An Apology to the Depressed!

Ummm...had a good hot bath with bubbles and no children in the tub. Others have holidays to get away from it all - a bath does me just as much good. While I was turning myself into an over-heated, pink prune I was thinking - unusual I admit, but I did and I was thinking that it is twice now that I have had a go at depressed people on this blog...only Conservative educational policy has received so much scorn! I did feel quite guilty and therefore, I did feel I needed to both clarify and explain.
I know quite a few people who have had traumatic events and periods of depression and they have had times when they've needed counselling and anti-depressants and I never felt the need to tell them to shut up - because the fact of the matter is, that when people are depressed they don't tell you about it. They bottle it all up, walk around with a false smile on their faces and never tell anyone about it. Eventually they may drop a few hints about what the problems could be or they do confidentially have a quiet chat over a coffee - they don't go on to every Tom, Dick and Harry who they can accost in the newsagents, bus stop or supermarket.
That's why these 'depressed' people are getting on my nerves, because they're not depressed at all, just feeling left out or wanting attention and their griping misery detracts from all the people who really do suffer and who don't complain...usually because they can't get a word in edge-ways above all the moaning and wailing! Perhaps if people stopped using the word, 'depressed' when really they mean, 'fed up' or, 'angry' then genuinely depressed people wouldn't feel they needed to suffer in silence through fear of being labelled a complainer! Depression is just becoming a word used by adults who can't get away with tantrums...unlike our girl below!

Recession Makes for Depression!

It's not been a good couple of months worth of news has it? Recessions and natural disasters as well as a fair few human instigated messes!
My anti-social side is definitely starting to kick in and I'm finding myself rushing past people and declaring fictitious meetings as I haven't had one conversation recently that didn't involve some depressed person - and no I don't just talk to myself! All these negative vibes are starting to rub off. I keep finding myself getting grumpy, I'm becoming a moaner, next things you know I'll be running around wearing placards predicting the 'end is nigh'. Our eldest was a stress head of a young child, I used to call him Chicken Licken and shout, 'the sky is falling' whenever he started...oh the days that Maurice Chevalier's 'Enjoy It' bellowed on repeat while we convinced him to look on the bright side rather than to always focus on the bad. Think I could do with some of that therapy myself now!
So what is causing this mass depression? It can't just be the recession...I've been skint for years and it's never really bothered me or got in the way of seeing the funny side of things. Maybe it's got a little, or a lot, to do with the 'keeping-up-with-the-Joneses' syndrome, people not wanting to feel left out in the miserability stakes. So it seems popping chill pills is the new must have; I remember when it was just a new conservatory or having venetian blinds fitted, items that were debt inducing and involved conversations with strange men who called you 'love' and therefore were not crazes I would ever subject myself too. Maybe if doctors wore dodgy suits, smelled strongly of cheap aftershave and used 'love' as a form of punctuation, people would be less inclined to want to go and request pick-me-ups? Or maybe we've just reached that point high-lighted on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, where we have started to have aspirations and expectations regarding a 'need' for happiness, without really knowing how or what can create this euphoric feeling. Now shopping has been curbed by the great financial squeeze, people are left confused and perplexed as to what will create this externally induced state. And the result? They become Chicken Licken's with the sky falling in over every lost button or stubbed toe...maybe all I really need is the money to buy a wonderful isolated cottage, ummmm, now wouldn't that make me happy?!

The Ofsted Circus Comes to Town!

