380zs, Clever kids, cleaning and a Michael Portillo cameo

Thanks for the memories
Googe Images

Hello again - feels like its been a while, but only a week I think. Perhaps that's not surprising as it's all been a bit crazy - another book festival last weekend, and I've been trying to keep up with DS1's desire for learning that his school aren't even coming close to meeting. What is it with state schools and clever kids? I remember when I was at school in the early 80s and they put me up a year, but I was still cleverer than everyone else and I hated it - used to get really badly bullied just for being different. My class teacher's solution was to stick me in the computer room - which at that time was one 380z, in what can only be described as a cupboard. I seem to remember being given a leaflet which had the basics of BASIC (which apparently stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code - not that there was Google around to tell me that at the time) and then left. (Heaven forbid that a teacher would actually try to teach me anything - or indeed engage in any form of conversation at all.) Mainly, I would sit there getting it to write my name over the whole screen:

10 PRINT "ATO MUM"
20 GO TO 10

Ring any bells anyone?

Gran, tantrums and more spiders

The spiders are multiplying, there's now one that lives on the wall above the tv and one that runs across the floor. I tried to frighten off the floor one last night by stamping my foot on the floor, but the idiotic thing just ran towards me and hid under the sofa I was sitting on. Not only are they annoying, they are clearly thick as well. Would it be too much to ask for some intelligent arachnid company? We could share a glass of wine and discuss social realism in the mini-beast world... I need to get out more.

For those of you following the saga of the post-dad-weekend yelling matches with DS1 - and at the time of writing that's probably none, but welcome any future readers who have decided to read the blog from the beginning, I commend your thoroughness - the 'being less hopeful' seems to be working. For me, that is, DS1 is still doing the yelling for a variety of proxy reasons - I'm just not getting angry in return because I'm just expecting it to happen.This is so far working well - who knew giving up hope could improve your life so dramatically? - but it is only Wednesday, so we're not out of the woods yet.

Here is a list of the things DS1 chooses to yell about:

The missing unfeasibly large spider, a lack of walls and a mystical Co-op

I just re-read my last post and realised that the part about the unfeasibly large spider somehow got deleted. Is there a word limit on these things? How strange. Anyway, the unfeasibly large spider of the previous title was sitting above my television as I wrote that post, almost daring me to do something about it. It was the size of my hand and I really was too tired to do anything about it. I did manage to catch it, or one of its friends and put it out - anything that large living in my house needs to leave, pay rent, or start helping out with the chores. However, its friends/it are now enjoying running across the carpet at night and hiding behind DS2's toys. I feel this is a battle I may not win. I do hate wood spiders though, they are not inconspicous things like lovely little money spiders - they have brown hairy legs and big googly eyes and are HUGE! It's a struggle to get them in the insect catcher without them losing a leg, which seems a bit harsh as they don't deserve to lose a limb just for being unwanted visitors.

In other news, I've worked out DS2s seemingly strange behaviour - its walls! The reason he is so happy to be miles away from me when we're outside is that there are no walls, whereas at home if I go in the other room there are walls between us. He seems to just like to do his thing and know that he can come and get me whenever he wants to. Which I suppose is fair enough. His graze on his nose is almost healed now, although yesterday he fell in a prickly bush, so he now has some scratches/splinters on his hands. Oh well, another week, another injury....