musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Category: ranting

On the Slow Train to Nowhere — May 19, 2017

On the Slow Train to Nowhere

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This weekend I am escaping.

I love my family dearly. But like all jobs one occasionally needs a holiday. I think it may be getting on for two years since I last went away without any of them. It’s due.

And so I am travelling up to Sheffield, the city of my university, to spend a weekend without kids and husband. And chores. And football. And the Cub Scout bridge walk. At which it always rains.

Normally I can’t get away on these weekends (which I would like to say have been a regular fixture but really can’t as the last one was 2 years ago) until I have finished pitch side duties around Saturday lunch time. This time the football gods had given me a reprieve and Youngest had no fixture on the weekend. (She is planning to make up for it exercise wise by running the bridge walk in an attempt to cross off all 80 slots on her sponsorship form. I am somewhat regretting my 50p a bridge pledge).

As such I am leaving on Friday. Today in fact.

Last time I got away on Friday (probably about 5 years ago) I sat on the M1 for a good 4 hours. With my left leg screaming from over use of the clutch. Yes my American friends I drive a manual (or stick shift as you call it) along with the vast majority of people here in the UK under the age of 65. Except my husband, he drives an auto. It’s not beige though. Yet.

‘So’ I thought to myself ‘I will get the train’. Where I live is on the direct line to Sheffield. Couple of downloaded episodes of Being Human and a large cup of tea and the job is a good one.

Of course life is never that simple.  First off for some inexplicable reason there are only 2 direct trains all evening. One at 17.41 (much too early to be sure of a home husband and fed, piano lessoned children) or 20.09 (bit late but my friends are night owls so should still be up when I arrive c 22.30) so I plumped for that.

My first inkling that something might go amiss was when my husband sat for two hours at Luton this morning trying to get to work on the same line but in the other direction due to ‘signalling problems’.

Now I am sure there are lovely bits of Luton, although I am yet to see one, but really he didn’t need to spend 2 hours there. Stuck on an overcrowded train.

He finally got to work over 3 hours after leaving.  I spent all day following the disruption updates which stated when ‘normal’ service would be resumed.  First by 12 noon. Then by 2 and then by 4 as trains and drivers and staff got themselves back where they should be.

All good. Husband’s return journey went without incident. Everyone ate. We said our teary goodbyes. Well Youngest was teary the other 2 put their i phones down for long enough to be given a brief hug and husband dropped me at the station.  Too early. At my request. I needed to collect my tickets and buy that large cup of tea.

Of course the train was running late. Predictably.  So I sat in the platform waiting room sharing despairing looks with fellow travelers and resisting the urge to start one of those episodes of Being Human, 2 of which were no longer going to be enough to fill the time.

The train was delayed due to a ‘train fault’. What sort of fault was not specified.  The lady with the whistle and the flag  (which is no longer a flag but a sort of over sized table tennis bat) who was there to wave (bat) the train off also turned up too early. As she exclaimed to a colleague (this presumably being a 2 person job) she had been unaware of the delay. That didn’t fill me with much confidence. To be honest.

Anyway the bat lady, her eastern European colleague, my fellow passengers and I then played delayed train roulette.

In my experience of delayed trains (which after 2 years of commuting to London is quite considerable) the word ‘delayed’ after the train time means either ‘we have absolutely no idea when the train will arrive’ or ‘the train is so late it hasn’t yet left it’s starting point and we don’t want to tell you because people will get annoyed and we can’t face that’ or ‘if we don’t tell you how delayed the train is when we give you an actual eta you will feel nothing but relief at having some certainty’. All these options add up to one thing. Fuck.

As I was sat there a time popped up. 20.16. Seven minutes late. Now in the scheme of things  (specifically the UK rail network scheme of things) this hardly constitutes a delay. 7 minutes. I laughed inwardly. Knowing as sure as night follows day that this would not be the whole story.  No siree!

Sure enough over the next 20 minutes the estimated time of the train oscillated between a best case scenario of that 20.16 and a worst case of 20.31. I leave you to guess at which time it actually turned up.

Anyway I then performed my ‘the sign said first class was at the front and so I needed to be at the very back of the train to find my reserved seat, which only a fool would travel without on a Friday night going north, but actually first class was at the rear requiring me to sprint almost the full length of the platform’ run. I was somewhat thankful for the delay at this point as I had already consumed all of my large tea which would have been a severe handicap during this manoeuvre.

I needn’t have bothered. Reservations had been dispensed with. Presumably because of the delay. Or maybe because the train was made up of old rolling stock  (which may have explained the earlier fault) the sort which require paper tickets to be shoved in slots on the backs of seats. I guess the people who used to slot reservation tickets into slots have been reassigned since new rolling stock which have computerised displays that can presumably be programed from a cental point came on line. Maybe they are all batting off late trains?

Luckily for me there was a seat opposite a luggage rack. The table already had 2 men seated at it but I am not the sort of lady who worries about such things. In any event the younger of the 2 seemed to be doing some coding on a lap top and the elder was reading Scuba Diving International. Which I expect to appear on Have I Got News For You any episode now. He was perusing an article dedicated to doing up a dry suit properly. Preliminary risk assessment satisfied I dumped case in rack and plopped down. Requiring dry suit man to move his legs.

Off we went.  About 500 meters outside the station we came to a halt. The tannoy man came on to explain that we were stopped at an unexpected red signal and he would update us all when he knew what the actual fuck was happening. Dry suit man sighed and got up returning with a can of Carlsberg. It looked tempting. And I am teetotal. And hate lager.

About half way down the can we started to crawl along at about 5 miles an hour. Tannoy man came back on to say we had to go slowly as we had passed the red signal. On the one hand moving was good. On the other crawling slower than the M1 felt like a lose to be honest. I risked eye contact with dry suit man. We exchanged frustrations about the state of the nation’s railways and used words like third world and bloody ridiculous and then we lapsed into that ‘fellow sufferers’ silence. Coding man (well boy really) risked a tut.

Anyway I am still here at my due into Sheffield time somewhere on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border.  Dry suit man and coding boy have long since left. I miss them. I only have some Japanese tourists left. God alone knows what they must think.

If I ever get there it will have felt like the Great Escape. Or that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when you realise he has tunnelled out with a spoon.

