Pensions again

Husband has a similar pension at Unisys to R's at EDS, so he started asking questions yesterday. CR, presumably in the same role as JB at EDS, said that this change was as a result of the Finance Act 2004 and she believed it would apply to the Unisys Pension Scheme.

Not satisfied with that, husband had already started talking to his colleagues, who have similar pension arrangements, and haven't been told that anything is changing. Similarly, son talked to friends at school, who were as indignant as him.

JB rang me this morning to say that it was 'good news'. Son can keep the pension up to 25. It only impacts on people who are not yet receiving a pension.

However, there are still issues:

• people (e.g. at EDS & at Unisys) running pensions haven't told the pensioners nor the prospective pensioners


• people paying into their pensions will have a reduced deal for their dependants


• EDS, if I hadn't queried it, might have carried on refusing to pay after the age of 23.
  

So where do we go from here?

Pensions

NEGU: I need the Never Ever Give Up thought today. Over ten years ago, R had an agreement with his company, EDS, that laid out the rules for the pension scheme. Part of the agreement was that if he died before retirement, as he did, then a pension would be paid to his children while they were in full-time education, up to the age of 25. However, now we learn that a regulation changes this agreement, and the pension will be up to the age of 23. The EDS pensions people have written to P asking him if he is still in full-time education, but telling him that the pension must stop at 23.

I do not see how it can be changed retrospectively, unless we agree. If someone can take away my children’s right to a pension, then someone could take away the pension that I receive, and could take it at any time, maybe when I’m 79, 84, when ever. It’s too late for me to do much to improve my pension prospects now.

I rang EDS to ask. JB told me that new regulations to simplify pension arrangements mean that anyone who receives a pension and is 18 after 6th April 2006, can receive the pension only until they are 23, not 25. I looked up the Inland Revenue web site http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pensionschemes/draftregs.htm that refers to this simplification, but I can’t see where it says anything about being 23 and losing your pension.

P is so cross that he's already written and posted his letter to our MP.

Partying

Parents go partying and teenagers stay in.

J had a party and lives some 40 miles away, so I wanted to stay the night. However, the same evening A was booked to go to a gaudy. (That's a party in an Oxford college, to which only the college members or ex-members may go). Dilemma! If we both went out, then we left our teenage children on their own, all night.

We went our separate ways. We left our teenagers. When my slightly-the-worse-for-wear husband got back the next morning they were still alive and squabbling.

The Producers

A asked me, "Do you want to go and see 'The Producers'?"
"What's that then?"
"It's a film about a musical."
"Not a film about a musical, about a film about a musical about a film about a book?"
"We ell...It's about two producers who make a musical about a book. It was a film, years ago."
"No, thanks."

So he went out and got us four tickets, came back beaming, and showed them to me. "I've got them for Monday night", he said. "Look, 7.30."
"Why does it say 'Narnia'?"
Slow thoughtful response, "I'm sure I asked for 'The Producers'."

So he went back to the cinema and got four tickets for 'The Producers', for 8.45 on Monday evening. That's a bit late when there's school and work the next day.

We enjoyed the outing, partly because there were hardly any people out on January 2nd and the cinema was almost empty. Perhaps everyone had partied enough. I'm not sure how my nicely convent educated daughter managed to laugh at so many of the naughty bits in the film. Even though I was really tired on Tuesday, it was a relaxing end to the holiday,

Success comes in halves

9/18 of my OU MT262 tutor group gained distinctions this year. I'm chuffed.

Juggling

Juggling is a mother's life. Balance the needs of teenagers against husband. Remember that old story about the mother who had to be sure that her baby got its bottle and that her husband didn't.

Tuesday I planned supper to be early at 5 o'clock so that I could get teenager to Tae Kwondo without indigestion at 7, but at 4 o'clock, when I should have been preparing the food, happy husband was icing the Christmas cake in the kitchen, so I popped out muttering about getting scones and having tea at 5.30 instead of supper. I duly returned with sweet food, tapped on ceiling to call teenager down, got ignored so ate with husband. At 6.30 went to tell teenager, "I'm getting changed now" to be told that she was too hungry to come to Tae Kwondo. I threw a wobbly and stalked off, returned a few minutes later with my hat and coat on, and found she was half dressed, so I waited in the car until a neighbour wanted to get out and I was blocking her. Left without b* teenager.

