HOLIDAYS :)

40something bitch and family are on their HOLIDAYS!

We will post again when we are back,  happy Easter!

Second Hand Rose, Buttons and Maths!

Last autumn I was at home wondering for the millionth time why there was always too much month and not enough money, and how with Christmas approaching a single mum with two kids was ever going to afford a turkey, let alone the enormous lists, stuck to the fridge, written to Santa which were getting bigger by the day.

The phone rang and it was Rose,  "erm.......Hi are you ok love....I have done something and I wondered if you could help me out?"  A phone call that starts like this is always entertaining as you never know what you are going to get yourself involved in, so I settled down on the sofa to have a chat and find out what my barmy ex mother in law had got herself into this time.


Rose had decided that "Memory Bears" were the future.  This was going to make her a LOT of money. (For any one unfamiliar with memory bears, they are teddy bears made out of old clothes from your loved ones.  They are really popular with parents and look something like this.)  As usual she threw herself into this project with gusto, making amazing teddy bears in all shapes and sizes, (rabbits as well now I think about it).


However, she did not have enough black buttons for the eyes, so had been looking round for a source of cheap black buttons. She ended up in a place that deals in bankrupt stock and found in a corner some buttons.  Careful enquiries established that they had been there a good few years and had been stripped out of a bankrupt haberdasher and no one really knew what to do with them.  After pausing for about a millisecond,  Rose decided that here was yet another opportunity to make money, so bought the whole damn lot!

Rose: "Well love, the thing is I have bought some buttons "

40Something: "Rose why on earth are you ringing me up to tell me you have bought some buttons? Your always using buttons?"

Rose: "Well there might be a few more than I can actually deal with"

I gave this some thought,  "how many buttons are we talking about?"

Turns out Rose had stumbled across a complete haberdashers stock and bought the lot. There were 8 crates of vintage buttons. Each crate held 96 tubes, and some tubes held upwards of 600 buttons! The average contents per tube was 500 buttons! So:96 tubes x 500 buttons = 48,000. 48,000 buttons X 8 crates = 384,000 plus some extra ones! (Bubble worked this out!).

I asked Rose how she thought she was going to sell all these buttons and discovered the flaw in Roses plan.  Rose had decided to put them on ebay, in small lots and really cash in this time.  However she was only allowed 100 listings in a month, and obviously selling buttons in bags of 20 or 30, still left her with an awful lot of buttons! Sitting in crates - in her kitchen - that everyone fell over.  Even my abysmal maths worked out that she would have 19,000 lots to sell and if she could only sell 100 lots a month, would take her at least 15 years!  Assuming she sold all of the lots every month! And....considering she is in her late 70's she would be more than 100 years old by the time she had sold them all!

Rose wondered if I had any spare listings on ebay that she could bung a few on.  I agreed to take a crate and said I would see what I could do......

To be continued.....

Thanks for reading






,

Preparations!

I do know I have a story to complete at some point for those that are interested, but I have been on a mission with the Dowager today, which is always an adventure so thought I would write a bit about that.

Last year the Dowager decided (at the grand old age of 70 something!) that caravan holidays were the future!  She wanted nothing more than to be able to take her 4 grandchildren to the seaside for weeks at time.  They could paddle on the beach, eat ice creams, play board games and eat fried spam to their hearts content!    I think in her head she thought caravanning was a bit like it was in the 1950's where you toddled along an "A" road at 30 miles an hour, holding all the traffic up, with your checked teatowels hanging out of the window.  Your thermos flask was filled with brown tea stewed to the point where it became orange sludge, and it took you weeks to get to your destination. Frequent stops were made and sandwiches and scones brought out to be enjoyed sitting in your deckchair.

