Making it up

On Channel 4 now.

You can’t protest in Parliament Square, near the Cenotaph, without police permission. See the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. So you can get a criminal record for reading out the names of the dead from the Iraq war, mark 2.

Cimran Khan is (probably) on a database somewhere for taking a picture on his mobile phone of some British Transport Police.

Matthew Dodd is a trainspotter. He was given a full body search by the Network Transport police in a public place for taking photos on a train station. A friend of his had her purse nicked at the same station - no police in evidence at that point.

Mr Hitchen, the narrator has just stated that the paradox is that the more the police crack down on the innocence, the less effectual they are at dealing with crime. That doesn’t seem to be a paradox to me, it seems to be a natural consequence of a change in priorities from dealing with crime to controlling a population.

The Roberts in Fleetwood discovered that the police aren’t interested in dealing with petty crime like drug using and vandalism in a playground, but they’ll come to chat with you if you make homophobic phone calls (asking for Christian literature to be placed alongside literature promoting homosexuality on council property). Before anyone gets up in arms against the homophobic nature of this part of the programme, Peter Tatchell is of the opinion that he might not agree with the couple’s view on homosexuality, but he does think they have the right to express it.

Are the police only involving themselves out of political correctness? I think not. They are being involved to control political opinion.

I’m going to stop typing a commentary on this program now, but I will state that I am concerned about the way our society is going at the moment. I think it’s time to fight back, possibly long past time to fight back. There are a lot of big names that agree - Liberty is a good one. I’m not sure about political parties - I don’t trust the conservatives as far as I could collectively hurl them, and I’m not 100% convinced about the libdems. The Green Party is possibly a bit fringe and I’m not sure about their take on personal freedom either - anyone any more opinions?

Oh, had to add the bit about the DNA database. Did you know that all you have to do is get arrested to get onto it? And even if you are completely innocent and released without charge, once you’re on it, you don’t get off. There are 24,000 children on our dna database who have never been convicted, and the police don’t seem to want to remove their records. The largest dna database in the world isn’t in a communist state, or an obvious dictatorship, it’s right here in our democracy.

Technorati Tags: politics, personal freedom, Channel 4 Dispatches Cimran Khan, DNA database

Big worked her way through huge amounts of my scrap fabric - they work it as capes, used it as blankets, she cut and sewed, it was great.  Forgot to mention that she drew a card for Small yesterday, wrote in it and everything.  Bizarrely she is now doing his initial backwards, but most other letters seem to have sorted themselves out.

I ran out and shopped, aldi really does seem to be good value. When I got back they turned the tv off and put my Robbie Williams cd on - and that was good.  Very good.

And this evening I’ve travelled all around the blogring, and commented all over the place.  Doing well on the community front at least

Tonight I have worked, and watched films (particularly enjoyed The Flipside of Dominick Hyde, didn’t rate Close my eyes nearly as highly, despite Clive Owen’s best attempts), and caught up with ppl, it’s been pleasant.  Haven’t completed everything, but I think I needed a quieter weekend, will try harder this week.

Technorati Tags: Robbie Williams, home education blogring,

A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running. Curiouser and curiouser

What I don’t understand is, if it is not running and still produces answers, then why couldn’t they have had the same result from a quantum computer they hadn’t built?

It’s been a busy morning, with Small playing happily on cbeebies with Mr Tumble, having previously done some fabric land game he found. He came charging in with instructions that he’d printed out about paper weaving, so I got him the bits he needed and he did a tiny bit of that, before declaring he was done and clearing off again. So that’s art, craft, and IT marked off for him, with added focus on communication as he comes to ask for help with various things

Big meanwhile is thrilled with the doll I finished off for her last night. She’s looked at Arthur in a Pickle (Step Into Reading Sticker Books (Paperback)), a book that I aquired along with all the others I was meant to be selling on. This copy has already had its stickers removed, so I’ve given it to her

And since then, she’s been working her way through a bag of bits of material from the scrapstore, testing what kind of material her sewing machine can cope with. We did have a slight meltdown when she wanted to sew a hat for her doll, but had no idea what shape or how to do it, and being a sewing incompetent, I couldn’t really help her. I couldn’t get across how she needed to plan it, and we ended up ditching it for the time being. So she’s sewn so much that she ran out of cotton on the first reel, and quite calmly set to and rethreaded the machine. That impressed me - she’s got the hang of threading the needle extremely well, but I was surprised that she could set the machine up from scratch without a second thought!

She’s also been helping Small with the computer - he occasionally strands himself on bits of cbeebies that he’s fed up with ;), and wonder of wonders, we’ve actually had the television off for most of the morning!

