Making it up

HIT show Doctor Who will be EXTERMINATED next year — after the fourth series.

Sniffle.

I am really not very keen on Just Giving. This is why:-

JG “charges a small transaction fee on every donation made on the Website. The fee is currently 5% of the gross donation, which is the donation plus any Gift Aid reclaimed.”

When you pay via Just Giving, not only does the charity have to fork over 5% to them it has to pay the card charges on top: Credit Card fee @ 1.34% for Visa @ 1.4 % for MasterCard, Debit card fee: 22p for Switch/Maestro/Solo 23p for Visa Delta/Visa Electron. Charities are also charged on “other services too”.

So on a £10 donation by credit card (with gift aid added grossing up to £12.82) £0.89 (almost 7% of the total) is taken off the amount the charity receives. See here

Contrast this with Paypal donations:

As far as I can see the charity would have to be set up to deal with the Gift Aid tax reclaim but… Paypal Charity rates 1.4% + 20p would mean that they would lose only £0.34.

Just Giving is making a fortune out of charity.

Today, Small was supposed to be spending a special day in Halifax with Ailsa, but yesterday he decided to do horrid and smelly things, so instead I worked from home and kept them with me.

This meant that he was able to have his presents on his birthday. He got Lego (to go with the lego vehicles that Grandma gave him the other day), a handmade microphone (from Big), a Bob the builder card that you can colour in! and money.

He wasn’t overly impressed with the money, I don’t think he understands it yet

The lego was good. He built a dog. And a fishpond. Full of dead fish for the dog to eat. Big made a television out of a cardboard box, and they amused themselves pretty much all day watching monster shows and shakespeares.

It was about this time 4 years ago that we got to meet him. He was angry then, and I’m very pleased to say that hasn’t been his defining characteristic so far. He’s a lovely sunny happy boy, if a little surreal at times. We love him.

Happy birthday Small.

The traditional way of making tea in a pot is healthier than dunking a bag in a cup, according to scientists.

what social skills you are supposed to learn from going to school? How come you need to go to nursery to learn how to go to school? Doesn’t any of this strike any member of the public as just a touch on the ridiculous side? Try the answers to this grauniad question if you feel like reading and weeping.

Today, after I’d got ludicrously cold and wet in a field in Halifax (unfortunately, I don’t believe anyone took a picture of me sitting in a wheelbarrow while some guy poured a bucket of cold dirty water over my head - even my knickers were wet! ) I went back to a colleague’s house to get warm and dry. After we’d eaten (she cooked for me) and talked about work (sad, I know) we got on to life in general, and she asked about the rules and regulations around home education.

There aren’t really any, I said, and explained the current legal position. And then she asked about socialisation. Please tell me, I replied, in what other situation in your life you are required to spend your entire day with approx 30 other ppl selected purely on the face their age is within 6 months or thereabouts of yours? She agreed, and recalled that when she met my children they were extremely capable of holding (slightly odd) conversations with all and sundry, not doing the common small child thing of just staring at the strange adult.

(On the offchance that S finds her way to this blog, this is not a rant aimed at you at all, it’s been bubbling up for a while!).

So school socialisation is not really an applicable social skill for day to day life is it? In fact, I think it goes a long way to explaining the disaffection of today’s teenagers - they are lumped in together, herded from place to place, dismissed as unimportant and unintelligent, non contributory and then suddenly, that’s all their fault. What, are they supposed to be grateful for this treatment? Returning to the conversation with my parent’s friends yesterday, they were recounting the work experience saga they are undertaking. Apparently all year 10/11 children now undertake 2 weeks work experience. This is not, though, supposed to allow them to necessarily experience the work that they are interested in, as they mentioned the boy who wanted to go into the army, who ended up spending two weeks in a hairdresser! It’s supposed to introduce them to the idea of working. Which is fundamentally different to school how in this situation? You go somewhere you don’t want to be and get told to do something you aren’t interested in doing. :/ Point proved I think.

I would just like to know how socialisation and school have come to be synonymous, in the same way they’d like us to believe that school and education are synonymous, rather than the reality for many children that they are actually polar opposites.