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6045157
Gove, that wonderful man in charge of the counties education has now pushed through the changes announced to school inspections system...again. Now 'Outstanding' schools will be exempt - unless of course the exam and test results slide, because as we all know, exam and test results are the only factors that really matter in the English education system. Ultimately, I know these things are important, but are they really the only things that make a school a good place to be? And what makes that wonderful institution known so affectionately as, Ofsted, both capable and able to pass these judgements? Excuse the cynicism, but surely a more regular, less threatening presence would be more capable of making more realistic and accurate assessments of whether a school is effective or not.
We received a letter this week stating that Ofsted would be inspecting the primary school that 2 of our children attend. I understand that some form of monitoring should be in place and that the education of our children is something that should be monitored so that standards are maintained, but by people sweeping into a place and making judgements based on a couple of days worth of observations? What a farce! If you had not guessed, I'm no fan of Ofsted, I find the whole circus insulting, demeaning and patronising. Because the truth of the fact is that it is a circus, and as with most politically instigated educational policies, it was done on the cheap, with the benefit to children being quite far down on the list of priorities!
In Early Years settings, schools, health care, social services, you find people with clip boards; people incapable of hacking it in any of those positions being scrutinised, behaving like the hand of God and passing judgement on people, who are often more experienced and more highly qualified! The old joke, 'those who can't; teach - and those who can't teach become Ofsted inspectors,' jumps to mind...and it's true. I once had a P.E. lesson inspected by a very elderly woman who stumbled around the playground, tripped over a couple of small children, had to sit on the bench because her ankles were swelling and who hadn't taught for over 12 years...she had possibly been an excellent teacher, in the days when she didn't forget your name half way through the sentence so how could she possibly pass judgement on modern practices in P.E.? Madness...surely people with the power to inspect and judge how well children are taught, should be experts, not failed, disillusioned or retired. One inspector I spoke to had never taught outside of the Independent sector and had displayed little more than a text book understanding of state education let alone the workings of an inner-city school! My friend's private nursery was inspected by a lady whose only experience of childcare was as a childminder, how could she possibly be aware of what to look for, it's such a vastly different area of expertise.
At a meeting I attended which was led by one of the chief inspectorates with responsibility for the EYFS, she did assure the grumbling audience that all inspectors would soon be qualified to degree level. Listening to her speak was not far removed from watching paint dry, only without the benefits of intoxicating fumes. A hypnotising tactic I believe they are taught to employ so that those being inspected don't actually listen to the nonsense they speak and they manage to leave the site without being stabbed with sharpened pencils...oh it was a lovely lesson, but I can't give you anything more than a satisfactory because your board is too small...and other such enlightening statements.
As I said, I understand that some form of monitoring does need to be in place and fans of Ofsted will always argue that they know what they are looking for, that they can always 'see through' any show and inconsistencies and identify problems. I have to disagree. Schools have an idea when Ofsted will show, they know roughly what areas they'll be evaluating and they usually get enough notice to run around like headless chickens and plug any gaps before the 'team' show up. Inspectors are naive, when I have said this to inspectors I know they have looked aghast, 'no, no school would do that and even if they tried, we would spot it straight away!' Obviously, they have talents beyond the general population to spot bull?
And maybe that is the real issue with Ofsted...the inspectors actually believe the hype, they really see themselves as having God-like power to spot 'truth'. All that daily passing of judgements goes to their heads until they actually begin to believe that their value-judgements are correct. Once they reach this Zen like state, their word becomes truth. The ineffective head, who bullies staff and ignores the children, but who fills in the right sheets of paper and who can say the fashionable buzz words becomes a Meta-human and an asset, rather than the obstructive prat that they really are.
This week for the first time since the EYFS was introduced (2008 for those who don't know) our children's nursery and reception playground actually had toys in it when we arrived! Amazing! Nothing to do with Ofsted though obviously, it happens every day, I just obviously hadn't noticed the bread crates, dens and trikes littering the place before and of course any inspector would always see through any circus performance...wouldn't they?!

Celebrity = Insanity!

Just recently there seems to be a huge media focus on mental health...Charlie Sheen, Kate Middleton? I'm not a great TV watcher and dislike the whole celebrity media circus culture, for while I can understand anyone enjoying a film, series, book whatever, I just can't really understand the obsession with the people involved in the production. To me it seems a bit like enjoying a cake so needing to know what size shoes the baker who made it has.
Don't get me wrong, I can become enthralled by biographical and autobiographical writing and enjoy nothing better than listening to people's life stories, I just think I prefer the stories to be interesting - and few 'celebrities' are! Here I feel I must distinguish between actors, musicians, writers and celebrities, with many actors, writers and musicians being talented and interesting 'real' people. Whereas, unfortunately, most celebrities simply seem to be shallow, ego-driven puppets - people so lacking in personalities of their own, they have to assimilate themselves, like the Boggarts mirroring the viewers desires. (When I say Boggarts I mean Harry Potter style, not the little cat-like creatures who stole milk-maids' stools of Manchester folk-law)
Once mutated and sculpted into these strange contorted shapes, they begin to become unrecognisable as people and the viewing public are shocked and surprised when they exhibit signs of wear and tear, whether it's physically, emotionally or mentally?! I'm rather shocked when they don't.
In hundreds of years time people will debate the word origin of 'celebrity' and few will know that this archaic dead metaphor was once a word used to describe a group of people who craved attention, glory and financial-gain rather than the common usage of the word which by then will describe mental illness. Who knows with 'gene' therapy, lucky parents could ensure their perfect and modified children were born without the blighted 'celebrity' gene. Wasn't it Diogenes who was quoted as stating that fame is the noise of madmen? Think the old cynic may have been onto something there.

