School! (by sarah)

Jeany will be starting school in September at 4 and a few days old and last night was an open evening at the school.

We went there straight from the Pre-School which ment we had a tired grumpy Jean with us - not how I would have chosen the teachers to see her but never mind.

School day will start at 8:45 and ends at 3 but for the first term (might have been half term can't remember!) she will only be doing mornings and then they disguess with you about them going full time. This was a bit of a shock I thought she was going to be full time from the start - she does 9-5:45 at the nursery currently and yes that would be too much if she was doing that every day as it does make her tired but half days! that means no lunch time there either 🙁 That means that I will not have time to do anything really for that first term.

There is also no school dinner facilities there so its going to be packed lunches which is a pain in the backside as I know what I am like and sandwitches made the night and kept in the fridge are just not very nice :/

But I was impressed with the learning programme they have and went a bit - opps... as I've been doing one of the things with her anyway. For a small school it has fantastic facilities and even takes the infant class swimming! They are in 'clusters' with other schools so get to use those facilities too!

Teachers and staff seemed really friendly and I appear to know half the PTA!

July will see Jean going in for three taster afternoons which should be fun for her.

The teaching techniques are also the sort that I approve off for small children - they have themes like under the sea and animals and learning in about exploring. The litracy stuff also caters for dyslexic learners without being apparent I noticed and as each child is treated as an individual learner for those subjects this is a good thing.

They do lots of nature walks and group work too so I am hopeful that Jean will have a good time at school.

Hopscotch Poem (by sarah)

I was so fuming after the post the other day that I found myself expressing the stupidness in poem form.

Feed back welcome!

It's called Hopscotch in case you were wondering:

Here's some chalk

Now go and play

Hopscotch was fun, in my day

A small child smiles up at his mum

Then runs outside in the sun

And begins to draw

the hopscotch grid

When out pops his friend - Sid

Then there's Jane, Marther, Mary and May

They've all come outside to play

Throwing stones

to mark their place

the hopscotch moves on a pace

until that is...

sirens rent the sky

And two burly police

come to spy

And tell them that their game's a fraud

Hopscotch - it turns out

is against the law!

And so with tears

they must scrub away

Chalk with which they should play

Stupidity in huge great measure

Stealing away childhood treasure

Whilst prisons burst at the seams

Police down size crimes - to please...

Those Powers That Be

So that they can get more votes

Seizing the UK securely by the throat

Sweeping troubles under the rug

By proclaiming a 5 yr old - THUG

And so without childhood games

I predict arson flames

as our youth grows in discontent

Violence shows as angers vent

So please - I beg

Government Sir!

Why not let childhood naturally unfurl?

And all those games of yester-year

be played in our streets

without fear

Diverticulitis (by sarah)

Mum came out of hospital about this evening and it turns out that though she may well have a 'grumbling' appendix the CT scan showed that she has Diverticulitis which is were pockets and pouches form in the gut where there is pressure on the system.

These get filled with erm.. 'stuff' you find in your intestines - ie half digested food and poo. It then becomes infected and inflamed. Interestingly it normally occurs in the sigmoid colon in Europeans but mum has it where Asians and Africians get it - were it is mistaken for appendicitis!

It says that it is cuased by a lack of fibre in the diet but mum drives us all potty with her insistance of eating Brassicas all the time (stinking the house out!) so I'm not really sure how she is going to increase fibre intake - dad already adds bran to her porrage - maybe he will finally get his way and get her to eat brown bread?

Anyway they are not going to opperate but will do if it comes back - they said that she also has the grumbling appendix but again they don't opperate for it grumbling and they wont touch the hernia either - mainly due to the risks of surgery and the anasthetic.

Still she is out - on yet another lot of antibiotics - I am starting to get worried that they will run out of ones they can give her - these are broad spectrum again - she must have bacteria resistant to alot of antibiotics in her system by this point which with super bugs infecting her surgery wounds and the cellulitis etc...

So fingers crossed its all ok anyway.

Hopscotch (by sarah)

I found some chunky chalks for a pound in Stoud and bought them to draw hopscotch for Jean along the drive.

This was a resounding success - she loves it though she doesn't entirely get the games you can play. Of course this was before The Rains that visited upon us the last week or so but is is now drawn back on in pink this time.

I got Jean to pick which colours to draw the outline in and then we did different colours for odd and even numbers - interestingly she pointed out that I was colouring the 1 of 10 the wrong colour as its an odd number - this took some explaining and I don't think so go it but I was impressed that she recognised a one to be quiet honest.

We took some of my nice ornimental pebbles from off of the rainbow/space garden I made last year and used them as our markers - mainly Jean just threw stones onto (or at least attempted too) the hopscotch.

When Ted the Taxi Man and Mary came to visit they were impressed with the hopscotch and said that your not allowed to play it on the streets anymore - that it counts as criminal damage and two kids have recently been fined! That is quiet frankly rediculous - please I thought tell me its a joke or scare mongering...

So did a google search:

This one was in 2007 and involves the perants being told off for allowing the children to play in the streets - even though they were obviously keeping an eye on what was happening other wise they wouldn't have noticed the police :/

Now its not so much the police over reacting as they were doing there job - and they say once they realised what it was they knew it wasn't criminal damage as it was chalk and therefore not perminant - but why did the neighbour report it in the first place?