“Ninety-five per cent of Britons are heading for hell, according to the principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, who has been under fire from some staff for taking one of the leading Anglican theological training colleges in a conservative direction.

Richard Turnbull, appointed two years ago, made the claim in a speech to the annual conference of Reform, a conservative evangelical pressure group within the Church of England.” (Grauniad)

My definition of hell would be to spend eternity with Richard Turnbull. Still, pride is a sin so he too will be taking the lift to the basement, I suspect.

It’s cold, wet and horrid here, so I’m really looking forward to it’s a knockout Don’t think the rest of the family will be coming now, it’s a bit much to ask them to drive an hour up the road to hang around in the rain for two hours while I get even wetter. So sorry, probably no photos.

Anyway, making a cuppa and scanning the headlines before I pour myself into clothes to set off, and I spotted this

Writing separately in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Blair said the disappearance of the three suspects under control orders was a symptom of a society which put civil liberties before fighting terror.

in article Stop and quiz powers considered.

All I can say to that is good. I’d prefer to live in a society that puts civil liberties ahead of fighting terror, especially when I think that the erosion of tolerance and civil liberties is what is causing the small risk of terror in the first place. We need to get our priorities straight here. Yes, ppl have died in terror attacks. Many more ppl die in car accidents, and I haven’t noticed draconian powers against them being mooted. If the police have the evidence against suspects, use it. If they don’t, then gather more. You can’t just guess that someone might be thinking about doing something wrong, and then house arrest them forever, it’s not going to lead to the kind of society we want to live in.

The Home Office would not comment on suggestions the new laws were to be rushed through before Tony Blair steps down as prime minister on 27 June.

Guess we still need to keep an eye on him then.

We had lunch. Then I moped a bit, Tim built (or rebuilt) part of the fence (which departed one very windy day some months ago) and I finally wranged the children into clothes and we went shopping. We bought wood stain and screws, and Small tried to half kill himself by hiding round a corner and peeping out. What I didn’t realise was that he was sitting on a camping chair at the time, so when he suddenly went crashing to the floor I wasn’t near enough to catch him. He banged his knee (yet again) and wailed and whined and I wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as I could have been given that he shouldn’t have been playing on the chair. I hate being shouty mummy in public, but this really did merit it (while I was carrying him about because his leg wouldn’t work any more!)

After Wilkos we went on to Tescos and Big and I colluded in buying Small’s present while he was staring at toys with spiderman logos on We picked up pressies for Grandad as well, and then went round to see them. They had guests so the children retreated to the conservatory with the lego while I sat and listened to ppl being cross about schools Very difficult to not just burst out with a rant about alternatives, but it wouldn’t really have been welcomed.

On from Grandad’s to the chippy, where we picked up fish, chips, scampi and a fishcake. Back home for tea, and Small attacked his first birthday present, and was pleased to find three lego vehicle packs. We finally detached them from him and got the children to bed, and now I’m writing up book reviews on another blog while we’re watching TV. So far we’ve had Doctor Who and Bones, which has been riddled with excellent quotes tonight. And now, more Bones and more beer. Must go to bed fairly soon though as I’ve got to go get wet in Halifax tomorrow. Tim is thinking of wimping out so there might not be any photographs after all.

“It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

Name the film?

Blog isn’t about that though, that’s just the quote that springs to mind once a month when I’m hoping that my period won’t start. And then it does. Hohum. Going to make the whole charging round a field in Halifax so much more fun tomorrow, when really what I’m going to want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep. (There’s still time to sponsor me for that, see post below for details )

Let’s see, yesterday. Kids let me sleep in until I rose in a dazed state rather later than I’d anticipated. Wandered round being confused for a bit, then managed to locate a solicitor for the house purchase thing. To celebrate this we dashed off to the bank and the shops - paid in contribution from CPW and bought me some jogging pants for tomorrow. Was then going to take them to Sainsbury’s for lunch when I thought about it properly and asked them whether they wanted Sainsbury’s or McDs, and McDs it was. Just as well, or I couldn’t have had the surreal conversation of the day:

Me “what do you have that’s vegetarian?”
Her “Filet o’fish”
Me “No, vegetarian.”
Her “Oh, you mean vegan. Well, there’s the veggie melt, but that’s got cheese on it.”
Me. “that’s fine.”

