Joys of Parenthood

My daughter loves ‘Dancing on Ice’. It is the highlight of her week. That same statement is also true of my niece E who is nearly 12, and my daughter’s best friend.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have this programme impinge upon your consciousness I should explain that it is a direct rip off of the wonderful Strictly Come Dancing (yes, I too have my television watching weakness) expect that in this case the ‘celebrities’ learn to dance (clue in the title folks) on ice.

The programme is on Sunday evening – first all the surviving skaters from the previous week dance – then the viewing public get to vote for their favourite – and then later the two pairs of skaters who have the lowest number of votes compete in the ‘Skate off’. Thus far, thus very familiar to any viewer of SCD.

Now it has not been all bad – had it not been for H’s obsession I would never have seen Todd Carty’s hilarious performance to ‘Help!’ (Now available once again on You Tube in spite of ITV’s best efforts to block it) But that apart words that spring to my mind include dire, dull, boring, tedious....you get the picture. The skaters are supposed to be celebrities, but apart from Todd Carty the only one I had ever heard of was Coleen Nolan – and that I guess pretty much sums up the standard of what passes for celebrity these days. (Reidski tells me that one of them was a former rugby league player.) H and my niece who always watch the programme together have strictly forbidden any of the rest of us to open our mouths to comment during their beloved programme. Any hint of criticism or negativity risks tears or a tantrum or both so we have learnt that discretion is the better part of smart wise cracks and we keep quiet.

I should perhaps explain that on Sunday evenings I always have my sister and niece over for dinner – along with various other family members.

And so to yesterday and (at last) the whole point of this post. For many weeks I have been exercising the skill of parental selective hearing. Teenagers are obviously the world leaders in selective hearing as in never hearing lines like ‘Please tidy your room’, but hearing the juicy bit of gossip you definitely don’t want them to hear even when whispered the other side of a ten foot brick wall from them. However, I have been a past master at the skill every time H or E has exclaimed about how desperate they are to see Dancing on Ice – Live. I have not given one tiny indication that I have heard any such wish. Dancing on Ice – Live would be without doubt My Idea of Hell.

So imagine my horror when the following scenario worked its way out last night:

1. H wants to vote for Ray but misses the advertised phone number so she goes on the website to find it.
2. Whilst on the website she comments once more upon how very, very, very much she, her friend C and E want to see Dancing On Ice – Live – and how the show is in Birmingham on E’s birthday.
3. My sister asks how much tickets are.
4. Five minutes later H is on the verge of pressing the button to confirm 4 tickets at a total price of £174.50 (FF'sS!)for her, her friend (who is almost part of our family anyway), E and my sister.
5. One second after that my sister is declaring most firmly that she is NOT taking them on her own.
6. Two minutes after that, with five and not four tickets purchased, I am drinking a remedial brandy as the terrible truth sinks in. I am going to see Dancing on Ice – Live.


What did I ever do in a past life to deserve this?

Anne Frank

I am ashamed to admit that I have only just read Anne Frank’s diary. It is purely by coincidence that I finally read it whilst my own daughter is 15 – the age Anne was when she and her companions were discovered, arrested, and when she subsequently died. The book no doubt gets to everyone who reads it, but maybe there was an added dimension in that inevitably I compared H and her friends to Anne.

It is easy to hear the voices of H and her friends in some of what Anne writes about. When Anne speaks about boys, clothes, her appearance, and how no one understands her she is the universal spokesperson for Adolescent Girl. As Anne points out on numerous occasions “It is so unfair!” Course there are degrees of unfairness, and I think even Anne’s parents would have had to admit that in her case, things generally speaking were indeed somewhat unfair.

My daughter and her best friends are all bright young women. They are in the top set for English and produce high scoring written work, but what kind of talent must Anne have possessed to have been able to express herself as she did with such clarity, wit, maturity and descriptive powers?

My daughter thinks she is deprived if the internet connection is down. Anne is of course terribly distressed by her confinement (“Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I’m terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we’ll be shot. That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect.”) but fills her days with education in a way that sadly it is hard for me to imagine H ever doing. When H is bored she presents as being incapable of coming up with any means of self entertainment, let alone self improvement! Anne’s drive to learn in direct contrast to H’s is extraordinary; reading any books she can get her hands on in any of four different languages. It is impossible to imagine a 15 year old girl today, no matter how extreme her isolation, raving about a biography of Franz Liszt. I find myself wondering if H has even actually heard of Franz Liszt.

It is hard enough for us to read Anne’s words, knowing as we do what was to be. How on earth must her father have felt after surviving in Auschwitz, learning his family were all dead, and then reading the incredibly vivid words of his daughter? Some of her words must have been so hurtful to him personally, but beyond that they would both have brought her to life as they do to the reader today, and yet also showed so clearly what truly exceptional potential was lost.

Rather than end on a miserable note though, as let’s face it, the Afterword can hardly avoid doing, I reproduce here a joke from the diary on the off chance that there are still some people who will not have read Anne’s book yet.

After a bible lesson about Adam and Eve, a 13 year old boy asked his father, ‘Tell me, Father, how did I get born?’ ‘Well,’ the father replied, ‘the stork plucked you out of the ocean, and set you down in Mother’s bed.’

Not fully satisfied, the boy went to his mother, ‘Tell me Mother,’ he asked, ‘how did you get born and how did I get born?’His mother told him the same story.

Finally, hoping to hear the finer points, he went to his grandfather. ‘Tell me, Grandfather,’ he said, ‘how did you get born, and how did your daughter get born?’ And for the third time he was told exactly the same story.

That night he wrote in his diary: ‘After careful inquiry, I must conclude that there has been no sexual intercourse in our family for the last three generations.’

It is that time of year again

when incredibly patronising adverts appear on the television urging punters to buy something unspeakably awful for their unfortunate mothers on Mothering Sunday.

I have assured my kids that if they buy me this they will be seeking alternative bed and board before the day is out.

I challenge you all to come up with something worse than this to give or receive on Mother's Day. And yes '9 to 5' is on it.

Lunch out

Reidski is now going to have to cope with an entirely new image - he is now officially a real smoothie. It must be the influence of having lived in London for so many years finally rubbing off on him. For my birthday he took me for lunch....in France. Boulogne to be precise.

To be preciser still he took me here which had been recommended to him by a friend of his, and what a great recommendation it turned out to be. We had such a wonderful long lunch, with food that was just as good as I had had at G.R's place. No one has ever taken me for lunch in another country before! It was amazing and very, very special.

After lunch we had a stroll round the old city, before heading for Calais and buying a not inconsiderable number of bottles of wine. Was drinking one of them last night -a fantastic sauvignon blanc which cost - even with the exchange rate as bad as it is - just £2.38.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate that I managed to leave my road map of France back in New Cross, but we only got Lost In France the twice, including a rather nasty moment at the docks in Calais when we found we had entered the lorries only entrance and couldn't work out how we were ever going to be able to escape from there. He must quite like me because although it might be argued that one was my fault, he didn't swear at me, not even once. The other time was unarguably my fault - but no body's perfect!



As an aside - it does seem that what with the credit crunch and the exchange rate plus competition from the Channel Tunnel that we are now practically at the point where the ferry companies will pay us to travel on them. Our trip on P&O from Dover cost £19 return total, and as if that wasn't enough to tempt us they also threw in 6 bottles of wine for the price. How can that possibly be worth their while? It is not as if one would ever have a second cup of coffee on the boat once one had tried the first so they can't make any money that way!

How on earth

can two steaks cost £220?

Well they are from Wagyu cattle who are so pampered they even get massaged (what a job for someone that must be!). But beyond that I can't provide any answer as to how on earth two steaks can cost that much money. Not that they weren't delicious though. Amazingly we didn't get served the steaks my sons cooked - they went out to some unsuspecting other customers - and thankfully they didn't get sent straight back.

My surprise night out took me here in London's Grosvenor Square. We had what they call the chef's table right next to the kitchen, and we had a tasting menu which included food of the most incredible quality. I had cavier for the first time in my life (only took 50 years then) and can kind of see what the fuss is about. It was worth waiting for.

