Middle-aged or old?

Our oldest has a wife and baby. One daughter is married with two children and another is engaged. The third is in her first year at uni, but we still have two more at home with some years of school to go. That means we still claim child benefit. We support the one at uni and anticipate having to find university fees for the two youngest. So we thought we were middle-aged, middle-income, middle-class.

However, Adrian found the age-related heating allowance in his bank account, so perhaps we've already moved into the old age bracket.

car broken in to

Took daughter out to do a jewellery stall last weekend, and let her unpack her stuff from the car after. When I came to fetch the car out of my garage on Tuesday, I found some swine had broken the driver's window, opened the doors and scrabbled around at the back to see what they could take. They probably thought that the empty camera-case box was valuable, but it had only a mug in it, packed to take to work. Underneath it I'd hidden my Walkman CD player, so they swiped that instead. B*. And they got the Michel Thomas Advanced Italian CD 1 out of the set of 4. Drat.

I've oiled the garage door but it still won't shut, and reminded daughter to cover up the boot when she's finished in there. She's making big hints about someone getting me a new Walkman CD player for Xmas.

Other people's homework

Buenas noches.
I’ve spent the last hour and a half first doing Spanish revision with 14 year old daughter and then preparing 16 year old son for his maths As level test. Now I’ve got a grumpy husband because I wasn’t in the kitchen clearing up after people and he’s found a bowl of cold water with dishes in it.
(My maths is good though).

Normal Saturday

Lay in bed a tad late until discomfort of retreating cold drove me coughing to a more comfortable sitting place.
Fed cat, who scorned my offering but waited until husband got up to feed her.
Husband also fed fried bacon to sleepy teenager.
French assistant (PG) overslept so husband took him coffee so he wasn't too late to meet bevy of assistantes (female variety) & take them shopping.
Husband

• has fixed the shower a bit more,
• tried to fix the downlighter that won't fix,
• used the multimeter that won't reach the ceiling wires,
• is blocking the leak in the conservatory (again)

Busy husband now getting cross and hungry.

Daughter leaves

Packaging in the hall, on the stairs, bike rack on the car, claiming of cutlery and milkpan, heaps of old 'A' level notes on the floor, as E prepares for uni.

Daughter gone

She sobs. Floods of tears, car full to the ginnels, tyres nearly flat! Daddy drives her away.

Giving up passwords

I nearly never blogged here again because I forgot my password and even though I followed the get-an-email-and-log-on-here-to-change-your-password procedure, it still asked for my old password. Must be because I use Netscape.

Where do I blog?

Where do I blog? In a sun lounge that is too hot to work in on a sunny afternoon, too cold to work in on a winter's morning, there is an old bank desk and a new cupboard where I hide my computer. This is not Virginia Woolf's "Room of one's own" because here all my family come to look for me, to chat, to ask when a meal is, to give me a hug or a kiss, or to complain that I haven't done their laundry, don't know where their swimming costume is. When Raf lived here, he'd come in to play quietly with his toy cars, until his dad would remove him, worrying that a toddler would be bothering me. I miss Raf.

Trying to start blog

Technology prevents.

Starting blog

I was preparing a tutorial on feedback and affordance, so I was looking at the google site to use as an example. Then I found the blog. So here we go.

BTW, it doesn't seem to compose well in Netscape. I have to compose in IE.