!! No, I didn’t ask whether it was vegetarian cheese…have just explored their website though, and apparently it’s approved by the vegetarian society, so I’m guessing I was good to go. Shame that that information hasn’t filtered through to the staff really.

Anyway, while we were eating, I spotted a woman with poundworld bags. This was a new one on me, didn’t realise there was a pound shop there, so I told the kids that they could have a pound each, and a pound for M and A and we went off to explore. Small chose dinosaurs and more dinosaurs, then put the second dinosaurs back and went for tweenie wax crayons, then third time lucky, chose a car. Which went down well with M Big chose pink girly tat, which went down very well with both her and A for the entire afternoon. I think two bits of the set are broken already, but that’s the way it goes. Oh, and I found bubbles, packs of 6 for a quid, so they got snaffled for party bags.

Dropped the kids off with Kirsty, along with a knitting magazine for her (so there’s no excuse, get crafting again!) and hared off to work for a very quiet shift, as it appeared most of the American clients left early for the holidays. Can’t complain - apart from about my computer. I was given a ‘new’ one a little while back, and finally moved all my kit on to it and started using it this week, to have it start shutting down at regular intervals. Sysadmin guy has fixed fans and so on, and it’s making no difference. So I’m back on the old machine, and spent about 4 hours just trying to get the code at a state where I could work on it

Home by 2 and Tim was still up, so got to burble at him for a bit. Which probably explains why we were both so late up. Tim’s dad rang to be celebratory with him, and the children played on the puter for a bit, and have now gone upstairs to clean their bedroom ??!! No, I don’t know what that is in aid of either. Shh, but I’ve just ordered Muzzy in Chinese for them so I’m hoping that will go down well. Should be amusing at the very least

And now it’s long past lunch time. So we’d better have lunch.

seen this around various places, quite enjoyed my results actually

You Are From Neptune

You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability. You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea. Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion. You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone. If you don’t get carried away with one idea, your spiritual nature will see you through anything.

Problem report summary

Problem type Windows stop error (a message appears on a blue screen with error code information)

Solution available? No

What does this problem mean? Windows has encountered a problem it cannot recover from and it needs to be restarted

Cause Unknown

Computer symptoms A message appears on a blue screen with error code information (for example: 0×0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED)

Additional steps for you to take Please continue to send problem reports so analysts at Microsoft can study and try to correct the problem as quickly as possible

…..well that really is bloody helpful. :rant:

on Sunday, to celebrate Tim’s birthday, we shall be in a field in Halifax. Tim will be pointing and laughing and catching photographic evidence, of me making a complete fool of myself in charity It’s a Knockout. If any of you fancy sponsoring me, please use this contact form

to send me details, or you can use the justgiving page (although they do take quite a bit of the money off the charity, so generally I don’t like to recommend them!)

Tagged by Gill, thanks

The official rules for participation in the Thinking Blogger Awards meme are as follows:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Hm, haven’t got the thinking blogger award piccie, might consider that…

Five blogs eh? Used to be that I read up to 40 each day, but since going back to work, I’ve had to cut back a bit. I don’t even have a working laptop atm, so I don’t have sage set up anywhere, meaning that I’ve actually got to remember to visit any sites that aren’t on the ring manually. Here’s a few of the ones that I do

Jen at thelactivist is great. And it isn’t one track posting by any stretch of the imagination either. Breastfeeding is a topic I’m interested in, but a blog that just went on and on about it probably wouldn’t hold my interest for long, and yet I’m a regular visitor over there. Strongly recommend you drop by.

