Twas the night before Xmas

As we march our way into our 20th Xmas here it feels really quite odd.

We well OK the management has managed all the presants, it's all under the tree and it's not yet 9 pm, a normal Xmas would be a 2 am rush of parcels and paper.

This year, it is not yet nine and everything is done, we have watched a shed load of I player and retired, we are having a quiet night.

 20 years ago we had a telly, now we watch everything online.

She is reading a book, I am writing, well I suspect you guessed that one.

Think we might have an early night, we have a St Emillion Grand Cru to keep us company for lunch tomorrow, 2007 was an OK year too.

I probably paid about 10€ for it - lot of money for a bottle of wine.

Lots of things have changed this year.

We thought fostering was over and now we have G - here for at least a year.

Little D is gone, things have really unravelled for him, but you can only do so much.

We bid a sad farewell to Citroen C5 estates, they have been a big part of this last couple of years. But after a too long absence back into the fleet came a Solihull product. A Land Rover Discovery with the 3.9 V8, automatic box and LPG. I am a bit of a petrol head at heart and I love that toy.

It fits brilliantly into our needs, we have a mega fun AX for flitting back and fore into town. For practical stuff we have the VW T4 van. If we need to move 6 people we now have the Discovery, if the weather turns all horrid we now have the dircovery, actually, we discovered this week that, running on LPG, the disco is not bad for long trips either. On locals it's horrendous like pouring fuel into the floor.

I love it though, the distant muted V8 noise.

Starting to sound like Jeremy Clarkson so it's time to stop driveling
  
                 

 

 

It was twenty years ago today

It was twenty years ago today, Sargent Pepper taught the band to play.

Aside from such Sargent Pepper type comments.

20 years ago today we loaded up our lives in the house my parents died in, it took a 1957 Bedford RL truck I bought for 600 pounds - with 1000 miles on the clock

A rather dodgy Renault Traffic with my mate Chopper Charlie at the wheel.

The management driving a Land Rover 110 with 3 baby seats in the back.

The amount of gear that bedford just swallowed up was bewildering.

We drove on down to Penole 120 miles on. The house my mother was born in, something we learnt a year or two later.

It was vile rain blasting wind hurling weather and as we left the A roads the undulations set the Bedford body a flexing and soon had the ropes holding down the tarp twanging.

Lots of stuff was wet but it all came off the truck

By about 7 the fire, an elderly coal fired Parkray was struggling to make the place warm.

It was 3 degrees in the living room with the fire lit

We had not realised that the previous owners had drained the oil tank, so the AGA would run out in the morning.

The children, all babies were in their cot in ski suits.

I was sat on the settee in a puffer jacket with my hat on wrapped in a duvet.

I wondered if this moving to West Wales lark really had been such a good idea.

Trefigin Oil were about to leave for their Xmas do when we called them, heard the babies crying in the background  and one of their drivers came down to fill our tank instead of going down the pub.

The local coal merchant delivered half a ton of anthracite also

It took me till boxing day afternoon to get the living room up to 20 degrees.

Over the last 20 years we have put a bit of a stamp on the place, as one of the locals said, within living memory no one has lived here this long.

We have done the research on the place and actually, no one has been daft enough to live here for 20 years in quite a long time.

And we are still here,

R

 



  




  
  
   

Time to ourselves

 The student, well no nowadays she is the graduate, does not do Armani or any of these here off the shelf clothes from prestigious brands. Only tailor made is good enough, put another way, every so often she makes herself some clothes, sounds a well posh if you say everything is individually styled and made to measure..

The cause for all this sewing machienery and cutting of cloth? For a change, we are going out tonight, when /i say for a change, I mean it too. Of course we could only be going out for a few minutes as it's not clear if the organisers tonight have a security firm booked (in which case I get the night off) or not (in which case....)

Everything has been a bit all over the place, last weekend we were due to head on out to sunny Brittany. Of course those of you based in this continent will know last weekend it was well windy Brittany and all the ferries were cancelled. Now, we did this one about the same time last year, 24 hours turned into 9 days, so this time we cancelled in good time.

Leaving us a week to spend at home achieving very little as the weather has pretty much cancelled everything. No chainsawing, means no wood axing, means no stacking, means trailer still loaded, means no more wood fetched.

So going out tonight could be a good thing. 

On the plus side, i did another day in university last week which will be good for the exchequer in a month or two when they get round to paying me, just in time for the January "WE SPENT HOW MUCH" Xmas post mortem.

With a bit of luck and a fair wind we might get out to Brittany before then too...

R

Sunday sunday......

It has been a very long time, quite uncharacteristic in fact since I got myself organised to post on here.

Life, as it has a habit of doing has filled the empty void that would normally be blogposting.

Health has been a bit of an issue, my knees going on strike and rendering me fairly immobile.

Also of course the agency, young G gawd bless her has declined to go to school. Now the Education Act is pretty exacting, any parent who has let their child go without schooling for as long as this young one would be getting some pretty heavy threats and visits from attendance officers. Of course if the parent is responsible for scrutinising their own conduct all that tends to go by the board. She has sat here since September with precious little by way of education, getting under our feet and into our hair. Discussions are taking place at a very senior level, discussions however do not educate children, schools do that!