Hope my mates have the kettle on. It’s a long time since my last brew.

Ginger Nut — February 7, 2017

Ginger Nut

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I am not really in a very good mood. There it is out there. And yes it is partly cycle related.

And it is also partly because Middlest got hit in the face by a hockey stick and has lips the size of some celebrity who has had bad plastic surgery.

And partly because Youngest brought home English comprehension homework with questions based around the most appallingly boring text about the plight of pedestrians written circa 1970. Such gems as ‘The title of this text is a rhetorical question- what does this mean?’ To which I wanted to reply ‘A rhetorical question is something I wished this question had been so I would not have had to answer it and have had to try explaining  the concept of a rhetorical question to my 9 year old who really just wants to be in the garden playing football…’.

And then I fancied a bourbon with my cuppa as a kind of reward for not throwing the English comprehension out of the window. (‘The text says that pedestrian crossings are often in the wrong place suggest where they should actually be sited.’ Answer ‘Pedestrian crossings should be sited where people want to cross the road.’ Surely.) And I discovered that some bastards have eaten them all. Well to be strictly correct they are not bastards my husband and I being boringly conventional. But my kids have eaten them all.

I scoured the house for a suitable alternative. All the birthday wine gums are gone. Even the black ones. We ate the one last remaining meringue out of a packet of meringues (use by date Sept 2016) I found mouldering at the back of the tomato ketchup, onion and Christmas pudding cupboard with tinned pears and natural yogurt for dessert between four of us. There is no cooking chocolate. And even I refuse to eat jam straight from the jar with a spoon.

So I was left with a ginger nut. Now I quite like a ginger nut as part of a selection of biscuits. So for instance I will have a bourbon and a ginger nut. Or a custard cream and a ginger nut. But never a ginger nut alone. And I lamented my reasoning when I purchased the ginger nuts. I was trying to be ‘good’ and reduce my sugar intake. So for purely health reasons I decided to buy plain ginger nuts rather than my usual dark chocolate coated real ginger chunk versions. Damn.

And for this I blame another ginger nut namely Chris Evans.

I like Radio Two. For those overseas this is a national radio station here in the U.K. It is a bit of an institution. To explain Radio 2 is the place to go when the noise and inanity of Radio 1 no longer suits you but you are not clinically dead enough to listen to Radio 4 which has no music and as far as I can tell is wall to wall worthy news discussion shows, intellectual magazine shows and soap operas about farmers.

The breakfast show is hosted by one Chris Evans, once a wide boy, a self-made man and maverick turned mostly normal married man with kids, albeit a screamingly rich one. He is still quirky and I like his show, generally. In fact during January I enjoyed listening to him try to stay ‘dry’.

But now it is February and he and seemingly all his fellow team members, have decided to go ‘refined sugar free’. Every time I tune in he seems to be waxing lyrical about the joys of soups and avocados and telling us all how marvellous he feels. Today he was joined by Dr Mosley a TV doctor who has done such things in the name of ‘dietary science’ (i.e. money and fame) as eating only take away food for several months to see what it did to his body. It made him ill. Oddly. The good Dr (who surprisingly has a cook book out called something like the eight week sugar free diet) was taking questions from callers. Such questions as ‘Can I eat cheese as the packet says it has 1% sugar?’. Oh my actual god. Are people really that dense?

The good Dr explained how much cheese you would have to eat to consume the same amount of sugar as contained in a bowl of sugary cereal. Obviously it was a lot of cheese. And whilst I might be tempted in my current state of ‘mild’ irritation to attempt to eat that much cheese even I might struggle.

Someone else wanted to know if eating salad was ok as she had heard that even an undressed green salad contained sugar. It was such a stupid question the good doctor dodged it and explained he had several recipes for sugar free salad dressing in his book. Chris interjected that he had made his own humous yesterday which was a first for him having only ever made pesto before, the Doctor counter-interjected that he had made something for the first time yesterday that I had never heard of before but presumably involved a blender and some sort of pulse and his wife washing up every implement in the kitchen. His wife is apparently ‘thrilled’ that he is taking part in this exercise and cooking. Really? I bet actually she sobs into her washing up bowl secretly stuffing her face with Milk Tray whilst trying to ignore her sanctimonious, evangelical spouse. By this point I personally would have screamed obscenities at the radio but I had small people in the car.

Finally a runner wanted to know what he could substitute his energy gels for during his marathon training. Again err… To be fair the good Dr did say that a bit of energy gel was ok for anyone running over 10k as sugar is needed in some situations. But then he did go onto mention bananas and dried mangos. Those really portable fruits which I am a sure every marathon runner would be able to carry round the 26 mile ish course with ease. Not.

Then there was some spurious gumph about sugar feeding bad microbes and it is the bad microbes slowly being starved to death and shouting out in their death throws for sugar, sugar, sugar that causes the sugar slump when you try to give up. Sigh. I am not a biologist. I hate biology. So maybe that’s true. Sounds like utter crap to me.

I am of the ‘a little bit of what you fancy does you good’ school of thought. So a couple of biscuits. A bag of crisps. Broccoli if that floats your boat. I don’t do well if stuff is banned.

Suffice to say I am finding all the holier than thou sugar freeness a little tedious. So much so I am listening to Def Leppard instead.

And tomorrow I am going to the biscuit aisle and stocking up on proper snacks. I need them (bad bacteria or no) after answering Question 14 ‘Did you find this text persuasive and if so why?’ without getting Youngest to write ‘No I did not find this text persuasive as it is badly written, boring twaddle about the plight of pedestrians and you made me answer 14 inane questions about it and any possible power it may once have had to persuade me has been forever crushed during this tedious mind numbing process!’…

Yah boo sucks to you Chris Evans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smooth Operator… — January 12, 2017

Smooth Operator…

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So currently every morning my kitchen looks like this. An explosion in a purple gloop factory. As I claw my worktops back into some semblance of order I curse PSHE. ..

I realise that those without children of school age might not understand this acronym. So let me explain. It stands for. Err… I am not totally sure to be honest. Something like Personal, Social, Health and Economics education.  Or maybe it is Political, Sexual, Health Education or maybe…anyway as I said I am not sure but it is a subject at school that essentially teaches common sense oh and the birds and the bees. Poor teachers.

