Making it up

BBC NEWS | Politics | Rubbish charge trials to go ahead

Trials of a scheme to tax householders who throw away too much rubbish are to forge ahead, Downing Street has said.

I’m fascinated by how that would work in this area. There’s next to no recycling facilities - the area we’ve come from was collecting glass, cans, paper, garden waste and cardboard, with optional paired shoes and textiles (if you bagged them and put them out on recycling day) and black bin rubbish on alternate weeks. Oh, and we had a compost bin for food waste other than meat. Here there’s a black bag (not even a bin, we had to buy that ourselves) and when I mailed and asked we got a green bag that can take paper and thin cardboard, and a black box that takes glass. That’s it.

So everything else I’m collecting up and stacking in separate piles in the ex coalhole (apart from compostables, which right at the moment I’m sorrowfully binning - suppose I could take it to school and bung it in the bin there) for the moment when I’ll feel up to going and finding the local recycling facilities other than those at tesco. Although at least Tesco has a recycling bin for juice boxes, so I’ve been taking those every so often for the past few months. I need to find somewhere for plastic, cans and heavier cardboard. Not so much to ask is it?

Really ought to get outside and do some gardening - think I might grab half an hour once I insert the children into bed. Given how loath they are to get in the bath that might be some time away yet. They need it though - due to several late nights they haven’t really bathed and certainly haven’t hair washed - we’ve been spiritually keeping up with the campers At least we’ve had a fairly relaxing weekend though, and fitted quite a lot in, including yet another shoe shopping trip for Big (she now has some very nice trainers for bike riding after another 45 minute session in Clark’s. I feel like I should be getting names and addresses from the shop assistants and sending them birthday cards!), another party for Small (bit of a busman’s holiday with so many children from school who seemed to think that I was there to assist! One of the mums bought me coffee though ), catching up with a sister and cousins and finally managing to walk both children to the park.

The park was heaving, with one family from school, which was quite nice as the boychild, N, has a bit of a crush on Big, and it was good for the mother to finally understand who she is and another family from where I used to work, also good to play catch up. Did point out to him that I might be up for some emergency cover given our current slightly strapped situation - Tim is away on another job interview, thumb holding appreciated (tomorrow at 10).

And that’s about as much as I have energy for given that I’ve still got to get the kids into bed, excavate the kitchen, find the mending and do it, and crack through some paperwork. At least we’ve got darker curtains on the bedroom window now so I ought to sleep past dawn!

Two EH sites in one day!

Sutton Scarsdale Hall which is just to the south of us seemed like a good plan.

Lovely setting, but not really much for the small people there. From my point of view too, it was just another pile of stately rubble, surrounded by grass.

One thing about Sutton Scarsdale though, it does have splendid views across the M1 to Bolsover Castle, and after about 45 minutes we decamped there for our second visit. The Smalls adore it, and we spent the rest of the afternoon there.

Our English Heritage Links

Today we went to Roche Abbey

We played hide and seek

Admired the spots on a ladybird

Threw Pooh sticks

And waited for them to reappear

… and Small has learnt to play with the stream…

It has taken me a while to get round to blogging this. Last week I took the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off to avoid the Great Yorkshire Show traffic jams in Harrogate, which would have added several hours to my travelling time to work (which is already too long).

I had planned to take the children to Eureka (”The Museum for Children is the first and foremost hands-on children’s museum in the UK and is designed especially for 0 - 11 year olds.”) on Tuesday but instead spent the day taking my car in to Dixons to be what they call repaired, but everyone else would call being ignored for a week in their car park (I was promised it back today, but hey, I had been promised it back last Wednesday). So the Eureka trip was postponed to Thursday.

I hadn’t been to Eureka before but Big and Small had already been with Jax, long enough ago to have forgotten about it. It is excellent and I can commend it to anyone else within day trip range with appropriately aged children. The exhibits are nicely thought out, a lot are a bit Science Museumy, I thought that some were just a little odd, but then I am not the target audience. Anyway, the small people loved it.

There was an added little something which set everyone’s day off, in the shape of the presence of Big and Small’s big sister, Lily, who they hadn’t ever met before. So this really was a little bit special. We spent about four hours at Eureka and then pottered off to a pub with a play barn for lunch, the children ate a little and ran around a lot, and Lily and I chatted and watched them.

So, a very lovely day all round.

Low point was lending Big my camera and discovering that she has a much better eye than I have. The pictures with this post are ones she took, with the obvious exception, of course, of this last, in which she appears.

