Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

Having trawled the shops for things that Maddy wanted to wear and getting nowhere, i gave in and spent a morning online sorting through every bl**dy clothing store i could find until my elder daughters were clothed again.

I’ve avoided having a boots rant this year, partly because the shops seem possibly to have noticed that not every parent wants their pre-pubescent daughter heeled and tassled and partly because i remembered to go and buy boots for them in August, there by not getting left with the dregs. I’ll ignore the fact that Brantanos had a pair of strappy, silver glittered sandals with a 4cm heel in a size smaller than Josie’s feet

This years rant is aimed at the fact that it is getting nigh on impossible to easily find girls clothes for children who don’t want to dress like adults, that are in anything other than pink. It’s really getting on my wick now. With 4 girls, the opportunities for not having them outfitted in a way that makes them look like a selection of mottled piggies are becoming few and far between. Tesco only seems to have velour (blech) or flouncy skirts in black, H&M is doing i know not what but doesn’t appear to want to clothe 8-10 year olds at all anymore, Sainsbury’s only has blue for boys under 2 (which is a shame as they had a cardigan in that size that Maddy would have loved!) and every other bl**dy shop only has pink, or fushia, or raspberry - or red, which doesn’t especially suit any of my children. Possibly if i was prepared to spend a fortune somewhere i could find things, but mostly then they are ‘nice’ clothes and i mainly only want roughing about clothes and i hate buying cotton stuff because then after the first wash they perpetually serve as a reminder that i won’t (can’t?) iron.

When Fran was little (and admittedly that’s 10 years ago), girls clothes were mainly yellow, orange and lime-green and if you wanted to buy blue jogging bottoms, you just did, from the boys section. Most of the clothes i bought for her, i bought fairly uni-sex, given i assumed at the time i might well have some boys at some point ( ) It wasn’t hard to do, the boys clothes were in nice enough colours and perfectly gender-anonymous. The pink thing began to creep in as Maddy was born, but even then i only added a few pinky bits, feeling that i might as well indulge it with 2 girls.

Now days you can’t buy a blue pair of trousers without it having a truck, or a monster, or “I’m a truly horrid little boy unless you feed me sweets” emblazoned somewhere on it, in any of the places that i’ve cheaply clothed my girls for the last 10 years or so. And it’s REALLY annoying - but not as annoying as the fact that nothing in the girls section comes without flounces, or HSM on it, or diamond trims and it’s all in sodding pink. I’m SO bored of pink and even if 3 of my children like it, Maddy REALLY doesn’t.

I’d spent a while flicking through boys sections in an effort to find things (a la Gwenny) but the trouble is, Maddy doesn’t like ‘boyish’ things and she likes things to be right. She might like blue, but she has a particular desire for feminine blue, not boyish blue and so boys sections don’t really cut it for her. All she wants, bless her, is a nice blue cardigan/fleece/jacket, not in pink but not with “I like to go stalking deer and smearing the blood on my cheek after the kill” written across it. (God knows what boys who like to ballet dance wear, or vegan ones, or ones that like pink….)

I’ve spent the entire morning shopping and between the Pumpkin Patch Online Outlet, M&S and Vertbaudet, i’ve finally managed to buy a summer/autumn supply of clothes that i like but that my girls will like too. Thank god for the internet, that’s all i can say.

“Ministers unapologetically “raised the bar”, saying the benchmark of five good grades must include English and maths.

They want a quarter of pupils in every school to manage this - but in almost a sixth of schools they did not.”

You know, if any self-important jumped up little twerp (you know, like a Prime Minister or anything) ever manages to force me to put my children into school, i am going to be in there every sodding day asking them how they are providing an education suitable to “age, aptitude and ability” in a way that i’m not. This is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. GCSE’s are NOT hard, using the English language (if it’s your first language and you speak it daily) is not flipping hard and actually the basic maths that is enough to get you a C grade is not hard either.

It ought not to be difficult to get 16 year olds through 5 GCSEs with a basic pass and if it is, then no-one is ever going to convince me that schools do very much beyond hindering the children that need their help the most.