OK I am over simplifying and before you get the wrong idea I do think there is actually a lot of good stuff in the PSHE curriculum despite my cursing. Things like learning about the harmful effects of smoking and drugs, how to improve self esteem and treat people properly, providing anti-bullying messages, warning of stranger danger both on and off line. And of course I am very pleased every one gets to discuss tampons in a supportive group environment…

So PSHE is essentially all the stuff parents should be discussing with their kids a darn sight earlier than they usually do and that the Government has decided schools should address because parents are essentially crap and not trained and forget to have the on line safety talk before little Jimmy has befriended god knows who on FIFA 15, probably because they really meant to have that chat but fell asleep through sheer exhaustion instead. But there is one element of PSHE that really annoys me and that is the teaching of healthy eating to small and not so small children.

For PSHE starts as early as Reception. I distinctly remember my 4 year old son coming home and refusing to eat pizza because it had become a ‘bad thing’ over night. Well actually over day. But you get the gist. Despite my explaining that this pizza was fine as I had made it myself and covered it in healthy organic vegetables and homemade passata (for I was still at that stage in my parenting career when I thought processed ready made food was the devil AND had enough time to avoid it…ha ha how I laugh at my sanctimonious self now as I shovel ready made pasta sauces into my kids on a shift rotation, I think I was beyond the ‘shaping each individual pizza into a bunny face’ stage (Annabel Karmel needs to get a life seriously) but possibly only just…). But he would not be swayed. And ate merely carrot sticks and cucumber as those had made the ‘good list’. See, still in ‘good parenting mode’, now mine get pizza with chips and possibly a can of baked beans if I can be arsed. Consequentially he went to bed hungry and woke me up at 5am because his stomach was complaining. That was my first brush with PSHE…not a great first impression if I am honest.

Over the years the topic has been repeated at various intervals and I have had to put up with a few weeks, days or hours (depending on the child’s tenacity) of being told they will no longer eat cheese or crisps or some other such black listed food stuff. Not eating crisps or cheese are heinous crimes in my opinion.

The main reason I find the teaching of ‘healthy eating’ so annoying is because the sorts of children who take it the most to heart are precisely the ones who could tuck away a whole pizza and be none the worse for it. Namely mine. And the kids who eat too much rubbish and drink cola on tap won’t give a damn. Stereotyping? Well yes. But hey its true. Sorry. I certainly wouldn’t pass a PSHE exam with my inability to avoid stereotypes although in any event I am not sure such a thing exists anymore. In my day it was called General Studies. I didn’t do General Studies. I did more Maths instead. My common sense seems to have survived.

Anyway I digress. Healthy eating. The most recent of these modules has been directed at Eldest the most likely of my children to take everything to heart. Eldest is 5ft 6 and weighs about 7 stone. He has a 6 pack and undertakes a great deal of sport every week. He is hitting puberty and growing at a more than alarming rate. In fact this time last year he was smaller than me and now he is 2 inches taller. So actually what Eldest needs is food. Lots and lots of food. And yes the majority needs to be healthy. We are cognisant of his requirements for veg and fruit and wholegrains. But he also needs lots of protein and fat and dairy and essential fuel for his rapidly morphing body. If some of that fuel comes from chocolate and cake and pizza I think he will survive. It is always a question of balance. Except when it comes to crisps. There can never be too many crisps.

What he doesn’t need is to restrict his intake in anyway. And so I find this slightly holier than thou ‘healthy eating’ teaching more than a tad annoying. Especially as the school deems it OK to serve sausage roll, chips and spaghetti hoops (which are clearly not a vegetable people clearly not..) on Fridays.

The most recent imparting of information was clearly aimed at trying to improve breakfasts by suggesting smoothies.

Eldest got home and looked up the benefits of smoothies, no doubt found some website or other promoted by Nutri-bullet, and decided he needed to change his breakfast to include a smoothie. Now our mornings are timed to perfection. If we haven’t sat down to eat by 6.30am my palms start to itch and I worry that I will not fit in cello practice or teeth brushing. So when Eldest decided a blender was required for breakfast I started to panic gently. I breathed out and advised that he had better get down from his pit a darn sight earlier than usual, whilst cursing Mr PSHE under my breath

Now, of course, if your usual breakfast consists of a bowl of coco pops and a doughnut from Sainsbury’s before registration then clearly a smoothie is going to improve your nutritional levels quite considerably. However my children eat wholemeal toast, decent cereals and a fruit salad with yogurt for breakfast. So I fail to see how a smoothie improves matters. In fact it probably makes it worse by starting the sugar break down process manually. Ha got you there.

So all that has happened is that Eldest has taken his fruit salad and yogurt and distributed it around my worktops with my soup blender. And of course the other two also think this is a champion idea. We are now ‘experimenting’ with ingredients. They are probably eating more fruit, which actually, guys, isn’t all that healthy, I am yet to persuade them to add kale. But it is also making our mornings even more finely edged time wise.

I am hoping the phase passes. And they will go back to chewing their fruit. And that the next module does not suggest vegetarianism. I will go in and complain I tell you. I will.

 

Oh Man! — November 20, 2016

Oh Man!

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I love men. Generally and specifically. I have a lovely husband and two gorgeous sons. A dad. Two brothers. Various in laws. I am friends with a number of my ex boyfriends. I get on with the husbands of my friends. I find it easy to banter along with all the football dads on my daughter’s touchline. Just as she seems to be able to get along with the 11 boys she boots a ball around with. Like mother like daughter.

And I appreciate men more generally. Especially hot, young men with very little clothing on and the chap at my local Costa. I like workmen who come over to the house and pass the time of day with me. And mend stuff, clean stuff, remove stuff, decorate stuff, assemble stuff, educate me in the fitting of appliances and the like.

And I very much like the young man at a local paint ball centre who was very nice to me at my son’s recent party and actually knew how to converse, nay maybe even flirt, with middle aged ladies. I am sure it was just his extremely pleasant manner but hey at 46 and (not so) suddenly invisible to the opposite sex he was a total breath of fresh air. It will certainly earn him my repeat business which I am sure was the point. Whatever his motives I will take it. One can’t be fussy.

