AD's off to Confession

[TheGreatWave]

Started a new one.

Need to adhere to guidelines this time though.

@Drivingdownthe101

DD1 is an avid reader which is great... she’s 6 and is the much mocked on MN 6 year old who has read all the Harry Potter books for example. But she has to tell me the plot of every single one. In detail. And show me pages she finds interesting. And ask me my opinion on the plot, and the characters. Which is lovely... for 10 mins.

God love you.

The Goblet of Fire nearly finished me off. We had been doing them as bedtime stories and after that one I said they could read for themselves. Jesus.

I really admire JKR but those later Harry Potter books are so badly in need of an editor.

GoF actually has a really exciting start and I thought "great, we don't have to slog through pages and pages of boring ass Privet Drive. But OH NO...

Middle child lashed through the rest of the books. I was commenting on how fast she read them and she told me she skipped ahead to when they were at Hogwarts in every book.

Sacrilege to a book lover - skipping ahead. OMG.

But I can't blame her in this instance.

@HesterShaw1 I don't blame them.
13th June, 2k people meet at an illegal rave in Greater Manchester, but cases are still levelling off. I imagine there are a lot of people who feel as if they're being lied to.

The youngest asked me if I would rather be Master of Fire, Lightning, Earth, Water and about another million options as I woke up this morning. I think it’s Lego Ninjago.

@Littlebelina thanks for the heads up, I'll stay well away from the school threads then! I find that baffling - looks like it's just you and me that need schools for childcare then!

If I was in charge, I'd have opened the schools fully with no restrictions for the whole of the rest of the term and watched to see what happened. All being well you'd be able to roll out openings across the rest of the economy starting with hospitality and leisure. If it didn't go well, you've got a natural fire break of schools finishing in July anyway.

Oh well, in good news since there's no school we're off camping in a couple of weeks, can't wait!

Maybe if we had not had such strict rules etc they would not need to rebel as much. With greater freedoms less need to rebel.

I like the sound of the scratch jumping into chainsaw game.

I've been reluctant to let mine do Minecraft but now I'm wondering if doing it with their friends is actually better than watching mind numbing Netflix cartoons. Computer games seem to make my kids' brains go fizzy though

Germany opened schools before opening other stuff. They made it a priority to get children back to education.

In Ireland it was horse and greyhound racing. Here it was garden centres and golf.

Cities have always been a tinderbox in the summer - add to that huge populations of disenfranchised youth without cash, purpose or outlet... a policewoman friend told me she dreaded being on shift for a sunny august Saturday.

@Orangeblossom78 I totally agree. Treat people like adults and I'd like to think they can manage their risks and behave themselves

pinkfondant mine craft is IMO the lesser of gaming evils. They get to be creative - although be warned they’ll want to WATCH other people play on YouTube 🙄. Stampy is your man for YouTube- his voice will go right through you, but he seems a nice enough man, loves his dog and keeps it clean! Fortnite will turn your lovely children into aggressive, fighting potty-mouthed horrors in approximately 6 minutes.

@InsaneInTheViralMembrane

pinkfondant mine craft is IMO the lesser of gaming evils. They get to be creative - although be warned they’ll want to WATCH other people play on YouTube 🙄. Stampy is your man for YouTube- his voice will go right through you, but he seems a nice enough man, loves his dog and keeps it clean! Fortnite will turn your lovely children into aggressive, fighting potty-mouthed horrors in approximately 6 minutes.

We like Stampy because he has a beagle like ours!

Yy if you are going to let them play computer games steer them in the direction of mine craft and away from fortnight.

@PinkFondantFancy that’s one of the things that makes me rage about all the work guidelines. They aren’t treating us like adults capable of exercising caution and distancing, but literally locking rooms so we can’t access them. In doing so they are preventing us using equipment we need to do our jobs effectively. The irony is that HR are allowed exclusive access to the rooms but don’t need the equipment inside them.

@Orangeblossom78

Will it not cause problems if pubs are limited to sitting at tables / bookings etc and taking names, when they open on a Saturday with these mobs of men etc? Seems a daft idea to me. feel sorry for the pub staff who might have to deal with them all

This is along the lines of my musing about groups continuing outside. Pubs will surely have to abide by rules on group size, which should be good for attracting the civilised end of the market. The yob end of the market will surely carry on much as they have?

My other random thought last night was never before have I smelt so much weed here, there and everywhere. I wonder if that's connected with the rise of polarised thought and shut-down debate style.

I'd like to think on schools that the government did have the woolly and niave will to get schools back in before being cut off by the summer holidays but scuppered themselves with their garble of guidence and hit a wall on union and parental will. With all the palaver just to get what they have in so far, they then couldn't overturn the guidence and plough the rest of the primaries in before the holidays so gave up for a fresh start in September. The pubs/ 4th July has been clear from the start and not hit multiple factions of whataboutery. It's not just employment in pubs either, there is a lot of employment in the supply chain and food distribution. That was all overturned in March when the supermarkets were being stripped and the 30% of food consumed out of the home suddenly stopped dead and took weeks to get some reorganisation. That will all have to gradually readjust as social distancing reduced capacity and demand is still affected by altered habits and confidence.