Celebration part the third! This is getting to be one long celebration, and Big is loving every little bit of it.

Having her oldest friend stay overnight, as he has done rather a lot of times in the past, ought to be straightforward and it did used to be. However, we didn’t used to have another little boy sharing the room and Small just can’t help but try to get in on the act. So it was a while before the yelling stopped last night, and then they were up quite considerably before the crack of dawn this morning. Lovely Consequently I contrived to sleep through the alarm clock that I had set for 8.30 this morning, and continue snoozing until well gone 9.

I needed the sleep, that much was obvious, but it did slightly derail my day. Just as well we’d had a replan of my driving, as Jonathan was joining us with C, otherwise I’d have struggled to get there in time. As it was, despite the standard tension of driving into Leeds, we arrived pretty much the same minute as the others, and met up outside the playhouse.

Alice was wonderful. The children were rapt throughout it, which has to be a good recommendation. Tim asked how much of the book was shown, and I have to say that it was a pretty good coverage. You certainly got an idea of Alice and who she was, the type of thing she would say and think, although I could have done with a marginally younger actress playing her in some respects. I’ve always thought of Alice as being quite young - can’t remember if it specifies her age in the book, anyone? Jan? But that was only a very minor quibble and overall it was a pretty good birthday treat. Also got to say that while the west yorkshire playhouse is a fair hike from us, it’s well worth the drive, especially on a Sunday. The seating really *is* well tiered, so even though we were on the very back row, the children could still see. Suspect Jonathan had the worst of our seats, and that he may have lost a small amount of the action due to his angle, but other than that, I couldn’t really complain.

Reasonable run home, despite the extremely slow moving lorry taking up two lanes of the M1 and causing a rolling traffic jam of approx two junctions. I suppose I should be grateful they were moving it today when the traffic is light…have I mentioned recently how much I hate that road?

Got home and made tea, while Big explored her present from the Rainedrops. She is absolutely over the moon with it, so thanks Barbara, it’s the hit of the year so far. In fact, I’ve got homework to do tonight, as she wants to write about Butterflies tomorrow, so I need to do some research and leave her some notes to copy! Wonder if I should leave her some more maths as well, she’s requested several more sets of questions today, and today I was allowed to make the totals go up to 11 (Tim got his questions marked wrong when he made them total more than 10 yesterday!)

Tired children into bed, and even though Small refused a story (Big settled for just the one Story of Thumbelina (Read Along with Me S.)) he was asleep within moments once Tim got him to lie down. And now I have stuff to do, so that’s your lot for this weekend. Apologies if any of it is incoherent, I’m watching the new episodes of NCIS that we missed the other night

in case there is anyone else out there as utterly misguided as me. Don’t try to go shopping and for a haircut with two small children, not when the shopping and haircut are kind of time critical.

It’s been a long day. Started this morning with Big deciding that today, the day we had an hour to get out of the house with an extra child, would be the day she refused to go downstairs. Marvellous. Then I somehow contrived to trip myself up and crash headlong into a door, ripping a toenail and giving myself an almighty headache. Although I might have had the headache anyway - Small did not sleep well last night, and when Small doesn’t sleep well, he likes to share.

Dropped him off with Barbara - asked him if he wanted to play with B and got a very happy and emphatic head nod, so was quite pleased with that. Made it into Sheffield to the museum only about 5 mins late, which is some kind of record for me. Big took a while to come round despite Janet’s best efforts - it was nice to catch up with several of the Sheffield crowd that I haven’t seen for a while, since starting to attend Chesterfield more regularly. Once E and Big warmed up they had a great time - the museum is wonderful and the caretaker very laid back about the children getting involved and roleplaying in the various little shops. Then she led a washday activity complete with poshers and dollies, mangle and (not) hot flat irons.

And then we had lunch

Barbara met me outside the museum to do a child exchange - much to E’s disgust - she wanted to take Big home with her, but I thought 48 hours together was probably enough. I probably should have let her go - as mentioned above the rest of the trip out was remarkably unsuccessful, and I’m going to have to nip out to TKMaxx in the morning and hope they have some clothes there. I did manage to buy myself a book on Java Web Services for £5 though - do I really think I can read and absorb it tonight? Maybe not.

for pretty much the whole day.

I was operating completely on autopilot this morning which would explain how I managed to get to the Chesterfield group with only about half of the stuff I set out to take. Hohum. The good news is that there is another woman who has small children who is interested in liaising to organise the smaller children activities, which is excellent.

