Nice People Thread Part 9 - and so it continues

lostinrates

Its funny the things we do and don't talk about in families isn't it. At least men can see the baldness thing.

I think my paternal grandmother had had a double mastectomy. But she was very tiny framed and might simply have had no breasts to mention. It was never discussed. I'd quite like to know. As far as I know her daughter had had no problems with breast cancer. She's no use as a source of information a like her mother she now has Alzheimer's, but hers was fairly early onset, and already significantly advanced in her late sixties/ early seventies as my grandmothers was ten years or more later.

Neither my cousin on that side nor I will have children and that branch of the tree will end with us. We both have good lives though, which is infinitely more important really.

PasturesNew

That "Blackout" programme just started on Channel 4.

neverdespairgirl

silvercar wrote: »

Must be an art academy. Any students drawing of houses I've seen has windows 1, 2, 3, 4, a door centrally and a chimney with smoke.

Isaac got all upset at Easter last year because part of his holiday homework was to draw an label his own home, and those of his grandparents. As he only has one lot of my grandparents, that left him a drawing short - until my Dad said he could just draw 2 places belonging to one set of grandparents, and that cheered him up perfectly well.

He counted windows rather carefully, for both our block of flats (7 storeys high, 5 windows wide) and my parents' Kent housem which has 3 storeys at one end, 2 at the other, and varying window sizes and 3 chimneys.

PasturesNew wrote: »

PCs/kids - you're supposed to have the PC in the living room where you can see what they get up to until they're about 16.... on the other hand, they all have smartphones or access to smartphones and the PCs of friends where there are no controls. So you're only in control in one room of your house in the whole world.

TV: I have one borrowed portable. When I get a house I'll have a small flat screen TV as CRTs are too big/heavy for me to cart about - and take up too much room in smallish rooms.

Isaac has a computer, it's in the living room. He doesn't have a phone at all, let alone a smartphone. And his mates' parents are as control-freaky as us, so he's safe for the moment.

neverdespairgirl

LydiaJ wrote: »

I'm glad to hear that that's the case in your sister's town. I still doubt that there was ever a time (even when PN was young) when it was the case everywhere, especially in big places like Birmingham, or even fairly big places like Bristol. Unless it was back in the days before comprehensive education and the situation was that that all the grammar schools were equally good, and all the secondary moderns were equally hopeless.

My Dad is a firm supporter of grammar schools - he came from a working-class family in what was then Cheshire, and is now Merseyside (other side of the river from Liverpool) and went to a good local primary, and then a grammer school. He was the first person in his family to stay at school past the minimum leaving age, and went to university, bar school, and then the bar. He reckons that it is harder to do that now, compared with the 50s and 60s when he did it. He finished his qualifications absolutely broke, but not massively in debt, because he got various grants.

He and my Mama went on a nostalgia trip, as they called it, to Liverpool and around in August. (Mama was born in the same part of Cheshire as Dad was, and they went to the same primary school briefly, before my mother's father was moved to another town, Buxton). Dad says his primary school, which they visited and were shown around by the caretaker, was almost identical to the school he remembered, and the library opposite had not altered a bit, apart from new chairs.

His grammar school became a comprehensive after he left, and more recently, an academy.

LydiaJ wrote: »

Your kids have specific problems that are not anybody's fault. They are not merely the product of inadequate parenting - in fact the reason they are turning out so much better than anyone might have expected is because the quality of parenting they are receiving is consistently excellent.

Consistently excellent from Sue - pity that her ex doesn't do more to deserve his biological title of "father", and that means that she's under more pressure than she needs to be.

neverdespairgirl

chewmylegoff wrote: »

It's when it rains that is the problem though. 5 mins cycling in the rain is 100 times worse than 18 minutes walking in it with an umbrella.

OH cycles in all weathers, including snow and rain. If it's raining he puts a waterproof coat and trousers set on, and stays dry underneath.

misskool wrote: »

Silly question how many people have more than 1 tv per couple? we have one and the SS's have to share when they get here and it annoys them. But I don't like the idea of having more than 1 tv in the living room, which makes me terribly old fashioned I think

Nope. We have one TV in our flat, a state-of-the-art 1990 one. We hardly ever watch it. When my Mama came to stay with us the night before her Feb chemo she noticed that it was turned to the wall as it had been the month before. We hardly ever watch anything on it.

I loathe TVs or any form of electronics in bedrooms, apart from a kindle.

neverdespairgirl

Doozergirl wrote: »

Your house is genuinely the most broken of the broken. I'm sure you had a number in your head that wasn't very small when you purchased the wreckstoration. The cheese room was a sizeable and unconverted farm building; so you'd expect a cost akin to a rebuild.

I think my parents' Kent house probably has LIR's beaten - when they bought it, it had no mains water or sewage, electricty in one downstairs room, an outdoor loo, water from a well in a pump in the scullery, it needed serious, serious work - some of the brick bits at the bottom needed rebuilding, a couple of beams needed replacing, the floors were (cracked and ancient) tiles on bare earth, etc.

They bought it in 2002, I think, possibly 2003. The house was livable in at Easter 2006, and the main house was finished this time last year. The oast house outside has just been converted into a 1 bed house, and the dairy and barn are next on the list.

