As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

kylebrad

You could try putting some orange peel where the cat likes to go or spray some diluted eucalyptus oil around your garden. Cats don't like the smell of either of those. For the hole in the fence I can only think of netting as others have suggested.

ChocClare

ceridwen wrote: »

Here - ChocClare - how DO you walk down stairs "properly"? Do enlighten us - as I only know how to get out of a car properly (and had to teach myself that...).

Well, for those of us who don't work at Madame Jojo's (which I used to frequent REGULARLY, btw, MG, perhaps I've seen you do your thang ) - the most important thing is to turn at an angle, so that you are facing 45 degrees towards the wall or railing as you prefer and coming down SORT OF sideways. I imagine this was to avoid flashing anything as you came down, rather than displaying t***s and teeth to the world! :rotfl:

scottishminnie wrote: »

p.s. I too was taught the art of getting out of vehicles gracefully - I'm not sure my mother ever thought I'd be putting it to use in a filthy 4x4 or a pick up truck, think she more imagined me nipping around in a sports car.

There was ont thing she spent lots of time teaching me as a child though that I haven't really had to use much - I can demonstrate the perfect curtsey - it just isn't called for that much in my world these days!

Ah yes! Curtseying! When I got my degree we had to go up to be presented to Princess Anne as she was the Chancellor of the University. This was an ENORMOUS "do" for the whole of London University at the Albert Hall and was one long, boring file-past. My mother, watching from the audience, said to me drily afterwards, "Well, darling, I'm glad to say it was obvious that you were one of the very FEW who knew how to curtsey properly..." :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

sammy_kaye18

Dear os members, as you may of recently seen announced - Sammy Kaye has moved has, subsequently she is now lost under a small whereat of clothes, mismatched socks and boxes of various unknown artifacts........ :-)

Only joking. Well we are in the house. I will make sure to send pictures when I can but am on my iPhone at this percise moment as wanted to let you all know how I'm doing.

It's been eventful - owen helpfully mixed up all the clothes bags so I had no idea what was clean and What wasn't so have had to resort back to washing it all again.

Ben is in his room but we are debating the redecoration of it - ben wants football but owen sadlid to consider Josh who hasnt been here in 6 weeks so why he gets a say on Benz room is beyond me.

I have my kitchen planned and the decorating of it. Should be nice hug hoping once computer is back up to get looking on freecycpe for some rehomed kitchen appliances with a fridge freezer being top proirity. Also spoke to swalec and have managed to save myself £35 a month by setting up a direct debit.

Hollys room is now a recycled version of bens. We used bens carpet in her room, and since it was a pale yellow colour anyway I have taken his Winnie the pooh stick arounds and put them in her room and so that is now her nursery. Plus I have some pale coloured material in green and yellow so will make her a few other bits once we are more settled.

Apart from that I have a living room, and my wet room. Once desk is up I will be back online properly - although trekking up the hills to my new house is most definitely keeping me fit!! Especially when innate go push a buggy too!

Well tonight will be busy - I have to work until 10pm and then home to decorate house as tomorrow my little dude Benjamin will be 7. It's gone so quick feels like I only had him yesterday.

Already trying to get ideas together for Xmas! And sobering what I can make with baby milk tubs and food jars as this Xmas will no doubt need to be a budget, low cost affair!!!!

Right better go - we have had several police letters about attempted 'child abductions' in surrounding areas which has been freaking ben out so want to make sure I'm there early for him.

Talk soon osers!
X x x x x x x x x

[Deleted User]

holly grows quite slowly hippeechic, get some very spiky pyracantha, that`ll stop the cat and it`ll stop then looking through. It grows fairly quickly and will make a brilliant protective hedge for you and it looks nice

[Deleted User]

whoops, I read the other posts hippeechic and you won`t be able to grow anything there, although personally I would make a raised bed out of pallets or whatever I could and grow the pyracantha in that. We had holly and we had pyracantha and the pyracantha covered a much larger and higher area and was very spiky and covered in red berries so looked nice

re the moggy, we used to have cat probs in the last house. The only deterentt that really worked was a catwatch electronic device, the genuine catwatch one. I tried mothballs, the lot. However the short spiky sticks sounds like a good idea too

mardatha

Well.... I'm proud to say I'm a wee pagan heathen peasant scuttling around my hovel in the hills without so much as a curtsey to my name :rotfl::rotfl:

GreyQueen

EstherH wrote: »

Oh yes, I remember pineapple upside down pudding.

