All change!

New Year, new starts.

My new job at Witney Library starts 20th January. I'm very happy about it as it's a permanent contract - 14 hrs, Tuesday morning, Wednesday afternoon and all day Friday.  Whilst it's fewer hours than my present contract (18.5hrs), I'll be glad to have my weekends back.  For the past two years I've worked every Saturday morning at Grove Library, and I'll be helping out by working alternate Saturdays until the volunteers take over at the start of May.  My contracts at Grove were only temporary,  and were due to end at the end of April, so I'm lucky to have a permanent contract at last.

As parents you (try to) do what you consider to be the best for your child.  For many and various reasons we've gone down the private education route - up until now.  Phoebe's well established at her lovely girls school in Abingdon, no worries there.  Sadly, last week we received an e-mail/letter from Tom's school inviting us to a meeting to discuss the future of the school.

Unfortunately we'd already experienced the demise of the local prep school here in Wantage, which is why we ended up taking the children to a school in Faringdon....  Not ideal.  Not local. (10 miles commute).  Not environmentally friendly, not good for forming friendships, not good for fuel consumption and wear and tear on vehicles.... in all, not what we'd chosen, but then the choice was taken away from us.

And it's been a lovely lovely, school, our children have done well, and although there had been 4 head teachers in 5 years, we thought we'd weathered the storm, and stuck by them.  Now it seems, they'd been subsidised by the parent company for the past 9 years, and they're no longer prepared to keep losing money.

So, here we are again, with the parents campaigning, raging, fighting, kicking, screaming, calming... forming a group, and negotiating, thinking, scheming, planning, hope against hoping that they can overcome the obstacle, and find a solution, rise above it, fix it, mend it, start it again, start over, afresh, new and clean, bright as a button, like a child on their first day of school.  And I hope they can.

Because we can't.  Because we've done it before.  And last time we waited it out and that was a mistake.  Because the school slowly disintegrates before your eyes. Week after week the children gradually drop away, like a rumour, drip away, like a whisper, if not in your class, then which class, how's it hanging together now, by a string, by a thread, by a cobweb?

So we're doing what we think is best.  Again.  And I'll not say anything further about it until everything's done and dusted because it doesn't seem right.

And, if that's not enough to be getting to grips with, on top of all that, we've had our own situation with the local floods.

We've had a long-standing problem with our drains.  Or rather we experience problems with our drains when the main sewer/foul line is inundated with rain water. And on the occasions we experience a problem with our drains, it's usually sorted itself out, and receded within 12-24 hours.  I could go on, but it's a bit of a bore.  Suffice to say for the last 5 days we've been overflowing at the inspection chamber at the front of our house, at the inspection chamber at the rear of our house, and also from our neighbour's inspection chamber onto my hen patch and vegetable patch at the back of the garden.  For 5 days.

Today it's finally receded and we've been able to sluice it down, rod it out, and start to feel that we're back to normal. Except we're not back to normal.  Normal's not normal when you expect your drains to flood when there's heavy rain.  So I've been on the phone - a lot.  And I'm going to be on the phone - a lot.  And I fully intend to get this resolved because I'm completely fed up of them taking the piss (pardon my language), or should that be them NOT taking the piss, because no piss was taken anywhere as it all overflowed into my garden.

Our two district Councillors visited and viewed the situation on Friday, and on Saturday I had a good chat about it to my County Councillor and I'm not letting this drop until something happens, because what's been happening for the last 5 years is just not good enough.  So here's where I pin my fight.  And I'm right in the mood for it.

Watch this space.

Kat.

Bed time routine

I'm all for bed-time routine, both in the house, and outside it - in as much as putting the hens 'to bed' is, obviously, part of the daily routine.  We call it 'putting the hens to bed', when in reality, they've usually put themselves in, and just need the door shutting to keep them safe for the night.

This time of the year means locking them up when it's gone dark - usually from 4.30pm on-wards, although the days are already 'drawing out' and if the weather's nice they may still be hanging around outside at 4.40pm.  They're definitely inside by 4.45pm, and the recent wet weather has meant I've left it until gone 5pm to be certain they're inside and to give myself the job of heading down the garden only once in my rain attire.

This careful planning and well trodden routine is sometimes put asunder by their hen-ladder having fallen down during the day - bad weather - or if one's gone in and somehow dislodged the hen-ladder for the remaining hen.  Which is what I found around 5.30pm in the pitch dark on New Year's Day.

The hen-ladder fallen to the ground, one hen in and one hen out, not exactly distressed, but confused, as if by walking away from the scene and then returning, it would magically straighten itself into what was normally there.  So I put the hen-ladder back and then retreated to give the hen space to approach.