The bad news is that even though we now have a clearly defined toddler play area, in just one corner of an enormous room, several of us *still* had to speak to some of the older lads to ask them to stay out of it. Still, there were no injuries

Big had a really good time there - I think maybe part of the problem with her atm is that she is cooped up in the house far too much. She has loads of energy, and I think she needs to run about and run it off, or it gets turned to other ends, like winding me up. So she charged about gaily, as well as making a mask and a tiara thing, both covered in glitter, sigh. Small had a lovely time - he loves to run about and is very independent, so I got to have a bit of a natter with Sarah which we haven’t done for ages.

Left group after lunch and headed off to find Kris. Must have still been employing that autopilot, although the multimap directions didn’t help, as they didn’t mention a right turn I needed to take and I ended up in Doncaster. Not quite what I’d planned! Made it in the end though, great to spend some time with Kris. Big likes D, but I think suffers slightly in that D doesn’t do as she is told - Big is very used to being the leader in all the games, and I don’t think D cooperates with that. Brought a slightly tearful girl away in the end, not helped by Small legging it up the road and screaming blue murder when I tried to get him into the car seat.

Home for tea, bath and bed, for the older child anyway. We’ve only just managed to get Small down - that nap on the way to Kris’s recharged him beautifully. Still, did mean that I got to see him playing pretty much independently with the geomags, which was lovely. He really enjoys them, although I was surprised to come out of the kitchen and discover he’d managed to get them out of the box! I am amazed at how much he understands of what we say - after we’d eaten I said “shall we put those away and you can play with them tomorrow, it’s time for bed now.” He nodded, helped put the geomags away, switched off the tv and headed for the door. Well, I was impressed

as I haven’t yet this year!

As has been mentioned elsewhere, we went away for New Year’s Eve. Big was delivered back at 9am on the morning, along with her friend A, and I pottered about getting ready to go over to Meltham, while Tim raced about and went off to Leeds to meet with his elder daughter.

Took ages to get organised, and A and Big were being pretty horrid - by this point they’d been together about 36 hours. Big was being far worse than A, so I asked her whether she behaved like that for A’s mother - she said not, so I asked why she behaved like that for me - because you’re my mummy, she said. Hm.

Over to Meltham for 2ish, and met Jonathon and the girls at the bottom of the lane. The children were very quickly off and about doing whatever it is they do - as I’d expected, Big and A were much better in the bigger space, and Small just joins in and potters about.

Tim got back from Leeds via Halifax about 4 and Jan arrived shortly after. We had a lovely evening - all the children in bed shortly after 8, some of them even asleep Good meal, good wine, good company, good conversation - right up til Small woke up screaming. He didn’t stop screaming til we eventually brought him downstairs, and he slept on my knee for the rest of the evening. Jan’s mum came round, and that was our NYE party - and very pleasant it was too.

Unfortunately, my night wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Small was determined to sleep with me, so spending the night on a single bed with him kind of put paid to any sleep I might have got, then Big decided to crash her head into into the bedroom door at 4am, and the two big girls got up and woke up Small at just after 7. Hohum. Who needs sleep anyway?

Most of New Years Day passed in a bit of a haze for me - I know that did some baking and so on, then eventually I gathered up my tribe and went home, via my sister’s. Big was given another Chrimble pressie, and the less said about that the better. A’s mother arrived for him shortly after they’d finished tea, and then it was an early(ish) night all round.

Today I’ve been over to Doncaster for a meeting with the local home eddors to discuss ways to deal with an over officious official. So I haven’t seen all that much of the children today. Big didn’t want a bedtime story tonight though, so I got to play Set with her instead. That’s my girl

that I don’t learn from my mistakes.

Today I have tried really hard. I have wet washing on the line (sigh) and wet washing in the machine (bigger sigh), the kitchen is trashed again, but was clean and clear before I started preparing our home cooked tea, and I shifted another bit of paperwork before we went out today.

Took the overpriced chocolate decorations back to Wilco’s (hate doing that sort of thing, but at least I did it) and spent a fraction of the amount on fun things instead (paper fasteners and cotton buds - skeletons here we come!), although I did wonder if I should be concerned that Big drooled over the maths workbooks, and was thrilled when I agreed she could have one…

Bought red felt, red checked fabric and blue checked fabric so that we can make some christmassy decorations, and managed to get most of the other bits on the shopping list that I couldn’t get yesterday due to the assistance of Small. Today I had Big to chase him every time he departed, which was often.

