ADs take the National Express when their lives' in a mess, it will make them smile

[BogRollBOGOF]

🎤On the National Express
There’s a jolly hostess
Giving porridge free
She’ll provide you with shots
amaretto or what
You like to seeeeee...

Going out was in style
Now we’re stuck in this aisle
Dream of being free
And it’s hard to get by
When your arse is the size
Of the furlough feeeeeee🎤

Bah ba ba la
Bah ba ba la

Tomorrow belongs to meee...

Welcome to the 17:38 to freedom, stopping at virtual hugs, critical discourse, and random tangents along the way. ETA unknown...

I have eaten a large quantity of marzipan

@AcornAutumn

I have eaten a large quantity of marzipan

I've just made my first lot of mince pies (I'd get nowhere on bake off with them but they taste good). One down, before they even cooled.

Next lot will have marzipan in as well as mincemeat

Also just fed the Christmas cake on rum and amaretto

I make a Christmas cake that has about half a litre of booze in it to start with, so doesn't need feeding. It's veeeery good.

[quote LivinLaVidaLoki]Police issuing notices to leave to shoppers without masks
www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/18884925.police-crack-merry-hill-shoppers-without-face-masks/?ref=fbshr[/quote]
Not been to the shopping centre in town since 23rd July.
I'm not convinced that my visor does any good other than deflecting trouble from brewing.

I'm not going to ask/ muse this in the great wide world for fairly obvious reasons...

Cases in schools...
Surely schools reflect the communities that they serve. They are obviously not magically immune to viral spread, particularly as the places of greatest densities of people permissible since March.
But just because a case is reported to a school and affects its function, it doesn't mean that it was automatically spread in the school, just that the school has to take appropriate action to manage that case from spreading further. Pupils can not live in single person households, they are exposed to the risk from their family contacts and other aspects of life.

It's hardly surprising that some schools are struggling with precautionary isolations from contacts, and members of their community being confirmed cases. But it doesn't automatically follow that all are spread within schools and I'd be curious to know what the ratio of internal/ external transmission is...

I know that age is relevent, particularly in secondary as pupils get closer to adulthood-difficult with A-level and GCSE pressures.

Anyway, thank goodness schools are generally open and ours seems to be reasonably pragmatic. We've been fortunate to get past a significant local peak with only two classes having a week of closure due to falling around half term mitigating the educational impact. One class escaped impact from a child infected via the parent's place of work but tested positive while SI and was beyond the amount of time requiring the class to be off. As much as I dread the potential of my two being off for 2 weeks, I'd rather take the risk of short term disruption than another long and indefinite bout of failing at home learning. I know its not an even playing field, but I don't want my children unnecessarily joining a race to the bottom because other schools are having a more challenging time.

I read this on another thread and thought how helpful it was. Not the specific examples for me, but definitely the principle.

"RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.
When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by.
I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.
“What are you struggling with?” he asked.
I gestured around me and said “I dunno man. Life.”
Not satisfied with my answer, he said “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”
I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it.
I wanted to have something more substantial.
Something more profound.
But I didn’t.
So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”
I felt like an idiot even saying it.
What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with actual problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?
But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said:
“RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”
I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.
“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”
It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express.
That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times.
I felt like I had conquered a dragon.
The next day, I took a shower lying down.
A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit.
There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.
Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry.
But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:
THERE ARE NO RULES.
RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!"

That's pretty much my feelings on schools Bogroll.

We've just watched the second in the Tom Kerridge series where he is helping struggling pub landlords to save their pubs. They've just got to being shut down for the first time and it is heartbreaking. It makes me so angry that all the experts, scientists,hangers on and dementors rabid for their five minutes of fame popping up on whatever media outlet will have them, are screaming for us to stay locked down and they simply do not care about the destruction of people's livelihoods bevause, you know, it's all for the greater good. The scaremongering generated by some random bloke in the news today - celebrate Christmas and bury your granny in January - was appalling.

Sorry rant over.

Got involved on a thread about fines

But hopefully the thread shows the madness and someone reading it might wake up.

"celebrate Christmas and bury your granny in January - was appalling."

When I was young, it was a common saying among my parents' friends that when their children went to university they came home at Christmas and killed granny. Having met lots of new people and new germs, presumably.

Sometimes it really does seem that there is 'nothing new under the sun'.

My WANKER of an MP is on Question Time. Cunt!

@Wishfulthinking1977 Fucking brilliant

I can't bear to watch question time, any more. Even when it was fairly local to me, the other week.

I appreciate the thread hass moved on but dh and I bonded over our love of REM (amongst other things) long before we got together. I didn't have a lot of CDs that ex disapproved of because they tended to meet with unfortunate accidents so I was glad of some mp3s of stuff I enjoyed.

