Nerve gas.

My eldest is currently at University, fighting her way through dissertations and essays and student life on a non toilet roll purchasing shoestring (Reference -See mother toilet roll history) The other day she had a presentation to do and according to the wire ( Facebook, twitter, emails, phone calls and texts) she was stressed out at the thought of presenting at University. My daughter! Nervous? Never! Couldn't imagine it. This was the girl who had acted in plays and pantomimes, sung solos, sung in front of 1500 in the Cambridge Corn Exchange, sung a duet with her father and lived to tell the tale. This was the girl who would dare to tell off 5 strangers on a tube who were pestering a young girl....as her father idly toyed with the metro crossword. The girl who wrestled a would be purse snatcher outside the Brixton Academy.
And then I thought, maybe there's more to this than meets the eye as I believe the apple doesn't always fall very far from the tree....although it's probably picked up and packed by Eastern European migrant workers.
Despite my gay and witty repartee, I am, when push comes to shove, a terrified little boy inside this overweight ginger exterior. The acting/ singing /drama god thing has come pretty late in life. even now my favourite moment is the final curtain call. Knowing that I've done something well that I'm really proud of but thankful that I don't have to do it again in case it goes pear shaped.
My first public speaking was at University when I ran for a sabbatical post and had to be heckled in the student union bar. My wedding was terrifying as I stood at the front with one legged locked straight so that I couldn't fall over and trying to be strong knowing that there was a beautiful bundle of tears stalking me up the aisle.
Public speaking is not an easy thing and most people never get the opportunity to do it.
Teaching! Teaching is about facing my fears every day, in some case the OFSTED unfriendly B.Birss show 5 times a day, Funnier than Reginald D. Hunter and no use of the "n" word.
Public speaking is nerve wracking and can make your stomach turn. ( or give you gas)
Hopefully she managed to complete it and was pleased with the outcome.

I'm Kim Jong Un, get me out of here.

 A week ago, all we could talk about was Li'l Kim. Kids at school who hardly pay any attention to new that occurs outside the football and entertainment pages paid attention to the fact the world might end.
The world didn't end when the hadron collider didn't find the Higgs boson particle for a millisecond and accidentally plunge the world into eternal nothingness. Kids paid attention to that.
North Korea were about to launch missiles in the direction of South Korea in response to them unleashing Psy and Gangnam Style.
This week we appear to have forgotten about him and are more concerned about Kim Kardashian's maternity clothing, Gweneth Paltrow's see through dress or Luis Suarez's  teeth
What has caused all this? Simple. Obama sent Li'l Kim an iPad with a BGT app which he uses instead of the nuclear launch button. Apparently this keeps him busy for hours and has kept his mind off of world domination.
The Second World War was won when Churchill sent a colouring book to Adolf Hitler. Hitler's years as a painter came back to him and he would spend hours colouring in.
Sadly, he did spend a lot of time crossing over the lines - force of habit, but it was enough to put him off his game.
Nikita Kruschev was in America at a dinner with all of Hollywoods Great and Good including Marylyn Monroe with whom he was quite taken.
He exclaimed his disappointment that he was unable to go to Disneyland because the US powers said that they could not guarantee his safety.
If only he could have gone then the whole Bay of Pigs incident could have been avoided.
Maybe it's time for Kim Jong Un to do a guest appearance on the BGT panel. machine a new BROMANCE with Simon!

At least Communism had a five year plan!

As a Head of Faculty, I am judged on results.
My maths Faculty have slowly but surely moved forward from a pass rate in the high 50's to 78% last year and my team hope to surpass that target this year.
Well done, I hear you say! Hopefully.
The only problem is that the Government keep changing the rule book. Three tiers of entry to two tiers of entry.
Then scrap coursework.
Then introduce questions requiring more writing and analysis.
Now the march exams are being removed next year and the following year the November exams will only be for resist.
This means that kids will only have one attempt at their GCSE exam unless I enter them for their GCSE's at the end of year 10 to enable them to have three attempts at the exam.
Every school is judged on performance based on how many students achieve 5 or more GCSE results INCLUDING Maths and English.

