dorsetgirl

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Every year for the past thirty years, this has been the day I/we load up everything but the kitchen sink and set off to take part in a brilliant event. (I'm not going to name it here because I don't want the DG identity recognised by anyone who knows me in real life). This year, we're not going, because the boys' school kicked up a major fuss; threats of getting in the Education Welfare Officer, all sorts. We were told "every single day counts in education".

What really annoys me is that every time we go along to those "keep the parents informed" evenings, they say "Once the attendance drops below 95%, there is a very clear effect on the GCSE results. It is proven that poor attendance causes poor results."

So I have several major issues with that:

(1) Even after their one-week unauthorised absence "to accompany the parent with whom they reside on their main annual holiday", my children's attendance is always 97%. Which by the school's own words is not in the danger zone.

(2) There are many reasons why a person with poor attendance might have poor results. That does not automatically mean that the relationship is simple causative.

(3) Last week, and three weeks ago, all students were sent home at morning break, to allow the school to prepare for Open Evenings. Three lessons missed, both days.

(4) Only yesterday my middle son was given the afternoon off, along with about fifty others, to enable them to get home in time to get to a school-organised event last night. In other words, every day counts unless the school themselves decide it doesn't.

Anyway, today all over the country, roughly one hundred people I've known for between fifteen and thirty years are at this moment driving towards their holiday and I'm not. I am pissed off and unhappy.

At the request of www.allout.org I have just signed a petition to the Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament, Volodymyr Lytvyn, asking him to stop an anti-gay bill - a gay gag rule - that had its first vote on Tuesday. This terrible law makes it a crime for anybody to read, write, blog about, or declare any kind of support for gay rights in Ukraine. The Chairman has the power to stop this bill before its next reading, and has already expressed concerns about it.

If you care about human rights, may I suggest you might like to check out and sign the petition yourself?

http://www.allout.org/en/actions/ukraine_gag

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Because I’m largely out of touch with the current "pop" world (or whatever it’s called nowadays) it’s always been difficult for me to appreciate where Green Day fit into the world. I mean, I know they must be big, because I see phrases like "one of the biggest bands on the planet", and they play places like Wembley Stadium, but to me they’re just my favourite band, a bunch of guys I've grown to love very much, who happen to be successful and quite well-known.

So it’s rather weird and sad that it’s taken a bad-news story to make me understand how big this band really are. Billie Joe "had a meltdown", or as I would put it, "seems to have cracked under the strain" on stage the other night; the story has been put out that he's going into rehab and obviously we’ve been anxiously discussing things on fan sites, as you would. But this morning, googling to see if there’s any updates, I find that everyone - the BBC, the Daily Mail ffs - everyone’s got the story.

See, to me, it’s not "news", if that makes sense - it’s information about people I love. So I’m finding it really strange that to the rest of the world what’s happening to Billie is big news. And that’s how I’ve finally come to realise how big Green Day really are - because the fucking Daily Mail has the story.

Is it just me, or is it totally disrespectful to the other two people that died to go on at such length about the one of them that happened to play rugby?

The ten o'clock news has done a whole piece on the rugby player, and barely bothered mentioning the names of his father and brother. How the hell must the rest of the family be feeling at this moment, knowing that to the media one of their lost matters more than the others?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9537600/Strong-evidence-Richard-IIIs-body-has-been-found-with-a-curved-spine.html

OMG I am so excited about this! I honestly never dreamed I would see the day.

I can’t honestly say I enjoyed much of the Closing Ceremony, in fact I was totally bored after only five minutes, but I was determined to stick it out, and there were a few moments worth waiting for.

Some random outbursts:

Freddie!

Oh my god, Brian May’s gone grey! And he’s finally looking older. Until recently he’s been looking the same ever since I first saw Queen in 1974.

Eric Idle! It’s very difficult to believe that I was a child when I first saw that man on television. That song’s definitely a bit of a British icon though, and I’m pleased it was included.

Kudos to Gary Barlow for turning up and doing a good job - true professionalism.

Pleased to know that Ray Davies and Roger Daltrey can still (more or less) sing. Certainly better than Suggs or McCartney.

Russell Brand can be quite disturbingly good-looking on occasion - this was one of them. I enjoyed his performance; I didn't even know he could sing.

I’m definitely a bit old for One Direction, but I actually recognised and enjoyed their song (or songs?). I can see why they're so popular.

I've probably missed out something important - what did anyone else think of the show?

