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You know it must be nearly the end of term when…

24 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

1. The children are very grumpy and argue with each other even more than usual.

2. The Joker screams while the Queen tries to boss him around.

3. The Engineer cries all the way home when he has to walk rather than go in the buggy.

4. In the next two days, you have to prepare a Pathfinder meeting (on work and idleness), write a monthly prayer diary and bake multiple trays of flapjack for the school summer fair.

5. You’d rather spend your time blogging about the things you have to do than actually getting round to doing them.

6. You find that you have put the lettuce in the freezer instead of the fridge.

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Happy Wolves

20 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

Apparently, we live in the second happiest city in Britain. If you read the article, though, we are reported as being happy about having our football team.

Some Singaporean friends were visiting recently and asked us what Wolverhampton was famous for, and we could only really think of the footie. And motor cars in the 1920s.

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The Joker’s plans

17 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

Today a good friend of the Joker’s pinched him on the arm at school, so he told a teacher. When the teacher went to resolve things, the Joker’s friend apologised. The teacher asked if everything was then okay with the Joker.

‘It will be, when I marry her’ he said.

Good to know that he’s planning ahead.

Posted in Family | Tagged | 3 Comments »

I’d like to remember…

6 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

… that the Engineer once said things like

‘When Owen comes to ours house, I will show him mine hoolie-oop.’

Ah bless.

Posted in Family | Tagged | 3 Comments »

Joker and the vegetables

4 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

Today the Joker was struggling with finishing some mushrooms from his lasagne at tea time. Cooked mushrooms are not popular with any of my children but I thought I could sneak them past with the mince.

We bribed him to eat the mushrooms by telling him he could have some more lettuce if he ate the mushrooms up. It worked.

The Joker loves to eat green veggies. He is a strange mutant. How long will it last do you think?

Posted in Family, Food | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

The rise of the Tories – how it looks here

1 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

I went to see my dear friend Starstudent a few days ago. I’ve not had a good catch-up with her for ages, because she’s just been taking exams.

Amongst the usual school gate chit-chat, we discussed the Conservatives’ victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and also the local elections. The local elections resulted in a change of council control in Wolverhampton from Labour to no-overall-control.

She told me that she’d not bothered voting in local elections before but that she’d been so fed up with the administration of her tax credits that she’d decided to vote. And vote Tory for the first time too.

If an Asian university student who’s also a single mum is voting for the Conservatives, it seems that they are winning votes from a whole new section of society (based on my sample of one!).

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It’s the immigrants

1 June, 2008 by thevicarswife

My dear husband was in the pub watching sport the other week and overheard the following conversation conducted in deep Black Country accents:

Bloke 1: Grumble moan, grumble moan
Bloke 2: It’s all these blooming immigrants taking our jobs, in’it.
Bloke 1: Yeah, they should all go back to where they came from. Grumble moan.

MDH turned round to see a white man and two Asians discussing the problem that is bugging the BNP…

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What’s your neighbourhood like?

21 May, 2008 by thevicarswife

I’ve found this UK government statistics site very interesting.

If you put your postcode into the ‘summary’ section on the right of the page, it gives you a snapshot of where your neighbourhood falls out of 32,482 in the country. The factors considered include health, crime, education, housing etc.

Our church is located in an area which is in the bottom 2000 neighbourhoods and falls on the first line away from the right (red) hand side of the nifty swingometer.

How about your postcode?

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It’s the neighbours

21 May, 2008 by thevicarswife

Mimi is a smiling mum I know from the school gate and is looking to move house. They want to buy somewhere for the first time. They’ve just had a second child so their two bedroomed house is too small. But mainly they want to move because of the neighbours.

‘Are they noisy then?’ I asked, thinking of ‘normal’ reasons for the neighbours to be difficult.

‘It’s the drugs.’ she replied. ‘And it’s so dirty, I won’t even go down the shared passageway between the houses.’ She scrunched up her face in disgust.

Private landlords mean that you can’t just call up the council to remove your neighbours. You have to move yourself in the end.

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After school curry dip for cauliflower

19 May, 2008 by thevicarswife

Home from school today, my kids were after a snack and were uninterested in healthy bananas.

The Queen suddenly mentioned that she’d like cauliflower dip. This is a remembered recipe from my childhood, when my mum used it to get my sister and I to consume veggies.

The Queen asked if she could also have ‘some of those green balls’ to dip in it too. This is a mother’s triumph – a child asking for sprouts!

Sadly (!) we were out of sprouts so they just dipped the cauli:

Click on the pictures to get more details, or see below for the summary.

Curry dip – the summary

4-5 tbspns creme fraiche

1-2 tbspns mayonnaise

1 tspn curry powder

Place ingredients in bowl. Stir.

Enough to dip a whole cauliflower, broken into florets. Can also be used to dip breadsticks, sprouts, carrots etc, but the pepperiness of a cauliflower goes really well.

Posted in Food | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

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