And now we’re having lunch

I am a good mother.  Big has been wanting to sew for ages, from this cloth pattern thing that mother got her for Christmas.  It’s got Woman’s weekly 1991 on it, but I can’t find anything about it on t’interweb, so you’ll just have to use your imagination. Ah, I tried some more, and I found something similar on Ebay

So we got out her sewing machine, and it was very much a joint effort. It’s not a fantastic machine, although it coped surprisingly well with all the corners, and she did very well with controlling its speed towards my fingers

I’ve finished it off for her tonight, and I anticipate she’s going to want to do more tomorrow.  There are quite a few more dolls on the sheet, so it should keep us occupied for a while.

Small played on the computer for a while - I’m frequently amazed at his mouse skills and overall control.  I know he spends quite a bit of time cbeebies, and tonight he was playing on Adiboo, a game that Big has played for a while. He’s surprisingly good at pretty much everything, and he enjoys just getting on with it. Prime candidate for this home education lark if you ask me

Have enjoyed broadening my horizons on the feminism topic in the post below, will have to continue reading around the subject.  I do think there are some issues to think about, but then there are with pretty much every approach you take to life - we didn’t take home education on board without due consideration, Tim and I didn’t waltz lightly back off to work either. All good fun anyway.

Right, as I slept in til 10 am this morning, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m still a touch run down, and I’m clearing off to bed now.  Will have to see how much of my todo list I can clear tomorrow - today has mainly been about relaxing, and you know what?  I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about that.  I think I had it coming

Technorati Tags: home education, craft, feminism

I’ve just installed a new plugin for firefox called performancing, which allows me to publish to my blog from an interface within the browser.  Theoretically, anyway.  I was looking for a tutorial on how to add technorati tags to posts - I’m interested in publicising the blog a little more than I have been doing, for a variety of reasons, which will all become clear in good time - and I don’t really understand technorati.  I’m guessing if I don’t, many of my readers probably don’t either, so I thought learning about it would come in useful.

Well, I haven’t achieved that yet, but I may have a nice new toy - let you know in a minute!

Well, that seems to work fairly well.  I now can add technorati tags, as well as del.icio.us bookmarks (no, I haven’t worked out what they are yet either, will get back to you on that).

Technorati Tags: technology, blogging, firefox, tags

Your wise quote is: “Be kind to unkind people, they probably need it the most” by Ashleigh Brilliant.
You try to look beyond appearance, try to give people second chances and are probably very kind. Understanding is your biggest personality trait, and those you can see through should be grateful. If they aren’t already. You detest narrow minded people, because they can’t see what’s really there. Facades is not your thing and you strive to always be who you really are.
What wise quote fits you? [pics]
brought to you by Quizilla

Hm. Well, I think that’s quite useful to remind me atm, although I could have done without it needing all those linebreaks taking out!

Net surfing is not responsible for anti-social young people - quite the opposite

From The Times

This article from the BBC is also worth a look for students of New Think. Winston Smith is alive and well..

Can a Feminist Homeschool Her Child | The Foundation for Economic Education: The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty

Discuss.

Technorati Tags: home education, feminism

And boy am I ready for it. It’s been a funny week, what with one thing and another, and having work crank up a level has been challenging but also oddly fun. I still have two slightly pathetic children - they mainly just pottered today, lots of games with play food, but also quite a long time on the puter.

I’m determined to clear some backlogs this weekend, get some stuff out of the door, but also to spend some time, especially with Big doing some of the craft things she wants to do. And I want to finish the hoodie properly (put buttons on), get some more stuff on sale on ebay or via a list on here possibly (books anyone? Might get shot of some vaguely educational things. Maybe.) Oh, and we want to get to the library.

Slightly annoyed that my next crochet project is on hold, I wanted to finish off something quickly so bought a ball of sirdar bigga in cranberry to make a hat, and didn’t realise I need two. Bother. Might have to another online search, see if I can find it on sale somewhere at a reasonable price.

Small is amusing us with his constant running commentary, not that all that much of it is understandable tbh. I’m sure that is going to improve with practise on all our parts

Right, bath time for grots, before our luxurious treat meal (fish and chips, he eats the fish, I get the chips, win-win :grin:). Might push the boat out and have a beer. We know how to live, don’t we?

Sarah-the-speech-therapist has been and gone, and was absolutely thrilled at Small’s sudden leap into speech. I looked back on the blog (must work out why it doesn’t display all posts in an archive!) and it’s just over a month since he burst out into speech, and now he rarely stops

She’s going to call us in a month or so to check that we still have more sounds developing, but at the moment she’s very happy with him. So that’s another stage done with. And in other news, I’m a bit hectic at work, and at home. Short blog.

Tim owes me big time, and he knows it too He didn’t have a shirt ready for this morning, so despite the fact that I don’t have to get up to drive up the M1 (working from home this morning until the speech therapist has been), I got up to iron his shirt and make his sarnies. Well, at least it’s kick started me out of bed, maybe I can steal a march on one of my todo lists!

