We're all going on a summer holiday

[MinnieMountain]

Even if it means 2 weeks of quarantine
The anti -dementors are here to be reasonable and sensible about everything.

Thank you Dowser - .

She is working and we can help with many subjects so I suspect it will be fine in the end though I worry about pressue in school next year to catch up.

I just really don't want this stopping her getting where she wants to end up - she's looking at University courses which want high grades but then DH got decidedly mediocre GCSE grades and really good A-levels and got where he wanted -so again hopeful.

Does anyone else find it hard to try to get accurate figures for their area
/ town
The daily mail has an ons calculator which for my town lists 86 deaths
Now I would’ve said these weren’t the town deaths but nhs trust deaths which takes in a much bigger town than us but I don’t know for sure

Arghhhh
And breathe

That's more than the toll for the entire country Dowser. It's definitely not accurate.

@DrearyWallAntler thanks for that link. I've shared it to a few parents in dd's class, had one positive response so far.

@Dowser I sometimes it frustratingly difficult to find/extrapolate the information I want to know. I guess with some stuff collating it is the problem. The CEBM website is great for hospital death data (that sounds awful!!). It has each day's reported total, with the figure broken down into last week and further back, and compared to the same day each previous week.

I've just seen a real dementor on my local Facebook page. A woman said that she wanted to go to the next town to buy sausages but it's 15 miles away so it's outside the 5 miles limit.
The Dementor asked if her life was worth a sausage. Fucking madness.
Staying withIn 5 miles is utterly ridiculous in my county. It's the biggest in Wales so these new draconian rules are no help at all
The Welsh Assembly is Labour run so that knobhead Mark Drakeford will take a great delight in differing from England.

School got back to me and can take kids next week. Bit nervous about it, mainly because dd1 is kicking off about going back before her friends but something has to give and am hoping this makes a difference

Institutkarite I'm in Scotland and have taken the 5 mile rule as more of a guideline than anything else and visited the beach which is 10 miles away for the first time in 10 weeks.

I get that we want to avoid the English situation of having people driving for hours to overcrowd beauty spots, but equally it does feel a bit nanny state and introduced to demonstrate- yet again- how different and canny we are in Scotland. Anyway it's gorgeous here, anywhere nice will be rammed at the weekend, no matter what's been said.

The dementors have won here - school have just pulled their opening on Monday because of the fucking unions. I have for definite that DD2, the child who is really suffering, is still OK as she's going back into the vulnerability bubble, and the wording of the message about DD1 indicates similar for her - but I've emailed to double check (but that school are dreadful responding to emails).

All those kids who got to Friday thinking on Monday they'd be back in a differently organised school but school nonetheless... now shot down at 2pm on the Friday afternoon - I feel like I've been physically punched in the stomach just empathising with them. Four years old, missing all their friends and then dropped like this because of the latest bit of guidance.

Dear god on a selfish note - let them still say DD1 can go or she's going to go ballistic and kick the shit outta me.

I don't live in Wales but the 5 miles seems very Cardiff centric where everything is close by. I hazard a guess that out in the sticks you could be almost 5 miles to your nearest neighbour.

@Dowser The Office of National Statistics (ONS.gov.uk) has good information, and goes down to regional level (also ages etc) - very good at putting stuff in context. It tends to be about a week behind, though.

Domina that’s awful, the unions are going to have a hell of a lot to answer for when the dust finally settles.

We just found a farm shop selling savoury snacks which also had a proper coffee cart. There were picnic tables, bunting, dogs, people eating ice cream and general jollity, it was like a little country fair. It’s really come to something when a latte and a sausage roll at a picnic table with other people around feels like an extravagant treat.

(has a slightly disturbing image of welsh grannies using a she wee or porta potty in the garden behind a bush)

No problem enjoying sun
..gawd am I enjoying this sun
Love and faith in our kids is all they need

My sil didn’t do so well at gcse and a level is now a project manager for a big company that has really looked after him thru lockdown
My son arsed around at 16. He was a single father at 21. He’s now getting distinctions in his access to nursing course
And will be training to be a theatre nurse in sept and now dad to three.
He’s hell bent on being the top pupil and is 39 this year
So , never give up hope
Plus his son, I helped raise till next was 5 had a bumpy ride too, but loads of love from us all..he’s a straight A student , well balanced, laid back, loveliest lad you could ever hope to meet.
I just hope he gets where he want s to be.
Hard worker
Presently flogging his guts out at macdonalds in between his a level studies.
He’s 17 next week and is getting A £1000 of driving lessons from me..he doesn’t know it yet
I’m so excited for him
Hang on in there as the saying goes.