Yet every year they change the rule book that we have to work to in order to achieve the best for our students.

If students do well the exams are getting easier. If students do poorly then it is the fault of the teacher with no thought as to how their tinkering affects progress.

How can you measure improvement year on year when the rules continually change.

Communism may not have been the way forward but at least when they wanted to improve things, they did have a five year plan.

The Only Way is E-Sex!

Love has changed.
Relationships have changed.
When was the last time you told someone that you loved them....if you have to think about it, I rest my case. (I'm also not referring to footballers or pop stars who have love thrown at them on a regular basis from appreciative acolytes...the exception being my feelings for Didier Drogba in Munich in May 2012...that love can never be broken.)
What ever happened to good old fashioned hand holding and kissing and writing letters of undying or unrequited love?)
Nowadays we have sexting. Lets not be in the same room but talk dirty to each other. Hold on a minute....this is a camera phone....CLICK!
I looked on the Internet for events on at Hatfield Forrest......and came across an article that said it was Essex's number one site for dogging. DOGGING! I drive past the car park most nights and am now afraid to slow down or turn my head.
The Internet is either a technological miracle, an educational shot of novocaine (colouring in for the new millennium as children can cut and paste instead of actually reading and summarising) or a source of concern for parents.
The first day I got a modem, my eldest daughter asked if she could use the computer to do some research on her school animal project. Her chosen animal was the beaver....HELP!
In London it is said that you are never more than 12 feet away from a rat. On the Internet you are probably never more than 12 clicks away from pornography.
My wife said that whilst on her ipad the other day she received an invitation to meet "local slags." I wasn't aware that we had any but shall now look more closely when queuing in the Post Office.
Say "I love you" more often and mean it.
Take time out to show someone special that you love them.
Spend the afternoon just laying in each others arms watching them breathe.
It's a beautiful, precious,vulnerable moment of trust.

Go on. You know that you want to.

Weapons of Mass Destruction and why NATO can't find them.

......Or as we prefer to think of them Weapons of Maths Instruction. It never ceases to amaze me how totally unprepared students are for the real world. We try to teach them trigonometry and other functions on a calculator.

" I don't need my calculator, I have my phone" In years to come, when that student has become a soldier and not bothered how learn to use the rifle (may have forgotten to bring rifle to Iraq as he packed for the wrong week) but at least he will still have his phone.

The compass is a weapon in its own right as students see it as a tool for stabbing the kid in front. (Thus good for hand to hand combat with the Taliban.) They cannot read the scale of a protractor  because it goes from  1 to 180 degrees but in two confusing directions and appears to mysteriously break the day before it's needed in class. (Sorry sergeant, my grenade broke at breakfast this morning Sah!) 

The pencil. A simple tool which when used effectively can solve many problems.  I didn't  realise that it's sole functions is to be broken into three pieces and thrown at the lad across the room. (I'm dead handy with a smoke bomb sarge but again it broke....)

A pen! Here is the first piece of equipment that the Army has a use for. The ability to strip a rifle down into it's component parts for cleaning and then to reassemble. With teenage boys, I have never seen so many pens that need to broken into individual pieces, (even the humble biro) during the course of a lesson. Sadly many of them never make it back to their existing conditions and many students are "injured" during the fray as the blue blood of battle runs freely through their fingers.

So I am sorry that we have failed you, as many students never bring their "weapons" to the battlefield and so cannot be trained.

Never fear. There is always one student with a fully armed pencil case, fully aware of the functions of the letters above the keys on the calculator and what they actually do. He will design you a weapon or a piece of software that will cover for the reduction in soldiers. We salute you!

Postman Pat goes to the job Center.

