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Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Grammar – working it out

Posted in Family, Kids, tagged , , on 13 February, 2009| 1 Comment »

I’ve just realised why my children do things

on accident.

It’s because they didn’t do them on purpose.

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Generations

Posted in Church, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on 10 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »

generations

The Joker was six the other Sunday. We’d already planned a party for him at a local soft play park, which happened after school on Monday. So what about celebrations on his actual birthday?

To tell the truth, we’d not completely factored in his birthday when planning our last few Sundays in this parish. So we’d invited three church members to lunch. They were an octogenarian chap and a couple who are both retired.

I hope you’re not surprised to learn that we had a delightful Sunday afternoon. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer are used to having all sorts of folk over for lunch, so they didn’t notice that the people around the table were older than their grandparents.

Before lunch they’d enjoyed showing their baby pictures to our friends and the Joker had been demonstrating his new birthday toys in the living room. Thankfully, not the pogo stick. We all particularly enjoyed his sharing of new jokes from his Basil Brush joke book.

I can’t think of many of my friends or contemporaries who regularly share meals with those of a different generation other than grandparents or other family members. So it is one of the great joys of being part of a church family that we have friends of different generations.

I was recently told that the promotion of intergenerational relationships is a current trend in community development. The Big Lottery Fund is certainly supporting it.

I wonder if the government would just consider encouraging people to join a church family instead?

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Complaining – an update

Posted in Family, Lads mags, tagged , , , , , , on 9 February, 2009| 3 Comments »

The other day I had a surprising comment on my blog. I’ve not approved it for reading because it was from a reporter!

She’d read my story about my success in complaining to a local Asda store and wanted to write it up for our local paper.

On Friday night I was out with friends for the first farewell of many (we’re moving to the Vicarage very shortly). As I told them about the paper’s interest, Mrs Discoman commented that she never took her children down the magazine aisle because of the lads mags on display.

Another friend announced that she would be going into a local Asda and doing exactly the same thing as I had – putting the complaint in writing and indicating that a lack of action would affect her shopping habits ie that she would no longer patronise the store. So it seems that the campaign is spreading already!

The reporter I spoke to wanted to write about how I’d had success with my complaint, so she’s going to interview me properly in the next few days and send a photographer round.

Hence the hair appointment.

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Crazy Feet

Posted in Kids, tagged , , , on 3 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Joker loves the movie ‘Kung Fu Panda’. So here he is doing the big fat panda’s ‘Crazy Feet’ routine. Enjoy….

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A Strange Thing

Posted in Family, Food, Kids, tagged , , , , , on 27 January, 2009| 2 Comments »

The Joker started crying at tea tonight because I gave some of his extra broccoli to his brother.

Some yummy broccoli

My children are unusual (the Curate says I can’t call them ‘strange’).

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More on Matthew’s Begats

Posted in Fun, Kids, tagged , , , , , , on 20 January, 2009| Leave a Comment »

My copy of Behold the Lamb by Andrew Peterson arrived a few days ago and since then we’ve been enjoying the album, even though it’s really for the Christmas season.

Of course, we are particularly savouring Matthew’s Begats and the Queen loves the song so much that she keeps on nicking the lyrics sheet and trying to sing along. Just in case you wanted to aswell, I’ve found the lyrics on the web.

I’ve also found a Matthew’s Begats book which I’m considering buying for the kids (and my godchildren), which comes with a cd of the song and the story of the people in it.

If the Queen cracks the lyrics I’ve promised I’ll upload her singing it onto YouTube. Watch this space….

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Complaining Works!

Posted in Kids, Lads mags, tagged , , , , , , , on 13 January, 2009| 4 Comments »

Asda logo

I had a letter in the post today which cheered me a little. It was an apology from the manager of the Asda store which I’d shopped in for the first time on New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t apologising about the shocking queues in there, but then I’d not actually complained about that.

I had complained about their magazine displays.

