I thought I’d have a go at doing 26 Things. I’ve set up a category in the photo album, but it’s not really geared to this problem. Maybe I’ll actually get my act together and write a new CMS system for this site…
Anyway… first picture is “Through”. It’s taken in the grounds of my workplace. I just like the chair being out in the warm sunshine and the route to it being in the cold shade.
Scary this social engineering, isn’t it?
I’ve bee reading Three Shoes, One Sock & No Hairbrush over the last few weeks (intermittently!)
This bit makes me think about the nature of our society:
“By the time I got pregnant with my second child, I knew my days of full-time work were gone, if not for good, then at least for the next five years. I had down-shifted my expectations to accomodate the previously unimaginable reality of being a mother, of loving my children, of being needed by my children. I am resigned to working less than I’d like, earning less than I’d like, achieving less than I’d like and doing more housework than I’d like.”
The bit in the bold (my emphasis) is the “problem bit”. (I can understand the concept of someone doing too much housework than they’d like to do! :) However spending more time with your children should not mean you are achieving less in your own eyes or in the eyes of society. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. Nurturing a child (or more usually, more than one child) through the first 5 years is an achievement it it’s own right. I find it quite sad that only wormen with jobs are recognised as “achievers”, even by authors of books about bringing up children.
Fascinating conversation on Radio 5Live today between a Labour and a Conservative about their respective education policies. The Conservative spent most of his time saying “this is what’s currently wrong and this is what we are going to do to fix them”. The Labour man told us what was wrong with the Conservative’s ideas.
I still have no idea what Labour’s plans for education are, other than they involve “choice”.
Whatever that may mean.
One thing the Liberals have got right is their observation that most of us don’t want choice; we’d rather have our closest school/hospital/doctors to be very good. This I agree with; I just don’t see how it can be acheived without some ability for parents/patients to vote with their feet.
Do proper research into complexity of project before taking it on…
Listening to 5Live today, I learnt that there’s a Thunderbirds film coming out! How did I miss this fact before?! There’s so many good films out/coming out in the next few months that we are unlikely to see at the cinema though. Roll on the DVD release…
Nothing much has happened this weekend in the-Allens’ household. Chores have been done and children entertained.
Sent Jon back to bed this morning though. He came into our room and the normal time and started whinging about having to get dressed. I gave him the choices of getting dressed or going back to bed for an hour. He didn’t want to get dressed, so I put him back in his bedroom. I don’t know if it’s related, but he’s been a nice cheerful little boy today (mostly!) which has been a pleasant change.
A great actor passed away today. Everyone else has provided much better tributes that I could ever hope to.