School university and college holidays are great - when do they end?

It's a funny old thing.

If you look back on  here, right to the first years you will get a feel.

Summer holidays have been great but by the end I have been glad to send the little angels back to education.

This summer has actually been harder than many of the young period summers.

The traditional option, "right it's nine o clock i can take no more get to bed" option has vanished.

We have teenies up to all hours doing teenie things like playing music, naturally as a parent and foster carer I support their rights to that.

Just as they never challenge  my right to test the proper 1950's vintage air raid siren at 5 minute intervals from 7 am onwards....

OK so I am joking.

But it has been a toughie this summer.

It's drawing to an end, the sad thing is that this summer I am not knackered and happy I am tired and thinking "never again".

Next year if they starve and have to survive on the cats food I think I will still spend the summer in   Brittany.

The management was really not keen to come home, and you know what? Neither was I.

R 
  

    
 

Money talks

Thats what some people would have us believe and in this case it's true. There i was admiring the  bank holiday deluge out of the window with the log stove crackling happily, when an email landed announcing this blog had earnt me some money.

Now, when I say "some" money, the mortgauge is not about to be paid off, neither is the next trip to brittany suddently closer, in fact "some" would not even pay for a meal out for herself and me but it's progress,  a step in the right direction.

No more shifts landed from the G4S demand mill, we had a fabulous teen free time in Brittany so much so that we are off there again in a few weeks and i have been tasked with organising a long break in October so that we can engage in some lumber jack ology and chop down a tree,

Lumber jacking is a sore point here. Not long before we left the Makita chainsaw I was begining to think was indestreuctable prooved it wasn't. Much heartaching and very much stretching ourselves financially I bought a big Stihl industrial chainsaw. WOW was that a revalation, I thought the Makita was good, but this is a whole new league. It is about twice as quick as the Makita - it tears into wood, my loading crew are seriously tired after a chainsaw load which will usually see a whold cord of wood chopped up as oposed to around 2/3 with the old saw.

So to say i was delighted was an understatement, I bet the little towrag who pinched it when we were on holiday was pretty pleased too. Fortunately, there is a data base, the serial number of the chainsaw is going on it and should the chainsaw pop up in any Stihl dealer for anny reason in the next 4 years, the game will be up. Technology is good sometimes!!

Othertimes it is just plain annoying. ~You may recall that just before we left Bethan and i spent a huge ammount of time trying to persuade one of my Green Goddesses to run and got no where. We changed battery starter switch and starter motor to no avail. We rewired the earth side of the truck and got nowhere. When I came back we rewired the supply side and still nothing.

When you take a component that has been part of spare parts stock off the shelf and  fit it you do have an expectation that it might work. We had taken a brand new starter off the shelf only to find it was faulty itself. Still all is well now and I am a happy little bunny. The truck is not running brilliantly but it is at least running.

In fact, had the biblical deluge not been falling we might well have gone for a play in the river today.

There's allways next year I suppose.....

New technology offers new chances and the student has been amusing herself these last few days on family history research.  This should come with a health warning, she has traced her familly tree back to 1798. 


They got about a bit too, they went to India at one stage. In one of those tricks of fate they lived in Plymouth in streets around the ferry terminal we use all the time.

Of course Plymouth got blown to hell in the last war and either in the slum clearances of the 60's or the bombs of the war the houses got flatened but between her geneology research and my google earth searches we found where they were. A funny old ting technology, sometimes your friend sometimes a pane in the glass.

She has tootled off happily to phone her sister and share her news.
 


R




   

Great to be home

I have been home this couple of days now and actually I am starting to like it.

The scene in Olympics land beckons, now all of a sudden G4S have their act to together and they want me there all next week.

Trouble is for them, according to their web based pay scheme, my pay rate for the first 60 hours I did was 0 an hour. So, frankly I am not moving up the drive till that one is sorted. 

To gild the Lilly, they have an ending bonus scheme that pays you an extra  pound an hour for every hour you worked  so long as you work your last scheduled shift. Now, I was told when the venues were closing and therfore booked a ferry accordingly, G4S shift schedule has me working the day we sail and so, not being able to rebook the ferry I will be pounds down as i cannot turn up on the day.

There will be a long and probably very funny post about the Olympics in a few weeks,  when I have been paid and when no ones safety will be compromised. 

R