Cliff Richard was right. It's so funny how we don't talk anymore. We do, of course communicate using a variety of other social media. The phone text. The bane of the teachers daily life. C U l8r soz lol, and we wonder why GCSE English grades are in decline.  A recent Literacy mandate involved the concern that kids don't put capitals at the start of things .......... such as their OWN names but that capital B's make guest appearances in the middle of words for no apparent reason.......please can we maths teachers help.
I'll Facebook you later. Facebook seemed to me a site where many friends and colleagues would let you know that they were just opening a bottle of wine at the end of a hard working week. I still don't know why all of their friends needed to know every little mundane thing in their life. My wife is still hurt that I won't friend her on Facebook. "If I wanted to friend you dear, I would put down my ipad and roll over in bed and get you to do the same." Maybe if I friended her on Facebook first I could let her know to put her ipad down and save a lot of time.
Twitter. Facebook for the texting generation who can't really express themselves past 120 odd characters.
Blogging. "I like your blog" says Mrs Head of  Maths to me. "It means that I don't actually have to listen to you when you go off on one, which you do regularly enough about the house."
So when was the last time you wrote a letter? I don't mean sending a cheque with your credit card bill or sending an overpriced birthday card with five words...Happy Birthday David, Love Susan. A real letter, filled with hopes and dreams and words that were not using predictive text or spell checked?
I rest my case. I had a heart attack when I asked for some second class stamps to send a birthday card. If that had happened on the same day that I bought a beverage in a coffee shop, I may have had to downsize my house as a result.
Kids today don't write, can't spell without help and use a text language that mutilates the Queens English and share their bland thoughts and life with other people who need to lol on a regular basis.
Imagine Postman Pat, who has had to have Jess the Cat sent to a shelter as he makes his way past the signs advertising BBQ's and Quiz Nites on the way to sign on. At least he knows when capital letters should be used. Soz.

Don't shoot me, I'm just the teacher.

In India, the buses came into town, men were herded in and mass unwanted sterilisations occurred in an attempt to curb the rising population. As an Educational Professional, there are times when I believe that there is still a need for that bus and today, I hope that it's a double decker.
People today have no concept of taking responsibility for their actions. Yesterday, I signed a students report to say that they had been 30 minutes late. "that's f*ckin' ridiculous." I was told. "But you were actually 30 minutes late." Today when the same student walked off at the start of the lesson to talk to an unnamed teacher from an unnamed subject about "something." So I reported her.
Imagine my surprise to be told that HER lunchtime detention was MY fault. Her poor punctuality and inability to follow instructions which led to a detention (unattended and so a days isolation ensued,) had nothing to do with her actions and was all my fault for recording her poor behaviour. "Driver."
A parent called to complain about a member of staff. "We'll I just want to talk about the problem that he's having with your teacher....." At this point I started shouting "oh....oh.....oh.......oh" down the phone. "Did you find that annoying?"  I asked her to which she replied "yes." "We'll that's what your child does when my teacher is talking and was eventually removed for throwing a pen across the room. "He said he got sent out for giving a pen back." "But it's the teacher fault! My boy doesn't like him. He learns when he gets sent out to another teacher."
" So you want me to reward his bad behaviour by moving him to another group?" "Yes because it's all the teachers fault." "Driver"
I do love the phrase "I wouldn't want to do your job." A phrase that is sadly followed by a load of suggestions as to how I should, in fact,  do my job properly.

If people do not realise that actions have consequences, what exactly is the point of their existence?
Answers on a postcard....what...you think I should  have got answers by email .....and its not your fault if I don't get any answers because you didn't bother to ask anyone to fill them in......

You want me to pay HOW MUCH for a coffee?

Coffee. Just a plain coffee. Milk, no sugar. No. not a latte, not a cappuccino not a caramel mocha. You don't do ordinary coffee! Oh! Well, I'll try the latte cos that sounds simple. Excuse me, I've been here for five minutes waiting for my latte....has your kettle not boiled then?
Why are you putting brown powder on the top of it? No! i bought it to drink and not to put in a gallery. OK Thanks. how much is it? Pardon? For one coffee? Are you sure I'm not paying for the lady behind me as we'll? Really! I could have bought a jar of coffee for that AND kept myself going for a month!
You've upset me Mr. Coffee maker...what was that? You are a barista........in my opinion you are a money swindling ......barista......you make over priced coffee and clean a very big machine that puts bubbles into a cup and you get to make up a stupid name for yourself. It sounds like barrister....they have got to many years of study in order to do their job.....oh....you went on a course that included health and safety AND you get to wear the t-shirt. Fantastic!
No! I won't be having a nice day...I'm going to go shopping. But at least I ow have the taste of overpriced coffee in my mouth to keep me going.

