Best Friends (by sarah)

For months now Jean has always gone on about the same best friend at pre-school and has been non-stop asking if she can have her round to play so I made a little card saying friends on it showing a cluster of cartoon animals and left it at the pre-school for Eves mummy.

We didn't hear anything for a while and I felt sad that Jean wasn't getting to have her friends round but then it turned out mum had just been very busy and we arrange for the girls to play today.

They turned up - little brother in tow and though both girls were initially shy they soon wizzed off to Jeans room where they proceeded to make braclets and empty out every single toy onto the floor!

They played with the dressing up cloths that Jean never normally touches though they are there in a draw under her bed! And they run about the garden including the prickly jungle which is a new look for the path along the stream where Barbara has planted grass in the fire pit so that it is a little secret den for Jean to play in.

They played on her slide and in the little wendy house and went through the tunnel and put things in the trailor on the trike. The little toddler played with rolly dinosuar and hello puppy and the rocking horse and kept making a bee-line for the water fall!

Eve's mum thought Jean's room was fantastic which cheered me up as I had only had negative responses to it - ie its too full of toys and does it really need to be so sparkly?

They loved the garden and the Mill and chatted with Barbara about things - Muareen and her friend Mary turned up before Barbara did for tea and cakes as Barbara had managed to double book herself for part of today! This cuased a little bit of confussion at first.

The girls pretty much kept themselves entertained and we chatted with the perants - this was lots of fun for us as well and might even result in me and Jean going swimming Friday afternoons!

It was interesting that the girls kept each other entertained making Jean far easier to look after than normal - the only down side is that they decided to run themselves a bath - something neither child would have done on their own but somehow together...

I did have appaplexy just before they came over as I discovered that a cat had weed in the corner under the cabinet and so there was a frantic clearing of books and chunks of amythist and a hasty mopping of the area etc...

I was glad it didn't rain heavily and that they went outside for a lot of the time but here is the twitter poem I wrote just before they arrived:

And so the day begins

the weather looks like - rain, it brings

when out side play

should be the activity of the day

children run about the house

wish they'd be quiet like a mouse

but they will not

And loud shouts abound

that glorious joyous childhood sound

I read it to Jean who then asked, 'is that about me and Eve?'

I said, 'Yes of course it is who else would the poem be about?'

At which point I felt I was in a Winni the Pooh story :/

The Saga of the Flat Tyre (by sarah)

Yesturday Barbara was getting ready to go out and as always she went to drive Madge - her canary yellow MG convertable round to the front of the house in to await when she was ready. Jean loves to rid in the car for these little manoovers and so it was that I was sitting there working on a book review at the table in the garden when I notice that her rear wheel was - erm as flat as a pancake.

I call to her and she looks and is startled and then confused that she hadn't felt that it was flat.

Anyway (stupidly in hindsight) I wandered off to check the washing on the line and to put some more up in the workshop on the drying rack.

When I come back Jean is standing up in the car whilst Barbara jacks it up on on of those little tiny jacks that looks like two metal brackets bolted together. Jean is playing with the wheel nuts and is absolutely covered in grease.

I tentively ask if I should remove Jean from the vechile Barbara says no it wont make any difference and continues to jack up the car on a slope. I look at the set up and its shifting!

Barbara hasn't noticed and I'm shouting and pulling her away - I have no idea if she was already moving or anything like that. The car smashed down with a wide eyed Jean in it.

'That bumped me mummy' yes and thank god she hadn't been leaning over the side as she had been a few moments earlier when I came upon the scene.

The car was now sitting on its wheel hub 🙁

I removed Jean and took her to wash the grease off her hands - thinking of how I should have seen what was coming. We came back and Barbara had rejacked the car up and Jean tried to run over to the car as she wanted to go back in it and I grabbed her fearing the car would come back off of the Jack. Jean thought I was being very mean and got very grumpy with me.

But the car did slip again - the searing pressure on the jack just too much - this time it landed on the spare wheel.

Barabara then got another jack out of the garage and started jacking it up again - fearing that she was going to squash herself I stayed in the garden trying to occupy Jean in the 'jungle' so she wouldn't go near the car.

I went back to check just as the car slipped off of both Jacks - Barbara got a third out and Begain again. I was worried by this point - I'm sure that with jacking cars there are only certain places on the chassi that you can put them without twisting the car making it dangerous too drive.

Plus I knew she would just carry on until she either succeeded or something catastrophic happened 🙁

I couldn't offer to change the tyre for her a) its too physical for me to contemplate at this point in time, b) who would keep Jean away from the car? c) I would never ever risk a car jacked with one of those jacks on flat ground let alone a slop. I grew up playing with jacks and the ones Barbara has really are not safe at the best of times 🙁

Anyway she then asked me to keep an eye on the wheel and the bolt bits on the hub - so I stood on the bank with a fierce grip on Jean praying that Barbara wasn't going to get hurt and panickig everytime she put her arm between the wheel and the car - my mind couldn't help but think - if the car falls off now she'll loose her arm etc...

All I can do in these situations is voice my concern.

Barbara thought I was being silly not letting Jean near the car as she would have been fine inside it. (not if it then squashed Barbara she wouldn't have been - Jean loves Barbara and that would be a bad bad thing to happen and yes I am probably being a really paranoid mummy again.)

Anyway - she got the wheel back on and then went of to Gloucester in one piece and came back ok too which was a relief.

Life Fail (by alaric)

For too many years now, it's seemed like we've being dragged from situation to situation, at the whim of events rather than steering our own course...

Read more »

School! (by sarah)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hopscotch (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