Ron of Atypical homeschool doesn’t get to post very often these days, what with the commuting he’s been doing, the whole housemoving thing and Andrea’s recent hospital excursions. When he does post, it’s often something he’s been musing on for quite some time, and also worth paying attention to. ( I think he may have been tagged before, but not in a personal way )

Tiny bit closer to home, Lucy at By other means is always worth a read. Her posts are measured, information, chatty and often full of beautiful pictures. And she comes to home education and life in a different way to me, which I find great for just stretching my horizons a bit.

And Rosie at Knitting Yogurt is someone I like to come home to. Despite anything and everything going on, she has a calm way at dealing with her life that gives me hope for my own.

I was going to tag Doc from Doc’s Sunrise rants but it turns out she’s already been tagged a bunch of times before. Not surprising, although her blog isn’t a read for the fainthearted. She was one of those who spearheaded the drive against those to whom we must not link. There are also loads of resources posted on there regularly and just commentary on life in general from a very different point of view to mine. I find it refreshing. But I’m not tagging her again, so here’s that Tim suggested I read, that I think he keeps up with more than me.

Our ex MP, Harry Barnes, blogs at three score years and ten and it’s a fascinating read. I have a lot of respect for Harry, I don’t necessarily agree with his politics but I always found him to be a principled and honest representative of his constituents, and there are not many MPs I would refer to in those terms.

Thanks for the tag Gill. If you hadn’t tagged me and someone else had, I would have wanted to tag you Hey, and look, I found a couple of not home educators!

I missed my blogiversary yesterday, busy living life (and watching Criminal Minds ). It’s been a hectic four years. At that point, I had one child, a bump and a job at a bank. Then came the second child, redundancy, own business. Home education started properly, and then another job, flexi-schooling, and losing a baby. This blog really has seen all the ups and downs of our lives - thank you for being there to share

Tonight I’ve been preparing for another anniversary - Small will be 4 in less than a week’s time. Wow. My baby boy - still, as he keeps on telling me, my baby, but very much a boy as well now. Found a great site for party bag bits when searching for fabric party bags, tickseed. Have emailed with David who runs it, as rather fascinated to find a link to EO on the other sites page - turns out they are home educators.

Tim has prepared party invitations, and I have shopped. We have both watched Heroes. I’ve done blogring admin, and persuaded a small boy to get back into bed And now it’s time to put myself there.

"Two years for elf lingerie thief (BBC) A man who claimed he thought he was a female elf when he stole underwear from a Belfast shop at knifepoint, has been jailed for two years."

an update from Andrea about their free homeschool blog service.

“HSJ is backed up, new space is purchased and I’m waiting for the account creation. It’s on a Virtual Private Server, so it takes a little more to set up. If you coudl pass the word on your non-HSJ hosted blogs, that’d be great. (I am so, SO SORRY!)”

There is a member of the blogring on hsj, I’ll be hibernating you for a little while Clare, until all is well again Andrea, I hope it all comes together soon - sounds like a whole bunch of no fun.

Link followed link and somehow I ended up in a pdf from Peta which stated:

No species naturally drinks milk beyond the age of weaning, and no species would naturally drink the milk of a different species. For humans, drinking cow’s milk has been linked to heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes, and even osteoporosis, the very disease that the dairy industry claims its products are supposed to prevent! The high animal-protein content of milk actually causes calcium to be leached from the body. According to a Harvard Medical
School analysis of the evidence, milk does not protect against osteoporosis; the study found that countries with low calcium intake (just 300 mg/day) tend to have a lower incidence of hip fractures (an indication of osteoporosis) than do those countries with higher calcium-consumption rates.

Um, humans are part of nature. They drink the milk of a different species. Therefore, one species does naturally drink the milk of another species. It might not be usual, it might not be normal for mammals generally, but it isn’t unnatural. Grr.

I am trying to work out my position re milk drinking, but arguments like this make me not want to bother!