"Dad, why don't you get a onesie?" What's a onesie? And what exactly does it do? Ah you mean it's like clothes but covers your whole body and makes you look like an animal. Why would I want to look like an animal? I'm a grown man.......no I don't care if they do them in my size, I don't see the point. I'm a human being, I have clothes that already do that function. Do you remember the all in sleeping bag that we saw in the other shop? Yes the sleeping bag pyjama like thing that you get into just to sit on the sofa. What's the point in that? If you wanted to wear a onesie or a sleeping bag pyjama thing......why not just go to bed?
I am a grown man, I do not need a onesie. God has already provided real men with their own onesies.........they are called BOILER SUITS!

The Luis Suarez Vegan Cookbook.

Currently very popular in the Merseyside area and a best seller in the Amazon charts is the Luis Suarez Cookbook. Definitely not for vegetarians. This contains a variety of recipes that are all meat based. Louis has moved away from the spices of his South American home and developed a taste for Eastern European meals. He prefers nothing better than a light bite in the afternoon and is prepared to forgo the fave beans and fine chianti that would compliment this fare.
The man is an animal. Not since the days of Mike Tyson's teeth meeting Evander Holyfield's ear, have we witnessed such feral behaviour. Mike had the excuse that in a boxing clinch....at least it was near. Luis had to get both hands on the arm and then lean in to take a bite, ( although he didn't have time to put on seasoning first.)
The phrase "adding insult to injury" was emphasised by a last minute, equalising goal scored by a man who should have been enjoying an early bath.
The FA are about to introduce Hawkeye goal line technology so that once every three months we don't have the "did it go over the line or not "  argument.
The fact that Mr. Suarez has already served a 7 match ban for biting an opponent and will probably get a post match ban of a similar magnitude will sadly not be any consolation for Chelsea who were robbed of victory.
Here is an ideal example of how football has put it's head in the sand and refuses to embrace game changing technology that millions can see instantly, yet officials do not benefit from and football matches and thus millions of pounds can be affected by it.
It's time for UEFA and FIFA to wise up and bring football up to the standard of other sports which have vastly improved by the use of TV replays.
The Beautiful Game has had another Ugly day.
Beware all if Luis wants to have you over for dinner.....

Michael Gove versus the world.

Hi. I am Michael Gove saviour of Education in the free world. Teachers are the problem you see. When children underachieve it is the fault of the teacher not the child. I as always have the solution. lets try lengthening the school day from 7:30 till 5:30 and then get them to give up most of those long holidays because we are falling behind the rest of the world in standards of learning.
Well Michael, I will give up my holidays if you will give up yours...the ones in combination with expenses paid fact finding missions. Yes cut down the length of the holidays so that parents have to take children out of schools at different times having complained about the long holidays so that they can get a cheap holiday.......of face the slow death of the tourist industry. and the master stroke of lengthening the school day so that after a 10 hour day, ( it means that the school refusers have more time to not attend school) only then can we go and prepare our lessons and do our marking so that we can't spend time with our own children.
Michel has decided that the answer is quantity and not quality in order to bridge the gap. Blame the teachers and fail to see that the problems have in fact been caused by Government and society.
As teachers we have to worry about the "I think I can win the lottery, play premiership football or win the x- factory as I believe I have talent so don't need to bother brigade" or the " I can get more money on the dole just like my parents so I don't need to bother brigade".
"But why are other countries doing so well in education?" you say. at least it keeps Daily Mail journalists in business and gives the great uneducated something to complain about in the lengthening dole queue.  It also irks the not so talented when the "fear all foreigners" headline knocks the picture of Pudsey, the BGT dog onto page 6.
Michael, Michael.
 Get behind us and gives us the weapons to fight the problem instead of shooting us in the back.

How to satisfy your wife under the sheets......