Can't they kids playing from thugs? This lot weren't even teenagers just littlys 🙁

This one on the other hang is quiet scary - did they really arrest a 12 yr old and put her in a cell for hopscotch?

People complain that kids are playing innocent games and are vandalising the street like they are not citizens of this country too and don't deserve to be allowed use of the facilities - a pavement is a facility provided by the council for goodness sake. Something is very very broken when hope scotch is band! Griffiti - really?

Both these reports are from a few years ago and I couldn't find any mention of the local incident where the kids were reputedly fined like £80 i think Ted said it was in Cotwold Life Magizine or something like that - if anybody could shed more light on this I would appreciate it.

If I had lived in a street I probably would have been sitting outside with Jean chalking the hopscotch onto the pavement - would I have then been made to scrub it off as Jean is under 10?

Chalk washes away for goodness sakes - when we played in the street there wasn't chalk in ready supply and the kids including me used to scrape the hopscotches onto the pavement with stones - no-one ever complained and I remember the police man who did live down our street giving us chalk so we wouldn't damage things.

People moan about teenagers and even kids doing actual criminal things but if we wont let them do the kid things then what do people actually expect to happen.

Plus we are breeding discontent in the youngster and how are they suppose to respect the police when the police are telling them off for playing hopscotch?

I try not to go on about politacal things too much but I'm mean really - how can we live in a society like this? A society that bans children from being children - they are kids not minni adults - they know more than previous generations it is true but they are still kids and they need to explore the world through play.

They need to be part of a society not seperate from it and if they are not allowed to at least interact with each other and learn how to be part of a social group then we are heading for trouble. I see this building on many sides with age ghettotization springing up - single mothers on the council estate and rich olds in retirement villages many of whom have never had proper social interaction with children.

We are human we are disigned to live in communitees with all ages mixed in together - seperating people into groups always leads to trouble or is this another case of use not learning from the past?

Sarah takes a deep breath and walks away from the computer muttering

Of Internets and Appendixes (by sarah)

And so continuing in the vain of my general bad luck field - I was here on my own with Jean this week from Wednesday when Alaric headed off to London.

I had decided to stay here to try and get stuff done when there was a phone call from my Dad saying Mum had been rushed into hospital with a suspected appendicitis but that she was ok and not to worry - she's in with the surgeon.

Eeek and arg!

I stayed awake waiting for news but eventually fell asleep just after midnight - at some point during the early hours my brother phones me to say that they can't operate on mum as her sugar levels were too high and she'd been put on an insuline drip (she is a type 2 diabetic). He also said there could be complications with all the cancer meds and that she's on so they were waiting for more tests and things to be done.

One thing they did discover however was that she has a huge hernia across the middle of her stomach that has been there since she had David over 20 yrs ago :/ How the hell has that been missed for so long?

Anyway I got up the next day and as always it was absorbed with entertaining Jean which included us learning about the Aztecs and Mayans via Mysterious Cities of Gold and doing lots of glueing and sticking with abit of 'helping' Barbara in the garden.

Barbara wanted me to help with the Goose grass pulling but I had to refuse - I was already in alot of pain from having to deal with the getting Jean dressed and loo stops and getting into bed and being jumped on and I can not risk anymore of a flare up than I have already when in sole charge of Jean. The other thing is that the goose grass pulling definatly acts my shoulder up as we've discovered in previous years and Alaric has actually band me from doing the task - this didn't make telling Barbara who naturally didn't believe me, any easier.

I did however discover that putting a film on for JEan ment that I could have my afternoon nap - but only becuase shes a good girl and I dislike doing it - I look the door so she can't get out and she knows shes not allowed downstairs under pain of no films in future.

Dad phoned to say mum was waiting for a CT scan and that Alaric shouldn't try and come and visit becuase of the way the hospital are being militant about visiting hours :/

I went to blog about the fact mum was in hosptial and lo! No internet - I phone Alaric in a panic and he talks me through things that should work - ie the power connecter to the wireless hub thingy - but I couldn't get the lights to shine on the front of the thing no matter how I wiggled the connector and then stuff with my laptop to try and use the ethernet with the cable - but alas and alack - it turns out my laptop is slightly broken too :/

So no internet which also ment no tweaking of websites, no blogging, no photo sorting, no instant info on things Barbara wants too know, no free communication including video calls with Alaric and no blogging - oh sorry already said that 😉

Also it ment no kitten cam which made me very sad though I did get a kitten pic texted to me 🙂

So I felt stranded and like I really couldn't even attempt to do any work which was frustrating.

Anyway back to mum...

The results show that it wasn't an appendicitis but that she has a pocket in her gut that has developed which traps digestive waste and has become infected - she is still in the hospital being thourally fed up from what dad saids 🙁

I just feel that everytime I resist going to London becuase I'll be on my own here stuff goes wronge - ie internet goes down in one way or another - if Jean's around and if she isn't I get sick sick ick!

If I was paranoid that is...

... you know I think the little green men are stealing the rubbish 😉