22 Foxhole East

badmemory

So agree with snuff2pay.

The problem that the last year will leave is for those that have done nothing but play on their (whatever it is they play on these days).  They have ALL missed basically a year in school.  That in itself frankly is not really the problem because they have all missed it.  If they have been engaged - in something anything no matter what they will be okay.  The problem will be the ones that have sat watching screens or TV for the last year because they will have forgotten how to be involved etc, how to learn, how to concentrate & even how to communicate.  Those are the ones that in the next few yeaars are going to be a real problem.  Some of them won't want to work at a job to earn money because they have never been in a position to work at anything much & I find that really sad.  Hopefully someone will find the answer, but it will probably cost too much to sort out, certainly for the current gov, they will probably just blame the kids or the parents anyone but themselves.

snuff2pay

It is a universal truth that as soon as teenagers and young people realise that there is something in it for them ( money)  they will find the motivation that's needed. Covid won't have changed that.

kerri_gt

snuff2pay said:

It is a universal truth that as soon as teenagers and young people realise that there is something in it for them ( money)  they will find the motivation that's needed. Covid won't have changed that.

And let's face it,  how many of us have been glued to screens for the past year, Teams meetings with work instead of F2F, Zoom exercise classes, Netflix, Amazon Prime, zoom parties/quizzes, Skype chats. I know some of them are technically speaking to other people but its still all from the same four sodding walls and 2D. I swear after this if i never see Zoom again it will be too soon.

f0xh0les

Not me! Never  had a teams meeting, never zoomed anyone, never  even skyped.  Although I have also never been asked to. Tonight was my first foray into  'online things' for a virtual parents evening.  Seems my laptop does not like it. Why will my audio not work for that, when it works fine for everything else? I can live stream the radio, and listen to podcasts, but tonight, nope. Would not  play people's voices.    I am just glad it all works on the kids laptops.  It was all very Max Headroom.  Not sure quite how annoyed teachers can get in a 4 minute scheduled meeting by my tech not working. There was no other option given, so I trusted the tech would work.  Now DH is absolutely disgusted with me because after 2 meetings of it not working very well,  he went off and got his i-thing he just bought himself and told me to use it instead.  Everything the man owns is password protected!!  Phone, i pad, macbook, honestly, security conscious is one thing, but this verges on paranoia.   I  only had 1 minute scheduled between each meeting, and there is no way on this planet I would have been able to log onto my email client, click on the link, add the birth date of the relevant child, click through to the scheduled appointment on the school website and be back  there in time for the next meeting.  So I said no thanks I would try and struggle on with mine, so he has decided I was just being deliberately and willfully unhelpful...... tbh he can go copulate with himself.   

A pop up green screen background arrived today so he can do more professional online meetings.  So that will be nice for him.   That is the problem with people who have a techy background, they just assume everyone has a base level of knowledge and they can't understand how you don't know how something works.

In other news, made a lovely shepherds pie for supper.

f0xh0les

Today has been, on the whole, a good day.  Baked goods ready for tomorrow in the kitchen, rice pudding in the fridge, plenty of cereal still in the pantry and I should not have to buy anything more until Monday. 

I have one freezer drawer front that is split from top to bottom, so I am going to use this week's child tax credit to buy a new one. they are less than £10, but then so is my ctc , so I am using the opportunity to run down the freezer contents (by eating them) so I can defrost the Ice Planet Hoth and have a fully working freezer section again.   That is my half term project homework.

This cunning plan of mine is going to have to involve ' nice cream' as I have a metric tonne of bananas in there, so I will have to get my Yonanas machine out of the pantry ( I bought it for 50p in a c/s about 9 years ago) and have a frozen fruit mushing session.  I still have very posh 38p ys chocolate and raspberry sauce to go with it, so that will be a cheap and very nice pudding.

Only 2 school days left.  Hooray! The end feels like it is in sight.

f0xh0les

What a busy day at work!  Clients waiting out the door for the whole session, luckily the sun was shining, and even though the side roads are all still iced up and frosty, the front of our building is in a sunny spot and the ground was clear and dry. So lots of people stood chatting on the street.  Quite a lot of new people who were, to be honest, completely shocked at the wonderful amount of fresh fruit and veg we were able to supply them with.  We had potatoes, carrots, swede, cabbages, kale, parsnips, 3 different bagged salads, cucumbers, courgettes, mushrooms, broccoli, green beans, corn on the cob, 3 colours of peppers, apples, pears, blackberries, bananas, kiwis, plums and nectarines.  Plus the normal stuff that is packed in the boxes.  So lots of things were taken by clients and everybody left happy that they could feed their families.   We also gave out pancake mixes for next week's International Pancake Appreciation Day, and noodles for Chinese New Year.   All in all, a good day and lots of people helped.  It is tiring though. 