There it was. The sound of deep breathing coming from under the duvet. The lights were off and the TV flickered silently in the background. It was time to head under the sheets and push the wife's buttons. Once I had found the SKY remote, I turned up the volume and proceeded to surf through the endless, mindless sea of late night repeats, until I found solace in Billy Connolly's world tour of Scotland, an episode where he told the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his journey through Dumfries. Rather than kill the locals, he reportedly stole their shoes, an act that apparently still rankles to this day. The  story was delivered at speed in the form of BonniePrinceCharliestolemafeckinshoes." ....and yet there it was....... The tiniest of sniggers coming from under the sheet combined with a small wriggle. Now  Bonnie Prince was not the largest of men, in fact, the portrait of him on the shortbread tins was life size.........larger series of sniggers..........riding in to the villages on his horse with a cry of "whoa Lavender!".......uncontrollable sniggers in conjunction with uncoordinated convulsive body spasms.

Now whilst some have the ability to laugh a lady into bed, a wise man will use Billy to finish her off.
I found a clip on YouTube which contains a small part of the concert which you may safely use.  I have replayed it under supervised scientific conditions and it had a similar effect. Good luck!
Click here

If terrorism is the answer it was a stupid question.

We are 48 hours after the Boston marathon bombing and I find still find mindless acts of terrorism impossible to comprehend.

Fight the army? Sure. Fight the Government? Fine. Fight innocent athletes and spectators? No. Just to anger a government to merit a response from an army? Why?

We live in a world filled with cowards. People who cannot face those who do not share their beliefs but choose to pick on the innocent.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Or to update the saying, the computer keyboard of the cowardly Internet troll is more powerful than the innocent computer user.

A brave man doesn't seek anonymity. A coward hides behind a bomb. A weak one hides behind an insult.

It has become a sad world when one person can provide so much misery, suffering and death

Britain's Got Nutters!

Welcome back Britain's Got Talent.  I for one do not share the current fascination with so called talent shows. I don't care which celebrity can dance on Strictly or Ice skate on whatever the other show is called.  I don't care for the concept of X Factor where contestants don't try to win but instead live in fear of losing each week.
Imagine if Simon Cowell ran the Olympics. The 100m final would be run five times with the crowd voting off one of the last two until we had only the medal positions left.
I wonder if BGT in other countries brings eccentrics out in hoards. (See British and eccentric..linked like football and hooligan...see previous blog)
I love the fact that some of these people have turned up for a talent show, with family and friends and none of them have actually mentioned to the contestants that they may not be as talented as they think they are.
"Making noises like a wild dog may be fun in the pub on a Saturday night but is it a talent?"
"You are the best I've heard but how many accordion players drive a Porsche?"
"Standup comedians rely on spontaneity, so do you really need a script of jokes your nan smiles at?"

Amidst all the mad, bland and talentless, there are always gems. We all hope for another Paul Potts or Susan Boyle moment. (I refuse to call her SUBO as it sounds like a Japanese 4x4) A moment where you pre judge someone on how they look or talk before they unveil a talent that we can only dream of.
I hope that the Hungarian body puppetry group win as they are original, talented and innovative.
But until then, leave no stone unturned as there are loads more delusional talent free people out there whose friends either don't have the heart to point out their shortcomings or more worryingly, wish that they had half of the talents that their friends don't have.


Not the X Factor, more the Y Factor......Y did you bother to turn up?

How technology helps the space race

"One small step for man, one giant leap forward in interest in space in the Birss household." Commander Chris Hadfield who is currently in charge of the International Space Station has been tweeting pictures back to earth several times a day with a little comment for each one. My wife has been regaling me with stories and pictures and so now I took my leap forward and followed him on Twitter as well.
Rarely have I looked up and taken time to appreciate the wonders of the night sky but with the joy of the ipad, I downloaded ISS tracking software which shows that space station flies round the world in a never ending series of Sine waves ( that's the mathematician in me) doing a complete circumnavigation in roughly 90 minutes. The software shows the time that the shuttle will become visible, for how many minutes and the quality of  visibility.
What it doesn't take into consideration is the cloud cover that prevents any views at all. There we were, my entire family out in the garden on Saturday and Sunday night (having put the t.v. on live pause) trying to see anything through the cloudy haze.
My wife downloaded nightsky software which gives you a matching picture of the the stars, labeled as you hold the ipad up into the dark......with a suitable "spacey" soundtrack.
Tonight the sky was clear as I looked up to see a quarter moon. At first we couldn't see anything as the expected space station was hidden by the trees.
Then it appeared above the house next door, bright and moving at pace below the moon.  It passed between the moon and what my wife now knowingly informed me was Jupiter, and stayed visible for 6 minutes as it passed above us.
Thank you Commander Hadfield for making us ground dwellers feel that for  a few moments that we too could reach for the stars.

