.

We also managed to do our postponed (due to illness) rainforest visit over half term.

This was a special place. I doubt we'll ever visit the actual rainforest because a) at the rate it's being destroyed, there will be nothing left by the time we are let out again and b) I'm not sure how I feel about visiting places which are better off without humans. So at the moment, this is the best we're going to get.

Some of the birds and lizards were roaming around the space: we spotted lots of ducks, an asian water dragon and even the two-toed sloth, Cinnamon, who was languishing above us in the canopy. Other animals were in cages and tanks. None of us had ever seen an armadillo, and Ferdy's favourite amphibious fish, mudskippers were also exciting to spot. Ferdy and Gil are the perfect combination of wildlife companions: Gil has exceedingly sharp eyes and can find things neither of us have even noticed, and Ferdy has infinite knowledge about the most unusual creatures. Apparently Mum is also pretty useful as the bag carrier...

We learnt about how mudskippers can survive simultaneously on land and sea and about the poor green iguana who is actually red because he was rescued from the pet trade who often selectively breed animals and create different colour morphs. And Gil overcame his fear of snakes by meeting an Emerald tree boa and a Carpet python. Snakes are now his second favourite animal (after pandas).

We also learnt how we wouldn't really be able to cope in the rainforest for more than an hour as it was very hot and sticky and grumpy-making especially when we couldn't find the caiman (who cleverly manage to hide from the nosy public), so we were quite happy to return to the car and listen to Katherine Rundell's thrilling story about children who had to survive for a lot more than 60 minutes in the Amazon rainforest.