In summary I like, get on with and relate to men.

But there are some things about men I cannot stand. Here are just a selection. I should probably caveat this by saying that I am not aware that my football touch line male friends are guilty of these crimes. I haven’t asked. But if I was out on a boozy night with their wives it is likely a selection of these gripes would surface around the table. Just saying.

My son’s are growing up. Eldest is nearly 13 and taller than me. Middlest is 11 and not quite so tall. And both of them have lost the ability to aim. It is likely a proximity issue. When they first became old enough to stand to wee, and I was banned from making them sit for fear of emasculating them, their tackle sort of rested on the loo rim making aiming pretty easy. Now their genitalia is hovering a foot or more above the seat the likelihood of bad aim has increased exponentially.

It is worse in the morning. And before you ask, no I don’t want to think about why, these are my babies godammit. They have their own bathroom shared by their father. But for some reason they  feel the need to hold on until they are downstairs.

They are also incapable of lifting the seat. Apparently it will not stay up. Surely that is what hands where invented for. It is not like they are using them for anything else, for instance aiming the appendage in the vague vicinity of the bowl.

Eldest informed me that he doesn’t want to touch the seat as it is ‘germy’. Well yes I agree however as nearly all those germs emanate from his own urine I believe he should just get the f over himself. He wasn’t swayed by that argument. Guests use that toilet and so there are other germs at play apparently. I may have shouted at this point that he could just use HIS OWN BLOODY TOILET THEN which he merely shares with people who have at least some of his genes in common but who also have dubious aim…

And so I have lost count of the times I have sat down on this loo to be greeted with a wet seat. I no longer sit without checking. I live in fear of a guest receiving such treatment. If you know me personally be warned.

In fact the ‘male’ bathroom in our house is a total war zone. I do not enter unless it is absolutely necessary. Both sons cannot hang towels. I bring the mirror up to a beautiful shine merely to have it smattered with toothpaste and hair gel and hair spray and god alone knows what else by the same evening. Toothpaste scum covers nearly every surface. Every time I clean the room I throw out at least 15 empty bottles of unguents and shampoos and Radox and face scrub and about three empty loo rolls.

And why can’t my men get the idea that if they would like me to replace something for them which is about to run out then maybe they should actually tell me. Rather than assuming that I will somehow order the said item from Sainsbury’s through a mere process of osmosis. It is no use telling me on Saturday that you are all out of deodorant. The shopping comes on Fridays. It always has. It always will. And no I do not have time to run to buy you some before rushing off to deposit you at football/ rugby/ hockey/ a mate’s. The other night husband asked ‘Why have we run out of toothpaste?’ I am not sure the correct answer was ‘F*** Off’ but there you go.

And no I do not have time to scour the house before each on line shop checking if you have run out of ‘evening’ Radox…that Eldest needs to ensure is not too ‘zesty’ thus impairing his sleep…my god I am a WOMAN and my sons’ ablution requirements far out do my own.

Well maybe I have the time but I certainly lack the will when I have spent an hour at the kitchen table, head in hands, surrounded by the calendar, clubs list, fixture spreadsheet and weekly up date from husband’s PA on his whereabouts trying to decide what the hell to feed them all whilst allowing for all their myriad allergies and intolerances and dislikes and avoiding red meat on every single day because I read somewhere that it is a ‘bad thing for arteries’ and we have difficult heart history on both sides of the family only for Sainsbury’s to turn up having decided that tomato and basil fresh pasta sauce is an appropriate substitute for bolognaise fresh pasta sauce when everyone knows my men only tolerate food with meat in it and that meal was one of my two ‘red meat days’ and I can’t add cheese as the missing ‘saturated fat’ protein as husband hates it and I don’t have time to make it myself from scratch which a good wife and mother does as that is the evening I have to feed people in four shifts whilst hopping in and out of the car shouting ‘Please have your shin pads in by the time I get back!’. No. Will. Left.

And it is not only bathrooms that resemble bomb sites. Bedrooms do too. I do not set my children many tasks. Which is probably lazy parenting. But I do insist on them making their own beds. Middlest has an issue with this. Quite why I am not sure. After all it isn’t me that insists on taking 8 cuddly toys to bed every night and it wasn’t me who pestered and pestered for all those touchy feelie cushions and the one shaped like a poo emoji. I believe that was him. And so I am really not sure why I have to spend minutes of my life every day picking all of them up off the floor.

And I don’t put husband’s gym kits way because the drawer they live in is spring loaded with so much unfolded lycra that it threatens to overwhelm me every time I open the drawer. (Note to self, I must carry on vainly trying to teach my boy children how to fold stuff up). It is no wonder husband merely buys more and more kit as there is no way he can possibly know what the bejeebers is in there.

And that leads me on to the looking thing. My god the looking thing. For the love of all that is holy please open your eyes. Or wear your glasses. If you can find them. Or both. The cheese grater is in the same cupboard it was last week when I asked you to set the table.

And finally, finally. That glass on the work top above the dishwasher. That glass that is always there. Always. How I hate that glass.

 



Farty Pants…. — November 9, 2016

Farty Pants….

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It has been a while since my last entry. In fact it is so long that when I decided today to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) WordPress had signed me out. I had to remember my password. I ain’t good at that. I nearly gave up. But not quite. I apologise to those of you that like my posts. What can I say? Life has got in the way.

A while ago you may remember an entry entitled Living In a Bubble. I wrote it in the wake of the UK’s democratic decision to leave the EU, Brexit as it has come to be known. It was the Sunday following the referendum. I was still in shock. A lot of us still are although time and the seeming lack of any actual action has somewhat numbed the initial emotion. Life, as always, goes on. Tea needs cooking. Children need fetching. Christmas needs planning. The every day inures us to the shock.

And then today I awoke to more astounding news. That the US has elected as its president a man such as Donald Trump.

I am not a great follower of US politics. But even I have not been immune to the hyperbole surrounding the Presidential race. The mud slinging. The posturing. The claims and counter claims. In fact the race reminded me of the campaigning ahead of Brexit. The ‘promises’ made to millions by people who had no intention or indeed wherewithal to deliver. Or worse promises made which may come true but which border on fascism.