When I heard where we were headed I was actually quite scared. I thought I may have been inappropriately dressed, and too obviously not wealthy enough to set foot in the place - but I needn't have worried as the staff were all lovely and really made us feel welcome. Being invited into the kitchen was a great experience.

Pretty hard to top it as a birthday treat, but Reidski managed to do just that. Will talk about that later.

You will always find me in the kitchen at parties

Although not always in one of Gordon Ramsay's kitchens.

I am pictured with my two sons who are cooking a couple of steaks. The chef's words to them on the subject were - and this is an exact quote - "These two steaks are worth £220 so don't fuck up."

No pressure then.

Had such an incredible evening. More on it will inevitably follow.

Mystery night out

For me that is.

Today at 4.00pm I have to be at my friend's house on the outskirts of London, along with my kids and the other friends who went to South Africa and Egypt with me. That same incredibly generous woman who took us all on those trips of a life time says we then have to get into our best clothes and then we are going somewhere.

What ever we are doing it is to celebrate my birthday which is very imminent. I remain to be totally convinced that turning 50 is something to celebrate - but hey - I will do my very best. One has to make the effort doesn't one? ;-)

Very excited, and very mystified as have absolutely no idea what it is she has arranged, but I do know it will be great. Being with these friends always is even if it is just a night in front of the tele.

OK (or not OK)

I have thought about this and I still can’t decide what I hate most about the tragedy for our times that is Jade Goody.

So in no particular order:

I hate the producers of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother who both built JG up, knocked her down, and then led her to take part in India’s version where she ended up being televised live hearing she had cancer.

I hate the ‘celebrity’ obsessed media who will fill page after page with trash about people such as JG. I also hate that I knew all about the fairy tale wedding (Costing £1.5 million – money well spent I am sure), but did not know until someone with family in Cairo told me, that there was a bomb in the main market in Cairo on Sunday which not only caused death and destruction but will have an on going seriously negative effect on Egyptian peoples livelihoods. I expect the BBC had no time left to report on this once they had covered the wedding of JG so comprehensively..

I hate the fact that we the public still buy these rags and allow the media to profit from the trash they print. And I hate people like Max (slime ball) Clifford (3,383) profiting from someone who is dying by selling the various ‘exclusives’.

I hate the fact that somewhere along the line I became so cynical about the media that when I first heard the JG has cancer story I assumed it was fabricated or at the very most - grossly exaggerated.

I hate seeing the effect the blanket coverage has on my close friend at work who has had cancer twice and tells me she finds the JG story really hard to cope with.

I hate the fact that even our government has to get dragged into the saga with Gordon Brown expressing his regrets and Jack Straw lifting the curfew on her jailbird bloke so that he can spend one evening cavorting in women’s underwear, and the next one boozing till 4.30 in the morning, whilst we are told his beloved bride had long since retired to bed. Yes - can sure see what she must see in him.

I hate the hypocrisy with which people who had not a good word to say about JG after the racist bullying incident are now falling over themselves to express their sorrow for her imminent demise. And when people who are total strangers to JG write things in comments on web pages like “Goodbye brave Jade. I shall never forget your beautiful smile. You are an inspiration to us all.” …Well, I am afraid it just makes me feel nauseous.


I think I can understand and appreciate that living out this final act in the drama that has been Jade Goody’s life in the public eye is her way of dealing with it. What I can neither understand or appreciate though is how on earth our society became so obsessed with the trivial that such a person - famous only for showing herself up on reality TV shows - is actually in a position where she CAN live out her final days in the public eye, and in so doing add to the huge amount of money she has already made

As a final observation when Jade’s popularity plummeted following the Celebrity Big Brother racism row Living TV cancelled her programme. Now Living TV is making money by filming Jade whilst she is dying. Irony or what? Maybe Living TV should reconsider what they call themselves?

Oh dear

I read that Gail Trimble,Captain Incredible of the winners of this year's University Challenge has turned down the opportunity to do a 'tasteful' photo shoot for Nuts magazine. Does she have no idea what is required in order to succeed in our country today?

Clearly she is in urgent need of assistance from Mr Max (slime ball) Clifford. (3,382)

I can't contain myself much longer

but meanwhile here is one I wrote earlier.

Oh - and another.

Seems like I am as obsessed as the rest of the population.

At the end of the first link I see I wrote "Sociologists will have a field day with this latest twist from the Big Brother team. What on earth does it say about the society we live in? " Those same sociologists will have even more to say about us all right now wouldn't they?


Incidentally, if one googles the words 'Max Clifford slime ball' one gets 3,380 hits. Make that 3,381 now.

In a supreme effort

NOT to mention Jade Goody and the quite hideous media circus that is currently surrounding her, it is with reluctance that I am forced to mention the shambles that is Northampton Town Football Club.

Our last six results comprise one victory and five defeats. We are relegation bound.

The first half on Saturday was interesting enough to make me think that maybe train spotting does have some merit as an alternative to football. I said as much in a text to Reidski. The second half was worse. We went one down to a very poor Walsall with only about ten minutes to go. Why I did not leave at that moment is solely due to a sadly misplaced sense of loyalty to a bunch of players who obviously couldn't give a damn about the long suffering fans. The fourth official was the cause of wide spread groans when he signalled that there would be four minutes of injury time. "Haven't I suffered enough?" I asked in another text to Reidksi. "Obviously not" I continued in a further text timed two minutes later as they scored again.

Doomed, doomed I tell ya.

As is Jade Goody apparently.

My mother always told me that if one can't say anything good about a person one should not say anything at all. So I am sorry that a young mother is dying. As for the rest - still trying to keep quiet but it ain't easy.

Cornwall

So anyway we did finally arrive in Cornwall which was nice.

We stayed in a holiday park just outside Camelford – another bargain found via the excellent Travel Zoo.com. First class accommodation and tickets to the Eden Project thrown in at an exceedingly good price.

We were very close to Tintagel, Boscastle and Crackington Haven.

I knew why I knew of Camelford – from the poisoned water disaster but I couldn’t think why Boscastle was familiar, until we got there and saw the reminders of the devastating flood they experienced in August 2004 (very interesting link here). In 24 hours they had 200.4 mm of rain (most of that falling in a five hour period). The rain was very localised: four of the nearest 10 rain gauges, all within a few miles of Boscastle, showed less than 3 mm of rain that day. This I learn from Wikipedia is down to the Brown Willy effect. (Yes, yes – I sniggered too). Crackington Haven suffered very badly that day as well.

As well as visiting the coastal villages we made use of our free tickets to the Eden Project which was interesting, especially learning about how it had been transformed from a disused clay pit to the extraordinary collection of plants that it is today. It has to be said though that if one visits it in the middle of February one probably does not see it in all its glory. It was predominantly green and brown when we were there.



Oh – and a mere 18 months later than planned we finally managed to get fish and chips at Rick Stein’s chippie, and a very superior fish and chips with mushy peas it was too. Well worth the wait!

We thought we must have been mad planning a trip to Cornwall in February, but in the event as luck would have it, it turned out that we had been very sensible. The weather was good (In fact spring had already sprung there - we saw our first daffodils of the year and our first new born lambs.) The views were spectacular, the pubs were as good as ever, and the place wasn't heaving with other tourists. Of course had we planned to go the week before we would never have got there due to the snow. It's always a gamble going anywhere in the UK though. After all, I expect those visitors to Boscastle in August 2004 thought they might get a bit of sun.......................


Thanks Reidski for a brilliant time. xxxx

We saw this on Saturday

Nice innit?

It is Slough Town Centre, and that road is the A4. There were road works on it when we were there too.

Now I know accidents will happen and I can be as sympathetic as the next person to anyone caught up in an accident, just so long (obviously) as it does not inconvenience me.

So there we are, me and Reidski, heading West. 'Cornwall young man, and don't spare the horses'. We were just out of London, on the M4 and only about another 200 miles to go - hooray! Lovely clear, dry day. Not many lorries on the road. Splendid safe driving conditions......

I hear something on the radio about a multi vehicle pile up on the West bound M4 at Junction 7 for Slough.