I’ve just updated the blurb on the ring hub page to read:

A warm welcome to the Early Years HE blog ring, a ring linking blogs of home educating families with a strong connection to the UK, (usually members of the Early years HE yahoo group). As we’ve been running for quite some time now, several of our members have grown out of early years, but the blogring has grown with them (barring the name ) I hope you enjoy your journey around the ring.

following someone applying to join who said she didn’t know that the ring was for homeschooling (sic) families. I responded that it is, although we do also welcome families who flexi-school, and turned down her application. She does have a fascinating blog though, so if any of you wish to add it to your sage or favourites, you can find it over at LittleMummy.com

So yet another debate arises about the nature of the ring. To my mind it exists to help build a community - the nature of home education is that the families can be far removed from each other and therefore the ring is another way to build bridges. As such it doesn’t demand a certain amount of educational input per post (just as well round here ) but it does imply that the family will be involved in home education in some way or another. Hope that clarifies matters for anyone happening to drop in. Once this post gets pushed down a bit, I’ll transform it into a page, and link it from the ring hub too.

Despite working until half past midnight I still managed to get up at a halfway reasonable time yesterday. I can’t actually remember what I did with the day - think it may mainly have involved doing washing and feeling sorry for myself, but at least I didn’t spend it all in bed. I did fall asleep in the bath at one point though.

This makes it all the more surprising that we managed to have an in depth discussion with Big about finances, sparked off by her finding a cheque book. (Can’t actually remember what we were looking for at the time, I know it wasn’t the cheque book though. Isn’t that always the way?) From there we went on to talk about interest in terms of what you get when you save money, and interest in terms of what you pay when you borrow money (for example for buying a house) and more about savings and bank accounts and all sorts of things. She’s got into the idea of planning ahead - has realised that if she saves her weekly pocket money up she gets to buy more interesting things. Hence yet another trip to build-a-bear workshop today

Not sure what else happened to the day. Oh yes, I went and got fish and chips, I remember that. Oh, and I got out my exercise kit of stretchy elastic bands and exercised. This caused many issues when I refused to let the children play with them (bad mummy, horrid mummy). Quite intrigued to discover that Small can do press ups, was about to say no idea where he learnt those, and have just remembered Lazy town!

This morning dragged myself out of bed very early when I heard suspicious noises from the bathroom. Was greeted by a semi-naked Small who presented me with a large roll of toilet paper saying “these are the pyjama trousers that I weewee-ed on”. Lovely. He’d also made his third attempt in two days to block the toilet by using vast quantities of toilet roll in one go, so he got his second stern talking to. Then I washed him down, stripped his bedding off and shoved it in the wash, and went back to bed.

Got up again at 9 to prepare for party day along with trip to M’hell for aforementioned shopping spree. Unfortunately did not account for the fact that the shops there don’t open til 11, so we were there at 10.30, used up some time getting petrol, then had a drink, and finally shopped. Left the carpark at 11.30 and somehow still arrived at the party only 5 minutes late.

The party was being held at the kids school, which at least meant I wasn’t risking getting lost. Abandoned the kids to the slightly bemused and bemusing entertainer, and got to spend a bit of time chatting about education, SATs, my children and montessori. Big is doing very nicely - as mentioned previously they’ve been talking about peace. Fascinating to hear about that from Ailsa’s point of view though.

Party went as well as can be expected (lots of small children getting horribly overexcited, various wails and tantrums, mainly on Big’s part). ETA forgot the car ed on the way home about evolution, creationism, beliefs and tolerance. Big has come a long way since the flat “I don’t believe in God and it’s wrong of anyone else to as well!” : ) Got home quite early, so mowed the lawn, can that count as today’s exercise? It’s quite hard work! Also managed to pour grass clippings over my hand, which wouldn’t have been too much of a problem had they not also contained nettle clippings. Ow, ow, ow and ow.

Downloaded and installed Scratch for a bit of a play, and discovered two children entranced by it. Accordingly am currently downloading and installing on the machine in the dining room so that they can have another play tomorrow. That will be before I load them up and take them to school for afterschool club tomorrow evening. Hm. This two ppl working lark is terribly complicated. Have also spent more time party planning - found another party favours site that does fabric bags for a reasonable price, so rather tempted by those

And that’s the weekend. Really feels as if I blinked and missed it - daren’t go to bed too early tonight though as I won’t make it through tomorrow if I wake up too early. Children already prepped to let me sleep in a little!