I am careful about Fortnite. It’s strictly limited to playing with his school friends in squads and no one else. No voice chat either. He came 2nd in solo mode yesterday which caused great excitement.

Re: gaming, it doesn't have to be online. Plenty of decent ones on Steam. Mine like Terraria, Loom, Starbound, and the Monkey Island series.

So true Rubber. The little buggers could be mutating as we read and developing arms with tiny masonry drills attached 😁.
Eventually we will all need to be welded into steel rooms.

Mind you they would also need tar removing enzymes to drill past the effects of 60 years of DMs attachment to Silk Cut.

Our bird was killed by our kitten, Arthur.
He even laid it across his food bowl.
The birds cage was on a kitchenworktop. Arthur wasn’t mature enough to jump up but he struck lucky that day.
My four year old went to give the bird some food. Took out the seed pot. There was an empty cardboard box near the kitchen counter.
I’m sure you’ve got the picture , especially when I say my son wandered off out of the kitchen.

One of the children came running out screaming..Arthur’s got jojo. I’ll never forgot that beautiful yellow bird with a red gash on his chest.
We all sobbed buckets.

Another time mum was going away and said you’ll have to mind the bird...what ..with Arthur’s track record
So we kept it in dds room. Arthur was such a sneaky cat. I went in to put her washing in there. Here’s Arthur laid across the top of the cage, like a big ginger rug ( by this time he was a massive, full grown red self Persian) swinging his paw through the bars like King Kong on the kong ride in Universal in Orlando at a Terrified bird that had managed to shrink itself to half it’s size.

Poor little thing. So in my experience birds, cats and kids don’t mix.

Yet once we discovered we had a mouse in the kitchen..at that time Arthur was joined by another two Persians ..who ..yes were all in the kitchen on a night. One very lucky mouse..or three very dopey Persians.
We have no pets now on account of the travelling we do.
Miss them but hate saying goodbye to them

The things I like about Minecraft is that it is creative (building and making worlds etc) and also the interaction and chat with others. My younger DS had a bit of a speech delay when little and it is interesting listening to the conversations and stories (such as the horse having a funeral!)

@MagdaS

The youngest asked me if I would rather be Master of Fire, Lightning, Earth, Water and about another million options as I woke up this morning. I think it’s Lego Ninjago.

Sounds like Ninjago. DS1 was most into it at 7 and now it's DS2's turn.

Minrcraft. Minecraft. Minecraft.
Youtube videos of Minecraft.
I quite like Grian, he's listenable in the background. Inspeakable is a bit excitable. DS1 has a bit of a 2b2t phase this week. A couple of weeks ago he tried to get onto the Anarchy Server which is a bit of a cult thing. It has a queue. DS joined at about 5:30pm in the 600s. The numbers were moving on steadily, then as America got online it slowed up... 9pm DS was in the single digits. He'd been so patient... it was way after 10pm when he got in and we could only let him have about 30 minutes as it was stupidly late. There would have been the mother of meltdowns if he hadn't had a go after all that patience!

I like the creativity of Minecraft although my two have discovered servers for competitive versions that get them very excitable. About 75% of their bust ups are over in-game disputes or DS1 lashing out as tech time ends. It doesn't help as they normally snuggle up together so are very hit/ kickable when something goes wrong.

I have threatened that we can never go on holiday to Iceland if they keep pushing each other in lava and beating each other ip in RL for it. It's all so real to DS1 and there's no distinction between ingame/ RL.

Tea was there an outbreak in Nuneaton? That's where DM lives.
Actually the infected NDN is probably the outbreak.

I have just spent an instructive ten minutes putting a bucket with a sponge in it on the yard and positioning it so the drips from next doors drainpipe land in it and not on the paving. Stood there moving it each time it dropped to achieve bucket perfection.
It's a rip snorting life here ,I tell you.

It is Brawl Stars here. He also paces around the house, so any volume comes in and out of range. Then he talks endlessly, even when I am in bed, then he gets cross.

Oh joys. (ASD)

The things I like about Minecraft is that it is creative (building and making worlds etc)

Or in the case of my children, building things so you can destroy them with lava and watch all your little villagers and animals die a painful death.

Mine are into roblox, fort nite and mine craft. Probably other things as well.
As three of them are home edded and their friends are scattered all over the north east, they talk on these head sets all the time, otherwise they would’ve been pretty isolated over this lock down

My only granddaughter is very creative. The slime fest is over for now, but the squishy fest continues. She makes them all herself.
She also showed me her canvases the other day, so I said we can do an acrylic pour one day at my house.
My grandkids love me, but I’m a bit redundant now they no longer need me.
My time spent with them is very precious.
I’m sure it’s the same for all grandparents or most of them anyway.

@MagdaS we have strict limits on Fortnite as well, friends only.

I need to stop arguing with idiots on other threads