Mothers and Daughters...

The house is unbalanced...not just with the groaning weight of the piles of dust and laundry...but sexually. The male to female ratio is 7:3 and anyone who understands basic maths will agree that that won't factor down, there is no smaller common denominator to make that a nice, even ratio...it's odd. The children kind of balance; 4 boys, 2 girls, add the parents; 5:3 and it's odd. Now put the cats in (by cats I mean the ones that are really ours, not the interlopers who eat all the food and meow at our back door) and it gets even more unbalanced with 7 males to the meagre 3 females.
I have female friends who physically shudder when they realise the sheer scale of testosterone which abounds in our house (I just spellchecked testosterone and it came up with an alternative of 'dessertspoon' seems quite a symbolic substitute...) and there are some definite downsides to so many males. I am a realist, no delusional flights of fantasy for me, no wailing of, 'my son, my son,' no, that's not my style.
For a start they do smell, it is necessary to regularly febreeze the elder 2 sons particularly. Then there's the constant standing on your feet...why do they do this? 'Ah, we are genetically predispositions to read maps, yet have no concept of where our own feet are?'
Feet feature greatly in the downside to boys, they have awful toenails and no concept of how to trim and groom these weapons without constant instruction...when they do remember to trim the talons, it's either by the 'picking and dropping' method or the 'foot in mouth like a chimp' method. Either way, do I really want to find chewed and picked crescents of yellowed toenails around the house?
There's also athletes foot, the plight of Number 1 (the eldest and a swimmer), that constant scrapping sound as the foot is dragged across any slightly textured surface can be quite irritating, not to mention the talc puffed over every surface in the bathroom. Then there is the scale of the things - boys feet are so damned big, the elder two are both in double figure now and I find them dumped everywhere (shoes not feet obviously)...when I say 'find' that is in fact a synonym for 'trip over'. They have shoe racks and shoe drawers, yet I managed to fall over a colossal size 11 brothel creeper with a cartoon of a half-naked lady on the front every time I walk in a room.
Hygiene in general becomes a big issue with so many males, either the smell of them unwashed or the sneezing fits which accompany the vast quantities of deodorant and aftershaves used. Simple tasks, such as teeth brushing and washing hands after toilet visits take years and years of rigorous training. The toilet seat issue is widely discussed, but I personally find the forgetting to lift the seat up at all far more disconcerting than the fact they never remember to put the seat back down. After a few years with boys I learned to view a 'down' seat with suspicion and always wipe the seat over before sitting...and then there's the not pointing the urine stream into the bowl so it squirts all down the back and front of the toilet...infuriating. Boys generally forget to flush toilets too - why? Who knows?
Food bills are immense, they eat everything as they get older - including supplies for their younger siblings packed lunches - we've had lots and lots of very early morning shop dashes because the eldest got hungry and had a midnight snack -'oh, sorry, was the ham sandwich, tube of fromaige frais and kit kat for his packed lunch...didn't realise, I thought you'd made it for me in case I got peckish, sorry!' Even buying in a pile of extra snacks doesn't help, they just eat even more...
They snore en mass, in a co-ordinated, syncopated cacophony of snorts and splutters. And when they speak, they are either so loud that it is painful to hear them talk, like being blasted by a fog-horn, or they tell you nothing and you find out from a neighbour whose sister-in-law reads the local papers that they featured as a centre piece on gifted and wonderful youth a week last Monday.
There are lots of other, equally disconcerting elements to parenting boys that I won't even go into, it may cause offense to the delicately minded.
However, they do have qualities that makes life almost idyllic in comparison with mothering girls. For a start they will largely admit when they are wrong or have done something that you may not approve of. Girls simply stare you in the eye and lie, 'No, I've not eaten the chocolate bar that Dad bought you. You're just having a go at me, you've probably eaten it yourself and forgotten, why would you think it's me anyway?' as they slam the door and flounce up the stairs with chocolate around their mouth and the wrapper sticking out of their back pocket.
Girls are just so demanding.
They want your attention NOW when you are busy, but want nothing to do with you when you are free. And ohhh, the sulks and flounces and strops! My Gran used to say girls, 'go on the turn' I now understand what she means. My daughter and I can be having a lovely day, chatting, cuddling, laughing even (it happens on occasion) when suddenly...bam...the mouth will clam, the chin will wrinkle and the mood will descend. I have attempted to analyse triggers, as I do with the boys, but they don't have predictable patterns or causes. I am beginning to suspect they are simply caused by my very existence.
Child Number 5, a boy, can be temperamental, but his strops are triggered by the word, 'no', not unusual for a 6 years old. He'll pull a face, stamp a foot, may even shout, but after a couple of minutes, he accepts the matter and is back to normal - we'll have a hug and that's the end of it. But, Number 3, the eldest girl? No way! She collects and harvests all injustices with the passion gardeners display towards their prized marrows. Conversing with her resembles an interrogation by the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, only it is a little more stressful.
It is essential to pause and consider all answers to her questions, 'should I wear the blue or black cardigan?' may seem an innocent query, it is however, a trick question, designed to cause the unsuspecting parent emotional turmoil and bundles of grief, because what she is really checking is whether you have noticed which jeans she is wearing today. Bizarre? Not at all, because anyone who really was interested would have noticed that she was wearing the grey jeans and the blue cardigan just would not match! Further evidence that she is ignored, injured and misunderstood.
And now we have another emotional whirlwind developing, Number 6 has just turned two and is already contrary and oh, I can see the path stretching out before me...the denials that she has anything to do with the crayon on the wall, and the insistence that the t-shirt was bought with scissor snips along the edge. The refusal to admit that the smear of lipstick on her forehead means she was the one to turn the prized-best-occasion Chanel en rouge into a pile of mush or that the huge pile of used tissues shoved under the pillow are hers or that a pocket full of penguin wrappers is evidence that she actually ate them.
On retrospect, I pity those poor males a ratio of only 7 for the vast quantity of we 3 is nowhere near enough to balance that irrational sea of oestrogen!