Uh oh.

We see Sign Number One that tells us there is a hold up ahead and we can expect a delay of around 20 minutes. "That's OK" says I. "I can cope when I know roughly how long we will be stuck for." We see Sign Number Two that tells us the M4 is closed at Junction 6. We surmise that Sign Number One had lied to us in the manner of the sadistic dentist who says 'This won't hurt a bit' when he means it will hurt a lot. I consulted the map and we decided that it would be better to come off the motorway at Junction 5 and travel on the A4 until we had passed the scene of the accident. We thought that even more as we saw the completely stationary traffic queuing from Junction 5 as we left the M4. We had definitely made The Right Decision. Smug Gits Were Us.

But not for long.

Where do you suppose all that queuing traffic was being diverted to when they eventually got to Junction 6?

Would you be surprised to learn they were being diverted on to the A4 up ahead of us?

Which goes through Slough town centre.
And which is currently being dug up for road repairs.
And which is very very busy on a Saturday morning anyway without the benefit of all west bound motorway traffic being diverted right through the middle of Slough Town Centre.

Think of the worst traffic jam you have ever been in and multiply it by 12 and you may come close to understanding just how bad that traffic was. If I had not finally come up with an escape route via Windsor we would probably still be in Slough Town Centre now. In fact I am sure I caught something on the news about emergency food parcels being delivered to motorists stranded since last Saturday morning on the A4 in Slough.


No prizes for guessing what poem I have had in my head ever since Saturday.

So whoever once said that part of the pleasure of going somewhere is the getting there lied as blatantly as Motorway Sign Number One. But somehow - when one arrives at a place as beautiful as this



it does all seem worthwhile.

Slightly depressing

that Waterstones put a sticker reading:

"The inspiration for the musical behind the BBC's 'I'd Do Anything'. "

on the front cover of that little known novel 'Oliver Twist'.

Alcohol is in my blood.

Just to clarify what I mean by that statement, my family history is littered with examples of great granddads and great great granddads who were pub landlords. When I was little my dad was a sales rep firstly for Babycham (we had a garage full of boxes of cocktail umbrellas as a result which the four year old Jane loved playing with) and then with Crawfords whisky, and as a result and my school holidays were often spent sitting in a pub garden somewhere in the country with a glass of orange squash drunk through a straw, and a packet of crisps – Walkers or Golden Wonder, but always ready salted, whilst dad was in the bar pretending to be working. (Reidski will tell you nothing has changed regarding the crisps – I STILL have ready salted every time – but it has been a while since I have been content with orange squash on a visit to the pub) When I was ten my mum and dad went into their first pub, and they stayed in the licensed trade till they retired.

My dad has an encyclopaedic knowledge of pubs. Where ever I happen to be in the UK he can tell me which pubs I should definitely check out – and his recommendations are always first class...and this coming from a fussy bitch. I can not tolerate a bad pub, and my mind is usually made up about a place within moments of entering the front door. Decor, atmosphere, welcome, cleanliness – all these things are taken in and I always remember that I have a choice about where I spend my money and I won’t stay in a pub that doesn’t feel right. There are so many good pubs that I could be spending time in that I don’t want to waste time and money in ones that do not measure up. Part of the pleasure for me of travelling is to discover new pubs – and Reidksi and I have been in some good ones the past few days my favourite of which was probably this one in Polkerris near St Austell. (Up the road from the Inn is a row of old cottages built by the unpopular Preventative Service to house the riding officers whose job was to patrol the cliffs on horse back to discourage smuggling. As in other seaside places they had to be housed together for their own safety. I love stories like this.)

This is a very long winded way of getting round to saying that I have seen quite a few of the programmes with Oz Clarke and James May travelling around Britain visiting pubs, breweries and distilleries in an effort to identify the quintessential British drink.

My offering would be gin and tonic, but I guess it all depends on where in Britain you happen to be. Obviously many people would go for a good malt whisky, others for a true knock your head off scrumpy, and CAMRA members could argue till eternity over the best British beer. Then there are those for whom this present



(TNR’s ace photo taken in a Glasgow off licence) comprising 20 fags, some roll up papers and a bottle of Buckfast would be the perfect Valentine’s gift.

What’s your favourite British drink?

Question

Can anyone tell me what a Google Reader is?

Bit of an up date

Strange that a week last Monday I was bemoaning the quantity of the snow in Northamptonshire - as in I didn't think we had had enough of it. Be careful what you wish for eh? It is now quite hard to remember what the land round here looks like without snow.

I was snowed in for the first time since my early teens (positively ancient history we are talking there). My son's friend was stuck with us for four days in the end - and that did necessitate by the Saturday an outing to the supermarket with someone brave enough to do the driving.

Oh


My


God.


We went to Morrison's first but after some 20 minutes in which it became clear we were never going to get a parking space because the place was under siege we decided Tescos would be easier. It wasn't. The traffic on the approach to Tescos was at a stand still. By the time we got there and parked an hour must have passed. Within the store there was the kind of atmosphere that might lead one to assume rationing was being declared the following day. Everyone in the county must have seized upon the slight let up in the weather to try and get the food in. Queues at every till went back to the middle of the store. I was best friends for life with the couple in front of me in the checkout queues by the time I finally got to pay for my shopping - we had by then known each other for ever. My trip to the supermarket took something like three and a half hours - how annoying was it therefore to get home and immediately realise I had forgotten the cat food? Answer: extremely.

The other thing about the snow is that it has has kept Reidski and I apart for over two weeks. This will however be rectified tonight as I am going down to his place - and tomorrow we are off for a break in Cornwall until Wednesday. We are staying in a log cabin in some kind of a holiday camp - obviously somewhat out of season. The info they sent us told us that regretfully the out door swimming pool will not be available for our use. Life is full of such disappointments.

On reflection I realise I have chosen an inappropriate title for this post as 'Update' suggests I have things to write about - but I really haven't. Due to the weather and the truly lethal roads I haven't been anywhere or done anything apart from a few trips to and from work.

So profuse apologies to anyone who has just entirely wasted valuable minutes of their life reading this!

Back on Wednesday with an up date on the wild sex I will have been enjoying.




(Anything to get a few more visitors :-) )

I know

it probably counts as lazy blogging to mention google hits, but I do feel I need to apologise to the person who came here following a search for 'My favourite programme is Top Gear.' I guess however that when he clicked on the link and found himself reading about 'Strictly Come Dancing' he might have worked it out for himself that he had been somewhat misdirected.


Yes - I am kind of assuming the searcher was male.

For the record, Top Gear is right up there with my Least Favourite programmes - and I actually manage to dislike Clarkson even more since his remarks in Australia last week that I can't even bring myself to repeat.

I just googled myself by the words 'Jeremy Clarkson tosser' and very satisfying it was to find
this.

Todd Carty Spectacular Stumble Off Set - Live On Dancing On Ice - ITV1 - HD Stereo

You have to see this - simply hilarious.

Stuck at home by the way

Loads more snow last night and it is still coming down as I type. I also have an extra teenage boy to feed as well because one came to stay the night on Wednesday and is consequently still stuck with us - poor lad. I am not saying I am being eaten out of house and home but this morning I was greeted with a no milk and a no bread situation. This morning I am extremely appreciative of my village shop even if I did blink quite hard at the cost of said essential items.

I'd ask you all to send food parcels but there is - for fairly understandable reasons - no post.

It is impossible to please all parents

I am the chair of governors at our village school. We had a meeting earlier this week and we had to discuss the subject of swimming because of complaints raised by two parents. We currently take children from ages 7 to 11 swimming once a week for a ten week period over an academic year.

Parent A recently moved her children to our school from the private sector. She questioned why it was necessary to take children swimming because it took one tenth of the school week to do so. She is right to say it takes this long as we have to get the children to a pool in the local town by coach, allow time for them to get changed, get them in the pool, allow time for them to get dry and dressed afterwards, and finally back to school - by which time one school afternoon has been and gone. "Why" she wanted to know could we not tell other parents to take their children swimming out of school hours?

Parent B was complaining because it was outrageous that she had to waste money buying swimming trunks for her lad in order for him to go for the contentious swimming lessons.

