Class of '18 Best foot forward through the autumn leaves.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

old thread was getting big....

Knitting
my DS would happily share with yours!

I shouldn't think 5am is that difficult if you are either an early riser for rowing/sciences OR you have only just come in from clubbing I suspect ds would fall into later category.

But as I said upthread, there are plenty of options and you don't have to live in a shared house in second year. You can be a lodger, you can sometimes rent in halls. There are always rooms to let in other peoples' shared houses when people fall out with each other It seems the primary reason people want to live in a shared house is because it is fun to live with your friends. I know people who have shared with just one other person, it certainly isn't the case that you have to find 6 other people you get on with unless you are after particular houses.

Ds2 came back at lunchtime today to polish off any Halloween sweets he hadn't given away yesterday. And then disappeared again, clearly loving A levels. Very odd but good! I know ds1 went out last night to a special Halloween event - he didn't send me any 4am texts but I am wondering whether I should ask him how it went. He said he was going as Where's Wally with a "frightening face".. He never dressed up at home, nor did he like puzzle books!

DD doesn't seem to have started looking for house share people yet, and I don't think they need to do it this early where she is. She's hardly started!! She does have friends though so I have a feeling she'll be fine with finding people to share with. I suspect she'll want to share with others from the living history society so there will be weapons, shields and chain mail around their flat/house next year .

Gosh that Durham queue for houses is scary!! Surely there's enough accom. To go round.

Remember with DS1 the looking in Nov and I think they signed before Xmas. Luckily, people have been fine and he's still with some of them for a 4th year. Phew! An organised girl got them all sorted. My DS would have found it difficult by himself.

Hello all,

Just been carving up ônsll your news.

KNitting - I lost my own mum in the year I did a levels. Tough times - my heart goes out to you and ds.

Marmite - so sorry your dd can’t come home. I hope your treatment is going ok.

Nettles - I hope your dh recovers soon.

It has now been 6 weeks since I ftppprd off ds and TONIGHT I get to see him!!!! Am so excited. Ds 2 and I are traveling to the UK to spend a couple of nights in his city.

Other than that he won’t fly home until the 16th December.

He is doing well - reading week starts tomorrow but he has lots of work and did not want to lose 2 whole days travelling. My parents will visit him one day. My brother went to the same Uni so they are excited to be going back 30 years later and now taking the next generation out to lunch there

Ds is off on a challenge next weekend - idea is to go as far as you can from the Uni city with no money in 36 hours. He does not appear to have a well laid plan on how he will achieve this so let’s see :)

Blinking foreign keyboards autocorrecting my words into gobbledygook!!
Apologies I must learn to proof read.

Just had a really useful email from the Accommodation dept at Bristol uni. Goes into all aspects of who, when, where, tenancies etc. Encouraging students to look from the new year.

I am almost feeling "normal " today. Yay!! Hope you all have a lovely weekend. X

Hello again - sorry for being AWOL for so long. We had a bad situation with DD1 again

knitting big hugs to you
marmite so pleased to hear you are recovering well.

Oh no chocolate

I've just been upstairs to hide this week's flowers in my ensuite as DS is bringing his washing home. My mother comes at the weekend and the flowers will inevitably lead to a discussion I don't want, especially not in front of DS. Unlike her I don't want to live in the past, it's a dangerous place for me and forward is the only way. Whatever people have done this week has been wrong, I am simultaneously peeved with my SIL for not phoning and also upset by the FB messages and flowers. As I tell DS, when everything and everyone rubs you the wrong way the problem is likely to be you rather than them.

Chocolate I am sorry, I hope things are settling back to normal, whatever normal looks like for you.

Downey the distance challenge was a thing in the early 80s too, it wasn't a level playing field even then because people with family connections were given "free" flights whereas Jo Public was hitching up the A1.

I hope it's sunny where you are Marmite and that you are sitting enjoying the warmth. It's showing the cobwebs here, I suppose that is the only advantage of the short days.

That winter sun is a bugger for showing up my lack of cleaning.

Hugs all round to those who are struggling.

Lovely Marmite :) just in time for the weekend.

I'm sorry to hear that chocolate. I hope things are settling now.

Knitting - it's difficult when you don't want support because you don't want to need support you want the situation to be different.

I'm not looking at my windows.