It being grade 2 * listed complicates matters horribly.

neverdespairgirl

zagubov wrote: »

Re: Biological clocks, they say a woman starts becoming less fertile about (on average) 20 years before the menopause and reaches complete intertility about 10 years before the menopause. A lot of the public think it's closer to the menopause than that.

really as long as 10 years before the menopause? I didn't know it was that long. I thought fertility started dropping after 35, but I could be wrong.

michaels wrote: »

Ideally I think kids mid-late 20s would give you the energy to do the whole thang justice but after uni and a few years out you are not really in a position financially to do so. It worries me how old I will be before we are no longer responsible for them. DW's family are 'renowned' for how late they remain fertile so we have a lot more years of avoiding getting pregnant as it seemed to happen extremely easily.

I was 27 when Isaac was born, and OH was 26. But that wasn't entirely deliberate!

Couldn't you look at a more permanent solution if you've definitely completed your family?

silvercar wrote: »

Young kids are cheaper than older ones.



It does seem weird that we are empty nesters (tern time only) and still (just) in our 40s. We have also managed to holiday without kids for the the last 3 years.

Isaac is horrifically expensive - £2,750 per month for childcare and school fees. Hope he doesn't get more pricey as he grows up!

LydiaJ wrote: »

I would not want to have a child in my mid-40s (ie now). My mum always conceived easily (as I did) but had several miscarriages (and I had one) and went overdue (as I did), didn't get stretch marks (as I didn't) and didn't "show" she was pregnant until really late on (just like me). Do you see a theme here? She had easy pregnancies and easy births in her late 20s and early 30s, and a complete nightmare with me at the age of 39, with the birth putting both her and me in danger.

I have always vaguely thought that pregnancy and fertility is similar along hte maternal line - perhaps Zag can now tell me how wrong I am (-:

My Granny had her first child aged 25, and second aged 31 (that damn World War got in the way, hence the large-ish gap, for the time). My mother, her second, was 3 weeks late, and Granny got pregnant very easily indeed.

My mother had her first, me, at the aged of 29, and my siblings aged 31, 35 and 36. She also got pregnant, so she says, within 1 or 2 months of trying to, with all 4 of us. I was due on 11th of March, and born on 31st, so I was almost 3 weeks late, too. My siblings were all 1-2 weeks early, but as they were born by scheduled c-section, that isn't a surprise.

I was 27 when Isaac was born, having got pregnant despite not missing or taking late my mini pill. He was induced when I was a few days late, which in retrospect I think I shouldn't have agreed to be bullied into.

My Granny was just over 55 when she went through the menopause, and my mother was in her late 50s, after her grandson was born, so I reckon 20 years from the menopause could still be in the future for me.

lostinrates

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I think my parents' Kent house probably has LIR's beaten - when they bought it, it had no mains water or sewage, electricty in one downstairs room, an outdoor loo, water from a well in a pump in the scullery, it needed serious, serious work - some of the brick bits at the bottom needed rebuilding, a couple of beams needed replacing, the floors were (cracked and ancient) tiles on bare earth, etc.

They bought it in 2002, I think, possibly 2003. The house was livable in at Easter 2006, and the main house was finished this time last year. The oast house outside has just been converted into a 1 bed house, and the dairy and barn are next on the list.

It being grade 2 * listed complicates matters horribly.

I have friends who have a spring/well in their breakfast room (the whole house is earth floor with stone slabs over. In the winter they just pump out any water, the aga being on takes care of the damp.

Our house turned out to have a well underneath it.

This is part of the house mid work, when nice people saw it.....:eek:




Everything behind that looked kind of worse actually, but had walls......


We also had to put sewerage in,( to a bio disc, no chance of mains here) but we do have mains water, and quite elaborate but it turns out weak mains electric. Only problem we had with water( we had an out door loo, but also one upstairs, outdoor got used more!) was that it froze all the time and until the bio disc was put in and when it froze it wasn't necessarily functional.......


We still lived here. .


We've been REALLY lucky with our historic building officer ( and planners and building control in the main, and definitely neighbours) and our architect liaised brilliantly, we also spent a year in pre planning. Its meant ultimately that in the main, the listing hasn't been TOO much of an issue. Often we're rectifying stuff that previous owners should never have done, and that's approved of. Previous owners being the most controllable of owners also gives us some leverage,


Edit, please on't quote picture.


I had forgotten that astilbe. I never liked it much, but obviously it didn't like it here either. Never mind.

michaels

PasturesNew wrote: »

That "Blackout" programme just started on Channel 4.

I tried but 2 mins of shaky handicam is all I can take before feeling nauseous.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I think my parents' Kent house probably has LIR's beaten - when they bought it, it had no mains water or sewage, electricty in one downstairs room, an outdoor loo, water from a well in a pump in the scullery, it needed serious, serious work - some of the brick bits at the bottom needed rebuilding, a couple of beams needed replacing, the floors were (cracked and ancient) tiles on bare earth, etc.

'My parents' had to remove the horse stall (and manure) from the main wing of their barn although it did have a stable lads accommodation in the other wing so wasn't totally uninhabitable. The 'Copper House' we stay in was pretty much a stone built garden shed.

lostinrates

michaels wrote: »

I tried but 2 mins of shaky handicam is all I can take before feeling nauseous.


'My parents' had to remove the horse stall (and manure) from the main wing of their barn although it did have a stable lads accommodation in the other wing so wasn't totally uninhabitable. The 'Copper House' we stay in was pretty much a stone built garden shed.

Every now and then I see ropey Victorian stalls for sale and try and buy them. Even in shoddy condition They always go for too much for my miserly taste. I'd put them in our covered yard for making a tieing up, tacking up and feeding area separate to the stable barn.