Easter Holiday Time.....

Off to Londesborough the other day for a look and a walk. No reason, we just hopped in the car and headed off to a couple of the local villages we'd never been to:



View from Londesborough park.



What's left of Londesborough Hall



All Saint's Church, Londesborough.



Just a path.

I don't care if Monday's blue......

...... because Friday I'm In Love.

Much smiles from this one at Buzzfeed. And if you have no idea - shame on you - see here.

4 Today - Fictions celebrates it's birthday

Fictions turns four today.

Granted, I've hardly been actively blogging all that much recently but still............ sort of worth celebrating. I may raise a glass.

And I promise, I really promise, that I shall be writing more here. Just out of the habit. Or maybe I have nothing worthwhile to say? (altogether now - "That didn't stop you from nearly four years of meaningless blather did it?")

Is it Easter yet?

Oh my word, I'm tired. Candle burning at both ends and all the way through the middle. A combination of a long, involving term since Christmas and a desire to write more and more things down has left me with the sort of tiredness I usually have at holiday time.

Unfortunately I've managed to skip a week. I'm in holiday tired mode with a whole week left of school. Arse.

Smarter people than I would spend the week being careful and getting to bed early. But not me. Oh no, I have a list of things to do this week, both school and writing, that means early nights are something I can only imagine once the holidays start.

Oh well. Could be worse. I could have a real job that didn't give me school holidays off. How do you people do that?

Should have deleted that email...

Oh, what a great day. All went well until an email from someone in council ICT that just happened to mention, in passing, the new BECTA guidelines for schools and data. I should have just deleted it, seeing as it doesn't come into effect until later in the year, but oh no, I read it, I clicked the links, I tried to decipher my way through page after page of BECTA guidelines and all the way through I just felt my mood getting worse and worse and worse. The work involved is overwhelming, bogglingly so.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be done all in one go. The bad news is that now I know it has to be done it's going to be at the back of my damn mind. Should have just deleted the email. Damn.

Mother's Day - the aftermath

Okay, the presents were given, the cards passed over, and it was a good day. Molly came bounding in at the pre-arranged time, waking us both up and almost throwing the bundle of goodies over Louise in her excitement.

Stupid me, we forgot to get pictures. But Louise was in the usual Mother's Day happy place. There were chocolates, cream eggs, a magazine to put her feet up with, a beautiful card handmade by her darling daughter and a lovely glass keepsake Molly picked up (with daddy's money of course) in the week.

Then it was off to Scarborough for a blustery spring walk along the beach and up to the castle:



(Castle grounds and castle at the back of the green diamond)



(Seafront)



(Beach huts)

There may be big bits of Scarborough where it's full on naff seaside town, all amusement arcades, shops full of tat and shellsuited locals. But there's an awful lot to enjoy there. And we did.

Stupid things that they pre-programmed into the damn computer.....

Sometimes it's the little things about computing, or maybe just Microsoft, that amazes me. Sticky keys that are a source of continual amusement to some children. That stupid thing where you can rotate the screen 90 degrees completely by accident if you happen to press some combination of keys in order (which is surprisingly easy when you're 5).

And then tonight, when my keyboard suddenly decided to give @ instead of ". A little google later and it turns out that the damn thing's designed to do that whenever the ALT and the SHIFT key are pressed together. And what are the odds of that eh?

Stupid, stupid, stupid computers.

Deliberate luddite behaviour .... or "just not getting computers" as they say to me.....

........................ Oh, alright then, since you asked me.
Fixing computers for friends and colleagues. Or friends of colleagues. Or children of colleagues. Fun.

But the most annoying, or perhaps irritating thing about it is that more often than not it's fixing stuff that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Invariably it's broken this or broken that, laptops or computers with huge virus problems.

And no matter how many times I've sent around emails or talked to folks about doing little things like regularly backing up everything or making sure they have the best free anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewalls in place - they rarely have. At which point they bring the computers to me. And I fix them with a smile and a gentle reminder that they should really think about doing regular back-ups and getting all that security software I've been telling them about. And halfway through I can see them forgetting to do it already.

It's at the stage now where I'm beginning to believe that it's actually some form of luddite-ism. Worse, there's almost a deliberate refusal to even think about these sorts of little things that would make their lives so much better and easier. You tell them what they need to do, these smart, educated people, and they look at you with glazed over eyes and always come out with something like "but I don't understand computers"

The thing is, we both know they don't mean don't. They mean wont.

Doing the Mother's Day runaround.....

Today (well, yesterday, but you get the idea) Molly and I decided to sort out the presents for Mother's Day on Sunday. We had a great idea over the weekend, involving fun, chocolate and artwork by Molly. All was sorted, we woke up this morning with an idea of what we needed to get.

Then I realised that it was such a good idea that we'd actually done it three years ago. Oh crap. Massive rethink. And then a wander around Pocklington trying to gather everything together. But we did it, all we have to do now is put it all together, decorate it and Molly has to add all the personal touches that make it all worthwhile. Because you can spend a fortune on flowers, or jewellery or anything. But nothing, absolutely nothing makes a mummy smile like a handmade something, no matter how small or how rough.

The secondary school thing...

Molly has her place at the secondary school she decided she wanted to go to (more on that back here). It's the one up the road. About 5-10 minutes walk away. Not that it was ever going to be an issue. I feel for those families we left behind who are going through the nightmare of trying to explain to their little ones that they don't get to go to school with their best friends and there's nothing mummy or daddy can do about it.

But I still remember the wave of relief that Louise and I felt on our first visit to Molly's primary school when we asked the question about entry criteria for secondary schools in the area. Automatic entry to either the local comp or a Catholic school in York. That just confused us and we had to check. Yes, automatic entry meant exactly what we thought it meant. A little different from the idea we were used to back in Birmingham.

So the thing that would have been giving us nightmares and cold sweats in Birmingham we sailed through in Pocklington. It almost makes us feel guilty. Almost. But it is one of the main reasons we moved up here after all. And it's worked out wonderfully well.

It's all worked out wonderfully well. Pocklington still feels like a holiday destination that we just happen to be lucky enough to be living in. It's a great feeling. But most importantly of all, our little girl, who's not so little any more, is going exactly where she wants to be going for the next 5, maybe 7 years.

Back again, but for how long?

A return to this blog is something I've been meaning to do for such a long time but everything conspires against it. The days rush past, the weeks even moreso. I go out to work, get in, have fun with Molly, maybe finish off some work work and then, once Molly's in bed, I read and I write stuff and I prevaricate and I write some more. Sometimes there's TV, sometiimes a film. Always music.

And yet, in between all that, there's no time to update the blog. It's not like things haven't happened. Molly's getting older and growing up, secondary school is sorted out, we've been places and done stuff. Life is still good up here in Pocklington Bruton mansions.

But none of it gets written down. I should really try to change that. Tomorrow. I promise.