It comes to something when ministers want a 1/4 of children to manage 5 basic passes that include maths and english. 1 QUARTER? How about ALL. THAT would be raising the benchmark. Just how low has our expectations of what makes a person fit for purpose fallen?

i was totting up today; i’ve had 6 students (plus one adult student) since Amelie was born to help me; out of those, the 2 who NNEB students rather than BTEC ones were quite honestly NOT fit to be about to go out into the wide world. They’d done a years childcare course and they didn’t know anything meaningful or useful about childcare at all. One of them told me, quite seriously, that the book showed them how to bath a baby and that was all the practise they’d had and then proceeded to run a cold bath for 6 week old Amelie because she was frightened of ‘burning’ her if she made it warm.

I can’t believe that as a country we need to ‘raise the benchmark’ so that a quarter of students have basic maths and english skills. It makes us sound like we’re in the 3rd world.

E-bayer rant - again!

On the 21st November, someone bought a pot of beads from me, paying the £4.45 by e-cheque. His feedback is only 34, but all good, so i sent it out because waiting is too prone to accidents on small items.

It never arrived and late last week he emailed to ask about it; i told him i’d sent it but i’d send a replacement. Then, just after that, his e-cheque failed but he immediately sent a “proper” paypal payment. I looked on my shelf, didn’t have any and emailed to thank him for the fresh payment (which had arrived on 1st December very late at night so i couldn’t have posted anything till monday anyway) and said i was out of stock but getting some in and i’d send it on Wednesday/Thursday, which i did.

Apparently he never got that email either and as of last night he filed a paypal non-received goods dispute on me; over £4.45 against someone with 100% positive feedback of almost 500!!!! WTF????? The note on it said “i’d still ike the goods but i think that it is too late for that now.” and when i replied pointing out the chain of events and stating again that ith ad been posted i simply got a rude remark that perhaps i could have bothered to email him and let him know that.*^^%()$*!!!!!

Honestly, what a twat. Oh yes, i’ve been selling on ebay faultlessly for 3 years but i’ve decided not to send you less than £5 worth of goods just for fun. And oh yes, i do see this is COMPLETELY my fault despite you actually paying via a method that bounced and not paying in proper until 6 days ago, and despite me apologising profusely for Royal Mail losing a sackful of my mail, all of which i have replaced with no quibbles at all, as i told him at the time.

&*^&%&&^%$$^&I&%%^&)!!!***

… i wish to point out to the person that left me a message in text speak the other day, that “lyk” is only one letter shorter than “like”. The time saved in reducing the word to ungrammatical twaddle is unlikely to leave you the time to save the universe (particularly as i feel anyone who can write an entire paragraph in unreadable drivel, while actually apologising for it, is unlikely to contain the capacity for promoting universal peace.) Further more, “tork” is in fact NO shorter than “talk” and did not save you any time at all, it merely made you look stupid. And saying “soz, i’m torking lyk msn” just made me all the more pitying.

So there.

I’ve decided that i’m spoilt by the people i spend time in social situations with. When HESFES’ing, asking someone to watch a kid for 5 minutes is almost never refused, if a child wanders into a tent and wants to do something the adult almost always agrees, if someone is stressed to the point of tears, people always rally round. i only survived my first HESFES because of Alison, Susannah and co and a lady opposite me. I make it through most camps, weeks away, home ed groups and so on because someone will give my children 5 minutes/ a biscuit/ tissue, as i give their child 5 minutes/ a biscuit/ tissue.

I’d started to think being nice, putting yourself out for a few minutes, doing something nice that makes peoples life more bearable or just being pleasant is normal human behaviour. Perhaps i was wrong.

It would appear the people i choose to spend time with are NOT normal.

So for the second time in a week, i’ve got on the wrong end of an old person, just by politely asking if they would be kind enough to help me out and make my life a tiny bit easier.