Past the library which bizarrely seemed to be shut (blast!) and off to Graves Park for our picnic lunch. Cut the visit short when Small started shivering - I always forget how much colder it is there for some weird reason. Shame, as he was fascinated by the animals, and Big was thrilled to be there too. Ah well, must arrange to go again soon, but togged up for the arctic next time.

Off to Lembas to discover that my nappies have been and gone Apparently they’ll definitely be in next week though. Hm. Then we tried the library again, which was open this time, but full of school children?? Apparently they come on their way to and from swimming, so I think we’ll try to avoid Tues afternoons in future. Ever so quiet once they’d gone though, and we could get to the books.

Indulged in a bit of retail therapy - they were selling off loads of children’s reference books, hardbacks for 20p a piece. Well, it would be rude not to really I was very restrained, only bought 12

And home again, where we’ve started cutting out some Christmassy decoration shapes to sew, and Big has made a good start on her maths homework book. Turns out it has stickers in it, so she is very happy. We need to do some work on her number formation though - she gets most of them reversed. The maths itself is a walk in the park, but the reading and writing is giving her some difficulties. Will have to have a think about this - she obviously very much enjoys workbooks and worksheets, so I think I am going to have to cater to this need, and perhaps I can figure out a way that I can get to do some work as well *if* I can think of a way to entertain Small. He likes jigsaws, for about 30 seconds, then he throws the pieces round the room, he likes his trains, until the track breaks, and then he throws the pieces round the room, he likes balls (because he can throw them round the room - are you spotting the pattern yet?) Hohum.

We did have a proud mummy moment at the library with him when he went and helped himself to a book, sat down with it and turned the pages carefully one by one to look at the pictures. The teacher wanted to know how old he is - apparently her 21 month old would just shred a book if allowed access to it. Sometimes Small will too, but most of the time he wants someone to read it to him. That’s got to be a good start, hasn’t it? He’s beginning to figure out his insert jigsaw too, so I can see him getting new skills every day now.

Today was so different to yesterday as to make me wonder if someone has done a kind of reverse changeling operation on my daughter overnight.

It didn’t start well - I had a bad night with Small. He’s got this thing going that if he manages to wake up before I come to bed, and that’s wake up to the point where he gets out of bed and comes looking for me, he won’t then let go of me, and sleeps on my head. I don’t find this overly comfortable, so I don’t tend to get much sleep.

We were supposed to be going to do art with my artistic friend today, and we were supposed to be there this morning. I don’t quite know how or why, but it was 11.20 by the time we left the house, so it was rather nearer lunch time by the time we got there. I primed Big that we might not be able to stop as my friend had said she was busy this aft, and went to the door myself. No answer. Ring again. Still no answer. Hm.

Went back to the car, rang them on the mobile, straight to answerphone. Curiouser and curiouser. Told Big and she looked a bit sad, but in line with our earlier discussion, didn’t tantrum, burst into tears, tell me I was horrid or anything. Wow. Even after I tried the doorbell and rang them again to leave a message she was doing OK. So it was a real bonus when I looked in the mirror as I prepared to pull away and saw them coming down the road. Turned out M had completely forgotten our arrangement, popped out to see a friend and stopped for coffee, so just as well we hadn’t got there on time - we’d have missed her completely

So we had lunch, then did drawing, more drawing, still life and painting. Big was an absolute star throughout, polite and thoughtful, tried everything asked of her, I was proud. And I said so. Many times.

Then we loaded up and popped off to see Kirsty and co and Big was incredibly well behaved all the time we were there. Marvellous. She didn’t make a fuss when I asked her to get ready so that we could go to her ballet class, and she didn’t make a fuss when it became apparent that the traffic was just too heavy and we weren’t going to make it there in time for the start of the lesson. I offered her the choice of going and arriving after the class had started or going home.

“I don’t mind missing my ballet”
“are you sure?”
“I’m sure that I don’t mind.”
“So you want to go home?”
“I don’t want to go home but I don’t mind missing my ballet.” Pedantic to the end. Can’t think where she gets it from.

So how did I achieve this miraculous turnaround? Hm. Tim had a bit of a pep talk at some stage, and this morning I laid it on the line - behave the way you did yesterday and we come home, we don’t do the fun things. I can’t take you to ppl’s houses if you are going to run wild, I won’t take you to ballet if you are going to treat me badly. So she decided to be grownup, and although she had to check with me once or twice what the grown up thing to do was, she managed admirably all day. Wasn’t that surprised that she had to be very loud and splashy and irresponsible in the bath though!