As we had received these two complaints we had as governors to discuss whether it was indeed correct and a productive use of teaching time to continue taking the children swimming.

The children of Parent A are all competent swimmers. The child of Parent B was terrified to get into the water for his first lesson as he had never been swimming before.

The same child of Parent B has a statement of special educational needs, and is unable to remember when he gets changed which locker he has put his clothes in. Staff who take him put a sticker on his locker now so he knows which is his. But in the past few weeks this child has learnt to swim and is doing better than other children in his class. This is the first time since he started school that he has ever found something he could master more quickly than his contemporaries.

After due consideration we have decided to carry on taking the pupils swimming. And we paid for the swimming trunks too.

Parent A will never understand the reasons behind our decision and will continue to complain about it with other parents of a similar social background to hers. Parent B is unlikely to tell her child 'Well done' because he has learnt to swim. Parent A and Parent B will in all likelihood NEVER say a single word to each other. The lives they lead are so totally alien to the other.

Measles

I hear today that there has been a 36% rise in cases of measles during the past year.

This of course is as a result of the 'research' produced by Professor Wakefield and published in The Lancet ten years ago. It was of course impossible to miss the enormous impact his claims that the MMR jab caused autism made and parents across the country were panicked into refusing to allow their child to have the vaccination which would have protected them against measles, not to mention mumps and rubella. You will still hear parents today who are frightened to allow their child to have the MMR injection 'because it causes autism'.

If you try to find the article he wrote that led to the backlash against the MMR jab you will struggle - The Lancet has ensured it can not be seen on the web, but that in itself is a classic case of shutting the stable door well after the horse has legged it. Wakefield's lasting legacy can be seen in today's figures.

But how on earth did what he say make such a huge impact, and why did the media chose to highlight it so prominently when his 'research' was based on studying just 12 children?

Yes - I did mean to say that his 'research' was based on studying just 12 children. Totally mad, totally true, and totally damaging to the health of our children. Wakefield must be so proud.

The North Wind Did Blow

and we did have snow.

PerfSym

For Holly.

Lovely stuff.

Daily Mail watch

Apparently Liz Hurley (aged 43) is looking 15 years older than she looked 15 years ago.

So says a male 'journo' who sadly does not show us photos of himself 15 years ago. This is a shame as no doubt we women could learn a thing or two from him about how to hold back time.

Is it anyone* we women have hang ups about getting older?

She looks bloody lovely FF'sS.

* As Yorkshire Pudding has pointed out - this should of course read 'is it any wonder...' The perils of blogging when in a rush and annoyed with the vile and despicable Daily Mail.

Nearly forgot something very exciting!

My dad got mentioned in the Sunday Times!!!!

He is Ken the landlord as mentioned in this article by Matt Dawson.

However - my dad would like to point out that in the interests of accuracy he did not in point of fact have lock ins. No. He would just never actually shut until such time as Tim Rodber - a big lad standing 6ft 6ins and weighing 17 stone and with whom one would not wish to argue - announced he was just about ready to go home.

Article that only mentions snow about 50 times.

Friday night, when it did not snow but was very cold, I was in the village quiz. I only mention that as an excuse to put in print the fact that my team won – hooray! which was more than I can say for Saturday when my team lost. Close observers of this blog will know I refer here to Northampton Town Football Club.

We played Leicester – run away leaders of League 1 – but we played well against them and even took the lead. Now anyone who ever reads Reidski’s blog will have spotted that he hates people who criticise referees so I am not going to do that here. Oh no. Clearly Mr Mike Dean – a premiership referee slumming it at our place on Saturday afternoon knows far more about refereeing than any of us in the ground do – and so he should do – he gets paid a great deal of money to know the rules and apply them fairly. So anyway, what I learnt from him on Saturday is that when a foul is committed outside the penalty area a penalty is awarded. Funny – as I had always thought a foul had to be committed inside the penalty area for a penalty to be awarded – but Mr Dean is the expert. It was actually quite surreal. The foul in question was committed in front of 1300 noisy Leicester fans, but absolutely no one – no fan and no player – appealed for a penalty. But Mr Dean knew what he was doing and applied the rules as only he knew them to the letter. Penalty duly converted. (Just re –reading what I just wrote to ensure there is no hint of a criticism of the referee there....my relationship depends upon that!) I have no arguments with their second and winning goal which was a beauty. Leicester are dead certs for promotion. And if we don’t start picking up some more points very soon we are a good bet for the drop.

The other thing about Saturday afternoon was the – in my opinion – pathetic reaction of some of my fellow Cobbler fans to the discovery that – shock horror – there were Leicester fans sitting amongst us. I say – bloody big deal and who cares. And this from the idiot who called out ‘Come on Luton!’ when sitting in the middle of the Millwall fans – but we prefer to pretend that particular incident never really happened.

The Leicester fans weren’t there to cause trouble and it is all money for the club if the tickets got sold. I appeared to be in a minority with that opinion. Some of our oh so tough (irony employed there if anyone wasn’t sure) chased one such supporter out on to the pitch where he promptly got nicked by the local plod. As it later turned out he was in fact Tom Meighan, the lead singer with Kasabian described in
this article as a ‘gob on legs’ I suppose that is quite funny in retrospect.

Obviously there was no snow on Saturday or the match would have been postponed.

On Sunday I met up with Holly of this blog, and she is every bit as lovely as I knew she would be. Funny meeting up with another blogger for the first time but already knowing so very much about each other. It was just starting snowing when we met. She was heading for Norfolk – I am a bit worried she may be stuck in Norfolk longer than she had planned as I hear how East Anglia is knee deep in the cold white stuff.

Sunday night I went up to Nottingham to see Keane. Reidski hates Keane and would rather have slit his own throat than go and see this particular band, but I would walk back to Nottingham in the snow to see them again. (Better than driving in the stuff as I had to do last night which wasn't fun at all.) Great and uplifting gig and Holly who is going to see them soon (if the snow ever melts so she can escape from Norfolk) is in for a treat.

And so to today when snow has stopped play – or at least prevented me from getting down to London to see Reidski tonight. Our snow is disappointing – here and cold – but not enough of it to close schools (I love being the children’s champion and agreeing that the village school should be closed due to snow which as Chair of Governor’s I get to do, although sadly only when it actually – like- snows hard enough to justify that closure.) Reidski has a foot of snow in his garden and will be spending his day doing sod all being well and truly snowed in. On his own :-(

Jay has just taken me back to my childhood.

Who would have thought the memory of a button box could provoke strong emotions - yet I feel quite tearful remembering how I would go through my mum's button collection again and again as a kid - for no other reason than I liked the shiny ones she kept in there.

Another snippet from the files

Dated 1968 - In spite of Mr H's Public School manners his boorish self soon showed through.

Question - should that actually read 'Because of Mr H's Public School manners his boorish self soon showed through'?

Or is that interpretation just showing off my own personal prejudice?

Mission Accomplished

It took me just under two months to get through War and Peace. I loved most of it, but it ended for me on a rather a flat note as I could scarcely understand a word of Epilogue Part 2, which takes up the last 42 pages.. In this concluding section Tolstoy reflects on what exactly is history (at least I think that is what he is doing!) and goes on at great length about the relationship between free will and the laws of necessity. I was relieved to read afterwards in a commentary on the book that the second epilogue is seen by others too as repetitive and unnecessarily complex.

There was an interesting piece in the commentary from the translator of my version. Language evolves of course, and whereas once it may not have raised an eyebrow to read that ‘he ejaculated with a grimace’ phrases such as that or ‘Andrey spent the evening with a few gay friends’ probably do need updating as the years go by. It also notes that previous translations were by refined young ladies and that was why according to an earlier translation when one man gets his leg blown off by a cannon ball there is a cry of - ‘Ekh! You beastly thing!’

So trying hard to forget about my struggles with the second epilogue what I loved about the book was the way it brings Tolstoy’s characters so vividly to life. They are all so recognisably human, making many mistakes along the way and having to live with the results of appallingly bad decisions, but in several brilliantly written scenes demonstrate the sheer joy of surrendering to a moment and revelling in some pleasure be it as frivolous as dancing or singing. It’s like – we know we are going to die one day – so for god’s sake let’s enjoy ourselves whilst we are here.