Couple of very long days - work has suddenly become an incredibly hectic place (I have staff!), to the extent that last night I was involved with something, lost track of time and ended up sprinting out of the office at 5.41 shouting “children!” Oh, did I feel like a bad person. It’s one thing getting into what you are doing, it’s another thing temporarily forgetting responsibility to your offspring. Work-life balance anyone?

Not that they minded. For all the performance yesterday morning, (Big managed to cough herself into being sick in the car on the way to school, so was rather wobbly when we got there, Small had forgotten all about school in a week off, and didn’t want to be left) neither of them were particularly desperate to be picked up either night. Small did greet me in a lovely way, and ask where his coat was ;), but Big was in the middle of a memory game with J, one of the staff, and both nights, they played it out, so we didn’t leave til 20 past six! Tues we went off the path, ostensibly to return the buggy but really so that I could have a lovely relaxing evening with J&J. Has to be said that it was lovely and relaxing - Small was very tired and clingy, but not unpleasantly or loudly so, and so when I put him to bed, he went to sleep. Girls must have been similarly shattered as they went down quickly too, leaving Jan and I peace and quiet to have a good natter

Last night I came home with sleeping children, and got them very quickly inserted into bed. Far too much to catch up with properly in the blogworld though, so a quiet evening pottering about, and (disbelief reigns) an early night. Just as well given that I’d got plans to stay in bed til at least 7.30, and I actually crawled out at 6.44. Plans for this morning include work, with a bit more work, followed by some work, a speech therapy appt, and then I’m off up the M1 (in the snow no less) while the children have the afternoon with Sarah and co. Catch up with you all later.

Big, please stop hauling Small about.
But he’s my baby.
I not your baby, I your brudder.

Watching Pinocchio, this gem from Big:
I don’t have a conscience, I have a mummy.

And a link that I enjoyed, courtesy of Doc, Raising humanist children. To be honest, I’d settle for raising tolerant children of pretty much any belief persuasion, but there’s a part of that article that really made sense, thus:

An ethical person lives his or her ideals. Period. There is no middle ground. No exceptions. No half way. This is one of the most important lessons that humanist children should be taught.

I think that might be close to one of the most important lessons any child should learn. Note that I changed the emphasis there, I’m increasingly coming to the opinion that it’s difficult to teach anything. You can show stuff, you can explain stuff, demonstrate, pontificate, but can you really teach anyone anything they don’t want to learn?

Yesterday, Big got her Disney Princess Bead Weaving Loom out. I took pictures.

I was rather upset by my outcome on the political compass test.

My result puts me unnervingly close to the Dalai Lama and the Green Party.

On the brighter side I came out as Mastermind Rational (iNTj) in this test

Guardian Unlimited | Family | Too early, too much, too long

Not sure this will elicit much debate on here tbh, as I think it’s mainly the converted that are reading

But I did think it was interesting. I am a sinner it would appear, as Big was in a nursery from 14 weeks, for 3 1/2 hours a day, 5 days a week. At the time I thought it was better for her than being at home, and I was very into my job. With hindsight I still think it was better for her than being at home - I really didn’t know what to do with a baby. But that is part of what has got to change, and it won’t be solved by putting babies into nurseries. Small has only just started nursery, but I think he’s up to it tbh, even if he hasn’t reached the magic age of three. I wish that I got to spend the other days with him though.

Anyway, I would be interested to read what ppl think of how we are supposed to go about changing things. There appear to be two suggestions in the article - one is that we as a nation should be spending more on supporting mothers and fathers to spend time with their children, retraining parents to go back into work, and presumably therefore working against the kind of prejudice I encountered while job hunting last year. The other is that we could aim for a simpler, less consumerist existence, so we wouldn’t need so much money in the first place. I suspect there are some families who would take issue with the second being particularly realistic, but there are some cuts most of us can make, she says, thinking about the two cars in the drive and the half a dozen computers in the house

On the way up in the dark and fog, causing Big to scream and then sob by telling her to look out of the window as we passed the Angel of the North. I’m sorry, but I laughed…

Spending an hour wandering around Melrose, just me and my offspring, and really enjoying having time to watch Small enjoy puddles, without needing to do anything or be anywhere.

Loved having time to crochet and sew things up - have nearly finished my hoody now! Even bought buttons in Melrose, at the lovely fabric shop. Also bought wool for my next project or two, although we won’t talk about that in case Tim notices

Not quite sure how I ended up in the kitchen assisting for three meals - but it was so much fun each time, especially, it has to be said, doing the pizzeria. Although I did enjoy getting the rice right this time, Helen And well impressed with Kris and her stew preparation - I faded after about 2 hours of prep, she stuck it out throughout, and served up with a smile.