The reality is very different, these days caravans have an aluminium chassis, are built out of fibreglass  and thunder down the motorways at 70 miles an hour.  Woe betide you if you don't lock a cupboard, drawer or shelf, your belongings will be splatted all over your caravan walls when you arrive.  They have complicated things like bottled gas, central heating, 240 volt hook up, water tanks, 3 way fridges, banks of batteries, hosepipes, drains, and waste water,  all of which was completely beyond the Dowager.  All she wanted was to eat cake, drink tea. and play with the grandchildren. Last summer was a steep learning curve for us all but ultimately the end result is, there is a nice caravan on a nice site, in a nice part of Wales, waiting for a nice family to have a lovely holiday.

Last summer was glorious and she did indeed have a wonderful time with her grandchildren.

The Dowager has decreed that the caravan is going to be too much for her this year so 40something and family are expected to make the most of it before she sells it next year.  This is an amazing piece of good fortune for us, but we are more like the "Clampett" family than the "Buckets", the delinquent dog on a welsh sheep farms involves a reinforced galvanised chain on a spike, there is no broadband or mobile phone signal or TV signal and its Wales!. .......and it's going to rain -  a lot!

40Something and family are off on our jollys when school breaks up, but thinking about all of the challenges we are going to face I set off on a mission today to try and find "stuff" that would pass the time.  The Dowager dropped in just as I was getting ready to go and promptly nicked my ham that I had just pulled out of the freezer to cook and take with us. She is going to cook it for me - (bet you 10p it is significantly smaller when it comes back!)

So - I decided I needed new wellies for Bubble, some books on tape, possibly some new dvds and some BORED games.  I hit the charity shops.

I love charity or thrift shops, rummaging about and looking for treasure is something that is just so much fun.  Very often the the old dears who volunteer to run these places have a cracking sense of humour and it always brightens my day.  I did not find what was I was looking for today, but did pick up 5 brand new tops still with their labels on.  Squeak supervised the trying on and fitting of these tops and as ever gave me her honest opinion.  "Well 4 of them are fine mum but that one.....is for someone a lot younger, and sexier, and a bit more of a fashionista than you are!"  "OK Squeak - I get the message - I will stick it my wardrobe and take it out and look at it every now and again - and dream of being young and daft!"

In other news I have now demolished the kitchen.  Squeak needs to take a decorated cross into school for Easter.  I have dismantled a wooden wine rack, had the hot glue gun out, utilised millions of buttons, found a box.  The place is bedlam AGAIN!

Thanks for reading

Second Hand Rose

Tonights story will be one told over a few days as it's a long one.  I will probably post bits of it every now and again until I reach the end of this particularly epic tale!

Second hand Rose is Bubble and Squeaks Nana, Whilst the Dowager personifies Downton Abbey,  Second Hand Rose is a scatty, harebrained ditsy eccentric who CANNOT pass a charity shop, car boot, church sale, garage sale or table top sale without stopping to have to have a quick look. Many bargains are to be found, the odd bit of treasure unearthed, and more often than not promptly sold on at a quick profit.  When we were all young and daft, she delighted in finding "stuff" to furnish the odd assortment of flats, houses, caravans and boats we took up residence in.

A seamstress by trade, she is always, always busy. Now in her 70's she still has barmy ideas to make her fortune and spends hours and hours making stuff, secure in the knowledge that "one day" she will drop on something that will make her a fortune. An extremely talented and hard working lady (I have a dustbin bag full of patchwork caps that I am still trying to sell), she upholsters, makes curtains, bedding, dresses, carrier bag holders with owls on, teddy bears, laundry bags, knits, crochets, does the crossword every day, finishes the suduko, finds time to eat out most days and generally has a pretty good time.

The downside to being an eccentric however is that everyone around her cringes when she says "Hang on minute.....I have an idea!"  or even worse  "erm....I have done something!"

