What makes you happy ?

I really like this attitude. You can’t feel hurt for kids, you can’t trust that they will believe you, you can’t make them learn from your experience. You can’t do a whole lot of stuff – so you may as well let them do it. Just more safely.

One point though – it mentions spears. Now I can’t be the only guy who has not yet met a woman that can throw. My girls have both meant to throw something straight down the garden and the item has flown straight over the hedge. They’ve thrown balls in entirely unexpected directions when playing with the dog. They can’t even throw jelly babies and hit me across the room. So give a girl a spear? Yeah right. Evolution took care of that one :) (cue the sexist stuff..)

Allowing kids the freedom to explore … will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer.

Go watch Ted. (10 min video)

We used to pay little attention to the utility bills. If they said they wanted 35 quid a month (or any amount) then they got it. We took it for granted that what we saved in the summer would even out with what extra we used in the winter. Oh how wrong we were….
After going bankrupt we naturally examined where each penny was being spent. And once we got the ability to pay bills again by getting the utility back (water are okay, electric/gas aren’t too bad, phone? they make you sweat blood. No, I am not joking) we looked really hard at these budgeting schemes. Initially we left it to them and it slowly but surely slid in their favour. I don’t mean that they had our money – I mean that our debt increased. Their grip got tighter. This matters because we wanted to change suppliers.

You ring your gas supplier and say “I want to switch to someone else”. They reply “No problem, but fully settle your bill first”. And all of a sudden you can see that part of their ploy is to put that financial obstacle in your way. After all, if you are moving suppliers to save money chances are you don’t have the money around to pay that bill off. So you are more likely to stay with that costly company – who then say you can save money by having your electric / phone / broadband / satellite with them. And you can pay monthly there too…. bargain….

With the costs of energy going up (and we can only hope the Govt immediately start telling the elderly that they will help more than they do) then I’m sure many people will head over to USwitch, find the deal and only then discover just how bad their debt is. So when the Govt and journos say that so many people have yet to switch it must include not just the inertia effect but also this financial hostage taking that the energy companies deal in.

Are we switching? Hell yes. But only when Martin Lewis says so. (The only thing I will not change is my ISP. At £35 a month it’s costly but when I ring Zen I get someone who really does know all the technical stuff. I don’t ring often but when I do the last thing I want is someone reading from a screen. I also – obviously – need an excellent service which I get).

D got an offer from Derby University today – Behavioural Sciences Hons degree course. She’s walking on air and smiling so wide the top of her head could drop off :)

For the last 364 days and 20 hours the people next door have not been in residence for more than an hour in total. They decided to have a party and bring all their LOUD FRIENDS with them. So I accompanied their wailing at midnight by blasting out the Cunninglynguists (it’s the only music I have in the PS3). I hope I annoyed them, I really do.

(Bee Gees – they are playing the Bee Gees and loudly too. Baaaaaaaad)

I passed an important parental milestone last night.

D (who is now 17!) watches Skins. I have no idea about it but she says it’s cool. There are Skins parties at what I assume are nightclubs in town and she has been to 2 so far. Last night was the 3rd. I knew she was going out and wouldn’t be back until the early hours (it was 2am in the end) but I didn’t know when. So I’m working upstairs and decide I need 5 minutes away from the screen. I head downstairs and as I wander toward the kitchen I hear the hairdryer. Turning the corner I see D drying her hair. Wearing a “little black dress”. My response – “You can’t go out in that!“. This brought a glare from D and much laughter from Jacq and P. D demanded to know why she couldn’t. I told her that she could, she looked great and that I hadn’t meant it. This was something I feel all dads have to say to their daughters’ at some point. It’s a necessary part of “how things should be”. It’s a sign that I am growing old, it was never like this in my day, that I do not understand the younger generation, that I don’t want people to have any fun, that I should buy her sackcloth if I didn’t want her to look good – all those stereotypes. The look on D’s face was excellent though – she really thought I meant it :)

We finally have a downstairs toilet. The sparky needs to fit a light and wire that and the fan, but it’s otherwise there and working. J no longer has to fight her way up and down the stairs many times every day. This isn’t just a good thing, it’s a fantastically wonderful thing. It’s one thing to be worn by doing something you like and quite something else to have the strength to cope with the calls of nature – the second leaves no energy for the first. Add into this that the last interferon jab went well and although MS is never good, it’s on the better side of bad right now. When I get the names of the people who did it I’ll blog them because each one I would recommend without hesitation.