The 1978 Wimbledon Centre Court Riots

Jimmy Connors had just succumbed to the ice cool Swede, Bjorne Borg when the scuffle started. Strawberries were thrown, the ensuing fight spilled onto the centre court where the umpires chair was toppled, a ball boy was blinded by a flying tennis racket and a line judge was garrotted by the net cord......an event that never happened and is unlikely to.
If we were playing Blankety Blank and Terry Wogan asked you which word came after Football, how many of you would have put the word violence or hooligan? Cricket? People now use it as an excuse to dress up and wave 4's and 6's in the air. Rugby? Loads of singing....especially from the Welsh...who are the mirror image of the French ( good at cooking -rubbish at singing.)
Polo? Everyone gets up at half time and helps replace the divots. (Evidence based on watching Pretty Woman so may not be accurate.) Why does football generate the need for mindless violence?
A weekend where Portsmouth fans go on the pitch, Newcastle fans arrested after defeat in the Tyne Wear derby and Millwall fans, so desperate for a fight at Wembly that they pick on each-other.
24 years after Hillsborough can we say that things have improved in "the  beautiful game?"
Would Pele recognise it?
A friend related the story of his first trip to Stamford Bridge where a gentleman next to him dropped his business card and when it was picked up and returned, the businessman said that it was a card that he and his Associates would leave on a freshly beaten up opponent which read "You have been done over by the Chelsea Headhunters"....a little something to help as they awoke in hospital.

Do football "fans" emotions spill out in other areas?

Do they rip up seats in the cinema when Scar kills Mufasa?
Do they rip the 50" plasma screen off the wall at the results of Dancing on Ice?
I think not!

Anyone want to love a teacher of Mathematics?

Teaching.
 'Tis an honourable profession. Sadly not a respected one.
Ah to hark back to the days when  any town would be run by the Preacher, the Doctor, the Lawyer and the teacher.
Sadly, the first three still have a certain amount of respect as a vocation.
Should your child return from school and decide that they want to be a minister or priest, saving souls,  they have your support.
A Doctor, saving lives, they have your support.
A lawyer, saving....saving....probably saving you money in legal fees, they have your support.
Should they want to be a teacher....nay, a secondary school teacher, you look for psychiatric help.
Where has the respect gone for the humble teacher of Mathematics?
The students hate you.
The parents think they can do you job better ( but wouldn't take you up on the offer.)
The leadership want to bog you down with proof, evidence and marking.
The Government change the goalposts and the rule book more often than Jordan changes boyfriend/husbands.
And then there's OFSTED, who tell you that you can always do your job better. Great, coming from people who have chosen to remove themselves from the chalk face.
Pupils do badly....the teachers are to blame.
Pupils do well....teachers have taught to the test and the exams are too easy.

I love the idea of teaching to the test. For my next group of GCSE maths students I plan to teach a course in Football appreciation and cooking.....see how not teaching to the test helps them.

And God made foxes..........why?