To give you an example of just how off the wall she can be, I want to share one of the stories the ex-beloved used to tell me about his childhood.  The ExB was one of 4 children and when he was a little boy his sister had a pet mouse which duly escaped.  Every conceivable attempt was made to catch his sisters pet, all of which failed spectacularly.  The little mouse managed to make itself a comfortable residence in the bottom of the sofa and when anyone went anywhere near it it used to scuttle back under the sofa never to be seen again.  Time passed, and the mouse was by now happily ensconced in the front room king of its castle.  Trapping was out of the question, as was poisoning - this was after all somebodies beloved pet.  Rose came up with an amazing idea - "I know we will get the mouse drunk!  It will fall asleep and we can just pick it up!"

The drink of the time was Newcastle Brown Ale  (it was the 1970's and we are northern). A bottle was duly bought and some of the potent brew tipped into the lid.  The mouse loved it!  Drank the lot, retreated back to it's lair a happy mouse and slept the day away.  The following night two lid fulls were left out and the mouse once again drank the lot.  By the end of the week the ExB has vivid memories of tiptoeing across the front room with his younger brother on their way up to bed, trying not to disturb the plethora of Newcastle Brown Ale lids, all strategically placed around the front room while Rose kept a lonely vigil with a dustpan and cardboard box!  

Finally at long last (about 10 days!) the mouse drank enough Newcastle Brown Ale to sink a battleship, and triumphant at last Rose emerged from the front room with a comatose mouse, a gazillion lids from the beer bottles and a smirk on her face.

Roses ideas range from the bizarre to the downright eccentric and last autumn I answered the phone one evening to hear the words  "Erm....I have done something, is there any chance you can help me?"

Nuns with Guns and Men in Black.

Homework at 40Something towers is a bit hit and miss,  To be fair, Squeak who is 8, is extremely motivated and always has hers finished weeks before any deadline approaches. Happy and cheerful to be doing something new she will take a scatter gun approach to her projects. Very often she misses the point entirely and bounces in to school confidently expecting the teachers to believe she is a genius. The eternal optimist that is my daughter, is slowly learning to think things through and I have high hopes that at some point we will hand in a piece of work that has actually been requested.

 Bubble on the other hand views homework as a kind of optional extra, and begrudges spending his time doing stuff he is not interested in.  Should a topic take his fancy then he will cheerfully complete his project, before confining it to the back of his extraordinary brain never to be talked about again, often knowing more about the subject than I do.  However if he is not interested in his homework then the scene at home resembles something from an emergency ward!.  We have headaches, stomach aches, mystery pains and ailments, he is hungry, he needs the toilet, there is a program he must watch.  He will use every delay tactic he can possibly think of, leaving it to the very last minute before ending up slumped over a piece of paper with a pen in his hand.  Last night was a full on homework epic, I have given up suggesting he do a bit each week - so yet again Bubble did a terms project the night before it was due to be handed in.  This meant a fairly late night for both of us, and as Monday morning is generally chaotic, needing military planning and a International peacekeepers beret, I was determined to be on the ball and not end up turning up at school with my pajamas on looking like something the delinquent dog frequently drags through the kitchen!

After my son had completed his heroic quest I decided to talk to him about school, and specifically what was happening at the moment.  School received a terrible Ofsted report, and as a result, it is looking likely that the school will undergo a process called an  "enforced" Academy status. This effectively privatises failing schools, and the government keep those schools doing well.  Becoming an Academy is something the Governors of the school believe would have a negative impact on the children of the school, not to mention the whole board would be replaced by a team of 4 "experts" from the chosen sponsor, which would allow no local representation from parents, the church school or local community.  There are petitions floating around, parents are being urged to write to Lord Nash, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for schools or to attend meetings where everything will be made clear.

As ever when dealing with children I make the effort to explain things in such a way that Bubble and Squeak can understand.  So last nights conversation went something like this:

Me: "Bubble do you know anything about this Academy schools status thing?"

Bubble:  "Yeah - it's because we got really good results in year 2 and now in 6 we are getting rubbish ones!"

Me:  "Well I am not signing any of the petitions and stuff to try and keep the school as it is now, so if any one at school asks you to ask me to sign anything I am not doing it.  As far as I can make out mate, It is a church group that will be taking over and they will put 4 of their own people in to oversee the transition, I am not at all religious, but I think morals with money might be ok."