Tae Kwondo was great. I had a lovely time. Being the last day of term we didn't practise patterns or sparring but played tag: pair tag, walk the white line tag, chain tag. There were penalties for being tagged, like 3 press ups if you're green belt but 5 if you're above. And we finished with a competition where each team had to learn a pattern composed by the leader, of 12 moves and with a Christmas theme. Our included me doing break dancing, or a form of Russian leap frog. It went down very well, and G probably would have been embarrassed had she been there.

Our team won and we had to do an encore.

See http://www.btkd.co.uk/

GrannyB alias GG alias Mum alias Betty (nee Fear)

Middle of the generations

As gradually your children go, you take on responsibility for your parents.

All her life, A's 90 year old mother lived in Keynsham, only moved to Aylesbury two months ago so she was near both her sons, and several of her grandchildren. J could visit on Saturdays, and Sundays she has lunch with us. The residential home is close and phones us with any problems. Every Friday evening S visits her. I was getting to know her, and through her, to know her son, my husband better. Last week we compared our attitudes on size of families.

But at 4.30 on Saturday morning we heard that she'd gone into hospital. The hospital said she had pneumonia and yesterday she died.

Today is Sunday. We shall miss her at lunch time.

Off to uni again

'Where's Daddy wandered off to?' she queried this morning as she packed her computer and cleared her room. 'If this were you, you'd have had a heart attack by now!' she warned him eventually, as he beamed and bumbled round the house, not carrying her boxes to the car.

She needs even more stuff this year because she's renting somewhere with three lads.

Punctuation free text

Not emergency just inform e went via cellar fnt door wdnt unlock i did it its ok now do i lock inner cellar door and door wher cat food is is open ok 2 close so i can put alarm on o


While on holiday C, our cleaner sent me this text. Punctuationless, it took a while to understand, but it is content full.

When E gets up after we've left, we've locked the front door while she sleeps, so if she finds it too difficult to open, she rushes out the cycle cellar door, which means it's a pain to put the alarm on. The day that C sent this, E also had to feed the cat, because her dad wasn't there to feed it, but she was late and her lift was waiting.

Responsibility of Mothers

What are we mothers that bring up children who self immolate? These are our people and our children, surrounded by our brothers, sisters, cousins, spouses and parents. We nurtured the suicide bombers. We are to blame, and those closest to the bombers must be most to blame.

Family commitments

I have loads of work this week and study too, but have had to devote time to the family. Son’s school had a big production of Grease and he was much committed to it. Consequently, he was out late rehearsing and then for the real thing. Of course, I had to stay up for him, so he and I didn’t get to bed till 1 o’clock a couple of nights.

Granny came to see what her grandson was so proud of. One morning, at 5, I got up to sort out the smoke alarm that was beeping because it needed recharging. Granny was already up, looking to sort it out for me, though I don’t know where she’d have found the ladder she was looking for, let alone go up it. I fixed the problem by switching on the light that charged the alarm and went back to bed, but didn’t sleep too well.

You’d have thought I could work once the holidays started and I didn’t have to worry about their school, but holidays are always more demanding of my time. So far I’ve taken daughter and Scottish friend to the BMW mini factory, which they thoroughly enjoyed, admiring the robots and the beautifully finished cars. I’ve chauffeured son to a party and daughter to a guitar lesson in High Wycombe (the train is not running because of a collapsed tunnel). Oh, and I’ve fetched Scottish friend to and from Luton airport.

Next week

• Family duty requires my presence at a loved nonagenarian auntie’s for a day.
• Son is requesting a lift to Oxford and I still have to finish two or three days work.
• I have three days work to do.
• and a day's study.
  

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.