It feels almost surreal. That a man with no experience of political office can be awarded arguably the most powerful job in the world. And when I say he has no political experience that is probably the very least of everyone’s worries.

That is the ‘everyone’ excepting the millions of Americans who actually turned out and voted for him. Whether as a protest, or because they believed he was the better of two equally awful options, or because they liked one small part of his campaign, or because they genuinely believe he can ‘make America great again’, those people turned out in their millions to vote for a man who claimed Obama (who from the outside seems like one of the most decent Presidents ever) wasn’t born in the States.

I am at a loss really. One hopes that his party, who now hold sway in all three arms of the government of the US, contains enough sane individuals to put a curb on his more extreme ‘policies’.

If not then if we thought the world was going to hell in a handcart before it looks like it just boarded a bullet train to the underworld.

Anyway must get dinner on.

 

 

 

 

Go Compare… — August 25, 2016

Go Compare…

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So today I got round to a bit of household admin…. I do all the admin…. It is part of my job…. Which I don’t actually have…. As I am variously classed as housewife/ homemaker/ full time mother/ waste of space…. That last one isn’t on many forms. But the implication is there.

Anyhoo. I do the admin.

During the school holidays the admin tends to pile up. Because I find it hard to concentrate enough to do it with a house full of kids wanting me to: mend and then blow up punctured paddling pools; admire their zip wire constructions which stretch precariously from bedroom window to trampoline and down which teddies pinned by ears to coat hangers career less than gracefully; rescue indoor remote control helicopters from the tops of trees in next door’s garden. More or less all at the same time. On an average day.

In any event the pile had got unwieldy. And was threatening to topple over. And merge with the pile of school/ child extra curricular type admin stuff. I need two piles. To avoid such toppling. School/ child extra curricular type admin is not a priority currently. Them not being at school or doing anything much of an extra curricular nature except watching endless you tube videos involving vloggers or Pokemon Go, avoiding anything relating to musical instruments and football. There is always bloody football. That game just never quits. Ever. I digress. So this other admin pile had also got quite big. Therefore I decided I needed to begin to attack my home admin pile. I had a quick shifty. The pile contained:-

Details of my new mobile phone insurance which bizarrely had been sent to my old address. That needed changing.

A new address card from friends. Again sent to my old address. I needed to let them know we had moved. I could have sworn I wrote our new address in their Christmas card but clearly the message had not got through. I guess this is how people fall out of touch. If the lovely people who bought our old house had not sent our friends’ change of address card on to us our Christmas cards this year would just have ended up in a recycling factory. Sad.

Middlest’s child trust fund statement. This sounds like we are much posher than we are…we aren’t.

A request to book in my annual boiler service. Again. Blimey that came round quick.

A large note to myself saying BOOK MIDDLESTS BIRTHDAY PARTY. In block capitals. With no apostrophe I noticed. Someone had also highlighted the note with pink highlighter. I think I can guess who. Probably not a grammar aficionado.

A letter telling me of a change in our bank account’s terms and conditions. I usually bin these letters as they just tell me how much more I will get charged if I go overdrawn. But I had seen a reference to ‘Travel Insurance’ on the front page and so needed to investigate. Please see below.

The claim forms from my Bank account’s travel insurance company which needed filling in following our recent medical escapades in Portugal. (See Why are there no Aspirin in the Jungle? for more information should you feel the need.)

An automatic renewal letter for the breakdown cover on my oven. Decisions decisions.   Do I allow renewal and then ensure my oven never breaks down again or cancel and ensure my oven breaks down a day later….always a lose lose situation.

A renewal letter from my insurer for my home insurance.

I decided to tackle the last item first. I thought it would be a quick ‘win’. Cursory glance to ensure T&Cs still in order. File. Jobs a goodun.

I looked at the premiums for the coming year. They looked a little, well, larger than I was currently paying, but I wasn’t sure. In our house move last year many, many things changed, got more expensive, got more complicated and such like.  I wasn’t sure how much we were actually paying. So I checked it to last year’s letter and found out my premiums had gone up by over 20%. Ouch.

Now I am not one of those perpetual comparers. I do not regularly check my energy providers. Switch insurers at the merest whim. I am not the proud owner of numerous meerkats wearing dubious outfits. I am loyal. Which I hoped counted for something.

Clearly not as this seemed to me to be taking the proverbial piss. I had claimed on my home insurance during the year (we broke some doors- well the wind did please see The View for more info). I thought maybe this was skewing the premiums. But, no, I saw that my No Claims Discount had gone up 5% making the price hike even more ridiculous.

My mother arrived. I hadn’t called her for insurance advice. She didn’t arrive in lycra tights with a cape ‘Insurance Woman’…She was coming around anyway. But even without the benefit of superhero powers she agreed the price hike seemed ridiculous.

There was nothing for it. I was going to have to enter a price comparison web site. I have tried to use such places before. To change energy suppliers. I got so bogged down in kilo watt hours and such like that I gave up trying. It had seemed that I needed to refresh my Maths A level before attempting again. I was hoping an insurance site might need less algebra skills.

In the event, although it took a fair while, most of the questions could be answered from my handy, if expensive, renewal letter. And the others I did my best with. I pressed the button. Those few seconds whilst the site was ‘getting quotes’ felt a bit like Christmas morning as a kid when one has awoken too early and is not able to immediately investigate the bulging stocking at the end of the bed. Well maybe I exaggerate a little. But my internet is very slow (something else on the admin pile) and so it did seem that time stretched out a little.

Well when those quotes came up I was staggered with how much less some of them were.

The first thing I did was scroll down to a name I recognised. Call me cautious but I struggle to buy stuff from firms I have never heard of. Plus a lot of them had rather dodgy looking ratings. It is all well and good paying tuppence ha’penny for an insurance policy but if the claims process is going to let you down it seems rather pointless.

Even discounting the more discounted quotes based on my gut feel and innate warning system of ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’ I could get my insurance nearly £450 cheaper elsewhere.

I still was not convinced and went through to the well known department store’s actual site and made sure the quote was like for actual like. OK I needed to amend the voluntary excess down a bit which put the price up a bit. Still a £425 saving.