The (real) tree is up, the sparkly lights lit (one set don’t work so they go back to Tesco tomorrow), Home Alone has had it’s first of many viewings, Santa Clause 1 2 and 3 have been seen, xmas music has been played, Noddy Holder’s Top whatever was on The Hits. P sat watching a video on there saying “Who is he? never heard of him. I know him he’s SO young. Look at her hair. Look at HIS hair! This is terrible music. What ARE they wearing..” It was the Band Aid vid from 198x. Makes me feel older when my youngest daughter says things like that. But she makes excellent mince pies and cookies so she is forgiven.
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A friend of D’s asked if she could look after his dogs while he is away for a night. She said Yes. They arrived yesterday (and thankfully are going today). They epitomise everything I dislike about dogs.
They are constantly pleased to see me, their tails never stop wagging, they seem to want to be under my feet, they scamper around, they sit and look all forlorn at me. I had to come downstairs in the early hours and as I opened the door to the lounge they were both sat there wagging their tails so hard they were actually wobbling. It’s that ‘Dogs worship you while cats expect you to worship them’ thing. Annoys me intensely.
The reason why Winston is cool is that first he’s huge. If you are going to have a dog, have a dog. He does none of this fawning rubbish. Get back after being out and he’ll say hello and that’s about it. Play Hide and Seek while out and he’ll be momentarily pleased then he’ll charge off. He doesn’t scamper – though at at least 13/14st that would be tricky – and he doesn’t fawn and look forlorn. Sure he’s got that droopy look but that’s because his skin is too heavy for his face (“No J, he is not sad, he is not asking, he doesn’t look hard done to – it’s just how he always looks so no he can’t have it – he’s a dog” “Yes, I am harsh :) “). But Winston isn’t a wuss. He’s a great big dog and 99% of the time he acts like one. The two little wretches from the friend’s house (who our cat isn’t fazed by at all and who is bigger than one of them) are just so…pointless.

Early evening last night I realised that Metroid 3 for the Wii was out. And I had forgotten (see, I get so wrapped up in work!) and I said to J that tomorrow I would be going town to buy it. I then tuned back into work mode.
Some years ago I read a book called “Why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps‘. This really is an amazing book. So much so that if you see it, buy it. Just get it. I promise you will not feel the money is wasted. It has saved so many arguments and given us (this includes my daughters) so much insight into how we (Man/Woman) operate that the book is gold. One such thing explained is called “The butter is in the fridge”. I will ask where something is and I’ll be told (for instance) it’s in the fridge. I’ll look and say it’s not there. I’ll be told that yes, it is and I should look properly. Again I look and yet again I state categorically that the item is not, repeat not, in the fridge. As this point one of the ladies in the house will open the fridge in front of me and take out the item – which could well have been on the front of a shelf. This used to irritate them hugely. “Are you blind or what” (No) “Why don’t you look properly?” (I did!) “You just wanted to annoy me by making me get up and come this way to get it for you didn’t you” (No, I really don’t need the grief) and this book explains that this is typical Man behaviour. It’s not my fault. It’s The Way It Is.
Now J used to come in from work and would then rabbit on and on and on about her day, who did what, when they did it, what someone didn’t do, what was said to who about who etc etc. Used to drive me nuts – every day this happened and I never did this. Work was work, it happened elsewhere and stayed elsewhere. In the end when she walked in, I tuned out. Later she could say “Remember I told you..” to which I would have to reply “Yes of course my dear!….” though she eventually realised I was not listening and that irritated her. Another thing that still drives me nuts is ‘Woman Speak”. Example: Man is out and he damages the car. He enters the house and says “I damaged the car, bloody idiots on the road, if I could catch him, it’ll cost me a packet”. This succinctly conveys that the car is damaged, it was not his fault, he is angry at the other person and he didn’t want to have to spend the money. Now, here is the Woman version: She enters the house, “You’ll never guess what happened. I’d just come out of the shop and – did I say I met so-and-so in there? haven’t seen her for ages. Well she’s dumped the guy she was with and she’s hooked up with that guy you used to play football with – why don’t you play any more? You really should you know – anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I wish you would out the mirror back as I like it in the car after you have used it. I got to the car ……” and sometime later she mentions that the car hit something. When J did this it used to really drive me crackers. Inside of me there would be a little person screaming “Get to the point dammit!!”. But because of that book I know understand that this is a Woman thing and She Cannot Help It. So I take deep breaths. I tried saying “Yes yes but what’s the end of this? What’s the point” Where is the result?” to which she would say “No, you won’t understand, you need to know all this”. Like hell I did.
Back to the droning on she used to do when she came back from work. The book mentioned trigger words that would cause the Man to stop ignoring and immediately tune in. Like when in a room someone whispers your name. We worked out that I had at least one trigger word – sex. If J said that I was all ears. This was very effective. No matter how tuned in to the task I was, the mention of that word get her attention. It was that effective that the girls would use that word when I seemed to be ignoring them – which I wasn’t, it was a tuning thing. Metroid. So I’d said to J that I’d be going town and I was soon back reading, replying and fixing. At some point while talking to P (who has just had her hair straightened and she looks fab) J said “Tesco”. I have no idea why but that word tuned me back in. I leant back to look around the corner and said that it was open 24 hours and that we should go there right now because they sell Wii games. This was about 10pm. I then tuned back into work again thinking my words would be useless. But P then said she needed some “hair stuff” and J wanted some Jelly babies. So off we went.
Tesco is a sane place at 11:15pm. Hardly anyone around, no rushing, no distractions, security are too busy watching some drunk lads coming into buy beer and I could actually go in straight lines between the parts of the store I needed. Very nice. Last year we started shopping in the very late/early hours because of this. Saves so much hassle. So I bought Metroid, P got hair bobbles and bread to take to feed the ducks today and J got her Jelly babies.

(I have News 24 streaming on the PC. Has anyone noticed they are using a sample of Bejewelled music in the summaries?)

Go buy that book. And I will hope that Tesco has not replaced sex in my life.