Seems most on here were grammar school educated not inner city comprehensive like me but this thread seems to be a leveller.

I grew up on a very rough council estate (parents still live there and I will be home this weekend), parents worked in factories and were thrilled to bits that I got into the Grammar. It was pants; they were busily privatising it, and starved the upper forms, who were still being paid for by the local authority, of attention and resources. We had neither heat nor paper in the art room. I bailed at 16 and went to an FE college.

I've done all sorts, factory work, delivery-driving, cleaning and am as common as muck with a nice received pronounciation accent modelled on BBC Radio 4 which played incessantly in my childhood home. And now is the backdrop to my own life in Shoebox Towers, a council block so infamous that the regional Police control room hear the postcode and send 2 units to everything we report..........we have cat-eating pitbulls around here and their owners are nothing you'd want to meet down a dark alley.;)

I've had a lot of fun in my life because I seem to be one thing and am not, but really must not tease the posh people whom I meet in the real world. Trouble is, it's hard to resist when they start a sentence with; "Working class (insert prejudice here)..."

At which point GQ will raise an elegant brow and say in her dulcet tones; "Excuse me, I'm working class!"

They don't know what to do about that and it's great fun watching them try to back-pedal.....:) he he he.

My alma mater is now a very respectable private day school with high standards for admission and great results and whenever I see their pupils around the town I remember how itchy those wool blazers were and that we girls weren't allowed to wear trousers and I don't envy them a bit.

As my late Grandma would have had it; "You can't always help being poor but you don't have to be common!"

hippeecheeq ((hugs in your hellish neighbour situation)). Don't have a solution which doesn't involve mass homicide and I know have a warped sense of humour which is not appreciated by all, so let's not go there. Thinking of you. gal.

maryb

EstherH wrote: »

Oh yes, I remember pineapple upside down pudding.

Seems most on here were grammar school educated not inner city comprehensive like me but this thread seems to be a leveller.

I'm old enough to pre-date comprehensives - not that my school was brilliant despite being a grammar. We were definitely intended to be good Catholic wives and mothers who would maybe fill in time with a little job before marriage. The sort where you would meet the right sort of husband material of course, so nursing in one of the big London hospitals was a good one - Guy's to work and Bart's to flirt but Thomas's if you're a lady.

They had a secretarial sixth form where the gels learned how to be the perfect secretary (no PAs in those days), again, with a view to meeting successful types - no typing pool jobs. One A level and excellent shorthand and typing plus deportment and party planning skills. That's what a good third of the sixth form did.

If you were REALLY academic and wanted to go to university it was predominantly English and History and, of course, you would become a teacher afterwards because it fitted in with having a family. I left that school without O level maths because of a timetable clash which meant I had to choose between Latin and maths and Latin was more important for the humanities.

Funny thing is, I became a chartered accountant when I left university:rotfl:

r.a.i.n.b.o.w

EstherH wrote: »

Oh yes, I remember pineapple upside down pudding.

Seems most on here were grammar school educated not inner city comprehensive like me but this thread seems to be a leveller.

There were no grammar or comps when I was at secondary school, they were abolished a few years before (along with the 11 plus). You had local authority schools (free) or private schools (fees per term).

ceridwen

maryb wrote: »

Can you plant some holly in front of the hole in the fence? It grows really quickly and would stop the cat coming through there as well as stopping the neighbours shoving their stupid faces through

....decides to go off and google "poison ivy" and see if it is what it says "on the can".....

...back later...

EDIT: just had quick glance at Wikipedia article on this - and it might be possible...