Addendum:
Number 3 has just read this and feels the following corrections are needed:
1. The blue cardigan does go with the grey jeans...she NEVER wears it with the black jeans however.
2. She doesn't like penguins - other chocolate covered biscuit centred items in wrappers intended for lunchboxes maybe...but NEVER penguins. 'They taste funny!'

Best Time to be a Child was the 70s and 80s???

According to a report recently released, women in England believe that the 70s and 80s were the best time to be a child. I would be interested in seeing the stats on this; you know socio-economic breakdown of the selected survey group, age and region, that kind of stuff. I would suspect this is further evidence of the government propaganda machine...was the survey conducted in an office in Whitehall? In eras where we go without, children have better childhoods! Because I would suspect that those questioned were either living in Surbiton, enjoying the 'Good Life' or well, not actually children in the 70s or 80s!
I make this sweeping statement as I was, a child in England during the aforementioned era. My childhood was quite happy...ok I never got the Sindy playhouse or a Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate dispenser...but it wasn't the stuff of nightmares, but the best times to be a child? No way!
There were some positive elements to a 70s & 80s childhood - no school was really that bothered if your attendance slipped below the 95% mark (or in my case the 40%)...it was BAD parenting to send children into school with illnesses then due to those old myths that infections could spread with close contact and cause a school wide epidemic. Teachers would tut if you returned with a sniffle or the remnants of a chicken pox mark, I regularly took in note saying, 'Lisa was off school last week because it was snowing,' no-one thought much of this - it made a class more manageable and you never missed much anyway.
I suppose if you consider widespread neglect, ignorance of emotional well-being and an apathetically lack of interest to be a great childhood, then I suppose it would score 'Number 1' in any league table!
It wasn't considered bullying to call someone 'Mong' or 'Spack' and racially motivated taunting was considered to be an imaginative use of vocabulary. Try complaining to the Head teacher because your 70s class teacher was calling you, 'a Mong-Spack-Minging-Ginger,' and you'd get the strap for being a tell-tale, so bullying issues were obviously non-existent.
 As for behaviour management, well that old teacher who collapsed in the playground while hitting a row of children's bare backsides with a cricket bat and died on the way to hospital was a positive role model for all. The way he used to scream at the lines, 'Stand straight and shhhhuuuutttt up, girls and boys backsides look no different to me at your age, I'll whack them all. You'll pull down your pants and I'll whack each and every one of you..' well that was inspirational public speaking that has shaped my own mothering methods to this day. As for that dinner lady who used to call me a slug and throw cutlery at children? She inspired love and respect from all.
Bland, blank concrete expanses called 'playgrounds' created a wonderful enhancing environment and when the school divided en mass into two camps so all children could play 'war' we required no teacher input until the nose-bleeds started.
Life at home was also idyllic. Children wandered the streets evenings, weekends and school holidays with no supervision or parental input, Lord I wandered everywhere. It was a perfect time for flashers, paedophiles and weirdos everywhere, perhaps they were really the core group of people surveyed?