My gingerbread buns are a thing of beauty.   NSD7 already.

kerri_gt

Ohhh, totally forgot its pancake day next week.  I shall have my annual day of not making them very well, wondering why i could make them better when i was 12 and remembering why i only make them once a year.

slm6002

I have just finished reading your diary.  I started at the beginning and got to your 44th birthday, but then lost my page, so started a bit more up to date.  You do so much and have done so well.  Will be keeping up to date with how you get on.

f0xh0les

Hi slm6002!  Nice to 'meet' you. Welcome aboard my wonky ship.

As a romantic valentine's day activity, dh has been teaching me how to solder. I have been removing capacitors and replacing and resoldering them, and splicing wires together. What fun!    Now't else to do is there!

Yesterday we watched The Muppets Most Wanted as dh had not seen it, and I bought it 2nd hand with no real money (NRM) so they could watch it over half term - today is The Tempest (Helen Mirren is in it) and Romeo and Juliet with Guns is next week.  Some of it is educational, and The Muppets does have some Shakespearean devices in it - twins (identical frogs),  mistaken identity,  deception for personal gain, falling in love with the wrong person etc.  Which means I have an XB0X rigged up to the tv so I can start to watch and reject some of the dvds we have acquired. Long time goal, now at least I can start to do it.   Hoping for 5 to discard this half term.   Things are going to have to earn their keep.

Had no idea whatsoever what to cook for lunch, but I do want to defrost the freezer asap, so I made Nice Cream with 10 of my frozen banananas, and the kids happily ate it, and a scone, and a veg stew with dumplings.   I have 2 x 1/4lbers in the freezer, so not enough for a meal, but if I cook them and chunk them and throw them into a chilli, then that should be a perfectly acceptable meal, I still have about 8 banananas left, so they will go too, then 2 out of the 3 drawers are empty.  The rest of the freezer contents are frozen gyoza, tofu, and spring rolls, so they can probably all go over 2 meals with a noodle soup.   All looking good to have a nicely defrosted and empty freezer for the end of half term, with a new drawer front  and NRM will be spent.  Somehow I have come in with £65 left of the £100 budget last week.  All excess shunted to savings.  The pantry is getting 'holes' where the tinned goods are.  A big shop is on the cards, just not this month.  I am using stuff up (still have 12 bottles of BBQ marinade to go) and carrot, corn, and courgette fritters will be making a guest appearance for lunch one day.

The Westminster Muppets seem to be squeaking all the right noises this morning for schools to be returning on 8th March.   It will give them 15 days back at school before the Easter holidays.   If they open the non-essential shops from 22nd, at least I might have the chance to buy them clothes that will fit from the c/s and I will not have to go to a (gulp!) r-e-a-l  clothes shop  (ds3 is doing fast fashion in geography - he has finally got why I shop the way I do). They do all need a haircut though.

Unearthed (ha ha!) a box of seeds from a drawer, and some of them can be started nowish.  Might look into that. Either way they can be planted April/May time so need to get on with making the rest of my planters. Still not finished them all. Hoping to finish them while I am not policing DS4 and his flippin' schoolwork so probably starting Tuesday at the earliest.

In other news..... all the laundry has been done and dried (it is chucking it down), DS 3 is making great progress on his 1000 piece jigsaw, mostly by leaving it for me to do .  The top two floors are clean and tidy, the ground floor looks like a bomb has gone off.

I am going to roast a load of veg this afternoon and have it with stuffing and gravy for supper tonight. 

kerri_gt

I hadn't even thought about the kids going back on 8th March makes it no time at all til Easter. I won't even suggest there is some logic in it, there seems to be none in general to these rules and lockdowns.

I am really hoping stores reopen soon-ish. First world problems but I thought our Paperchase was closing for good, it seems it might be having a refit so at least one nice store to reopen.  Sadly we've lost Topshop, Dotty Ps and Burtons all since Dec lockdown now.  Can't say I regularly shopped in them but its more gaping empty stores in town that has little enough to offer as it is. We've also lost a fab little independent card/gift shop, Monsoon, New Look Poundstretcher and a yoga studio all in the past year (bar NL that closed a while back) and its not a big high street. 

A lesson in soldering sounds fab, used to love that in Tech at school.
Well done on running the freezer down, i keep trying to do that with ours, then fill it up inadvertently - this time with baked goods rescued from Olio.
Enjoy half term, at least you won't have as much pressure home schooling. Does DH get the week off? I seem to recall as uni terms are short we didn't get a mid term break (gosh it was a while ago).