I don’t particularly like this approach. I don’t want her to be grownup, she isn’t grown up, she isn’t even 5 yet. But if she can cope with behaving in a more reasonable manner by deciding to be grown up every now and then, then that’s what we’ll do.

but boy did it take some doing. I think my next project for the year is going to have to be sorting out his sleeping patterns - I’ve just spent two nights away from home, and I didn’t get any evening time without children to talk with adults. Hohum. Apart from that, the weekend was marvellous, thanks for asking

Saturday afternoon was parents and a sister. We were a bit late going over as Small fell asleep on the living room floor (he can do that easily enough ) Always bizarre to discover how little I have in common with someone I grew up with - the children were a bit confused as well. Not nearly as confused as my sister when Small handed me his bowl with some chocolate left in it!

Saturday evening we went up to see Jan and Jonathan. They live at the end of a nice long bridle path, so I was fairly sure it would be a safe place to avoid trick or treaters. Plus, their eldest and Big get on fantastically well, and I hadn’t managed to chat with Jan for ages, so all in all, a good weekend in store.

We managed to chat, and I even got to drink a small amount of wine (hic!), and I do find it restful that there’s no tv there (makes me seriously consider (again) getting shot of ours - the kids don’t seem to miss it there, but the second they walk through the door here they both want it on…)

Sunday morning, we went to church. Bit weird, the bloke who takes the service knows my parents from way back when they lived in the village Jan lives in now. Last time we were there he didn’t clock who I was, but this time he did. Something about not having realised my “august parentage”. Hohum, not quite out of my parents shadow yet then, I guess.

Small loved church - they kept playing music. Big hadn’t realised it was about God, which was probably just as well, given that her reaction to any mention of God is to say “well *I* don’t believe in God” with a terribly teenage sneer in her voice. We ended up having an extremely bizarre discussion of that while I was sorting out Small in the bath that night - she went from not believing, to believing to not believing so fast that all that became apparent was that she doesn’t really know what it means to say you believe in God. Which isn’t surprising given that she’s 4, but gives me a starting place for further discussions.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Jan did us a full Sunday dinner, which was extremely enjoyable. I used to hate sit down dinners - reminded me far too much of rows when I was growing up. I didn’t even think of that when sat down at Jan’s, which says something incredibly positive about the atmosphere there I think.

After dinner, her girls had a party to go to, so I bundled my two up and we went to visit yet another of my sisters, who now lives just over the hill from Jan. Small obviously managed to fall asleep in the car, which was annoying. We went to help Kierston get the horses in (she has one, but takes it in turns with the other two at the stables to look after theirs as well). Discovered that Small takes after me in more than looks - he likes animals, and isn’t a bit scared of them. Kierston offered Big a sit on her horse, but Big didn’t want to know. Small thought about it for a moment, then nodded very seriously, and boy did he look cute up on the horse. So wish I’d had a camera with me.

He isn’t scared of Kierston’s dog either, which is something Big had to learn. Quite nice to have one of my children take after me a little Highly amusing to watch him eating marmite sandwiches while walking in a circle in the dining room, and stopping every so often to examine the dog (who just rolls on her back when he looks at her - wants her tummy tickled!)

Then we went back to Jan’s, with Big mumbling on throughout about *not* being scared of trick or treaters, but it isn’t a nice thing to do, and anyway they are only children dressed up…sigh.

Which brings us back to the time of the believing conversation above, and all the way up to Sunday night. Took Small up to bed and fell asleep with him, so that wiped out Sunday evening

Monday We started this morning with a leisurely breakfast, and then did some house excavation. Jan did Milly Molly Mandy school with the two girls while I did washing with Small and M pottered. Big thoroughly enjoyed working with C, which gave me more food for thought about the whole education process.

Late (huge!) lunch, and then more chance to chat while the children bounced around. Then we rounded them up and walked down the lane to feed the ducks. Big managed to stretch her length and remove the top layer of her knee (again! must be about the fourth time this year) which made the whole walk considerably noisier, but still quite pleasant. We found some more ponies for Small - it would appear he likes horses. He was a bit surprised when the pony tried to lick his head though

Sauntered back to the house for first aid for Big and a cup of tea for me, then finally time to round up our kit and come home. Got here in time for tea, bath and bed, although it took ages to persuade Small to sleep again. I really need to get that sorted - I need some adult time *before* I have to prop open my eyelids with matchsticks!

So there you go, the ins and outs of my weekend, in pretty much full gory detail. I’m pondering a lot on education, what it means and how best to achieve it while retaining my fragile grasp on sanity, so you can expect some more ramblings on that in the near future.