So that's that, then. Back to reality tomorrow. One of the best things about the Games, for me, has been the way it’s dominated the news. I mean, that’s actually seriously irritating when you’ve just been watching the Games for the past however many hours, but there hasn’t been a single stupid story about stupid politicians for two weeks now. I wish the BBC would keep to that from now on, and concentrate on actual news, but I don’t suppose they will.

My entry in #Dangleboris:



(Cap from www.sundive.co.uk)

Well. I loved the children’s choirs at the beginning. I’d been a bit worried that it would be English as opposed to British to an extent that would piss off the Scots and Welsh (and the Northern Irish, presumably? How can they be in “Team GB”?), but choirs in each country was a lovely touch.

James Bond! I was gobsmacked at Daniel Craig actually going into Buckingham Palace and coming out with the Queen. And they even got the corgis to nip at his ankles so he could smirk at them being left behind. And the idea of Queenie jumping out over the stadium made me smile.

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Whatsity: I was so totally not expecting Mr Bean. Fucking perfect. I like to think no other country would have undercut that proud Olympian moment with humour like they did there. I cracked up. What I really liked about the whole thing (well OK, I hated the last few minutes, but you can’t have everything), was that the entire ceremony was a statement about who we are. There was no way we could follow Beijing with more of the same but better, so I think it was the right decision to make it all much more personal. “This is us, this is where we came from, this is what we’ve done.” Earliest industrialisation, the NHS, Peter Pan, whatever. With a little bit of JK to remind everybody that we may be small and in some ways past our prime, but we can still do world-beating.

When they started doing the whole “iconic British” thing we were waiting for Doctor Who, and we were very pleased that we actually got the Tardis noise in there briefly. Thank you Danny for that!

I’m not particularly into David Beckham, but the guy seems genuine and I was pleased he got the job of transporting the flame down the river. He looked so proud, and rightly so.

What a great cheer when our team came into the arena! I know the BBC will do an excellent job of showing the actual events impartially (we’re very used to cheering on anyone charismatic at the front while our guy limps in tenth off-camera), but I was very pleased that they gave our team more screen time than the others in the opening ceremony, and that they got “Heroes” as their music.

And Doreen Lawrence! I very nearly cried at that moment. That was such a good thing to do; that lady truly deserves the honour.

The fireworks were good, too. Someone on Twitter said they could see them from twenty miles away.

Finally, one of the things I’d been worried about was that we would have all sorts of embarrassing has-beens singing their so-called greatest hits because someone in charge didn’t realise what year we were in. Right up to the end I thought we’d managed to avoid that but unfortunately we then got an absolute stinker, which came close to ruining the whole thing for me. I fucking loathe that song, always have done, and OK he might be rich and famous and it must be heartbreaking but surely someone could tell him that sadly for him, he just can’t sing any more?

So, once I’ve posted this I’m going to listen to a bit of Green Day to stop that awful song going round and round my brain, then I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can find some gymnastics to watch.

Overall, though, congratulations to Danny Boyle. The boy done good.

Reposted from talkingtothesky (with permission):

"If you see a post on tumblr that says something along the lines of 'What do you mean, you haven't read J.K.Rowling's 800-word Harry Potter prologue?' and the link is hidden, DON'T CLICK. I ended up with a fake 'Yorkshire Police have locked your computer for illegal activity' virus which made my computer (temporarily, thank god, since I managed to restart in safe mode and system restore) unusable and tried to get me to pay £100. The post I clicked already had 700 notes, so it looked legit, and I was halfway into reading the first two sentences when everything locked down. As evidenced by the 700 notes, it's apparently not affecting everyone, but if there is some way viruses are using that site to target computers, I'd say it's best to steer clear for now, just in case."

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My children are all off-timetable this week, in fact the whole school is. Year 7 and 8 are on trips, Year 9 and 10 are doing various projects and stuff, Year 11 and 13 have left after their exams and Year 12 are getting ready for university applications.

The eldest spent yesterday learning about writing his Personal Statement for his UCAS stuff, and starting on his first draft. I dunno if it’s even a word, but tersity, he haz it, so this is going to be something of a painful process. Today he’s being introduced to the applications website and getting some information on finance. I’m just trying not to think about the terrifying amounts of money involved, and remembering what Martin Lewis said about it not being parents’ responsibility to provide all, or even any of, the money.

