Work!

Stepdaughter #3 has been offered a job locally, a proper job in engineering, a job that uses both her degrees, she tells me:

"I have received employment"
"if anyone needs me, I'll be in the having a job dome"
"lalala i win"

She's delighted to inform her landlord and all the utilities that she's "moving shacks".

She starts next month, and they'll put her up in a hotel during the week for a couple of months while the lease on their Loughborough house finishes. In the meantime, she and her partner are getting a place done up to live in, partner having a teaching job in a local school, starting September.

"productive, innit"

Relatives everywhere

Amazing connections!

Husband's granddaughter #2 has a Great Little Friend and they go to each others parties, but didn't know they were related. Why should they? It's only because GD#2's father is becoming rather well known that someone made the connection and asked about the surname. GLF is the granddaughter of husband's cousin, making GLF and GD#2 third cousins.

GLF is delighted to find she is related to GD#2. And her grandmother remembers GD#2 well as she has been to GLF's parties and vice versa.

I've never met husband's cousin - I don't think they've seen each other for years, so their children's children meeting like this is extra amazing.

Old friends in Bath

We picked up daughter and went to Bath to meet friends we haven't seen for more than ten years, lovely people that I've known for more than thirty years, who gave us our visitors' book.

We had a lovely time, including a meal by the river.

Warm weather

Today is so warm that my Facebook friends comment:

Friend #1 Hello sandals, goodbye boots!

That's a nice positive way to move from winter to summer

Friend #2 has just conducted a phone tutorial wearing a swimsuit and a face pack. Thank god we don't have a video link!
Her friend: I bet many people would disagree!
Another of her friends: roflmao I often think that when I am doing an online grocery shop in my PJs.

(roflmao means "roll on floor laughing my backside off")

Friend #3 please put on a shirt, I do not want to see your wobbley moobs. It's really not that hot.

Says she! It's too hot for me in the sun, where my garden thermometer says it's 30 degrees. I like it in the low to mid twenties.

Friend #4 beautiful day for cycle ride round our new home and BBQ with the fam :)

It's nice to know that the family is together this weekend, and that their part of the country is good weather too.

And this morning in London:

Friend #5: Beautiful day, but a way too crowded lido so I was dreaming of Lake Windermere!

And a fellow OUer:

Friend #6: sun, lounger on balcony and catching up with S189 course book.

Aunt's electricity

Sometimes these interactions with authorities on behalf of my aunt do work.

Aunt had a bill from Southern Electric - she doesn't remember getting her electricity from them, because she wasn't - she was getting her electricity from another provider when she lived somewhere else. So her memory's good there. But Southern Electric addressed the bill to the district council and was charging for the weeks when the flat was empty before she moved in.

So I decided to

1. set up a direct debit for the electricity
2. pay the extra rather than explain the whole situation in order to get the bill sent to the district council

But when I rang Southern Electric, Tracy wanted to sort out the name on the bill, to change it from the district council to my aunt's. So she passed me to Sean, who

• amended the bills to charge aunt only from the day she moved in
• changed the name on the bill
• took the district council address and will send the missing weeks bill to the council
• set up the direct debit
• arranged the bills to come to me, not aunt
  

I'm well pleased with the service.

Distant relative

I note this Fulbright prize winner because her uncle (sort of) is my uncle (sort of). It's pretty good anyhow that she's a professor of English and poetry, let alone win such a prestigious prize. Our mutual uncle points out that our family came from Ireland at the time of the great hunger, through the Liverpool court slums where twenty to thirty families shared a yard with one pump and one toilet. In 1866 our great great grandparents, Charles and Mary, were too illiterate to sign their names on their wedding certificate.

Four generations later, life has improved for us.

Tadpoles

I've got some new pets! I've got tadpoles for the first time in years.

In late March, I was passing a pond when I noticed it bubbling all over, like it had lots of aerators in it, but on a closer look, I saw the bubbles came from lots of mating frogs. Mating frogs means frog spawn, so I grabbed a bag I'd been keeping in the car for this, and scooped out a handful of spawn. Now, weeks later, the tadpoles are wriggling round in a stone sink in our garden.

Watch and I'll post photos as they grew.

Voting day

I have voted.

It wasn't easy. The choice isn't great. Today's paper has a Matt cartoon of someone in a polling booth chewing his pencil and thinking while the officer looks at his watch and says, "You know we close at 10pm, don't you"

Although my polling station was quiet mid afternoon when I went, that doesn't surprise me because more people can get there first thing in the morning or in the evening after work. What is interesting, even exciting is the people on Facebook who are talking about voting at Democracy UK. The news tonight is that people were queuing late this evening to vote.

I think my family members have all voted. At least one of them is choosing to vote tactically by voting in her university town rather than here where we've little choice.

Wait now and see what tomorrow what we have done.

Way to vote

Lib Dems have wound me up by declaring they'll make Catholic schools take non-Catholics if they live close to the school.

"We will ensure that all faith schools develop an inclusive admissions policy and end unfair discrimination on grounds of faith when recruiting staff," (Lib Dem manifesto page 37)

But such people, eschewing the faith, can refuse to attend the religious assembly, so take the education but not the culture that comes with a faith. And yet the Catholic communitypays towards the school. Yes, I know faith schools take public money too, but since the Catholic community contributes, local non-Catholics shouldn't get priority over more distant Catholic children. That's not right or fair.

So how do I vote? Our alternative is the Conservative candidate, David Lidington, but he apparently (according to the Lib Dem literature) has claimed £12,000 for dry cleaning expenses. £12,000!. Husband and self together in decades couldn't spend so much on dry cleaning - and why on expenses? That's what a salary is for. And then when you retire, you save money because you don't need to spend on dry cleaning, so you can live on your little pension.

So how do I vote?

Scuola Cantorum

We avoided the mayhem in Aylesbury by going out:

• morning coffee in Princes Risborough at the Field Mouse cheese store
  
• lunch in Oxford at the Nosebag, a cafe I've been going to for decades
• a lovely afternoon meeting old friends from the Oxford University tape-recording society for tea at the Ashmolean rooftop restaurant
  
• sharing supper with friends at Browns
  
• finally an evening at a concert of Handel and Bach in the Sheldonian. See http://www.schola-cantorum.net/ who were having their 50th anniversary

Aylesbury under siege

There are protests in Aylesbury. The English Defence League has a protest, and the Union Against Fascists have a counter protest and the Muslim have a protest against the protests.

Mounted police, roads closed, empty streets and Kingsbury not usable.

Sounds like martial law...