Moments of hilarity with Small - he announced “I not feel well”, so I cuddled him and got him ready for bed - whereupon he announced “I go play” and legged it!

The triumph on Big’s face, admirably captured by Helen, (and shown on Merry’s blog ) when she learnt to crochet. It should also be noted that at the time I *was* giving her the tests from Joanna’s Reading Reflex book. She scored really well, 95% when I’d adjusted her score (as you’re supposed to) for Year 1. Then Jan pointed out that she wouldn’t be in year 1 yet…. And bizarrely, since I told her how well she did, she’s been reading every sign, shop name, and carpark level that we didn’t leave the car on ever since. (Oh, and those books are fab, Alison, she’s taken one to bed every night except tonight this week. )

Telling Merry that that was just the kind of thing that small children do, and then having her bring my child to me having done it

Lovely quiet last night with a small enough group of ppl that I actually managed to go sit with them. Having struggled all week with a head cold and headache I’d found group evenings particularly difficult - my hearing is poor at the best of times in that situation, and all blocked up I stand no chance, and it’s too dark in the common room to reliably lip read. So I’d pretty much stayed out of the groups, but on the last evening it was a pretty quiet crowd and it was very pleasant.

Listening to Big describing her week on the phone to Tim while we were stuck in traffic - about how she’d been playing and she didn’t see me much, but she could usually find me in the kitchen.

How come I never spend time with everyone on these things though? I barely saw Joyce (although it sounds like she was barely there to be seen ) or Merry (although that seems to be par for the course on these events )

Small saw lots of ppl though. He’s come home with a whole set of new names added to his vocab, and he’s talked about playing with them too. So Robyn, Ben, Freya, Jasper and Hannah, you are honoured

and utterly adorable when you cause my Small to sing with you!

Wind back a bit. This afternoon, on our way home from Melrose, we stopped in at the metrocentre. (Sidestep - hugely amused by Big spelling out Metro kent-re, then agreeing with me that just possibly it might be the metro centre after all….) While we were wandering about, we came across a charity fundraising stall. You know the kind of thing - bright cheerful ppl in colourful T shirts trying to get you to sign forms to give them money. Anyway, this particular charity is one I’ve noticed round and about, and for fairly obvious reasons, its cause is rather dear to my heart. So we stopped for a chat.

Turned out that the woman (well, OK, cheerful American cheerleader) that we started to talk to has the same name as my sister. This makes her the second person I’ve met with that name So after we’d got over that shock, we got talking about children and communication, and obviously about the fact that Small hasn’t been talking for very long. He played to the crowd, refused point blank to sign, and ran around talking the hind legs off all donkeys (or at least yellow T-shirted fundraisers in their stead ) So I signed up to send them some of my hard earned cash every month. I used to have a charity when I worked before, and seems good to have one again. Then in a bizarre twist of fate, it turned out that I was the 150th person to sign up with them, so we won the teddy bear. The talking teddy bear at that. The kids were thrilled, and someone produced a digital camera and asked if it was OK to take piccies for their magazine. Now, being a bit of a cynic at times, I’ve got to wonder if it really was just happy coincidence that their 150th signer also has two particularly photogenic children, one of whom has had communication difficulties in the past. Hm. Ah well. We still got the teddy

And Small took him to bed tonight, and was singing along with him. It doesn’t get an awful lot better.

This is coming in via email, so I don’t know what it will look like - I
apologise for that in advance.

Anyway, it’s the final night at Melrose and the final countdown of families
remaining til the bitter end. There’s only 7 families left of the 17 who
started the week (numbers had dropped before we even got here). Kirsty visited
but has gone already (good to see you though Kirsty ) We know several of our
number have made it home OK, though we’re still waiting on confirmation of a few
others, but you are all much missed already. Although it does mean the wine is
going further

Kris has found her phone. Helen is bereft without Merry’s camera to take
piccies of us, although Barbara is stepping into the breach We’re about to
break into the garlic bread and we’re making inroads into the red wine. Less
to clear up tomorrow.

Sarah, we’re still missing you, but trust me, you’re really glad you weren’t
here this afternoon.

Kris has lost her phone.

We need get well vibes for Joyce and assorted infants (Stella has already run for home, closely following Karen, both sorely missed already).

Oh, and hello Sarah, really really really really really really really really really really …. really wish you were here. But you knew that already.

Other than that, we have drunk (boy have we drunk) there was a triumph of pizza making this afternoon, and I finally finished my hoody

And guess what, Helen just took my picture. You couldn’t guess that would happen, could you?

in Scotland.

Wireless hotspot at the youth hostel itself. Pretty good if you ask me.