Middle one had exercises in teamwork yesterday; like the rest of the family he doesn’t see the point in working with a team when you can nearly always do everything much quicker and better on your own, but I was able to give him some examples of a management course I went on once, and of the one effective team I’ve ever been part of, to show him that it can actually be useful to have others around providing they have complementary skills. My aim was to send him off in a more positive mood and to get him to think about what skills he could bring to a team, rather than moaning about having to be in a team at all. I think it worked - he had a good time, it seems, and enjoyed the various projects. Today, those of his year group who have parents in useful jobs are shadowing said parents for the day. I wrote a coldly angry letter to the school on this subject, pointing out that this was perpetuating privilege and basically discriminating against anyone whose parents aren’t in fancy jobs that will allow them to have their kids in for the day. I never got a reply, but two days later the organiser sent out a note asking if anyone could offer a placement for the day to a second student as well as their own precious. Nothing doing there, apparently, so middle son is spending the day on some “GCSE Maths Preparation”, whatever the hell that is. I suspect a cover teacher and a load of trivial worksheets.

Youngest is away in Normandy! It always amazes me how big a hole is left in the house by just one person being away, especially as we hardly ever see this one nowadays; he spends a lot of time upstairs doing incredibly complicated redstone stuff in Minecraft. Anyway, he went off at 6 o’clock yesterday morning, slightly nervous and still not knowing who he was going to be sharing a room with. Looking at the itinerary, it seems to be a World War Two gig (reading up on the places he’s going to I was astonished to read that the Germans had batteries in France that could, and did, actually hit England; I had no idea) but I always think the main point of these trips is to accustom the kids to being away without their families. It’s something that practically by definition, you can’t do for your own kids, so it’s good that schools do these things. He’ll be home tomorrow evening.

Tomorrow, oldest son starts his three days’ work shadowing. He’s been very fortunate to get something fixed up that should appeal quite strongly to his aptitudes and interests. It’s perfectly possible, if a little long-winded, for him to get there by public transport, but it will probably be easier if I give him a lift. So that’s my project for this afternoon - find out where the place is. And this evening’s project will be a brief canter through the practicalities and etiquette of office life. He says he knows all about office life (I don’t know how), but I bet it hasn’t occurred to him that a small company probably won’t have a canteen and that the nearest food is quite likely a twenty minute walk away. I just hope they have a sandwich lady. (Um, sexism alert? Dunno - I've never seen a sandwich man, is all I can say.)

I wish "control F" worked for finding my glasses. That is all.

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We still can’t get BBC2 on digital, and all our channels are way down in the 800s (we’ll deal with that after the next re-tune date), but it paid its way for the first time on Saturday when I looked at the Radio Times and realised (a) New!Series!Primeval! (b) at 6pm and (c) it was now 6:45 pm.

“Ooh, +1,” I thought, happily, “Never been able to do that before” and rushed back to the kitchen to encourage dinner along its way.

Miraculously the chicken was cooked in time, the garlic bread didn’t burn and I had enough red peppers to serve as they were so I didn’t have to start chopping and cooking anything for the veg bit.

So we watched Primeval in all its formulaic clunky ITV glory, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it has to be said there was rather more happy dissing of the plot than we generally get in Doctor Who.

( Mildly Spoilery Thoughts in no particular order )

OH has been panicking for a few weeks about the fact that we will lose the rest of the analogue signal tomorrow (we lost BBC2 last week). I don't often get a chance to watch so I'm really not that bothered, and we've had some nasty arguments about how much it's worth spending on a new tv. He, obviously enough, wants a BIG one, with HD, Sky, 3D, you name it. All I want is wireless headphones (for him, so we don't have to listen to his choice of boring programmes) and to watch the occasional programme of my choice, at the volume of my choice.

Anyway, on Sunday I suggested that a cheap short-term fix would be to buy a FreeView digibox. So he duly went off to Maplins and came home with one, which had cost about £30. We watched BBC1 and BBC2 on a slightly iffy picture for about half an hour, at which point the picture disintegrated completely and the signal then failed. We couldn't get anything else for the rest of the evening, and I found a website that said that at this stage we can only get BBC1 and BBC2 on digital, and we'll get the rest tomorrow. Fair enough.

This morning OH asked me to phone the digital helpline and ask them what was going on. I argued that we might as well wait till switchover tomorrow, but he insisted. (As I'm at home I tend to get given these jobs while he's out Earning The Money). So I switched it all on again prior to making the phone call, and they're all there! BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channels 4 & 5; I even looked in the Radio Times for other channel numbers and - for the first time in my life - watched Dave and the BBC News channel. All of this on the day before these things are supposed to be available. *iz confuzed*

Of course, they'll probably all disappear tomorrow, never to be heard of again. We shall see.