And it is filled with dry humour. Having gone along with the traumas endured by Pierre whilst he was a prisoner of the French we learn that ‘He was suffering from what the doctors called a bilious fever. Despite their treatment – with blood letting and various medicines – he recovered.’

I would actually quite like to read it again. But not before I have got through a few instantly forgettable crime novels first. Light reading here I come!

Is this child

suitable for adoption?

This was a question which had to be answered in the affirmative before adoption agencies would accept a baby whose mother wished him or her to be placed in an adoptive home. The records I see commonly ask questions like "Is there any history of mental illness within the mother's family?" or "Is there any history of epilepsy?" I had not however seen the following question on an official form before, as asked by the National Adoption Society as recently as 1976:

"Is there any red hair in the family?"

Outrageous.

More grave news on the credit crunch.

Now Battersea Dogs Home has gone to the wall. They've gone and called in the retrievers.

New link

Just found out that one of my all time favourite Cobblers players has his own blog.

Any other fan of lower league football can see what Chris Hargreaves has to say about life, the universe, and the Blue Square Premier here.

Non football fans like Fire Byrd may care to check him out anyway for his very admirable six pack!

Typical bloody Guardian

The Guardian has been publishing this past week a series called 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read. I am a sucker for anything like that : Albums One Must Own; Films One Must See Before One Dies; Men One Must Shag* etc etc. I like pouring over these lists, ticking off those I have read/heard/seen/shagged - and I have this week been doing just that with the Guardian lists.

Last Saturday was comedy novels, Sunday with the Observer was books on crime and so on and so forth.

Well as I do keep mentioning I am currently reading War and Peace. I have about 200 pages to go and it will count as a major life time achievement when I actually reach the end.

All week I have been looking out for My Book in The Guardian list. I needed to see it there so I could have that lovely smug feeling that this enormously long novel is one absolutely everyone HAS to read - and I have very nearly done just that. The only thing was I wasn't quite sure which category W&P would fall into so I have looked for it everyday - except the science fiction day - I really did not think it would feature in that section. The last day of the series dawned without me having seen My Book but oh yes! The section on Friday was entitled 'War and Travel'. This Was It.

Only it wasn't.


Alphabetically listed I turn the page where the last book mentioned was Sophie's Choice by William Styron to see the next entry - The Adventure's of Hucklebury Finn by Mark Twain. 'Huh?' I turn back a page - Styron. I turn forward a page - Twain. 'Ha! Probably got a special feature on My Book.' So I searched for the special feature. Only it did not exist.

I was forced to the conclusion that this enormously long book that I thought I just HAD to read was not in fact a book I had to read at all. Clearly I have been wasting valuable reading time this past two months when there are all these other essential novels which I simply HAVE to read.**


But as I was saying - typical bloody Guardian. I just went on their web site to find a link for this waffle and lo - what do I see listed inbetween Styron and Twain?

Tolstoy - Leo 'War and Peace'.

What is it with the Guardian and printing errors??? Only The Guardian could compile a list of war novels we simply have to read and manage to omit the most famous one of them all by mistake!




* Joking. Am not really a sucker for a list like that Reidski dearest!

** Joking again. Time not remotely wasted reading it - it is I have to say a joy to read.

One minute forty seconds

We hadn't won since 20th December. In our last five matches we have managed to score precisely twice. We were in need of a miracle.

And the miracle appears to have arrived in the shape of a 21 year old loanee striker from Ipswich town by the name of Billy Clarke.

One minute forty seconds was the length of time it took him before he got his first goal on his debut this afternoon. (What the hell was he doing for the previous 99 seconds I would very much like to know? The slacker.) He went on to score a hat trick and inspired the team to actually put 5 past Crewe Alexander.

My side could never be accused of consistency.



And yes - OK - Crewe are indeed bottom of our league, but my team always contrives to lose to the worst sides in our league....that inconsistency strikes again. Just hope Billy Clarke strikes again and again during his loan spell with us.



Oh and the guy in front of us who had bet that we would win 4-1 at odds of 100 - 1 still had the decency to cheer when we scored our 5th goal from the penalty spot...fair play to him!




THREE DAYS LATER

Normal service has resumed. We lost 2-1 at Colchester last night :-(

My portfolio

I have shares in what used to be the Halifax Building Society. When they sold out all account holders got some shares. (Thatcherism - wasn't it great?) I never did anything with them because a) I thought they might be good to sell on a rainy day and b) I didn't ever know how to sell shares anyway.

As usual in matters financial it looks like I made a mistake.

I'm no mathematician but even I can tell from this graph that my little shareholding is worth bugger all.



I will try not to jump out of a skyscraper window in my despair.

Man City's own goal

Garry Cook, City's executive chairman said of AC Milan: "They bottled it. We weren't naive. It was just that the world we entered was unprofessional. We engaged alot of professional people to take care of this. But it was all a bit too sophisticated for Milan."

Well - with all those professional people Man City employed to take care of this proposed deal wouldn't you have thought they would have managed to come up with at least one Italian speaker at the initial talks in - erh - Italy? Or would that have been a bit too sophisticated?

The worst times to be a parent

are I think when you can do absolutely nothing to help one of your off spring when they are suffering.

My 17 year old started throwing up in the early hours of yesterday. He wasn't due to go to school anyway because he had a study day - with which to prepare for his very important A Level exam.

Yesterday he did no revision whatsoever but spent his time sending me the occasional message like this one: "OK, I'm fairly sure I'm dying." If that was designed to put my mind at rest it didn't exactly work.

I'd like to be able to say it didn't matter too much as he was already done so much revision for the exam, but if he has revised for this already it must have been whilst my back was turned.

He has gone in to do the exam. He looked as bad as he assured me he felt. He is obviously totally unprepared for the exam.

And I can do nothing at all to make any of it any better, so I feel crap too.

A Just Jane Exclusive

I want to start this by stressing that I hate Top Gear and were it not for having two teenage sons would never have heard of The Stig. However, I have heard of The Stig, and what is more I even know who he is. He lives in the same village as me.

And so when I read this I feel quite smug. Ben Collins may or may not be A Stig - but he is not unique. My Stig says he is one of three.

So there we are - readers of this blog (a select group) know more than readers of The Times do.


Up date - Wednesday. Four! They must be breeding.

Rejoice x 2.

1) Today Barack Obama becomes President of the USA.




2) And today Sarah Palin does not become Vice President of said country.





Why are these pictures so huge????

Weird advertising campaigns of our times.

I was in London with Reidski a few weeks back when I commented on a poster on the side of a bus which advertised the film Slumdog Millionaire. It exclaimed that it was 'The Feel Good Movie of the Decade!' and it made the film look like something in the style of the American Pie films. My comment was along the lines of 'Well I won't be bothering with that load of shite.' Reidski told me it was a Danny Boyle film which took the winds out of my, already prejudiced against the film due entirely to the poster, sails. He said he had heard it was really good. "Why then" I asked him, "are they designing adverts to make it look really bad?"

So it came to pass that I did go and bother with that particular load of shite, and it bore no resemblance to any American Pie film I have ever had the misfortune to see (I do have teenage sons you know), - except for the bit when our young hero dives into the sewer I suppose. The ending is indeed 'feel good', but I have to say that for the vast majority of the film I was frankly traumatised by the horror that was young Jamal's life experiences.

I would really like to know how much the designers of that poster campaign earnt for what seems to me to be the biggest misrepresentation of any film ever - unless anyone can suggest other candidates for this distinction?

what actually depresses me

about this is not the sheer out of touch ignorance of Charles and his offspring.* Frankly, that doesn't come as any great surprise. But what does get me is the fact that the two people referred to with such totally unacceptable 'nicknames' feel they have to say they aren't offended. Thankfully the soldier's father has the guts to speak the truth when he accused Harry of using a hate word against his son.

And no - this isn't 'political correctness gone mad'. It's common courtesy not to use such vile expressions. This reminds us why that is the case.. No one I know would dream of using such terms- would you?

