Hopscotch (by sarah)

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

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

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

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

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

So did a google search:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Internets and Appendixes (by sarah)

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

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

Eeek and arg!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway back to mum...

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

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

If I was paranoid that is...

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

Realism and Neck Specialists (by sarah)

Today saw me at the Drs again and we disguessed how things were and I spoke of how I saw things and that I had come to the realisation that I can do stuff and be productive but not in a normal way.

The medical restrictions on me are just too big to be ignored - I tried ignoring them and getting on with things and the result has been the last few months of one medical thing after another.

I said about having just been jumping from one crisis to another without looking at the underlaying problems but that these needed to be addressed or this was just going to carry on.

He agreed and said I was being a lot more realistic than when he first saw me over what is achivable and that thinking in terms of having a 'normal' life is a bad thing to do. I'm just a variation. So I am basically back to pottering around doing me craft stuff as and when I feel like it and trying to look after house and garden.

Mainly I've been making things with Jean and watching films with her though oh and reading the complete works of Winni the Pooh!

The only way I have of controlling the back pain stuff is doing several hours of the physio stuff a day and having hot baths - when you add in the afternoon naps at the moment time starts getting scarce. He prodded and poked my back and made me move my head and stuff and said that he thought that the reason the shoulder surgeon had been so negative about it all is that its not actually a shoulder problem but possibly something to do with my neck.

He thinks I need to be refered to a specialist for MRI scans and stuff but apparently my notes are all in box files up stairs (why on earth they are not in a nice searchable format on the surgerys computers I do not know). He needs to go through all my note (good luck as half of them went missing between London and Gloucestershire) to see what has or hasn't been done.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up that something might actually be done and I might be fixed this time - it only leads to crushing disappointment.

There is the point as well that things that were tested 8-5yrs ago now may not have shown up stuff that has since got worse.

So I am armed with more pain killers and stomache liners and play the waiting game once more - he's even going to chase up the acupuncture they said I could have!

Taps (by sarah)

Yesturday Alaric went to get Jean from pre-school on his own - I was too tired from the weekedn and was flate out in bed. They were an age but it turns out they had lots of fun - first off they went to the playground by the preschool and then on to B&Q to look at taps.

Yes Taps - Jean started asking questions about taps about two weeks ago and Al turn round and said that he would take her on a rainy day to look at a tap shop.

She came home with a 'tap' a.k.a an applience fitting for a washing machine. I put her to bed last night and when I went to check on her later on - there was the little tap gripped in her little paw 🙂

This morning she demonstrated how it could be turned into a wind instrament and what happens if she opens or closses the valve!

This morning on the way to pre-school she announced that B&Q is the tap shop. We also had lots of discuession with her about how vans and road signs are made and why!

Geek in the making - me thinks!

Cheltenham Science Festival 09 (by sarah)

Last year I missed the Science Festival which was a shame as aparently there was a scientific poetry event which would have been right up my street - they didn't appear to be doing that this year (probably due to entry by a graphic gay poet who enjoyed the topic of taboo and writes to shock! It was actually him who told me about the science festival and I am very embarrassed not to recall his name when he has been at several poetry event with me and I think chips in the pub may have occured at some point).

We got into cheltenham and parked close to one of the most bueatiful cars ever - a Ford Mustang!

We then discovered that Aliens had taken over the Town Hall again - these inflatable waving around tubes really excites Jean and we had trouble getting her into the hall past them!

It turned out that we were just in time to catch a circus skills workshop - under 8's had to be accompanied! She loved this and was indignent everytime we wanted to look at something else! She went back three times I think! She wouldn't go on the stilts initially and then I realised that she had bought me over a purple plate to spin and given Daddy all the blue things she could find so I found a pink pair of stilts for her which she loved!

Eventually I remembered how to spin a plate though I couldn't get the diablo to do much nor the devil stick! I realised the last time I had done circus skills properlly I was actually pregnant with Jean! Though very early on 🙂

We bumped into on of our cubs - Holly who was getting wobbly on the monocycle!

Inside there was a large hall full of fun interactive stuff like drum machines and steroscopic viewing of landscapes and many other things! A nice man with piercing spoke to me lots as Jean played with beads and various glasses that cuased optical illusions or made you see as bugs do! Though I think I might have offended him by asking if Gloucester Uni did Science as I'd heard it was only Softy science (then spotted the Gloucester Uni t-shirt!).

For some reason you weren't allowed to take photos in there - I took a sneaky one anyway!

We got icecreams and Jean was very concerned, 'They don't have purple ones I'm afraid mummy, no icecream for mummy! I'm having pink icecream mummy, you pink too?' She didn't quiet get why I wanted green icecream when my favourite colours purple and the concern was quiet touching!

Between goes on the circus skills we found UCL chemists doing some fun things with test tubes, washing powder and zeolite! And hydrophobic sand. Jean wanted to do the test tube stuff but there were too many people there and so we did the sand instead - she didn't want it in her hands but wanted to watch my do the experiment so out went my cupped hands for some sand and then water was added to each hand. One lot of sand was hydrophobic - which as I mentioned it I had to explain what it ment - ie water hating, to the group of kids and perants. Basically one lot of sand mixed with the water and one lot the water just ran off of!

They told me at the end that the sand is basically coated in Scotch guard!

Then to cap the day off we found an ecological arts cornor just beyound the Environment Agency Cafe where the artist and scientist Dr Lizzie Burns was getting people to paint on a large white column with a clay/water mix. It had to be something enviroment/ecology based so Jean painted her tadpoles and I added the pond and then she added her ducks and then the apple tree and then the nesting blue tits and would have carried on forever I think. The Lady running the event was a biologist and makes really cool [molecular earringsand other jewellery}(http://www.molecular-designs.com/), and said she even embroiders ties and things which is so cool! Of course that does mean that another one of mine and Ella's bright ideas has been done whilst we were thinking about it!

There was a guy called Matt with her who was explaining to the children about seeds and trees and how they grow up into trees and stuff - Jean having already grown her own plants from seeds looked at him like he was being a bit silly but then he asked her if she wanted to make seeds out of clay to go in the collection - she earally agreed and chose brown instead of white clay! She was very sad to leave so we had to explain thats why its not a good idea to spend all your time doing one event! ie circus skills!

We got soaked in the rain on the way back to the van and were starving so went on a hunt for chips which resulted in Jean's first ever photography!