Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

PasturesNew

I've not touched a thing online for months as my time has been taken up 25/8 (I envy those working only 24/7) .... and since Friday .... it's all just gone !!!!!!!! Overnight Mr G, the big money giver, decided he didn't want me in his team any more..... hoping to rebuild my empire starting next month, but aware I might just never get it back as the world marches on with new technologies and the money making's fast becoming the domain of the lucky and the bigger boys. I'll be giving it a shot though ... only alternative is a bizarre thing called "a proper job" and I am not really into them

Generali

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Is that Arsenal?

It is Ars**al.

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

To date, I've not spent a single night in hospital - wasn't even born in one as I popped out unexpectedly, no mid wife as I was appearing and there was no phone, so dad had to do the honours, then go out in the street to run to the nearest public phone box to let somebody know.

Blimey, that must have been a bit of shock all round.

I spent 10 days in hospital after I was born, and then 6 months in and out when I was 8. Since then, just when Isaac was born.

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

Overnight Mr G, the big money giver, decided he didn't want me in his team any more.....

Has your account been cancelled?

PasturesNew

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Has your account been cancelled?

No, he's decided not to send me much traffic ... down by about 70%.

On the other hand, making a bit of a small killing on the H site... moving to sub-domains put the income from that where I believed it should have been all along. Only downside is that I'm about 50 articles behind where I'd have been if this year had been different.

I need to do at least one new H per day starting on 1 November .... build that up a bit more.

Davesnave

I'm also pleased your DS is on the mend, michaels. :T

We were only 5 minutes from A&E before we moved. Our kids ended up in there a few times, but nothing too serious. Now, it's strictly air ambulance for emergencies in this village. We raise thousands for it every year, but then it attends 1.5 times a month, on average.

Breathing difficulties in kids are always scary. While mine never had any, we'd get them on school journey weeks, when stress levels and maybe a change of air would exacerbate a problem.

I remember one poor girl who suddenly couldn't get her breath one night, and the grumpy GP who attended. "Has your little brother got asthma?" asked the doc, hearing that she had one. The child nodded. "Well, congratulations, you've got it now!"

Talk about a great bedside manner!

Then there were Sports Days. Always a good chance of an asthmatic crashing out and some (unrelated) parent then berating us for allowing them to compete. I was never quite sure where I stood on that one, but the kids themselves were rarely in any doubt!

PasturesNew

So, I found this great place for the old to go to .... a friendship club for oldies... old was having a mardy and wouldn't go, so I went to check it out the other day and liked what I saw... and it's affiliated to a church. Now, I've not had much experience with this religious lark... but it was a church, so decided to take the old there to check it out/meet the lovely people. Thing was .... as I said ... don't know much about them, thought they were all the same.

Had to have it pointed out that everybody else was following a Service Sheet, that I had tucked into the hymn book, unnoticed/unopened.... then they hit me with the big one. Come up for communion ... uh-ho ... do what??? Had NO idea what that was about, or what we should be doing, but felt it was important that the old was dragged through that as it was clearly expected and I thought in order to "belong" they'd need to be doing it every visit too .... made a bit of a plonker of ourselves by not having a clue what to do .... and didn't leave when we were supposed to until I spotted they were coming round with seconds so we were supposed to have left and gone back to our pews

We'll know next time. No idea what sort of church it was .... it had a tower, bells rang, they sang hymns and the board outside said church

Anyway, old had a whale of a time, lovely people.... the old's now signed up for their full package of fun for oldies.

Edit: Researched it, it's CofE.

neverdespairgirl

Have you been confirmed?

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

So, I found this great place for the old to go to .... a friendship club for oldies... old was having a mardy and wouldn't go, so I went to check it out the other day and liked what I saw... and it's affiliated to a church. Now, I've not had much experience with this religious lark... but it was a church, so decided to take the old there to check it out/meet the lovely people. Thing was .... as I said ... don't know much about them, thought they were all the same.

Had to have it pointed out that everybody else was following a Service Sheet, that I had tucked into the hymn book, unnoticed/unopened.... then they hit me with the big one. Come up for communion ... uh-ho ... do what??? Had NO idea what that was about, or what we should be doing, but felt it was important that the old was dragged through that as it was clearly expected and I thought in order to "belong" they'd need to be doing it every visit too .... made a bit of a plonker of ourselves by not having a clue what to do .... and didn't leave when we were supposed to until I spotted they were coming round with seconds so we were supposed to have left and gone back to our pews

We'll know next time. No idea what sort of church it was .... it had a tower, bells rang, they sang hymns and the board outside said church

Anyway, old had a whale of a time, lovely people.... the old's now signed up for their full package of fun for oldies.

Edit: Researched it, it's CofE.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Have you been confirmed?