*I did always think that Harry could actually be the son of James Hewitt, but in spite of the physical likeness I think this latest episode is proof positive that he must indeed be a direct descendant of that great ambassador for cultural understanding - HRH Phil.

Our wonderful councillors

I was going on .here just before Christmas about what a bunch of useless tossers we have controlling our borough council. I am not alone in my dismay that, for example, they say they won't make a decision about developing the land around our football ground for another 18 years, and a meeting was arranged to discuss this and other issues regarding the lack of any progress over assorted plans to develop the town.

The meeting was packed and people were turned away from it. However, room would have been found for the leaders of the council - had they chosen to attend.

Only hours before the meeting was due to be held, the Liberal Democrat leaders of the authority announced they would not attend because it was "too political".

Politicians not attending a meeting because it will be too political?

Beyond parody.

What passes for an exciting evening in Northampton

Something very exciting nearly happened last night! I have still not quite recovered from just how exciting the thing that nearly happened was!!

Reidski came up to see me last night which was of course in itself exciting. I hadn't seen him since Saturday due to my cough (Can I just mention here that as far as I an concerned Alexander Fleming is the greatest man who ever lived. I feel SO much better thanks to his discovery of blue mould.)

By the way - how stupid are we? One thing we often do together is the Guardian crossword - quick version. Last night over a drink all was done bar one clue....'Chap animal?' 8. This had had us flummoxed. We were left with -e-e-o-f. Sudden inspiration hits me and I start to write in 'Shewolf' only to come unstuck immediately as letter the second is not an H - and never had been (never mind that shewolf is only 7 letters, and 'chap' rather suggests 'male'). But undeterred I declare "It is something WOLF!" At which point one of us - I hesitate to suggest it could have been Reidski, says something along the lines of "How do you spell Beowulf?" which led to numerous attempts to make 'Beoewolf' or 'Beuewolf'. All obviously totally and utterly wrong. And thus we gave up. How in the cold light of the next morning we failed to come up with 'Werewolf' I really wouldn't care to speculate upon for too long. I actually woke up in the middle of the night and yelled out 'Werewolf!' The children were confused.

I digress. back to the very exciting thing that nearly happened.

We went to Pizza Express. It was packed downstairs which might lead one to question the concept of the credit crunch, were it not for the fact that all of us punters had come armed with their latest two for one voucher. Therefore we went upstairs where a very long table was laid out, reserved, as our very lovely waitress told us, for the cast and crew of the local pantomime. She went to fetch our drinks giving my mind time to work (rather more quickly than it had performed earlier re werewolves)."Does this mean?" I asked her upon her return, trying to appear cool, calm and collected "that you are expecting Jimmy Osmond?" "Oh yes!" says she. "He will be here. In fact - he has been here practically EVERY NIGHT since the panto started!" (Yes - she did confirm he is indeed rather plump.)

Imagine how we felt!!!!!! At any moment as we ate our pizzas - Little Jimmy Osmond Himself could be coming in and sitting down in the Very Same Room As Us! Frankly, it was almost too much excitement to me - recuperating as I am from my cough. If I was a Victorian lady no doubt I would have swooned on the spot and Reidski would have had to pass me my smelling salts. A Real Life Osmond! In Northampton!

Regretfully we did not actually get to see Jimmy Osmond, having eaten up and found to our astonishment that we could not actually be arsed to linger over coffee in the hope that the great man would arrive.

It later transpired that Reidksi had actually SEEN HIM BEFORE! In Irvine. Strange. But also most unfair as he has seen him and I have not. But on reflection it was quite exciting enough knowing that I just MIGHT have seen him...had we arrived some half an hour later. Life is very random that way is it not?




Has my blogging really sunk so low that I am reduced to writing about something that did not happen? ;-)

What's Occuring?

I have no idea where I am going with this. It is likely to be in the favourite expression of my kids and their mates 'Random'. I always say to myself re blogging that if one has nothing to say one should say nothing at all. But it's my rule and rules are there to be broken (except grammatical rules obviously).

My friend Anne was recently 50 and we had a great night celebrating the occasion. She sent an e-mail to all of us who attended in which she particularly thanked the Thomas's who had travelled a significant distance to attend. Thomas senior replied thus "You have unwittingly stumbled into a small local dispute about how to spell the plural of Thomas. And I’m afraid, Anne, that your spelling is not helpful to my position on the matter. I shall have to alter your email before showing it to the children; doh!"

Anne's response was:
"OMG we're starting the new year with a Lynne Truss moment - now I know I am f**king 50................ "

Well there you go - I certainly didn't know I was going to mention that when I started this post.

Moving on:

This past few weeks I have been mainly ...watching Gavin and Stacey. Both series 1 and 2 plus the Christmas special. I have seen each episode so many times now that I know them verbatim and have inadvertently developed a Welsh accent alongside a recently acquired tendency to describe matters as 'Tidy' I also look at our toilet brush in an entirely different light - but enough about that particularly sordid hotel bathroom episode.

I have also in the past few weeks been mainly ...coughing. This is in fact how come I am sitting here now at home blogging, rather than earning my crust dealing with the whole range of the human condition. I try not to talk about my job here but if I just tell you that in the weeks leading up to Christmas I had to cope with amongst other things: the aftermath of a suicide; someone who was falling in love with his sister; a childhood story that was unremittingly awful from the day of his birth (born in a ditch- literally) to the moment he left the care system as a profoundly damaged young man; and I had to tell someone he was born as a result of his mother being raped by her father. It was all a right laugh as you may imagine. Actually, thinking back it is no wonder I have been ill. I fairly successfully ignored the fact that I was coughing my guts up all over the holiday, but at the weekend it got ridiculous and I saw the doctor yesterday. Diagnosis: chest infection as well as possible asthma. Instruction: take medication, use inhaler, come back and see me in a few days and stay at home. The silly thing is that I can't say I feel really ill. I had pleurisy 17 years ago and thought I was dying. Ever since then I have probably judged being ill as feeling like I did then. I never ever want to feel like THAT again.

The other thing I have been mainly doing is continuing with the on going struggle to get through 'War and Peace'. I am on page 545. Oh good - only another 813 to go. (The print is very small by the way.) I do like it...in fact it is positively 'lush'. I love the way Tolstoy paints portraits of the characters - he is often very funny. My main problem with it though, at the risk of sounding very thick, is that because the book is so huge, and because the names are (surprise, surprise) Russian - plus they often seem to be known by more than one name (not helpful Leo my old mucka) - that when they come back into the narrative, I can't remember who the hell they are and have to go back and find their previous appearance to refresh my memory.

Yesterday having been instructed by the doctor to stay at home I thought I would be able to have the day in peace and quiet reading W&P. In fact I had not been in five minutes before my two youngest returned home from school together with a gang of mates. The school's heating had failed and they had been sent home. You may imagine how devastated they were. Anyway - guess what they came in to watch? Would you believe series 1 and 2 of Gavin and Stacey plus the Christmas special. So I ended up watching them yet again. Oh well - fair play.

Favourite poster seen this holiday

Holly Reeves ---->


Who ever she is she has been residing near our local recycling centre this Christmas period.

Or it could have been Christmas Day

when I stepped on to the kids new Wii Fit assuming I was going to show them how it was done, but five minutes later suffering the public humiliation of being told by the machine that I had a fitness age of 64.

So much for visiting the gym practically every day during the past year!

Worst moment of 2008 for me

Possibly finding out I was NOT (as he had assured me I was) his one and only.


Most distressing.

Dateline 3rd January 2009

Easter treats on sale at Tescos...Cadbury's mini eggs and Lindt chocolate bunnies (my personal favourites). Get yours now before it is too late.

On the other hand

Lisa and Brendon's showdance was the most inadvertently hilarious thing I have seen this year. The comments about it here have made me cry with laughing.

"Alien:The Musical".

A classic.

Tom Chambers and Camilla Dallerup's Showdance - Strictly Come Dancing 2008

My TV feel good highlight of the year.