The positive though has been a post bad knee flurry of activity, our Rayburn is in. I thought someone had tattooed a silly grin on to the graduates face, she has been just delighted. It's a strange old thing a Rayburn, delivering sufficient heat to warm the whole house whilst using very little fuel indeed. The downside being that it runs best on coal, hardly green and not terribly cheap, but it uses barely a bucket a day which is very little indeed.

There has also been an auction - never a good idea to let herself loose with a bidders number. She did however get some very very nice arts and crafts corner cupboards for not a great deal of money - another result there then. Of course all good news is tempered and this was no different. I had spotted a very useful looking towrope sat in the corner. So of course herself was duly tasked with bidding on this whilst i went off and saw to some child care issues. Meanwhile, herself was all in the bidding so when the "car puller" came up, naturally (??) she assumed that was a tow rope and bid until she won it. Now, I am not going to suggest her hearing is suffering from age but "Car puller" and "calf puller" are two very different items, well in my book they are. In case you are wondering; a calf puller is some medieval torture device looking tool for use by vets and farmers, and, we now posses one.

We also have a whole load of firewood waiting to be processed, which is good in a playing catch up sort of way, we are still way behind on the firewood front. i dare say today will be given over to chainsaw and axe. What with it being of a non rainy if a bit windy disposition.

Another success story has been our wood stove, well it's always been a success really but there have been issues around the flue and proper sealing thereof. Yesterday was a full on  living room full of soot day at the end of which the flue system has been completely reconfigured. The fire is working far better - much to the cats delight.     
     
R






   

time flies when you are having fun

Well, time has just whizzed past, lots has been going on especially around young G.

Fair play, she is not as other school refusers we have known, she does her school work. She has also impressed a local riding school enough to be offered an NVQ in horseology which she has got really stuck into.

That's the good news, she should be getting 25 hours of education based activity, which is not being provided by the LA.

So of course the graduate, decided enough was enough and phoned to ask about some funding for this here education m'lady is getting.

And of course here comes the standard response, they were very happy with her education but not happy enough to discharge their lawful duty to fund it.

Some years ago, we were in a similar position, young person is out of education, sadly no plans around funding some. Out of generosity we offered to commission some education, what a good idea came the reply. And we would bill them, ahh, they said almost gleefully, we could send all the bills we liked, they would simply not pay them. We never thought they would we answered with equal levity, we had always expected to have to recover the costs via the courts, if the duty to provide education was not statutory, they would win their case, if on the other hand we were providing education because they were neglecting a statutory duty a judge would be bound to find in our favour.

Suddenly they seemed to think we were not very nice people....

How dare anyone put children's needs before their balance sheet.

We are back to that part of the country...

From being fantastic people to Satan in half a day.

Funny though that the conversation that took the line that we would do what is in fact a job of work for nothing when the social work staff did likewise. There is a bit of a background debate as to whether foster carers should do their jobs out of love or for money.

I love my job, but without money I cannot afford to do it.

G is at home, all day every day, she is making more progress than she has in years. She is stopping us "working" because we are "working" with her. When you "work" you get paid. Simples really....

R 


      

Time to ourselves....

Everyone is back in school or college except of course G who has decided to refuse to go.

It's turning properly complex as she had thought this would be the issue where she would get conflict, and she hasn't

She has done some work we set her and she's academically not daft. Hard to see how she thinks this is working for her. 

Today has been another day where no one expected her to go to school she is finding that a bit difficult.

We have amused ourselves on the home front with things like chain saws and axes and firewood.

It's late in the seasons to be cutting and very hard work thrown in. The wood is wonderful, well seasoned oak, if you know wood, you will also know that oak needs to  be processed just when it's felled no when it's dry. A new chain has been needed to equalise things a bit and this really is a job for my 50 year old axes, modern stuff will not cope.

To cap it all the student has been thinking, never a good thing, she has decided she is not after all doing her masters or PHD next year. Not next year, but maybe the year after, am I too old to join the foreign legion??

Getting back to normal

A summer of kids and young adults kicking round grinds to a halt.

As from tomorrow the first go back to school.

Our trip to Brittany went  a bit better than planned. The run down was achieved in indecently short time and we sailed happily into the night.

G had tried a bit of drama, announcing on the day we were to leave that she wasn't going. The student in due course producing her master stroke.  All was fine G could stay with Serenity for a week, neatly cutting off her power to disrupt. Faced with that choice, she chose get in the car.

Brittany was a mass of  holiday type activities like strimming, chopping down trees and cutting hedges back. Oh yes, we really know how to have a good time.

Unfortunately, I got things a bit wrong and   became quite seriously dehydrated, not a good thing to do when the temperature soars, and soar it did 41 C was seen on our thermometer once. It was well into the high 20's even at night. The result of this was a seriously bad knee. Not at the time, it waited till we got home then went on strike.

This in turn means lots of nasty pain killers and anti inflammatory.

Still all that is done, the kids go back to school and college tomorrow, all is well with the world.

Just need the students exam marks and we are sorted.

Then we are on to serious wood cutting ready for winter which is not quite upon us but won't be too long in arriving.

 
R