Actually having to be confirmed to take communion is not the policy any more. Official policy is that communion is available for anyone who's been baptised and wants to take it, although many churches prefer to say anyone who wants to take it is welcome, and C of E churches differ in their approach to when to let kids start taking it.

Pastures, taking communion's not compulsory. You and/or the Old can stay in your seat when it's going on, and nobody will mind. Or you can usually go up and get a blessing if you want to join in without signing up to the full deal. Some churches have some kind of code for "I only want a blessing" like taking your hymn book up with you, or just keeping your hands down and your head bowed when you get there. If you and/or the Old would prefer that, then ask the person who hands out the books what the procedure is. If you do take communion, then the general idea is that you follow the queue of people until you get to where it's happening, you stay there until you've got both the bread and the wine, and then you go back to your seat/pew.

Has your Old got experience of churches from before your time, or are you and she equally inexperienced? It's totally OK to tell the people at the church that you are new to this kind of thing. They will be thrilled to have new people, and will tell you what you need to know. You can just say something very simple like "We've never really been to church before, but Old is going to your xyz group, so we thought we'd come along. I'm an Aspie so I feel more comfortable in situations where I know what's going to happen and what I'm supposed to do. Can you explain what happens in the different kinds of services, please, and especially about communion?"

Honestly, they won't be cross. Churches put on activities for oldies for two reasons:
1) Because they want to be nice to the oldies. This is mandated by various bits of the gospel that say "God has been unimaginably nicer to you than you deserve so now you should be nice to other people." OWTTE
2) Because they hope some of the oldies will think church is a good thing and come along to the services and discover what this Jesus thing is all about. Likewise, this is mandated by bits of the gospel that say "God has been unimaginably nicer to you than you deserve, so now you should tell other people about it so they can get in on it too." OWTTE
Both of these purposes are absolutely intrinsic to what Christianity is all about. Some churches are admittedly better than others at making newbies feel welcome - the trouble is they are full of people, and people aren't perfect - in fact some people are quite badly screwed up. However, all of them do really know that they are not supposed to be exclusive clubs, and should respond well to being told you and/or the Old need a little help to fit in.

lemonjelly

LydiaJ wrote: »

Thanks for all the kind wishes for DS.

OK, I have a couple of questions for the NP.

1) I have a friend, single mother of twins aged 10, has been on benefits for a while but now looking for work. She feels her boys need her to be there at least some of the time, so she's looking to work part time, but of course she needs the magic 16 hours a week for tax credit purposes. She's happy to work more than 16 hours, but not full time. She saw a possible job advertised, but it was only 14 hours. She thought perhaps she could apply for it, and then if she got it she could look around for another part time job to make her hours up over that all-important 16. She went to the job centre, put forward her suggestion, and asked what would happen to her benefits in the meantime, while she was working 14 hours but looking for more work. If the job's hours don't fit nicely with school hours then she'll have to pay for after school club, and if she doesn't get help with that from TCs then she could end up worse off than she is on benefits. The job centre people said they didn't know. They said they'd get back to her but they haven't. I thought I might ask on the benefits forum, but before I do that I thought I'd just check if any of the NP have any advice, please?

2) My parents live in a house with a rather small front garden. There is a thick laurel hedge between their front garden and their neighbours' one. Recently it's been getting overgrown, so my dad went out to cut back his side of it. Once Mum comes home, he won't have time for cutting it again for ages, so he cut it back much further than he normally would. Near the centre of the hedge, he found an axe. I gather from what he said that it's the kind of axe you use for chopping wood, although I didn't actually ask him that. He says it's a really good quality one - better than his own, in fact. He didn't recognise it, so he assumed it belonged to the neighbours and went to return it. They've never seen it before either. Neither family has had any gardeners or similar working on their front gardens. My parents have been there more than 50 years, and the neighbours have been there at least 25 years. The axe looks obviously a whole lot newer than that. My dad's going to check with my brother that he didn't do any hedge chopping that my dad's forgotten about, although he thinks that's rather a long shot.

So, how could an axe suddenly appear in somebody's front garden hedge, and what if anything should you do if you find one?

Re question 1. After the first £25, her income will be deducted £ for £ from her JSA. If her wages are below circa £170(ish) she should continue to get topped up to around £170 via a small bit of JSA. She'd continue to get full hb/ctb. Essentially, she'll be £25 a week better off.

Once she gets to 16 hours+ per week, JSA goes. She'd qualify for tax credits. You can claim for up to 70% of childcare costs (this includes afterschool clubs IIRC) & depending on the level of income, may still get a little hb/ctb.

She'd continue to get the 25% single person discount with C tax.

All the above assumes no-one in the household has a disability or is a carer.:)