I rang them. That warning bell was still going off in my head. It took three minutes to get through the menu system and to listen to all the dire warnings about lieing and to their privacy policy which basically consists of one having no privacy unless one stipulates that one wants privacy.

I got a lovely lady. In the UK. Always a bonus. I checked my concerns. Had they understood my claims history? Where my specified items showing? Etc. She confirmed all was in order and urged me to complete the process on line as it would be more expensive to do it through her. Good advice too.

My mind was almost made up. My innate sense of loyalty kicked in. I rang my current insurer to see if they could do anything and anyway I would need to tell them I wished to cancel. I got through their menu system in record time as I had clicked ‘I wish to cancel my insurance’ early on in the process. That seemed to help.

I explained that their insurance was too expensive. The man ‘ran through the renewal terms’ and came back with an offer £200 lower than the original quote. I was flabbergasted. In fact now I was even more cross. I asked him why he was suddenly able to provide me with insurance for £200 less a year than previously quoted.

He spouted some guff about the quote being computer generated and then I let him talk on by saying nothing and his ‘excuses’ got lamer and lamer. In summary what he meant was:

If you are a sucker who does not challenge his insurance quote you will get shafted.

I ‘politely’ declined his offer. Added accidental damage to my new quote and still proceeded to save our family £400 a year less the cost a few phone calls and my time, which as we know costs nothing.

The price of loyalty, it seems, is extremely high.

Shocking.

 

 

Silly Season — July 3, 2016

Silly Season

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taj mahal.jpg

It is nearly the end of term. All my children have done end of year assessments. We have concerts and sports days left. Cricket matches and charities afternoons. Swimming galas and house rounders. The last few weeks are busy.

As such I was hoping for a let off homework wise.

Unfortunately this is homework ‘silly season’.

In the last few weeks of term Eldest has been doing ‘mini projects’. One in science, one in RE and one in Geography. I am sure the teachers love them. I imagine them on Facebook or taking down classroom displays whilst their charges get on with ‘independent’ work.

To be fair Eldest managed his Geography project quite well alone and I had little involvement. Except to correct some fundamental errors in his map reading of our local area.

The science project has involved me driving him to a mates’s house so they could recreate the solar system out of polystyrene and represent the phases of the moon with Oreo cookies. I think the mate’s dad did get involved. Eldest mentioned a man cave. And the resulting model does imply that said dad has a lot of hardware type stuff ‘lying around’. Good job they did it there. We don’t have a man cave. Or lots of bits of stuff hanging around. Thanks mate’s dad…. All Eldest needs to do now is get said stuff to school tomorrow along with his cello and games kit. Luckily my friend is driving…

The threatened RE project has yet to materialise. Eldest did mention making a model of Exeter cathedral, which we recently visited. I put my fingers in my ears and sang ‘la la la la la’. Repeatedly. And am hoping it has all just ‘gone away’. If not we will stick a bit of coloured cellophane on a shoe box and call it quits…. It could be worse it could be making the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks…

In music they are filling in the last few lessons by learning to play a contemporary song in small groups. Eldest is his group’s pianist. I and the rest of my family are slowly going mad being subjected to the opening bars of ‘Seven Years’ over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. He does not seem to be able to get beyond those opening bars. I have been roped in to help. Which seems to consist mainly of me shouting ‘B flat major chord’ at him a lot, whilst washing up. I used to like the song. Now? Not so much. ‘Once I was 46 years old, Eldest said to me, got to learn the song, now I hate it all so much’. Or something like that…

Middlest’s maths teacher decided that setting ‘making chocolate brownies’ for homework was a ‘good idea’. Some sort of guff about ratios. How spurious? They are ‘due in’ on Wednesday. Of course Middlest has also been selected for cricket matches on both Monday and Tuesday evenings and also has other commitments on those nights. So guess what we were doing at 7pm today?

I am sure the maths teacher loves ‘marking’ this homework. And feels he is being cool and hip. What he is really being is a right royal pain in the arse. I like to cook with my kids. But I would like to choose the time. And the recipe. If it is all the same to you Mr Maths teacher.

And for the avoidance of doubt I don’t want to make chocolate brownies at 7pm on a Sunday evening.

Ever.

I hope all that ‘marking’ makes him sick.

 

Cycle Rage — June 29, 2016

Cycle Rage

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It is time for a rant…. I haven’t had one for a while. Not a proper, judgey, one sided rant. So brace yourselves.

A couple of months ago a new road opened near us. That is it up there. The road had been a long time in the coming. When we moved here in 2002 it was in the planning stages. Various issues to do with, I think, funding and compulsory purchase orders had got in the way.

Anyhow after a protracted building phase, involving both existing roundabouts at either end being compromised for eons, it was officially opened in April.

Personal friends may remember the photos of my husband and offspring running its length and myself walking it prior to it being opened to traffic.

Once I had got over the disappointment of it being single lane only and the fact that on its circa two mile stretch there are four roundabouts (do we have Milton Keynes envy? No just many houses to build to cope with the outpouring from London) the thing I was most impressed with was the wide and smooth cycle and pedestrian way running along side it.

To start with his road revolutionised our school run. Until temporary traffic lights appeared on one of the only other two routes to allow for the entrance to yet another housing estate to be built. I use the word ‘temporary’ here very loosely. The traffic control is there for about three months. Sigh.

Still the road has helped. Off peak I can now do the school run in 7 minutes. I know, I have timed it. Partly because I fell asleep in front of an episode of Prison Break after a particularly heavy day of cleaning and was almost late to pick up.

I didn’t drive down it at night for a few weeks but when I did, wow, was I impressed. That cycle way, which at times is on a higher level than the road, is lit up with blue LED lights. It looks like a runway. In extremis I am sure light aircraft could land on it.

This got me thinking that there is now only one small piece of our route from home to school that doesn’t involve a cycle way. It is a particularly tricky part of the route involving a major junction and a Roman bridge which is too narrow to comfortably take two cars side by side. But still mostly nice, safe, even cycle route.

I have plans. To dump the school run. Obviously not on cello days. And probably violin days. Which basically means only Mondays and Wednesdays, but still in time it might alleviate my driving schedule. Assuming I can get my head round the Roman bridge.

There are going to be a lot of houses built by the side of this new bypass. I think around 1500. And so I am pleased with the council’s foresight in providing a route out of their estates that can be achieved safely on foot or cycle.