I also shone my head-torch on the hen-ladder so the hen could see it was in place and would toddle along nice and quickly....  No.  This was not to be.  Backwards, and forwards, backwards and forwards... this was starting to do my head in.  All that was left to do was start chasing it round the muddy patch of ground in the pitch black, but for my my head torch... and I've done that once too often!

She obviously wanted to go in, but, but, but.  Ah-ha.  My years of experience clicked in, and I tried to 'think like a hen'.  I see now.  Of course.  It's not bedtime at all.  It's daylight.  Time to scratch and peck, scratch and peck....

I used to have just an ordinary torch, but my husband treated me to a head-torch after he'd babysat the hens at half-term, when I was 'up North' with the children.  He thought it would be easier to manage the gate catch and hen-house door with two hand free instead of encumbered by holding a torch.... And I'm really pleased with it, and wonder why I'd not had one sooner.  But I digress.

The beauty of my head torch is it had two levels of illumination.  Thinking 'like a hen' I dimmed the beam, so the light shining towards the hen-ladder now resembled a dusk-like light, and 'hey presto!' the hen went up the hen-ladder and into the hen-house.

Took a little longer than usual, but we got there in the end.

Night night!

Another New Year's Day

So, here we are again, reflecting on where the last year went, and lamenting how quickly it passed by.  No?  OK.  Happy New Year to you and yours, wherever you may be.  We'd been invited to V's party last night - to bring the New Year in, and the children were welcome along as well.  The children amused us (and were amused by us) playing charades, so it passed the time remarkably quickly considering that I was the sole adult who was sober.

I'd been banking on Tom (7) not lasting, and needing to go home early, as an excuse (I've never been a 'night-owl'), but blow me down he actually went the distance.  It was Phoebe (13) who's head was on my shoulder at 11.30pm.  Still, we're all tired out now, and it's early nights all round.  Need to get back into a routine, school next week, and all that.  I'm back to work tomorrow, but it's a 'short' week, so no matter.

We took a day-trip to 'big' London on Sunday.  A train ride from Didcot Station took us up to the big smoke in an hour.  We hopped onto the Tube and got off at Marble Arch to head into the 'Winter Wonderland' in Hyde Park.

No time to stop and gawp at the men holding court at Speakers Corner, and there was some kind of parade/march amassing - something to do with a Muslim celebration of the birth of someone or other, which was all very orderly and most of the participants were dressed head to toe in black.  I did enjoy the march marshals with their loud-hailers standing by the pedestrian crossing, behesting us to 'Wait for the green man, ladies and gents, not yet, not yet, now!'.

Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland appeared to me to be nothing other than an excuse for a very LARGE fun fair with all the associated nonsense and thronging masses of the great unwashed and pickpockets.  We'd decided not to do the ice-skating, but had opted instead to book in advance online for the 'Ice Kingdom' experience....  wrap up warm we were warned, it was -8 degrees inside.... and it was.  It had to be in order to keep the ice and snow sculptures frozen.

 The sculptures ranged in size and subject, from the small, and cute, to the larger.... and cute

 ... to the immensely huge!

and not at all cute.

 The scale and artistry of some of the pieces was truly impressive, and we took the scaffold walkway behind the castle...

 some people stuck coins to the ice... whilst others tried to prise them off the ice....

to exit the castle 'ramparts' you had to go down the ice slide - which wasn't as slippy as you'd imagine.

There was more to see, but you get the idea, and by this stage Tom needed to go to the loo, so we scurried past the last few things, and skipped the ice bar (which served various beers, spirits, and hot chocolate) as well.

After lunch (out of the Wonderland - we didn't fancy eating 'on the hoof') we returned and had a ride on the big wheel.

I would have taken more photos - super opportunity, clear sky, but, I do still suffer from Vertigo, and as much as I'd like not to, once we'd got the top I was longing for us to get back to the bottom.  The ride controllers had other ideas, and the whole thing went round a second time before we disembarked and got back on solid ground.

We had an interesting journey from the park to Paddington Station.  We ended up in a black cab because the tube was temporarily closed (barriers all down, crowds pressing, no announcements until we heard sirens, so we surmised there must have been an 'incident' - euphermism for 'accident' (or other) so not wanting the children to see too much of the darker side of life in the city we legged it to the surface).

Our cab driver was the least chatty of his kind, and the traffic was abysmyl.  One particular bottle-necked double parked street had a woman walking down the middle of the road to the impasse (us versus a white car) and saying 'I'll just see if we can get someone further down to move along', or words to that effect....  Several similar streets later, a slight bump from the rear back flank of the cab to a parked vehicle, and a quick nip wrong way down a short one-way street to a large square, and we got to the station.

I don't spend much time in London anymore, and I'm glad of that.  Still, you've got to stretch your comfort zone once in a while, and it was a good family day out.

Night for now.  Kat