Im on the Christmas should be cancelled thread. Some people really expect us to believe that if we sacrifice Christmas there wont be a lockdown in January.

@MercyBooth

Im on the Christmas should be cancelled thread. Some people really expect us to believe that if we sacrifice Christmas there wont be a lockdown in January.

IKR? It’s amazing how people believe the government.

Pickachew I think my favourite REM might be Near Wild Heaven.

Shiny Happy People. The redhead from the B52s has an amazing voice.

Oh dear!
www.disabilitynewsservice.com/apple-could-face-multiple-legal-actions-after-ignoring-government-face-mask-guidance/

Someone else here has changed some lyrics. You HAVE to listen to this

"Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Lockdown" Found it on Emma Kennys Twitter feed.
twitter.com/False_Pos1t1ve/status/1329529652029890560?s=20

I haven't looked at that Christmas thread since yesterday morning but there are a few things I don't get.

1 why the assumption that numbers will rocket out of control? Most people there work on the assumption that everyone will be having massive raves and visiting thousands. Whereas in reality each family will probably visit another set of family or two. There are also people who have decided the risk is too high for them and won't visit. So its not going to be some apocalyptic free for all.

2 restrictions doesn't automatically equal lockdown

3 There's a chance we'll get locked down again, this way we're all good and ready to blame each other again

To be honest most January's are like lockdown in this house because we never have any money to go anywhere anyway. Last December cost me a fortune in activities as well as gifts.

I was musing yesterday how I'd like to take DS out of school early. I can't do it because of work but if I had the choice I'd do it and pay the fine because it'd be safer for my parents if we isolated first. My mum has no intention of us not spending Christmas together. We went to see them take shopping after school yesterday and I kept having to move away from her. She comes close to me and then I feel I have to step back in case I breathe city centre germs on her! I think she just forgets having not really been out of her house/garden since last year. I keep thinking how I haven't hugged either of them since last Christmas and it makes me feel sad.

Anyway, I'm starting my cleaning shortly so I can wrap Christmas presents while DS is at school. I've suddenly become very aware of only having a few days off before Christmas in which to do it.

I also think these people have no concept of what its like to be lonely, how this can be magnified over Christmas.

A lot of our 16 to 18 year olds in supported accommodation live alone. They have support staff who support them for a set amount of hours a week but mostly, once the door is shut they are alone.
The dementors can fuck off about support bubbles. Who are some of these kids going to have? The only stable, reliable and consistent relationships some of them have are with professionals.
Imagine being that young, living alone and having no stable or consistent relationship in your life you can rely on for support. Its heart breaking most of the year, at Christmas it can be worse but they have friends they can visit and this Christmas....I'm dreading it.

Even in a standard, loving family like ours, there is no support bubble. We've had several Christmas Days to ourselves which is fine and dandy in a normal year with all the build up, and going go Christmas services, and visiting family on other days.

At present, it's illegal for children to see other children in their own family because of the rule of 6.
Most of my family are tier 2. And without an amnesty, it's illegal for us to go into each other's homes, even on the shortest, darkest week of the year. DMs arthritis struggles most Nov-March, she can't cope with walks around the park.

All I want is for it not to be illegal to see people I love.
Not wild parties.
But some time together after 9-12m apart.

Easter Sunday was DS2's 7th birthday. We did our usual egg hunt in the garden. We did our legal walk. We sat in bed and watched a film with popcorn and dressed it up a movie night, which was easier to fudge with the new TV and being about 3 weeks into this, not 9 months. It's worn a bit thin now! DS2 turns 10 in one month. I want to know if it will be legal for him and a friend to meet outside school so that his cancelled-Christmas-birthday is not a total pile of shit.

Over Christmas, the DCs won't be sitting in their classrooms exposed to over 30 other people (and if classrooms are such disease ridden cesspools...) so visiting 3 or 4 household unts is a net loss of social contact!

I'm not saying that being a family is the same level as lone youngsters in care, obviously not! But rather support bubbles only deal with quite a specific form of lonliness where people meet the requirements and connections to form one.

@NannyGythaOgg your post really resonated with me - I get periods of being totally overwhelmed (controlled with medication) and have learned to break the seemingly mammoth tasks down into the smallest steps. My To Do lists often start with 'get out of bed' 'clean teeth' 'have a wash' etc,. The sense of achievement in ticking off even those small silly things can be such a game changer. When getting overwhelmed with decorating the kitchen recently, I was so anxious about choosing the 'right' colour paint - then I had a lightbulb moment - there was no 'right' colour just one that I liked! There are no rules about what colour I paint my kitchen cupboards! thank you for posting xx