Season's Greetings

Happy New Year everybody!

My goodness!

My poor brain is in a whirl! (I have been tested in the past, I know there is one there and that it has worked, OK there might be a question about the present time!) All the reading I have been doing over this year about the subject for my dissertation, seems to be whirling around at an ever increasing speed inside me! I am not being flippant - or thoughtlessly so, when I say that it feels like a twister is at work in there. At odd moments I glimpse a thought that I want to grab and write about, too often I am so slow that I have los tthe train of thought before I can write anything. How on earth did people write lengthy dissertations before computers? I am so pleased to be able to open numerous websites with useful references, so that I can simply click to the place I want, then copy and paste etc etc. Now if someone could make a simple program that would convert book titles into the correct Harvard referencing system, I would really look up with a bright bushy tail!

The words they are a flowing!

Ooh, the methodology is really hard going, but I am cracking on with it. I still need to write a couple more thousand words, then I can start to look at my car keys! (Can't wait for the snow to come, I love a good walk in deep snow - perhaps that can be my reward for turning out the staistics and reliability!)
Thanks Tami for your last post - i will use some of them at school!

I have been told....

No more socialising until 5000 more words have been written, so here goes!

No snow!

Isn't it funny how that covering of white 'stuff' is so important to us at this time of year? The south of England has been visited, as have some of the Midlands, but not Shropshire. My daughter is having a little sulk, but I suspect that we will have some later on in the winter. I keep thinking that I would like to go somewhere warm for Christmas, but the cold weather is all part of my seasonal experience and I suspect that I would miss it dreadfully.
For anyone who reads this in warm climates, I hope you had a good time!

Boxing Day

Tami asked what Boxing Day is, so not only have I dug into the recesses of my memory, but the internet has been of some help finding a good answer. I was always brought up believing that it was the day when you gave a box of money as a present to people, in my innocence I did not question this. The web site I found talks about this being a class issue, the 'box' was given to a member of the working class. I even remember mum and dad giving a CHristmas Box to Jim, the wonderful man who worked for us on teh farm in South Wales. The pratice went on until quite recently, with the tradition of giving your postmen and dustmen a Christmas Box - which was a tip of saome money. I can remember doing that within the last 20 years and it seemed quite the normal thing to do.


is the website which has a lot of information about it. I think I shall have a little read now myself! Then I must clear up the junk before my daughter and her partner come to stay the night. The poor old diss is not getting a look in yet!

(One last question, if it takes a walk of 18 miles to walk off the extra calories in a Christmas dinner, how many miles do you need to walk to get rid of a box of chocoltaes worth of calories???!)

Nativity Plays

I went over to spend last night and this morning with my son and his partner near Nottingham. Lindsey and I went to watch the Nativity Play that was being performed in the local Baptist church, it was lovely to watch one that I had absolutely no responsibility for, so I could enjoy the traditional story line and the little mistakes that make these productions. Heaven help us when they become so good that no-one does anything untimely or muddles the words!
We returned to their home and ate a delicious Christmas meal cooked by my son - the first in their new home. It was lovely to be there and part of a new home tradition for them, it also helped me to deal with Christmas Eve which is the time I miss my mother most of all. The many times we prepared a meal together and iced the cake at midnight because I was not prepared for the day, are some of the most precioius memories I have of our times together.
Happy memories and a Happy Christmas to you all.

Panic stations..

Yet again, I am not ready for Christmas, what is it about this day that I am totally unable to cope with the deadline. Holidays I can cope with - getting to the airport etc, catching trains etc etc. Why can't I write cards, wrap presents, cook food to time? I am one of those who does other things when I am supposed to be doing pressing things. Aaaargh, why can I not do things in the right order and carry on sorting out jobs to be done? Why does hoovering (yes, hoovering for goodness sake!!!) seem so attractive when I should be making mince pies etc?
OK, I feel better after that! Happy Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a lovely day, let the kids play with the toys first, then have some fun with them yourselves!

Yippeee!

It's the holidays and I am off for my first real Christmas dinner! Have fn folks, I will be back next week and will post some pictures then!

This weekend...

my son and his girlfriend visited! It has been lovely to see both my 'children' recently, and this time I even cooked a meal that worked! I have got out of the habit of cooking and so a frenzy occurs when I actually decide to cook for others. Gone are the days when I enjoyed spending hours preparing a meal, but at least there are some dishes that are quick and taste good. I cooked a Green Thai beef curry which all disappeared, so I still have to make sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch! After eating, we pootled off to our local stately home to buy their Christmas tree, this being a tradition of many years for me. The first day of the holidays means that I buy the tree and decorate it. So this year I got lucky a week early!! A lesson on making golden fairies for the top of the tree followed... (You can take the person out of the classroom but not the teacher out of the person!)
Well I have just worked out that Christams day is two weeks today and I have not done much by way of shopping yet. Aargh!

Can anyone explain?

My daughter came over last night for a natter and - did we natter? In fact at half past 12 there was a phone call to see if she was safe, the answer? "Yes, we're still talking."
It is not until you have one of those really good, lengthy discussions that things are dredged out of the past that you never knew about. I realised that for a long time in the past she was not comfortable in her own 'skin' so to speak and last night she talked for the first time about not feeling good about being intelligent! Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather - I just never knew this. Some of the gang she went around with at school were bright, but she apparently never actually felt that she was on the same planet as them. It was only when whe did her recent garden design course that a woman said to her," It's OK to be intelligent." (Gosh, the thngs you miss as a parent.... and the assumptions I made.) I make no bones about not being academic myself, this degree is a vertical learning curve for me (is there such a thing as a vertical curve!!?), however, what I didn't realise this was her insecurity about the same issue, albeit from a completely different angle.

The conversation then progressed onto other issues that has affected all of us - bullying. Both my children were bullied at school, she in fact sorted out one rather aggressive boy who was attacking her brother by lifting him up by the lapels of his jacket and threatning to sort him out. It worked - no more bother from that front. She suffered from other girls, and there were many nasty occurences during the days at school for her.
Then the bullying at work issue arose, we have both suffered from this; people who are supposedly adult cannot deal with someone being different. Why not? Where is the difficulty in this? We both agreed that some people do not have the courage to understand that being different is not a threat to them. Having another point of view does not mean that one cannot see their point of view and accept that perhaps it has to be the one that is adopted. Asking questions merely show curiosity and interest, not necessarily disagreement with the speaker.
Interestingly, when she leaves her job, there is a requirement that the person leaving is interviewed and gives their reasons for leaving. Now that strikes me as eminently sensible, in fact there could be an annual interview to discuss issues about the workplace so that these problems are not allowed to escalate into years of misery for people. The interviewer would need to be someone who is not involved with the establishment, in fact why wait until people leave, it could even be an online annual questionnaire. An approach of this kind could be something that might address this horrendous problem that so many people are needlessly facing. I t would also sort out other non-bullying issues like the need for a creche or other practical need that make work so difficult for families.

If we are so concerned about rooting out these nasty bullies, let us positively try to get rid of them from the family, the work place and schools as well as the streets.