Bubble has a sense of the ridiculous that equals my own and his eyes started twinkling,

"Mum does this mean that if we become an Academy there will be 4 nuns with guns patrolling the school saying "work harder boy!"

Me:  "No...it's a Church of England trust, I don't think they have nuns,  I think the 4 people would be a team of experts a bit like a SWAT team or the Men in Black"

Bubble " That's even cooler!  I want Will Smith to patrol the school....In fact Nuns with Guns and Will Smith together will be even better!"

I really have no idea what will happen to our local school!

Thanks for reading xx

blah, blah,blah.... blog - and "Enforced" Acadamy status

I have decided not to write a blog post every day!  (Hurray I hear some of you cheering!)  This is because not only do I have other things to do, two lively kids to contend with and the delinquent who needs 24 hour care, but also because I think I might actually be able to write something worth reading! (Optimism is my new middle name). When I decided to write a blog, as usual I did little or no research on the subject, just jumped in and away we went. The last few days have been filled with endless research on blogs, blogging, how to blog, circles of blogs, adding meaning and content to blogs, embedding buttons in blogs, blog, blog, blog.........

All I wanted to do was just to write a few things about my day that amused me, and hopefully anyone else that is kind enough to read what I do. The first thing I discovered is that bloggers are supposed to utilise social media all over the place.  This is in order to generate "traffic" and drive people to seeing what I write. At 40 something towers we do have a fair bit of information technology knocking about the place so I thought this would be a breeze.  WRONG!

The Facebook thing was quite easy, probably because I like FB, and I am pretty familiar with its set up.  Creating a page was well within my comfort zone and I felt pretty smug about the whole thing.  Then I realised that my blog was connected to my personal email. The last thing I want is a shed load of notifications and emails landing in already overcrowded inbox that I rarely clean up. Are you ready for this..... I had to create a new email, invite myself to be a co-author, accept the invite, log in, log out, log back in, accept it, then make myself a new admin, then delete my other self!  That did not take any working out AT ALL!

Creating an account on Twitter seemed quite easy.  Just sign up, stick a bit about yourself (which I copied from the header page) and away you go.  Then it asked me who I wanted to follow.  This stumped me for a few minutes as I don't use twitter and don't know anyone who does yet!  I decided to "follow" some eye candy so selected people who set my heart aflutter.  Then I had a panic because I realised that anyone who looked at my profile would think I was some kind of weird celebrity stalker so deleted some of those, (leaving Robert Carlyle in obviously!) and added some really not at all interesting news channels.  I looked at my feed and it was full of news!  This makes me look like some kind of political activist (which I am not) so I added quite a few comedians!  I am hoping this makes me come across as a balanced individual but  I am guessing probably not. Google + was straightforwardish but again needed some tinkering with.

Bubble, who has appointed himself "editor in chief" then said we needed "reddit"  I have never even heard of this.  He explained it is really popular and lots of people talk about it.  Bubble can be a geek about what he is interested in, and I am not sure that gamers who play minecraft and watch "The Yogscast" would ever find a 40 something womans blog about housework and dogs interesting!  The "reddit" button has been duly added.

Then I was informed that you should sign up to some blogging sites and get to know your fellow writers,  (do you have any idea how many of them there are out there?).  I signed up - verified myself and guess what?  I now have to wait for my application to be accepted!  Why is everything so bloody long winded and complicated.  All I want is a simple stress free blog!  For now, I have managed to put all the links onto the page and please do feel free to like, follow or share any of them, (although, I am not guaranteeing that the twitter thing will be a success) it's always kind of amazing when someone likes what I do, and I am truly grateful for the comments or shares.