By seven I used to jump on my bike and go, although I did stay within a five mile radius, mainly due to the fact that I did get hungry and would need to return home for dinner, children in 70s and early 80s England didn't carry money, especially girls as those flammable, nylon dresses never came with pockets. I have a vague memory of wandering into the records room in my 'local' children's hospital with a girl from school who lived at the 'edge' of the hospital grounds (a couple of miles for me, maybe a mile for her). We spent ages routing through old wooden filing cabinets looking for the names of 'dead' children...we just found loads of x-ray pictures but created fantastic stories about how these unfortunate children had met such gruesome ends. However, I don't think any of our stories featured two unsupervised seven year old girls who had ridden a couple of miles across the middle of roads before climbing over seven foot spiked railings and entering a hospital site through an open back door and wandered through the old-ramshackle building for several hours without anyone noticing...other than the local psychopathic paedophile obviously.
We lived near a block of flats and discovered that the 'key' on corned beef tins could be used to access the stairwell, and because our childhood was so full of enjoyable and enriching experiences, we elected to spend large sections of our days going up and down these and sitting on the roof sharing out fags we had stolen off our parents - it was great to exist in a pre-cancer awareness era and have all of your clothes smell of that lovely stimulating odour de stale tobacco. That combined with the wonderful living environment that was pre-central-heating-houses-where-damp-ran-down-the-walls-in-winter ensured that we always had great coughs which meant we could spend lots of days off school which meant we could get bored sitting in a toy free house which meant we could spend all of our time outdoors breaking into to the local tower block and smoking on the roof...it was great to be a child back then!
When I say 'toy free' this is an exaggeration, although the rest is 100% truth...we did have toys. A bucket of lego bricks, an etch-o-sketch, some board games and some Sindy dolls oh and obviously, colouring books...but as all the great commentators will tell you, we didn't need these as we were outside all day, keeping our Mother's houses tidy.
Instead we explored the great outdoors and spent our days nicking flowers from the cemetery, playing knock-a-door-runaway or skidding bikes down a gravel hill because the OAP who lived next door would hang her head out of the window and threaten to throw buckets of water at us...what stimulating entertainment. Children today don't know what they are missing!
Of course childhood obesity was unheard of, there were children named, 'Fat Git', but the rest of us enjoyed the health benefits of getting our '5 a day' from jam, lemon sherbets, strawberry jelly, marrow-fat peas and tomato ketchup. School holiday lunches of tomato ketchup butties or half a packet of 'nice' biscuits kept us trim, while essential vitamins and minerals were given from the school canteens serving of stewed liver, chewy mash and reconstituted veg. We were quite posh, we had both fish fingers and arctic roll.
If that's the best childhood ever, then I believe as a nation we lack both ambition and imagination. The one area though that I genuinely believe it could be argued was better, was that as children were not really considered to be people, no-one really had any expectations of them so I guess in a strange way, it did mean that they existed without the pressure to achieve that today's children suffer from. The pressure to be polite, or to have an ambition or to brush your teeth. Obviously, at school we were given lessons as to how to 'sign on' because, to be honest, what else was anyone ever going to do? No actually, now I think about it, that was crap too.