Hope all on here have a good weekend. Weather so glorious here that if it keeps maybe that will lift all our spirits.
Knitting, we lost a young close family relative with young children fairly recently and it is sad and difficult and comes in waves. My condolences.

Ds is off on a challenge next weekend - idea is to go as far as you can from the Uni city with no money in 36 hours. He does not appear to have a well laid plan on how he will achieve this so let’s see

DS1 did that one from Birmingham, but really didnt enjoy it much - it was just after the Brussels bombings. He and his friends ended up deciding not to try to get any further than Paris (having failed to get any further than Paris, really), which he said he probably wouldn't particularly want to visit again and they dub foreign language films was about the last straw. His girlfriend's parents very kindly booked flights home for all four of them.

He much preferred 'Lost' - the one where they are blindfolded and dropped off a hundred miles from the university and have to make their way back again without spending money, completing challenges on the way.

Ours was Amsterdam when I was at university (a long time ago) - people used to think nothing of hitch hiking. Not something I'd want to do now. I don't know how we got back in one piece. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I’m clearly far too old for this to have been a thing.

It's not something that ever came up on my radar either lonicera. But then when I was at uni I had a baby/toddler so it's not something I would ever have been able to participate in anyway.

We used to hitch everywhere. Starting from Keele services

No hitching or going abroad when I was at uni either. I remember people sitting in baths of baked beans and dressing up but that's about it.
dd has adjusted to working in the shop but having different shifts each day/week means there is a lack of routine at times.
Her uniform still hasn't arrived!
This week there has been one customer complaint and another customer nominated her for an "excellent customer service" award!

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. We were abroad until yesterday and wi-fi was patchy.

DS1 had reading week so he stayed here and he and his girlfriend house-sat for us. They also fed the cat and invited the grandparents round for tea. We came home to an impressively tidy house.

He is looking a bit better, so hopefully the week's break did him good. We're taking him back to university tomorrow, equipped with some melatonin.

Glad DS Is on the mend thefirstOHN. Melatonin is very useful.

Good luck to your DD catndoglife. Dealing with customers when you are young is tough.

I never hitched but many friends did. I had a little datsun. Lucky me!

It's so quiet on here you had dropped off my TIO!

Popped to see DD on Sunday as her phone, which has been broken for months, had finally given up the ghost completely. I have just had a new phone through my contract so took my old one for her to use until she can drag her backside to the Apple store to try and get her's fixed.

She has also spent all this term's loan and is in to her overdraft. I was toying with the notion of sending her £50 a week but DH is not keen as he thinks she will never learn, so I have offered to do a weekly Tesco online order for her - the notion of which has gone down like a lead balloon. Anyone done an online order for delivery to halls? Just wondering how it works. I've only ever done a home delivery order once and the guy dumped the bags just inside the back door whilst I stood there on crutches .

Hope everyone is well.

ursula I have enough money to give ds extra and I want him to have a good time at university too, AND he needs to be encouraged to go out and eat well....

BUT we tried our best to make him keep within the agreed spending amount because we thought it might a) encourage him to appreciate gifts over and above basics, b) feel he was in charge of his own destiny, and perhaps do a few chores for cash when he comes home even if he doesn't feel able to get a job in termtime (sorry that was irony)

However the thought of him going hungry and cold/shoeless is too much for me.. I bought ds some very boring iron rations, (and shoes) at the beginning of term and stuck them in his cupboard on the basis that if he really had absolutely no money to buy food, cos he had spent it on ready meal kebab van and clubbing well at least he wasn't going to starve.

That’s the trouble. We can afford it and she knows it. But I am fed up of her buying clothes and random shit. She saved nothing from her job over the summer. I won’t let her starve but she needs to learn to manage a bit better.

ursula I do a Sainsbury's delivery for myself every week. My delivery drivers also do the student halls which are nearby.
They complain because they have to phone the students to come down to the main door of their block to collect their shopping and it is often difficult to get them out of bed.
However it is obviously something commonly done and the supermarkets are used to it.

I went to visit dd last week. She is coping and enjoying her course but obviously getting increasingly tired.
We had her PIP interview which was confusing. The interviewer was very neutral but afterwards I thought of lots of things which we didn't say mainly because of the way the questions were framed. I am now wondering if covered everything we needed to. A friend said I sounded exactly like someone coming out of an exam when I talked about it.