Today I've mostly bin...

[Laura]

Well, it was Thursday night, Friday and Saturday. But yes, still exhausting!!! Fantastic fun though - a lot of firsts in one weekend.

[Bunnylump]

Sounds like great fun!!

[LAT]

I like Polesden Lacey. We've been a couple of times in the last 3 or 4 years. Wonderful gardens and grounds, and an interesting house too.

Today we have been to Hamprton Court Flower Show. OH got 2 free tickets so we braved the traffic to get there and the mud underfoot inside the showground. But a great day out with lots to see. I wore washable sandals (deliberately) but my feet took a bit of scrubbing to get all the mud off when we got home!

[Laura]

Euwww!!! I've been to Hampton Court Flower Show when the weather had been dry for a few weeks, and I can only begin to imagine what it would have been like after this year's rain! Congratulations on surviving it!!!

[Bunnylump]

Went round to my friend's house (I'm a band widow again). She instantly started making home made scones...

Good news is that obviously she has done this too often. I got another new outfit (she's grown out of...again!!)

Anyway, the REALLY good news is that my lovely niece (who I have always been really close to) just rang to say she's getting married next year. I'm really chuffed.

[LAT]

Gosh! Another wedding and you'll need another new outfit for it. What fun!

[Bunnylump]

I think the diet is definitely on the agenda now...

[gill216]

....seeing red with Dreams bedding centre.

They were the only store I'd found that had the exact bed frame I'd been looking for. Bonus too, it was reduced and marked as one only. However, if we wanted to buy it then we had to buy at the normal price because that one was "sold"! Not only that but we then had to pay a delivery charge despite saying we would take way. The additions added up to an extra 50% on the advertised price.
I'm afraid I saw my backside and walked out. OH very calmly walked back up the stairs and took a photograph of the sign in full display of the salesman. Need less to say he came out with the very same bed frame for the advertised price and loaded into the back of the car with no compulsory delivery charge.

[giraffe]

Dreams let me take matresses etc away in my car with no delivery charge, but the bed frame that I had said I would do the same with so I didn't have to pay delivery they insisted on delivering, but did it free as a goodwill gesture as I had been "messed around" I hadn't but if they were delivering t for free that was fine by me. Then a few weeks later they phoned up to ask when I wanted it delivered, so I told them I already had it. Then a couple of weeks later they phoned again to arange delivery, and I told them that I had it and that it was the third delivery they had tried to make of the same bed. Their systems seem to be completely useless. i almost agreed to have an extra bed just to get them to stop phoning!

[Bunnylump]

Guess what I did today??

I had my photo taken carrying the Olympic torch!! (Not the lit one, the paralympic one, but nevertheless cool),

[Laura]

Very cool! My Brownies were in competition tonight.

"I touched the olympic torch!"
"Yeah, well I got to hold it!"
"I got to hold it for longer though...."

And so on.

[LAT]

I'm jealous.

[MBH]

it was reduced and marked as one only.


........... he came out with the very same bed frame

Eh????

Very cool! My Brownies were in competition tonight.

"I touched the olympic torch!"
"Yeah, well I got to hold it!"
"I got to hold it for longer though...."

"I toasted mashmallows on it."
"Yeah? Well I burned Brown Owl's bum."

[kathlyn]

[Bunnylump]

Had all the new intake for next September coming in for a morning visit today. There were some really nice kids, and some horrors as well. What never ceases to amaze me, when you bear in mind that they are only 11, and are coming to the "big school" for the first time, meeting a load of new pupils, how there are ALWAYS a few of them who get left there, waiting for their parents to pick them up.

We ended up with one little girl, who had come from a private school. She was the only one from her school and looked very nervous. All the others had been collected at the end of the morning, and there were a few stragglers, but she was there a full 25 minutes after everyone else had gone. We asked her who was supposed to be picking her up. "Oh, my mum. But she's busy at work and doesn't know when she will be able to fit picking me up in." FIT HER IN??? This is her daughter!! Some people really do have their priorities all up the spout, don't they? Poor little thing. I felt really sorry for her. There was no way she could have walked home, she lived about 8 miles away. (I might add, she would have had to pass right past 2 other perfectly good schools to get to us. But obviously they weren't "good enough". )

[Laura]

Sad to say, in my experience, it's a very common mentality in parents who send their children to independent schools. They think it's the school's job to look after their children until they think it is convenient to pick them up. I'm not saying that that is true of all or even the majority of parents, but the ones who do think like that seem to think that by paying for their children's education, it somehow means that they pass the responsibility on to the school.

[Bunnylump]

Well, I must say that thought did cross my mind as well. One of my staff gave up about 3/4 of her lunch break to look after her in the end, before Mummy deigned to turn up. Frankly, if I hadn't had a meeting to go to, I would have given Mummy a piece of my mind. Did feel really sorry for the kid though.

[LAT]

Oh dear, now I feel really bad. I was often one of the last parents to arrive to fetch my children from school, mainly though because it always seemed to be the days when I was asked to do something else at work before leaving, that the traffic was particularly bad. Luckily they had a 'homework' club which kept them until 6.30 so they knew to go to that if I didn't appear by 5.30 and the car park was emptying. And I did feel bad but the provision was there so I knew they were safe and nobody was being put out.

The trouble is these days that a lot of children go to school too far away to walk there. I used to make my own way to and from school from about the age of 8 or 9 but lots of kids can't do that these days.

[Bunnylump]

Well, that's different. The kids knew you would get there as soon as you could and there was provision for them to be looked after anyway. This little lass was left all on her own in a strange school with strange people when all the other 190 kids from the year had gone home.

[LAT]

Well, at least they were resigned to the idea of me being late to fetch them. But it's all long past now anyway.

Poor girl though, it is slightly different on a day like this when she doesn't know anyone.