No - funnily enough it wasn't the Cobblers losing 5-2 against Leeds in the FA Cup.(I am so not over that.)

I saw this today*

The dog in question was stood patiently waiting for its master to catch him up. It was very touching.

Without wanting to come over all sentimental on you (although why not - it is Christmas) - it seemed poignant that at a time when we are being told increasing numbers of people are chucking their pets out for reasons such as
'My cat doesn't match my new carpet' that others will spare no expense to keep their much loved pet alive.


*Well - not the exact same dog ( I googled for a photo), but one that looked very like it.

Compare and contrast

WARNING: Parochial rant coming up.


Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. It is about 67 miles (108 km) northwest of London on the River Nene, and is the county town of Northamptonshire.

Please stick with this background stuff and I will try to reach my point before TOO long.

The district's population is 200,100 and the urban area's 189,474, making Northampton the 21st largest settlement in England and the UK's 3rd largest town without official city status, after Reading and Dudley.

The town became significant in the 11th century, when the Normans built town walls and a large castle under the stewardship of the Norman earl, Simon de Senlis. The town grew rapidly after the Normans arrived, and beyond the early defences. The town and its castle were important in the early 12th century and the King often held Court in the town. During his famous fall out with Henry II, Thomas Becket at one time escaped from Northampton Castle through the unguarded Northern gate to flee the country,


Milton Keynes is a large town in Central England, about 45 miles (72 km) north-west of London. It is also the principal town of the Borough of Milton Keynes, itself part of ceremonial Buckinghamshire. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967. At the 2001 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent town of Newport Pagnell, was 184,506.


Ikea (where on earth is this going?) - a rather popular furniture store as we all know - wanted to build their largest UK store in the large and historic town of Northampton. Our Borough councillors did not think this was 'a good idea' and turned Ikea down. Milton Keynes Council (15 miles down the road) said (loudly) "WE WANT IKEA!!!" And Ikea went to Milton Keynes creating as it did so, many jobs and knock on benefits for other local businesses.

Northampton Town was founded in 1897 (now she is getting to it -ed.)For the past four years (2004) in order to secure the financial future of the club the current owners have been trying to get approval for redeveloping the land around the ground into a local centre with shops, sporting facilities and a hotel. Our Borough Council has delayed making a decision on this more times than I care to relate here. (Thank god says only reader who has got this far.) Except they have now made a decision, which I will get to in a minute.

Milton Keynes Dons were launched on 21 June 2004, nine months after the then Wimbledon F.C. moved to Milton Keynes (and for god's sake don't get me started on that disgraceful episode... I must stick to my point, always assuming I can still remember what that was). Milton Keynes Council wanted a football club - so they built a state of the art stadium to accommodate one. It's next to Ikea, and has brought with it further jobs and knock on benefits for other local businesses. It seems that when a local council has the will to make things happen,things happen.

On to Northampton's Borough Council and their long awaited decision is .....

Drum roll......

to do nothing until at least 2026.

Yes - I did mean to type 2026. EIGHTEEN YEARS AWAY.

To quote one club director:

"We have discussed the club's intentions now with four chief executives, three council leaders, and it seems a busload of planning officers over a period of five years.

"We have had talks on Area Action Plans, Local Development Frameworks, Joint Core Strategies and Masterplans and yet we are still, after all this time, right back where we started."

It's taking 4 years to build a complete Olympics infrastructure in London. It's taken 9 years to completely rebuild the West Coast mainline including stations at a a cost of £9 billion. It took 8 years to build the Channel Tunnel. It took less than 18 years to build the entire city of Milton Keynes. It will take our council 18 years to even start thinking about developing the football ground? Northampton Borough Council are a total and utter disgrace.

There won't be a fucking football club by then. We will have gone bust long before then without any additional income.

Everyone (except me) will have long since started supporting Milton Keynes (Franchise) Dons.

One is

frightfully chuffed.

The other two Northamptonshire bloggers are positively seething!

Guess he wants to go back

for good.

Brilliant.

Reidski and I were at this gig to see Glasvegas. Here is the summary of the review in the link...

In short, acts like Glasvegas show us that stadium rock can be so much more than cheesy falsetto hymns to groupies and decadent lifestyles, and with this gig anyway, confirmed themselves as the best rock outfit out there today...


After Monday night I for one can not believe there is currently a better rock outfit than Glasvegas.


I can't come up with a more appropriate descriptive word than - Stunning.

What have I started?

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates taken over by the Buonaparte family."



And how long is it going to take me to finish?

Spot the typo

I just sent the following in an e-mail to a colleague:


"The stuff in his flies is absolutely harrowing."






Should have read 'The stuff in his files is....'!

I'm like Lisa!

Cloud has found this which will analyse blogs.

I love daft things like this!

Lisa's blog and mine both come back as this:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Reidski will be best able to judge if my blog does indeed reflect upon my personality. But as Reidski's comes back as ISTP and defines him thus "They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters." I have to say they are a little off the mark with him. Reidski will not mind me saying He Does Not Do Risk! And he is the most careful driver I know.

The Jam - Saturdays Kids

"Saturday's girls work in Tesco's and Woolworths."

But not for much longer.

Once upon a time

were the Cobblers to play Leeds United it would be a Heap Big Deal. But things change.

Last night we played Leeds United for the third time since 7th November.

7th November - FA Cup 1st round at Elland Road. It was on tele, but I did not see it as I was watching the Cold War Kids play at the Astoria, Charing Cross instead. Through the wonder that is texting I did however know that we were 1 nil up within 8 minutes, lost our captain to injury two minutes later, had a player sent off ten minutes after that, and conceded a penalty all before half time. Not a dull first half then. We then by all accounts defended for our lives and saw the match out for a replay.

18th November - FA Cup 1st round replay at our place. I actually watched this from the comfort of Reidski's front room. Had I gone to the match it would have cost me £22 - £3 more than our usual ticket prices - to watch the side that I would be seeing the following Tuesday anyway - and in any event the match was also being televised.

THANK GOD I DID NOT PAY £22 TO WATCH THE RESULTING DEBACLE.

We were absolutely dire and it was painful to watch. We got thumped 5-2 at home, our last goal coming in the 89th minute. (I texted my son at that point to say we had scored with a minute to go so he should not abandon hope.)

True to say I was not looking forward to 25th November - League One home game. I took a mate of my son as my son was working last night and couldn't use his ticket. I jokingly said to this lad on the way there "You're not a secret Leeds United supporter are you? " "No" he replied, "I AM a Leeds United supporter." (Nothing secret there then.) That was all I needed - thought of taking a gloating Leeds fan home after the match - bloody marvellous.

But hey - what do you know? We were superb and deservedly won
2-1.


I would say that it's a funny old game, if I did not have a sneaking suspicion someone somewhere may have said that before.

I love local news stories

This one comes from Reidksi's home town. It has the lot - a mistake that could happen to anyone (couldn't it?), sex (possibly), violence (definitely), the bowling club (naturally), and a great last line.

Margaret refused to comment.

In those circumstances that seems like the wisest course of action....unless of course she is just waiting for the tabloids to ocme up with their best offer for her Exclusive.

Harry and Paul-Dragons Den 2-Kitten Stomper

I LIKE kittens.

But I still think this is hilarious.

Getting to Egypt

Yes - I know I promised I had finished with the subject of Egypt, but the following tale doesn't count cos we weren't actually IN Egypt at this point*. In fact - at that particular point we all began to wonder if we were in fact going to get to Egypt in the first place.

In order to get to Egypt we have decided to take an aeroplane. This means travelling from Heathrow Airport's new Terminal Five, a decision which provokes comment from even the youngest members of the group, all of whom are aware of publicity regarding the disasterous opening of the Terminal a few months ago. Now was all this bad publicity fair?



The new Terminal Five is a massive facility, designed to relieve congestion at the airport and improve the travelling experience. It is designed to handle all of Briish Airways flights from Heathrow.

