28 mosaic paving stones have been achieved by this group. The perents of some of the children have become involved as well.
The whole project is at a stage now where it is becoming more real, what I mean is people can see results of their work and the landscaping of the garden has begun, so things look different.
I had an episode on Fri afternoon! The grout I bought for this job was quick drying which is of no consequence to me. But turned out to have a negative impact on friday afternoon.
The children were grouting away very happily while I carried on with another task. When I came back to check things the kids were unable to remove the grout off the mosaic as the hot sun had begin to make it stiff and sticky. Controlled application of water quantities on dampend rags is the remedy, but no they enjoyed the mud pie aspect to this and continued to apply more grout and ignore the instructions. The rescue opporation was more urgent now as the grout was really beginning to dry and 5-6 mosaics were under a milimeters of very stiff nearly hard grout.
The children unable to respond to my increasing requests to 'get the grout off not on' were largely ignored, the nice clean rags I wanted to use to wipe the mosaics clean at the end were suddenly in the grout pot, dried grout was on every trowel, float and scraper I had provided. I was beginning to growl at these children.
So I aborted their contributions by explaining that this was a good time go round the block on their bike, find something else to do or go back and watch TV for 15- 20 mins and come back a bit later so I could clear the grout off the mosaics. The children formed ranks and started an organised campaign Julius Ceaser would have been proud of to thwort this plan of mine. Chanting had begun echoing round the site…'We hate Rob….We hate Rob.' When I asked them to go and come back a bit later, the chanted reply was …Up your bum and round the corner all the way to california'…Hate mail was being writen and chaos had broken out.
I ignored them and went back to resuue the mosaics from a boa constrictor like death below cement. With no response to their taunts, things became calmer and after a short while back to normal.
Later we were talking about horses and bikes and sweets as the compensation they wanted for being treated so badley. I knew this was back to normal and enjoyed negotiating their demands. By now we were all friends again and it was time to clear everthing away at the end of the day. They all willingly and happily helped pack stuff up and were well behaved.