They have even installed an underpass at the roundabout nearest to my village so that not one cyclist needs to negotiate its perils. At the other roundabout it links well to existing cycleways with islands.

Sorry it is taking me quite a long time to get to my rant. So far this isn’t very ranty. Here we go then.

I drive down this bypass a bare minimum of twice a day. More often than not it is six times. And already I have lost count of the number of cyclists cycling on the road rather than the cycleway. In both directions.

I completely fail to understand this. The road has a fifty mile per hour speed limit. Even on the down hill sections no cyclist without the aid of steroids is going to hit that speed. That means I have to overtake. On a single lane road. Or sit doing 20 mph, gently seething.

This morning there was a middle aged man in Sky branded Lycra gear cycling in the same direction as me down the road. Completely ignoring the deserted, purpose built cycle way immediately to his right. Which has about 50 signs proclaiming it as such along its length.

Moreover as lorries hurtled past him he was relying on a woolly beanie hat to protect his head in the not unlikely-and certainly more likely with him on the actual road- event of him being knocked off his bike.

I just don’t get it. I have asked my husband, who himself is a middle aged Lycra clad cyclist every Sunday, why. He has tried to explain that serious cyclists don’t like using cycle paths. Because they are generally uneven and possibly go up and down for drop kerbs for people’s drives and contain cyclists who are going too slowly, to their Lycra clad minds, getting in their way.

I feel so sorry for them. Having to negotiate the odd cyclist who has the temerity to go slower than them. Not. They think this gives them the right to make all the cars using the purpose built powered vehicle road, for which we pay tax, negotiate a slow cyclist.

And even if I accept the fact that all that up and downing over dropped kerbs is too hard on their poor bottoms THIS IS NOT THE CASE ON OUR NEW CYCLE WAY. It is so smooth teams of roller skaters use it for practice. There are no drop kerbs. No pot holes. Practically no other users.

I got quite ranty in the car. Once we approached the roundabout queue at the end of the road I was trying to get in the left hand lane. Cars were queued. I squeezed to the left side of those queueing to go right. I was stuck there for a bit. Queueing.

Non helmeted Lycra man caught me up. And then got arsey because I was in his way. There was some gesticulating. I only just stifled the urge to open my window and point out the proximity of the cycle way. Which incidentally had no queue. And would have led him safely in the direction he wished to go (right) without him having to negotiate the roundabout at all.

Prat. I hope he gets nipple chafing.

 

Central Bleating — April 3, 2016

Central Bleating

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image.jpegSo today we got home from a lovely week away in Northumberland. Lots of Roman walls and plumbing. Lots of medieval walls and plumbing. A postern gate or two.  Lots of Scrabble. My kind of holiday.

The journey home was only remarkable for being unremarkable. That seven hour marathon to get there was not repeated and we arrived back home in good time.

I don’t know about you but whenever I arrive home I am always pleased to see it still standing. Not burnt to the ground. Or broken into. It is irrational, I know. Half the village would have texted me to let me know if such tragedies had befallen my abode during our time away.  Hell they may have even called. But still it’s a relief none the less.

This was especially pertinent this time as storm Katie had hit whilst we had been away. This is a new thing here in the UK. Naming storms. We seem to have hurricane envy. Anyway Katie had dislodged the BBQ cover, moved the table tennis table and inexplicably opened the locked shed doors. But otherwise she had been kind. Ta duck.

So anyway initial inspection over I marched straight upstairs to turn on the central heating and hot water. Although the day was not that cold a week of vacancy and no heat had turned the house into a fridge, it was literally warmer outside. The kids agreed and so whilst the house warmed up they went on the trampoline.

I began the task of unpacking the boot. Quite a long winded process as we seemed to have taken most of the house on holiday and returned with more Easter eggs then was healthy.

Just as husband was off to the supermarket to rustle up some tea I noticed the distinct lack of ‘heatingupness’. The day being so warm I asked him to check the thermostat to ensure the heating would indeed kick in. It showed 11.5 degrees. So, yes, the radiators should have been warm. And the hot water tank well hot. And can I just add at this juncture that my hot water tank does not have an immersion heater and non of my showers are electric. Damn and blast. I was starting to get…a….bad….feeling…

I went into the garage. Even before I had climbed over the bikes and trailer I could see a flashing red light on my boiler. Not, I thought, a good sign. I still needed to make that perilous journey as my eyes were unable to determine the meaning of the flashing red light from any distance. Using the handy warning light key on the side of my boiler I determined that I either had low pressure (of what was not specified Gas? Water? Blood?) or a defunct pump. Or possibly both.

Neither sounded great. Of course knowing what the fault(s) maybe was(were) was in no way any help to me as no where on the boiler did it explain what to do to rectify said fault(s). Nor did the installation manual- that I subsequently located in the ‘file of useful stuff’ the previous owners of the house had left for our delectation- shed any light. In fact the manual was written in a foreign language. Corgi engineer speak I believe.

Luckily I pay a small fortune to a national gas company for boiler insurance. It took me a while to locate their phone number because my own over efficient filing system meant I failed to locate the paperwork which I had possibly misfiled after ‘constantly filling up toilet-gate’ and my computer, also redundant and unloved for a week, was refusing to ‘warm up’…there’s a theme here…

Out of interest despite two call outs from the plumbing sub contractor of the aforementioned national gas company the toilet will still constantly fill up after every flush unless one depresses both the ‘poo’ and ‘wee’ buttons of the flush mechanism simultaneously. This is a fact I find myself having to remind every other occupant of my house of. Constantly. It is only I who has the knack of reaching into the freezing cold water of the cistern to rectify the issue. Sigh.

Anyhow I called them up. Eventually. Unfortunately because I have no one with medical conditions, have two log burners and a kettle I am not considered an emergency. Tomorrow was the best they could offer. 8 til 1 or 2 til 6. Um let me think as early as damn possible please.

I set to laying out my log burners. It was not a job I expected to have to do. Piles of laundry yes. But not setting two fires. Accordingly there were no logs in the house. It is April. I had gone away thinking it unlikely I would use them again this year. Doh.