Unfortunately, the much-publisised opening was dogged by problems, cancelled flights, computer systems not working, massive levels of lost luggage; in other words complete testament to the fact that we British, when faced with the task of building anything larger than a garden shed, always manage to cock it up. In fact Graham who was one of our party and who is himself a frequent traveller, has an unfortunate friend who arrived at terminal 5 at 11 o'clock one morning, whose flight was cancelled at 11 o'clock the same night, whose luggage was lost in the meantime, and whose travel insurance was declared invalid since, technically, he had not travelled.

When one is due to travel via Terminal Five one receives a leaflet from British Airways telling one how to negotiate Terminal Five without stress. That didn't seem quite as reassuring as B.A. no doubt intended that it should be.



Our collective feeling of unease was compounded at check-in, where a unique system has been adopted by the authorities. What you don't do when checking-in at Terminal Five is go up to the check-in desk and check in. What you do is go to the check-in desk, get told to go to do-it-yourself check-in computer screens, check in each of the seventeen members of the party separately, get issued seventeen boarding passes where no two seats are together, go back to the original check-in desk to have all of the machine-issued boarding passes cancelled so they can issue new ones manually and try to seat the group in the same section of the plane. It is a unique system. And it took an incredibly long time which was why we all started to wonder if we were in fact travelling to Egpyt or not.

Still, all the hanging around sorting out our seats did give some of us the opportunity to read some of our travel guides whilst we were waiting and now I finally get to the one thing I really wanted to tell you about Egypt but had somehow neglected to in my earlier posts. I think you will agree that the following information was well worth waiting for.

One of the things we learnt from one of the books was that:



"The Egyptian pyramids are pyramid shaped structures to be found in Egypt".


As you may imagine - this came as something of a surprise.




* My blog - my rules to make or break as convenient.

Feeling a bit depressed

I don't know why I let it get to me. It has certainly not been a good few weeks to be a social worker but nevertheless the vast majority of us work really hard in challenging circumstances.

So then I read something like this about some woman who claims she was told she was too posh to adopt, and it isn't so much the article that bothers me (typical Daily Mail story) but it is the comments that follow it. 191 to date. And so very many posted by some of the very many people who obviously simply hate social workers.

Makes me wonder why any of us bother.

I've just gone off my favourite programme

I didn't like reading that other contestants snubbed John at the end of Sunday's results programme.

I don't like it that John Sergeant has now quit Strictly Come Dancing. If this show is a dancing competition then just pick 'celebrities' who are young, fit and have already got dancing experience. If it is, as some of us were under the impression it was, in fact harmless entertainment then pick a cross section of the population to take part and don't get hot under the collar when the voting public actually vote for the person that entertains them the most.

And yes I do realise that many people think SCD is neither of the above and is in fact just a load of rubbish, but I liked it in a passive non voting kind of way, and after today I really don't like it anywhere near as much.

For anyone who never had the pleasure of seeing John jive, and who is not easily distressed by dancing that is not of the highest possible standard.

Look out

Iain Dale. The blogger beloved of the media has a rival and he must be shaking in his Tory boots. Yes, another blogger - well known to literally tens of other bloggers (or at least to tens of other people if you count all my distant relations) is in running for the title of media darling.

Or not.

OK - not content with snogging Tony Blair in full view of television cameras (another story)- in my mad pursuit of media recognition I e-mailed Radio 5 on the subject of Baby P. I had been listening to the Victoria Derbyshire programme and the phone in was about how social workers did bad. After the discussion ended I sent an email about it and thirty seconds later my mobile rang. Radio 5 to say they were very interested in what I had said and would I be prepared to talk on air to Victoria about it? Well modesty forbade - but obviously I got over that and


Bit

Their

Hand

Off.

Well - not quite as one does not want to appear too easy to get, but opportunity to sound off on a subject close to my heart???? Here we go, here we fucking go. I did agree and I did indeed chat with Vix (as her closest bosom pals know her) and it seemed to go OK. As in; I didn't make a complete and utter tit of myself on nationwide radio.*


Half an hour or so later though I got another call. BBC News. I assumed it was the radio station again and was therefore more than a little thrown to be asked if I would appear on a television discussion programme they planned to put out on Friday evening. So fame and if not fortune maybe at least a token expense claim beckoned.

Petite Anglais, Norm, The Girl With the One Track Mind, that other tart that sold books about how being a prostitute is really ace. For one moment 'It Could Have Been Me' too.





Except I said I couldn't possibly. But thank you very much for asking me.



* And did anyone I know ring me to say they heard me and I was bloody marvellous? No they did not.

Although maybe they did hear me, and thought it kindest to pretend they did not!

Nat is blogging again

And she brings us wonderful tales like this one concerning a drawing of a spider with 7 legs and an overdue utility bill.

The story has a very satisfactory ending indeed.

Baby P

I used to work for the London Borough of Haringey.

It is a borough too often in the news for all the wrong reasons.

I wasn’t in social services although my job did bring me into regular contact with that department. My area of work was community relations and I was there at the time of the Broadwater Farm riot where PC Keith Blakelock was murdered. As you may imagine promoting good community relations following that terrible night wasn’t easy.

When Victoria Climbie died it sounds awful but I wasn’t surprised. There were many inadequate workers at the Council but they either went unchallenged or we noticed they got promoted. It was all too easy to understand how an inexperienced social worker without proper support from supervisors could fail a child with such terrible consequences. The fact that it is happened to yet another child within the same borough - in fact just a few streets away from where Victoria died, is however not so much as surprising as frankly beyond understanding. Where a mother has actually been arrested twice on ‘suspicion’ of child cruelty and both times released; where a child is recognised as being at risk and is on the local Child Protection Register; where a child has been taken into foster care because of concerns for his welfare and safety – for crying out loud how many serious concerns does any authority need to have before they remove a child for his or her own protection, let alone the very Local Authority who had failed Victoria Climbie?

I am trying to get my head round this and I do think that partly The Children’s Act of 1989 is at fault because this emphasises that the best interests of a child are normally served by keeping the youngster within their birth family. I quote directly from the Act: The underlying philosophy in the provision of services is to work in partnership with parents and children to prevent the breakdown of family relationships and minimise the need to have recourse to Court or emergency protection.

So what workers are supposed to do is take every possible step to keep a child at home; whether by putting in a family support worker to assist with parenting, sending a parent on courses designed to help them care properly for their children, or anger management training, or ensuring respite care for the child and parent. So the social workers act as a family friend and inevitably form some kind of relationship with the parent/parents, and that does make it difficult to reach the decision that the child needs to be removed because actually in this case the family represents danger for that child. That same worker moves from being a helpful family friend to Family Enemy Number 1.

If the case gets to court, because of the basic premise of The Children’s Act the Family Courts in care cases will always insist on knowing what measures social workers have taken to keep the family unit together and if they don’t think enough has been done they often return the child to their parent/parents. The court appointed officer (The Guardian ad Litem) who investigates the circumstances for the child will first and foremost look into how that child can remain at home. It is the social worker who has to fight that belief within the adversarial atmosphere of a court case that a child’s interests are best served by remaining at home – with support from the services if necessary. It isn’t surprising if maybe a worker will be over optimistic that a family can be trusted to care for the child safely when the alternative is becoming immersed in hostile proceedings. We also all know the poor outcomes for children that do end up in the Care System.

Yet so often it is glaring obvious from the very beginning that a child needs to be removed from their family. In my work now I summarise care files for people who went on to be adopted and I often read in disbelief at the sheer scale of recorded abuse which was allowed to continue for months and in some cases years before children were removed whilst parents are given one more chance after one more chance to prove they can adequately protect their children.

Having said all that though I still find it inexplicable that workers in Haringey of all places could fail to spot what was going on with this poor Baby P (and why he can’t be identified along with his mother and her partner I really don’t understand?*) when they were visiting his home week in, week out. One thing stands out to me in all the horrific catalogue of injuries… (Baby P had) Blackened finger and toenails, with several nails missing; the middle finger of his right hand was without a nail and its tip was also missing, as if it had been sliced off.

How does anyone involved with the welfare of a child miss that?

* the doting parents had another child when she was in prison so that explains the anonymity.

Wednesday - I just read the serious case review. Not only did the mother have another child in prison - there are three older siblings to Baby P. Wonder where they are right now the poor, poor children.