We were hurtling around the shop trying to find a few sandwiches for lunch after a morning trying to sort out things in the vicarage we’ll be moving to at half term. We took a short cut down the magazine aisle and I was horrified to see the display of ‘Lads’ Mags’.

The store had a full shelving stack of FHM, Nutz and the like, with their glossy covers of buxom naked women. Because they had so many of these mags, they had them handily diplayed right at the height where my kids could get a full eyeful.

Now, I would really prefer it if these magazines were not produced, sold or desired by their readers. However, given that this is the case, I feel strongly that they should displayed out of the eyesight of the under-18s. Hence my complaint to the manager of Asda. The over-sexualisation of children in our society is a worry to many and surely this sort of display must make a contribution.

So I was pleased that he wrote to me, apologised and told me that he has arranged for ‘the magazines in question to be moved up to the top shelf to avoid any other issues’.

Seems like it’s worth complaining. Maybe I should start a campaign?

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Sourcing new jokes

Posted in Fun, Kids, tagged , , , on 21 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The Joker has been expanding his joke repertoire of late. In case you would like to do the same I can recommend the following sources:

  • Infant Christmas production (there was a character with an endless supply of dreadful cracker jokes, but also a nativity play I hasten to add, just in case you were worried about standards dropping in church schools)
  • Basil Brush joketionary (the Joker’s joking hero)
  • Sainsbury’s – an unusual joke source you may think but the Joker was telling one of his (What do snowmen wear on their heads? Icecaps) as we passed the ready meal section and made a fellow shopper laugh. The laughing shopper then passed on a good Sainsbury’s joke to the Joker. I had to explain it to him in the dairy section and he’s been telling it since then: How do you get a bear to eat cheese? You say ‘Come on bear’. Say it out loud.

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My new favourite website

Posted in Family, Recycling, tagged , , , , , on 10 November, 2008| 3 Comments »

The Curate has recently been appointed as a real life Vicar and we will be moving to a grown up vicarage a few weeks after Christmas. This is all very exciting – the chance to serve God in a new place and put down roots after living in 7 houses, 5 cities and 3 countries in 13 1/2 years of marriage.

The challenge now is to get ready and one of my tasks is to sort our sofas out. The sofas were bought 9 years and 4 houses ago and on a different continent. We love them but a series of cats has meant that the covers are disgustingly shredded and are suffering from small children induced wear and lots of tear. They are Ikea sofas and Ikea have discontinued the range.

When I asked at a local furniture shop about the cost of replacement covers, figures of £600 per sofa were mentioned, sending me straight for the Ikea catalogue to look at brand new sofas. However, today I discovered this fantastic site where I reckon we’ll be able to recover our entire set for less than the price of a new sofa. Phew! And how eco-friendly too.

Now I just have to decide on colours…

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Pigeons

Posted in Family, Inner city, School, tagged , on 21 October, 2008| 2 Comments »

The Queen is in the juniors now. This is a big thing because

  1. The juniors is on a different site
  2. The Engineer is in nursery which starts earlier than the infants, and at the infant site
  3. So we have to leave twenty minutes before we used to last year
  4. And we don’t cross with Mr Goldtooth any more.

This makes our mornings a little more stressed and a little less jolly. But the upside is the pigeons:

Pigeons

Our pigeons are fatter than this

I confess: I have encouraged my children to do something terrible on a regular basis.

Whenever they see the pigeons, they make big roaring noises and run at them, sending the pigeons up into the sky, or across the pavements, depending on how lazy the fat birds are feeling.

We see the pigeons nearly every morning, as local Asians, believing the birds to be reincarnated relatives, feed them daily on torn chappattis, bread, birdseed, rice and beans. Sadly, they don’t do this in their own gardens, but in the shopping precinct, which is then covered in bird poo, mouldy bird food, and later on, with rats picking up the leftovers. The instructions in English and Punjabi indicating that feeding the birds is against the law have no effect.

I’m not sure whether my kids roaring has any effect either, but it makes us all feel better.

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