The big news today is that it is looking likely that school is to have an "enforced" Academy status, we have a letter telling us all about it and asking us for our views.  It is NOT enough that as a single mum I have to do everything  - plait sawdust, cook, clean, paint, decorate, garden, do the DIY, fix the car, find enough money, be a counsellor, look fab, pick up poo and stay abreast of happenings in the real world, I now have to look into something else!

The first point the letter made was that the school have adopted and implemented a "robust improvement plan," for improving results and by becoming an Academy it will jeopardize this.  I have no idea how true this is, as I don't know what new measures would be implemented.  The second point was that in the opinion of the Governors, becoming an Academy would mean the Governing Body would be replaced by an Interim Executive Board during the consultation period and would consist of 5 individuals who have no current links to the school.  We would lose the people who represent parents, the community, church, staff and LEA.  My understanding of Academy Schools is that there should always be 2 elected representatives from parents on the board of Governors and so fail to see how replacing one board with another would affect parental representation.  I have no idea how long an Interim Executive Board is expected to be in place, but would assume that those appointed have the schools best interests at heart.

The Ofsted report has already led to the resignation of the current headmaster, a guy I have had no real issues with so I think his resignation is a shame. Bubble and Squeak generally do very well at school, are happy to go and with very few notable exceptions I think their time spent at school has been well spent. So what do I think about Academy schools?  I have no idea!  A quick google search told me the basics, another search revealed pro's and cons, and a last search revealed a lot of rubbish.  Do Academy schools show improvement?  I have no idea. Is it some part of some wider government agenda? - probably.  Is there a potential clash between the teaching unions and Academy status?- most definitely. If I am honest I think after the last terrible report the school had ANYTHING they do would will be an improvement and could not possibly make things any worse. Once you are at the bottom the only way you can go is up!.

Apologies if you were expecting more tales from the dog side -I decided to write about something else today.

I have discovered putting Harry Potter on the telly is the most effective way of getting half an hour to myself to write this blog!  Happy Days!

Thanks for reading

The Delinquent and The Robber

I did not mean to write another post about dogs so soon, so if dogs are not your thing then check back tomorrow, when I will have thought of something else to say. But yesterdays post got me thinking about all the disasters I have with my dog, so I thought I would share a few more, which is probably much more interesting than telling you a load of techno rubbish about how easy (not) it is to add buttons and stuff to your blog so people can follow you.  I have spent a good proportion of my day doing this and learning as I go along, and if cleaning causes me to lose the will to live then googling "How do I ...........? and reading the various answers and solutions causes a reaction in me similar to major blood loss trauma. However I think I have cracked it.  There are now buttons you can press to follow my blog, and buttons to share my blog, and I even managed to set up accounts with twitter etc.   I am superwoman!

If the delinquent is the Frank Gallagher of the dog world, then the Robber is Benedict Cumberbatch!  A large graceful black lab who weighs in at 7 and half stone and is the gentlest giant you could ever want to meet.  The Robber often comes to stay with us and the two dogs have a great time trashing the house, scrapping, taking over the sofa's sleeping on my bed, and having competitions between themselves to see which of them can make the worst smell!

We all adore the Robber, the delinquent puffs his chest up and thinks he has his very own gang, and the the kids get a lot of fun with him, generally at my expense (more about that later).  The Robber, does have a few things though that get some getting used to.  Walking him is like walking a baby bull elephant.  He has no concept at all of walking to heel and charges about like an over excited toddler in a sweet shop.  His weight, combined with fact that the delinquent is on a lead in the other hand means I end up being dragged all over the road, or fields, or grass, or rivers, or footpaths or wherever he decides to go really whenever he feels like it.  The kids laugh their heads off, and I just look like a total doofus.  His other major failing is that he is a born robber and there is no food he will not eat. The robber has been known to sniff out a chocolate advent calendar safely stashed away in a bedroom, steal it and retreat back to his bed so he can snaffle it in peace, and then look completely  innocent and surprised when the evidence is discovered hours later.