The idyllic childhood of the 1970s - those pre-console and mobile phone days, when opposable thumbs were used for lighting matches, and pinching siblings...please note the lack of pockets. However, clothes were multi-seasonal, in winter you'd stick a home knitted cardigan on, corn-beef legs were an essential fashion statement.



Day Piddle-I-Po!

Number six...the minute dictator, has decided she no longer wears nappies, "no like 'um," she says and stubbornly pulls in her chin and shakes her head. Unfortunately, she is now an expert underesser, so sneak one on and you'll find it removed and in the heap with the rest of her clothes the second you turn your back.
It isn't that I want to discourage her and keep her in padding eternally, she's just made this decision on a bad week.
1.It's cold for a start, driving rain and wind keep blowing through the gaps in the house.
2. The downstairs toilet is out of action (number 5 used the sink as a climbing hold) and husband hasn't had time to fix it.
3. The staircase just has too many steps this week to be up and down them every two minutes...(still suffering from abscess, sinus infection and antibiotics combination and a thousand times a day is just too much - and potties send me into an irrational panic unless they are placed next to a hand-washing sink, so are therefore rendered useless)
4. Huge backlog of washing already, would have had this cleared in preparation for the vast quantities of 'pickle pants' that are joining the overspilling pile.

The simple fact of the matter is, that she is not quite ready to be nappy-less, she just thinks she is! So we are having a constant stream of trickles...quite literally. A few more weeks and all would have been well, she has all the sensations and lots of toilet enthusiasm, we're just not quite there with the control. The house will soon smell of chicken.
We start the day with enthusiasm but by five o'clock the knees are aching with so many up-and-down-trips and nothing else in the house is getting done. I suspect her need to 'wee now' coincides with whenever the husband and I attempt to have a conversation, drink a cup of coffee or eat any food. She uses urination as most countries use trade sanctions and nuclear weapons - it's an ultimate threat and deterrent to make parents bend to her will on all occasions. As soon as, 'get down from the table' or, 'no pinching' is said...surprise, surprise...she needs a wee.
Everyone toilet trains differently, some take a nappy off for an hour a day, moving up to an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, that works for them, but stretches the whole thing out eternally. I know toddlers who are in/out of nappies and underwear for months - pegs at nursery groan under the weight of the piles of bags of soiled bottoms.
I just don't have the commitment for a protracted project of any kind. It is so much easier to book a couple of weeks off, preferable when it's warm (less washing if they are just knicker-less) and timed to coincide with the other children's school holidays and to get ready a mop bucket! But no, as with all great dictators, that girl will do it her own way and in her own time, whether it makes sense or not!

'Special needs support promises more parent power'...my a**e!!

I can feel a rant coming on courtesy of the BBC news page...well, more specifically, the reportage 'Special needs support promises more parent power' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12677259.
I'm not big on swearing, but what a load of b*ll*cks!
The heading should read, 'Government uses 'parent power' when it means cutting funding because it firmly believes the general public are all too special to understand what the policy really means!'
Everyone involved in education...either working in education or having children in education or who simply travels past a school on their daily travels knows and understands that the system is a mess, and is fundamentally flawed. I completely agree that a systematic overhaul of the current system is essential to bring the education system in line with the 21st Century...because lets face it, the British Education System is almost Dickensian in its both outlook and ethos. It is a system created from the Ragged school philosophy of social control as required by those 'philanthropic' Industrialist who resented children playing on their one day off each week! It is not a system built upon a quest and thirst for knowledge, it is about pouring facts into empty vessels...Gradgrind, what an inspiration!
Within each and every classroom in this country several (if not most) of the children's educational needs are not met, not catered for and not even acknowledged...and most teachers, assistants and even many of the people in the LEAs are not to blame because, largely they try their damnedest to do their best by each and every child they look after...that is until they become so disillusioned with the system that they switch off and start churning out last years worksheets. It is the philosophy behind the system that is abhorrent and sickening to the core. Because within this country the word pedagogy should really be replaced with the word 'budget' - because that is all that ever matters. Please explain why I pay tax for a Royal family who can afford to send their children to Eton and why I pay for a handful of people to live in unbridled luxury? Why does my hard earned money pay for nuclear warheads when children in every classroom across this country don't have the access to an education which is both nourishing and enriching? And people cry budgets at me, every time I come across a child who needs some extra help, all children have special needs, but some just need that extra support, and in the grand scheme of things, the money involved is peanuts...don't cry budgets at me when I know Headteachers who drive 80 grand cars, and don't cry budgets at me when a single PM has expenses beyond my child's annual education allocation.
So my policy would be this...scrap paying for this Royal farce of a wedding, sod the nuclear warheads - if it gets that far, we're dead anyway, so what the hell - let the Queen and David Cameron and his cronies take the bus and allocate support to EVERY child who needs it (believe me, that would more than cover the money needed) ...not so that they can be force-fed their times tables and the phonological patterns of the 'oo' digraph...but so they can develop the love, passion and enthusiasm for learning which would actually see society progressing in this Century. Obviously though, no British Government would want that: if they created children who were able to think, no-one would ever vote for the self-serving b**stards!
'Big Society' is a country where people take responsibility for everything through unpaid voluntary work, while the government abdicates all responsibility for each and every social element...they are simply a tax collection service, we all seem to be paying our dues to Caesar.