My crime. I arrived at the musical show to find the carpark full, 4 cars parked in a row on a space that normally holds 8 parked up one behind the other and an old man milling in the area. Everyone was parked all over the place and to get out i was gonig to have to leave my car in the middle of a road with the little two in the car.

I wound down my window and said (after saying “hello are you going to the show” etc and getting a polite if frosty reply) “Excuse me, would you possibly mind asking those people there (pointing to just inside the dancing school door a whole 10 metres away) if any of them own these cars and if they would pull forward a bit so i can go behind them.”

He gave me a freezing, furious star, shook his head and turned his back on me.

Obviously it would have just been TOO awful for him to be in any way helpful. Pray i never walk by you when you need me, Mister.

Ouch. I think my tolerance levels deserted me rather today I’ve managed to get well and truly narked, and embarrassingly sarcastic, with someone being pissy on eo because their messages didn’t get released immediately. I really didn’t do well and June and Jacqui will doubtless shoot me. Ho hum.

And then i lost my temper with an old lady. She used to live 3 doors away, long before we ever lived here and arrived to visit the other old lady 2 doors away, today. Now we live almost opposite a nasty junction and we’ve recently had double yellow lines painted with good cause. There have been several bad accidents here since we’ve lived here. I was outside and pointed out the lines and said that they did come and check now too. “Oh it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve got a blue disabled badge. Besides, i’m not here long.”

4 hours later i arrived back, dodged around her car against the flow of traffic to get in my drive and went and knocked on old lady number 2’s door. I made my point, politely, that her car was an obstruction and dangerous. “Well, i’m disabled” she said (she walks perfectly well) “where else can i park.” “Hmmm… how about this nice free drive your friend has, or 20 yards down the road where it is double yellow lines?”

She was really rude and dismissive and shut the door in my face, having said she didn’t live here so my issues with her parking were not her problem.

I know you can park on double yellows if you have a blue badge, but surely you are expected to still park safely and use better parking if it is available? I think it stinks; what a bloody horrid attitude, no one elses safety or convenience matters if i have a blue badge. Horrid woman.

Oh well.

Maddy has spent the day making museums, doing sums and being industrious, Fran did touch typing, Amelie and Josie played beautifully and looked at books, Fran read books to them.

We all got our hair cut.

We all went out to Ferry Meadows and got blown away with Tammy and Sam, but it was fun and warm enough to be out in, which helped!

I joined Freecycle and got rid of our garden toys.

Maddy and Fran had Rainbows/Brownies and Fran went bowling with them.

I posted MORE parcels, but am now up to date :cheer:

Maddy has created a birdwatching kit for herslef and wants to learn about birds and animals of the world. So i’m gonig to support her in that

I’m zonked, had bad dreams all night that i woke up believing and need to go and collapse on the sofa. Tomorrow my brother is visiting and i can’t wait

*rant alert*

The Observer, Why Mothers Should be Offered Caesareans.

Job to know where to start on that one, though “f*ck off you stupid, ill-informed Daily Mail style ‘journalist’ bint” might be quite a good start.

Judging by the comments on the Observer Blog quite a few people feel the same.

Why shouldn’t we offer caesareans to non-medically indicated but frightened of labour (and frightened of a ‘too saggy for sex vagina’ (hand me that patriarchy file!) ) women? Oh now let’s think… because it costs twice as much, because it’s major abdominal surgery, because it leaves you with significant danger of a baby with birth difficulties, of having bladder damage, it heightens your chances of PND, because it is a MAJOR operation, you stupid woman. Honestly, when in danger of having nothing to write for your column this week, let’s go for adding hype and hysteria to the mystery of natural childbirth shall we?

Why don’t we offer caesareans to mothers who just want them? Do we offer colostomy bags to people with slight constipation? Get a life Jo Revill and talk to your sister about her caesarean in a few months; 13 days after does not a full emotional picture make. And if you ever make it here, read a few of my post caesarean posts in the “rant” section here. I might even provide you with a decent story. Jeez, my Dad has always been proud of his professional status as a journalist for a National Daily; you make a mockery of it, woman.

*end of rant*