1000

Facebook offering of the day:
"The question is not are we allowed to go out, but SHOULD we?"
Really made me think..... of places to go. So, I went to the nice butcher in the next village, the scoop shop for some baking supplies, the Coop and the garden centre. I am going for a picnic this evening.

More parks and gardens to open if any take your fancy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52845490

I'm near tears and wanting to self harm after reading that letter - which is daft considering my own kids' positions haven't really changed at all (still waiting for a response from the eldest's school but I'm assuming that she's OK to go in) - it's just the feeling that we are never going to get out of this hole we're in and be normal and I want to go back to uni and finish the degree I love and schools are going to still be whining about this come September. No transition for the youngest one at all - haven't even spoken to the new school about her SEN and she had such a shit year last year with a teacher who didn't listen and this year's teacher has been so bloody good.

And now we're stuck in this society where kids aren't allowed to leave their houses - with one kid who just doesn't sleep and tantrums like a toddler with sheer frustration of it all and another who just explodes and hates me constantly over it all and you never know if she's going to wallop me or threaten to throw something breakable and it's not getting any better and I am so so fucking sick of it.

Haunted goat.. I thought so too
She’s well demented

Orangeblossom78 thanks for reminding me, have just got she wee out of the cupboard in preparation for visit to friends garden this evening. I never really got on with it when camping and just ended up with slight dehydration most of the time by not drinking, but will give it another go as friends DH is a stickler for the rules( unlike us who have been meeting up for about the past 4 weeks.

We have a chemical toilet for camping somewhere, you can get toilet tents for them as well

Oh domina, please, please don’t hurt yourself
Years ago, I did some child centered work
We did a lot of pillow fighting
Great for everyone to get their anger out
The workshop leader was a doctor
One amazing woman
Would that help

Go inthe loo domina
Have a good cry, then Hand The kids a pillow And say right pillow fights, I’m coming to get you
She van hit you in a safe way and you can use your pillow to block

I seriously can't do this corona shit any longer - the clapping, the queuing, the internet dementors, the social isolation (I don't really have friends I can call on to visit - but I have people I can have a joke on with at the school gates or people on my uni course for interaction and all of that has obviously gone), the fucking masks, the fucking smug, the shit telly. I think I'd pinned my hopes on those initial school year groups getting back and then normality starting to begin to descend and it's just gone to fuckery from a bunch of unions having a pissing contest.

Oh Domina

DS1 really struggled when he was 7. We had violent meltdowns lasting up to 4 hours and regressive behaviours such as biting and headbutting walls. That was the summer when I started the referral that resulted in his diagnosis for ASD.
It's so hard when your child is struggling with their world.

They still have their vulnerable child places. This will pass.

Everyone is hiding behind arsekissing and policies and covering their arses and worrying about the staff staff staff... no one at all is asking what about the children?! I asked (risk of outing but fuck it now) about if the school had checked that all families could access online learning at governors and the head was so pissed off that someone would dare question their awesomeness and was immediately on the attack that "do you know of families that can't" and looked so pissed off when I said that I'd been finding and setting up old computers we had to help people out who only had the internet on a smart phone during the period.

No one actually gives a shit about the kids on an institutional level. I know on a personal level the class teachers I speak to (I get on very well with lots of them in school who are very candid with me) really do care passionately and are really concerned about what's happening to the kids - but insitititionally and societally - and the kids are just a nuisance at the moment. On MN - they're making noise in the back gardens, they're getting in the way of working from home, people are daring to take them to the supermarket with them so they can eat, or flouting rules by using a playground - and no one gives a fucking damn - it's just "oooh more cbeebies" - what if you have a kid that isn't happy to sit placidly in front of the TV? What happened to the legions of "special spirited" MN children who wouldn't ever cope with watching telly? Feels like our kids are now like soap opera kids who get wheeled out occasionally for a plot point and then sent to their bedroom for 10 years to reappear as a completely different actor when required.