Day ummmmm - again.

Our youngest child has developed an obsession with 'Charlie and Lola', she reads it, watches it, talks about it. Today she is in the best mood ever because her dad bought her a t-shirt; red with white, spotty sleeves and the word 'LOLA' is capitals, with a picture of the character seated on the 'O'. Amazingly she has cooperated in the breakfast eating - even to the point of using a spoon, dressed without a fuss and by mid-morning is still smiling. Oh the power of a t-shirt.
Perhaps the medical profession should take note and abandon the production of both Prozac and Mogadon, all that is needed is a sweat shop in some impoverished third world country and the nations depression would be cheaply eradicated. 'Charlie and Lola for All!' or 'C&LfA' for the acronym lovers, and when the powers that be restrict distribution and raise prices, it could cause an unparallelled national crisis. The papers would obviously divide into political camps, those for and against the increased prescription charge for Charlie and Lola merchandise and those who genuinely believe that these items should never be on prescription at all, those who feel that only people who could afford such luxury should be entitled. Producers would cite soaring costs and reduced cotton production as the reason why a t-shirt would cost £445.00 per unit and Panorama would go undercover...filming those children who get to make, touch, yet never wear the t-shirt while they sleep on factory floors and go without pay, sacrificing basic living standards simply for the joy of glimpsing these radiant items.
Charities would spring up, I am sure I would end up involved in fundraisers to acquire 'Charlie and Lola' porcelain crockery sets for the truly suicidal toddler. The charity workers would phone my place of work regularly, stating that new 'have not' social services case that was on their books. The tragic child threatening to jump out of the window unless 'Charlie and Lola' could arrive to save their lives...parents would be wringing their hands in despair at the uncooperative children, throwing tantrums and refusing to eat. Mothers would be revealing their inner turmoil to magazines everywhere, newsstand would overflow with tales of woe and inadequacy that the 21st Century Mother had to face - the trial of knowing that your child could never glimpse the desired, 'Snow is my favourite and my best.' That classic book that is essential bedtime reading.
Oh the relief that I am a 'have' as here I sit, with my child watching, 'Recycling' and singing an abstract song about Lola's shoes while patting the doll named Charlie.

Day ummmm?