The fox. The cunning fox, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The animal that sneaks into children's fiction on the fringes of acceptability. Not as cute as the fluffy bunny rabbit, or as eccentric as Toad of Toad Hall and definately not as drunk as a badger.
(I assume that badgers have a drink problem as the only ones you ever see are flat on their backs by the side of the road after a night on the lash.)
Foxes are not cute and have no redeeming features, especially when they decide that rather than go forage for food in the wild as nature I tended, that they would rather come down to their local Tesco Metro (otherwise known as my back garden) and visit my chickens and quails.
Having attempted to break in to my reinforced quail cage by burrowing underneath it or attempting to chew through it, I have had to put my quail inside my chicken run and have had to accept that my girls are not going to be as free range as normal.
In fact the other night I came downstairs to see the large ginger brush moving along the side of my garden only to bolt out into the field at my presence.
Then, suddenly, he stopped, turned, sat down and looked at me.
It was a look of arrogance. A look that I would have liked to have seen better through the crosshairs of a rifle sight but he knew that I didn't have one.
I couldn't even expect a bunch of Hooray Henries on horses to come flying across the field after a pack of nicotine starved beagles to give him a sound seeing to.
Eventually he got bored, turned and went back to the wood surrounding the old disused mink farm where he resides. "I know where you live" he thought " and I know you've got to sleep sometime and I've got a shopping list and you have a vast range of poultry of all shapes and sizes."

There is one Basil Brush I would like to hear go " Boom Boom!" In more ways than one.

Technology is for the young!!

When do you have to admit that you are no longer one of us and have become one of them? 

Remember when you had to show your parents how to set the timer on their video recorder as they were terrified to go out in case they missed their favourite program?

Have you ever bought a small electrical product only to realise that the instruction manual is larger than the thing that you have purchased? .......and the fact that you have to speak 14 different languages to do so!

At least for blokes we get the Ikea manual which thankfully involves pictures.

It has now taken two days and a frustrated 21 year old  creative writing student super blogger of a daughter to unleash my rants upon the world....well nearly...probably me looking at my own blog 7 times as I fail to navigate out of my blog. Thanks to someone in Germany who is also probably over 50 and logged on by mistake.

Just hope that I wasn't quite so patronising to my parents with the video recorder.......nah...I think I probably was. "By setting the time here it reminds the video fairy to wake up and press play..." 

Technology is improving so fast that things are out of date by the time you get them home. 

"Gabi....what does URL stand for? .....Why do they call it a blog? Is it a B-log and if so what does the B stand for?" I suppose that's what life's like on the interweb. 

Computer stuff may be improving at an exponential rate....but bitchyness and sarcasm are forever!

B.

...

Pets! Are they worth it?

What exactly is the point of pets?

You get a cute and cuddly kitten or puppy which licks you, loves you, falls asleep on your lap and does endless amounts of cute things.
They grow up with you, allow you to stroke them when you feel down and need love without conditions...well except for kitty or puppy snacks with a pitiful face at a later date.
Then they grow older and confident within their surroundings where they feel comfortable to steal YOUR seat or space in the bed and in some cases attempt to replace you.
They leave little messages of love that you can smell but can't see.
Through all this they manage to accumulate a small fortune in vets bills.
Occasionally they go missing for days or weeks leaving a huge hole in your life.
They do occasionally not come back and provide your children with a small ripple as to what their life's will be like once YOU go.
Pets, are they worth it?

You bet they are!

Remember. A pet is not just for endless hours of YouTube videos - a pet is for life!

And this is supposed to be Easter...

Here I am, on my Easter, yes Easter break watching the rain come down as I look out my bedroom window towards the grass that needs cutting, patchy areas that need seeding and a chicken shed that needs opening so that my girls can get out and about.

Easter.

Filled with yellow daffodils and yellow Easter chicks and sunlight........
Half the daffodils have not opened and the rest were flattened by the snow, Not one of my girls is feeling remotely broody so no chance of baby chicks there and as for sunlight....why has nobody put in a missing persons report?

Many years ago we were all told that with every aerosol spray squirt we were releasing CFCs into the air and killing off the ozone layer, the ice caps were melting, polar bears were drowning and Scientists were saying " I told you so" .......... So......being a bit more concerned about number one, where's my bit of global warming?
"Ah," says unnamed scientist in white lab coat, "that will be because what we actually meant was CLIMATE CHANGE!" ....

Calling it climate change and pointing out that our weather was actually going to get worse would have had a much GREATER effect on us.
What is the point in spraying on any more antiperspirant if it's not going to get warm enough to sweat?