Anyway I got them going. I have never lit both together before. On going outside to collect the logs I did consider leaving the doors open to let some warm air in… I spent the afternoon oscillating between grates. The front room burner is easier to tend than the family room burner. I discovered.

By the kids’ bedtime these two rooms were warm. No where else was. I dangled fairly flammable PJs off the mantles. All we needed was a tin bath to complete the Victorian Fireside look. However we had to make do with the kitchen sink and used the kettle to get some warm water for a lick and a promise. I introduced them to the joys of hot water bottles. I only have one so they have had to time share it. I will be sneaking into Eldest’s room later to purloin it back. That smell of hot wet rubber, it takes me back it does…

All in all, excepting the cold loo seat which Middlest was very shocked about, they have found it quite fun. Middlest has a new found appreciation for the Tudors. Apparently.

I, on the other hand, have not. Found it fun. And will be glad to have my pressure sorted tomorrow and get a warm shower. In the meantime I will chuck another log on the fire and see how many of those Easter eggs I can eat without the kids noticing.

Oh and on my way to my cold bed later I must just stop by that cistern. Cheers hubby.

 

 

I accuse Anglian Water with the lead piping … — March 24, 2016

I accuse Anglian Water with the lead piping …

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lead.png

So here is a thing.

A couple of weeks ago my new neighbours popped round to tell me that a recent water survey had shown that they had dangerous levels of lead in their water.

I am not sure what prompted them to get the water surveyed. But anyhow they had. And Anglian Water had done some scientific testing and the upshot was they were banned from drinking their tap water until the road could be dug up.

New neighbour explained that Anglian Water thought the problem might be the pipe between the main main and the house.

In a neighbourly way she thought I ought to know the lie of the land so to speak. Lay of the pipe? Obviously the road being dug up was one issue but there was also the fact that Anglian Water thought it likely my house would also be affected.

I think I may have mentioned the road being dug up in my blog Fares Please . Well I don’t think I did I know I did but, hey, links get me visits. So sue me I am a shameless reader numbers whore. Secretly all bloggers are. Numbers do matter. Sorry guys.

Here is another thing. Pipes running up to your boundary are the responsibility of the Water company (yea). Pipes on your property are not. They remain your responsibility.

We have all had those letters in the post warning us of the dire consequences of not taking up one’s Water company’s insurance for pipes on our property. We have all binned such letters. Or if super security aware, shredded them. I am one of those people. My laissez faire attitude to pipe ownership was perhaps coming back to bite me. Poison me.

Anyway our road was dug up. Neighbour’s pipe was lead. Anglian Water replaced it up to their boundary. And not an inch beyond. However they did say it looked unlikely that there was lead on their property. I am pleased for them.

Anyway in the manner of Pandora’s Box I now had to do something. I had been happily imbibing my tap water since last May with not a thought to its possible heavy metal content. Of course now there was the distinct possibility I was absorbing the old Pb I became paranoid. Not paranoid enough to switch to bottled water (too expensive and environmentally damaging) but paranoid enough to run my tap for two minutes each time I wanted a drink. I couldn’t put the thought back in the box.

I should probably add at this point that I have historically been a tap water evangelist. I have never seen the need to spend money on bottled water and pollute our local rivers with empty plastic bottles. I have always firmly believed in the benefits of tap water. And often told others so. I still believe this. Sort of. I will when all possibility of lead has left the arena anyway.

Of course I googled the effects of lead poisoning and wished I hadn’t. No really, I really wish I hadn’t.

So I called Anglian Water who, considering the circumstances, were happy to send out a scientist to test my water. And its level of toxins. I was expecting lab coats. And possibly a bespectacled gentleman.

I got a man in a van with steel toe capped boots and what looked suspiciously like four washed out coke bottles. Surely enough residual toxins in there to get my water onto the banned substance list. Anyhow he took his very scientific samples. Without labelling a single one. And nipped off to his van for a fag before drawing his last one- a 30 minute standing test.

He promised the results in writing within 10 days. That seemed an awfully long time to a person possibly building up ruinous levels of lead in their system. But then I reflected that since I had been gaily doing that for around 10 months it possibly didn’t make much difference.

In the manner of blood test results I expected a phone call should things be particularly hairy (sorry heavy). I hadn’t heard anything for 6 days and was starting to relax. I had stopped running the tap for two minutes every time I wanted a cuppa anyway.

I was just mentioning to my mother that I thought we were in for a clean bill of health when the man from Anglian Water called up. Irony or what… Leadery?

Suffice to say the level of lead in the sample taken from the street was over the safe amount of 10 mg per litre. Not much over but still over. The samples taken from my kitchen tap were lower but still showed the presence of lead. So there are lead pipes somewhere. My levels were not so bad that I was banned from drinking my water but he suggested going back to running it for two minutes before drinking to minimise the lead content in each refreshing glass full.

His suggested course of action was to dig up my road again and have a look at the pipe leading up to my boundary. If that proved to be made from lead they would replace it free of charge. Next another steel toe capped mad in a van would roll up and repeat the sampling. This time they would do a slightly more scientific test (in my view not difficult) for the ‘fag break’ one and take many more smaller samples which would help pinpoint where the lead piping remained within my property if indeed it did at all.

Quite why they didn’t do this before is unclear to me.

I asked him was it likely that the whole road (which predates the 1970s when lead piping became illegal) would be in the same predicament? He thought it likely.

That begged my next question. Why didn’t they just survey the whole street in a systematic way. Thus presumably saving time and money on hole diggers, pipe replacers and hole filler in-ers, temporary traffic lights and road closures.

His response? “That would be ideal but we have to target our resources”.

Clearly a stock response read off a card ‘to be used with difficult customers’. (I had one of those cards when I worked in a bank and had to sell loan insurance. ‘Overcoming Customer Objections’, I think it was called. If only the banks had not overcome such objections they would be a lot better off now. But hey ho that is a whole other issue and I appear to be getting side-tracked.)

His only suggestion was that I mention it to my neighbours directly. Of course I will. But a bit of proactivity on their part might have been nice. No not nice. Responsible.

It is not clear to me why shareholders in Anglian Water would come above public health but they clearly do.

Neighbour and I may do a leaflet drop. That will screw them right royally.

Serve them right.

.