Today I am feeling quite sorry for myself. A slump day. We are all allowed these apparently. Some people I know have one each and every day of the year and have no qualms about burdening the world with their pessimistic miserability. They don't feel guilt for this, but wear their griefs and grievances like medals of honour; expecting the world to acknowledge each and every minute fleck woven into the desolate ribbon of their own sacred award. These people actually think it is their right to bombard people like me with tales of woe: depressing, drawn out tales of other drivers cutting them up, or what check out girls dared to say, while people like me, sit and nod and think of how many bricks it takes to build a wall. I find these people generally breeze through life, with everyone who surrounds them ploughing a furrow and carrying both their own burdens and the burdens of those miserable others. These miserable others, obviously never notice this, but continue along their cleared path, firmly believing that they alone understand toil and pain and suffering.
So today I have joined the ranks of the martyred -  flagellation and horse-hair vests all round!
It's the chemical poisoning I reckon, they have addled my already deteriorating brain and created a mini-depression, so I am a ratty, fowl-tempered bovine woman. Very animalistic eh?!
The cause of this odd temper is probably complex and multi-faceted, it could be the stress and strain of modern life, the wrench of needing to be a superwoman in a society where the female is consistently undervalued, the drain of attempting to balance finances, children, work and relationships?
But I doubt it, I'm not really that emotionally complex...About a month ago, our youngest child, it a fit of 'don't-want-to' bit me. It was a vicious assault, making contact slightly to the left of my right nipple...it happens, people with toddlers can testify that bites, pinches, even the odd head butt is just standard practice for a miniature person attempting to communicate frustration. Although it made me wince, I thought no more of it. But although the bruising went away, the ache didn't, until I've been dreading cold days...cold days and sore nipples are not good combinations. Then, one evening last week I as I sat in the bath I noticed a rather unpleasant yellow tinted swelling, just where the offending teeth had made contact. The child truly is rabid. So now I have an aching breast, a strange fever and an even odder flu-type thing not to mention antibiotics the size of horse pills which are turning my gut into a churning sea of bile!
There I have had my moan and burdened the world with my fit of moods and temper...can't help feel a bit guilty though. So if you are unfortunate enough to be reading this, sorry...I am sure you actually have genuine issues to complain about, not just an aching right breast!

Day Whatever and a Half!

Now I have purged myself of the guilt of not posted daily, a weight has lifted, leaving me free to post as and when I feel like!
I've become interested in memories, why we remember some random words and images and why others moments are taken from us. I hold images from very early childhood, before the myelin had coated the synapses. Before all synapses had sprouted and flourished into a wild, unkempt garden and before Capability Brown had arrived with hedge clippers to trim the untidy mess and cultivate to a sculptural wonder.
If I close my eyes, I can see flashes of arbitrary images: the bumpy pattern on the wallpaper, a handful of orange-tinted dog fur, watching frost glittering on stone...so many haphazard pictures they become tedious in the rendition.
Yet, yesterday I saw a photograph: my sister and I with our Dad wedged between us, he is turning and looking affectionately at me. Long limbs stretch out in front as we sit on the floor and as I looked at him, I wondered why there are so many random images, but not one of that stranger's face.

Day Whatever!

I have realised I don't have the qualities needed for blogging. Dedication, maintaining interest, enthusiasm, commitment...these are not positive traits of mine. I even have to food shop online, as I can't maintain an interest for shopping past the bread aisle. "Ah, so we're on bagels, spinach, bananas and a novel this week? That'll go far," my long-suffering husband used to say, that was until Internet shopping was devised with the express purpose of saving my life.
I know myself and have no delusions about my character, so when after a whim, I started a blog and put 'Day One' as the first headers, it was in the belief that this may just create the sub-conscious commitment to maintain something for more that a week. It didn't work.
For daily blogging, as with everything else I do, was started with good intentions and a flurry of enthusiasm, then petered out.
It is a damp squib of a blog.

Day Eight and Nine of Blog!

Apparently I attend meetings some days and while there I have been known to voice opinions and views. Yet when I get home, I have no memory of what these could have been. I have what I will term Selective-Social-Amnesia, it is as far as I know a newly classified condition. Within these strange, alternate reality meetings, people sometimes say, 'oh, we'll ask Lisa, she'll know about that.' And I do. At least I do for the full five minutes while I am prattling and then...abracadabra and 'PUFF!' all the information vanishes from within me, released like caged bird into the world and I'm left with an empty cage full of stinky bird droppings and discarded feathers.
At yesterdays meeting, I am aware that the neurological development of infants was raised and I know I ranted about how essential movement was for this to occur effectively; but no idea which details and facts were spouted. Today it happened again with a discussion surrounding the changes in legislation on vetting and barring of people in contact with children and vulnerable adults; I know for certain I mentioned chapters and even page numbers...don't ask me now, no idea.
My mouth sometimes takes possession of my brain and I find my voice making statements that at the time I may actually believe, but I have no idea how or why I know it, I suspect I may in fact just make the whole lot up - very peculiar.