Walking the Robber is problematical,  obviously having no control over two dogs going down the street is not a good look, not to mention quite dangerous sometimes, so I solve the issue by throwing both dogs in the car and driving them somewhere remote where they can run about to their hearts content.

It was a horrible day in autumn, wet and windy and we were at the canal.  I had a fancy new handbag and my plan was to park the car, walk the dogs for a mile or so down the canal where there is a Tesco, tie the dogs up outside, pick up some bread and milk and walk back.  Simple

The reality was the Robber, who loves to swim, jumped in the canal.  I did not worry overmuch (he is a dog, he likes water, and he can swim) the delinquent quite happily stumped along the towpath and everything was serene.  Till we got to a bit of the canal that used to have a small lock on it,  The Robber was quite happily swimming along the canal when we came across two yummy mummies out with their precious darlings feeding the ducks.  One of the mummies started yelling at me that the sides were too steep for the dog to climb out and she thought he would drown.  I tried to point out that the Robber would just swim to the end of the steep sided bit and climb out but she was having non of it.  So I carefully put down my new handbag, knelt down in the mud, and yanked out a seven and half stone dog onto the towpath who promptly landed on the new bag!  Then proceeded to shake the spare water off all over me and the bag!  I arrived at Tesco looking like something the cat dragged in, smiled at the checkout operator who looked slightly taken aback to be confronted by such a vision, trudged the mile back to the car with two happy dogs and a wrecked new bag!

I need a deep breath to tell you my next story as it's not for the faint hearted.  The Robbers predilection for stealing food when ever and where ever he can get it sometimes leaves him with a bit of an upset stomach.  The Robber had been staying with us for a day or two and had managed to beg, borrow or steal quite a lot of extra titbits.  Sunday morning dawned and the kids very graciously let me have a bit of a lie in,  the plan was, clean up, stick a roast in the oven, load the dogs in the car, drive 3 miles to the local reservoir, walk the dogs for an hour or two, come back have Sunday lunch.  Job done.

What happened was very, very different.  We set off all loaded up, two dogs, two kids and myself.  After the usual spat as to who was sitting in the front,  Squeak ended up in the front, Bubble went on the back seat with the dogs. (I did have a guard to keep them in the boot, the delinquent wrecked it)  Bubble had his nose in a book when he suddenly said  "Mum - one of the dogs has done a whiffy"  we sighed and opened all the windows.  The smell got worse and worse, Bubble finally took his nose out of his book and said  "erm....Mum - The Robber has had an accident in the car!"

Things went from bad to worse after that,  I could not stop as we were on a main road, so I turned off onto a narrow country lane pelted along, hell for leather with all the windows and the sunroof open until we reached our destination.  Letting the dogs and two horrified kids out of the car I assessed the damage.  The robbers "accident" looked like an elephant poo.  This was compounded by the fact that he had walked through it and so was all over the back seat and window!  Looking in the boot I discover the only bags I had for cleaning up were the extra large fabric bags from Aldi!  I cleaned up as best I could and we all set off to walk round the reservoir

While I walked I formulated a new plan.  We would walk the dogs, then drive to Tesco, park at the bottom of the car park (so no-one would know what we were up to) and buy stuff to clean and disinfect the car. We got back to the car to discover one of the tyres was going flat and the kids point blank refused to sit in the back.  We ended up with Bubble in the front seat, Squeak in the footwell,  two happy dogs in the back, and me driving very carefully.

Supplies were duly bought, we let the dogs out of the car and operation clean up began.  An hour later we limped into the garage to put air in the tyre and finally we made it back home.

Dinner was burnt!

Squeak is disgusted at us today.  Her April fools day pranks was not appreciated.  Offering to make Bubble his morning cereal she promptly put lemon juice into the milk to curdle it.  Bubble was definitely not amused when not only had she done that - she had used the last of the crunchy nut cornflakes so he had to have Weetabix.  I was even less amused to find there was hardly any milk left for that all important first bucket of coffee that always starts my day.

Thanks for reading