Beware the Crepes of March!

[QueenQueenie]

Well someone had to do it as my last post was number 999...

Much duller day today, at the IoE library doing my assignment. And getting feedback on my observation last week - mainly good, but about twelvety million 'areas for development'. Including the fact that I talk too much!

DS currently in bed, reading Fantastic Mr Fox to himself. Looks like he's going to finish it tonight. Not bad for five.

Herbs, that's a great story. Like most of the RD's. Well done mini-Herbs!

I am putting my fingers in my ears about how hard your DD's are finding university. I can't see further than the GCSE's ATM!

O m g beachy !! You kept that under your woo lovers jumper!
Borneo! Flipping heck. That sounds like my dream trip. I also love the Old men of the Jungle in all their gingery loveliness . I am wel jel mate oh and well done to Stylish DD. Fur coat for extra confidence. Works every time. Best of luck to her .

Emily, what beautiful part of France. Have you met Hatty yet? She's also en France.

Lalsy, DD is a bit more up than down. Have talked her into a quiet weekend at home next week. Will update when I've assessed her top to toe She did whinge the other day that she was tired of trying to think up 'things for dinner' I had a little smirk at that.

Orangutans are not small. They are very large indeed. I lived on Borneo for a couple of years. If I had my time over again, I would work in conservation, although where orangs and gibbons are concerned it is very depressing. Are you going to Sepilok, Beachy? I went there a long time ago. I also made the horrible mistake of going to a small local Chinese zoo near where we lived and the faces of the poor baby orangutans there, isolated in tiny bamboo cages, have haunted me for 20 years.
Spent this morning at Exeter University, dragging a reluctant dd onto the campus. She is so anxious. She stood in the middle of one of the biggest buildings we visited and her eyes filled with tears. I don't want to go to university, she said, it's too big and I won't know anybody and I can't start all over again.

A very lovely professor introduced herself and had a calming chat. And then asked me to come and give a talk about my current area of work to her MA students. Random, eh?

I have no urge to go far on holiday any more. I wonder if it is because I've spent a lot of my job sitting on planes? Two hours drive looks about right to me, although I have always wanted to go to Barbados.

I am back from my mother's, smelling strongly of cigarettes. DD2 and I got in and threw all of our clothes in the washing machine. Now need to wash hair.

My mother called me tonight to tell me that after we had gone, she got a call from the hospital. She has an urgent appointment with the skin cancer specialist and the Macmillan nurse on Tuesday. This doesn't sound good...

Stropps - DD1 has asked me if there is "a very small university" that she could go to.

MrsS, that'll be your dd1 and my dd in the University of My Shed-At-The-Bottom-Of-The-Garden. Currently only offering a BSc in Chicken Studies, however.
My pa spent most of his working life in the more remote parts of Africa. He refused to ever go abroad on holiday, although he once let slip to my mother that the only place he would like to visit was Canada. So they did a rail trip over the Rockies and a cruise up to Alaska when he was 85.
Sorry to hear the news from your mother. Doesn't sound good.

Yes, you might meet some strange woman who turns up with a bra on her head, Rudy.

Stropps and Mrs S, in no way was dd ready for uni at 17. Neither were a lot of her cohorts. A gap year or similar maybe called for sometimes I think.
A very kindly teacher once quietly admitted to me that less than half of her year 14 class were really ready to go off into the big wide yonder.
Dd has been quite surprised by how many 'unready' kids she has met at university. ( dear help them, I think dd has been making vats of chickpea curry to make sure they don't starve)
A few dropped out in the first term after realising they weren't ready.
X

Oh MrsS.

I am braced for trip to parents' at 7.28 tomorrow morning. I quite spectacularly do not want to go.

Stropps, that was pretty well my dd's reaction to every open day. Anxiety writ large. The reality has proved much better than would have been predicted from her reactions then. Crem, dd has been living on shreddies - she too is coming home for a quiet meal-filled time next week.

Orangutans, oh Beachy, how wonderful.

Dd is a July b-day, so only 16 still, but adamantly opposed to a gap year, as they are "too expensive and for losers". It is fair to say that ad things currently stand, we could not finance her with anything post-school, but she would be in a position to finance herself. However, she has no intention of organising anything. I have to admit to a sense of deja-vu, as I had similar feelings of terror about the big wide world at 18 and for me life went quite wrong because of that. I don't feel qualified to advise dd, really. I just keep hoping she will see the light I never saw.

Welcome, Emily. Is our next meet-up en France, then? Please say yes...

Bath is a small uni, and seems very welcoming - would that be small enough, Stropps? I agree that many are too young when they go off to uni, never mind the age at which they have to decide what to study etc.

We've discovered that Newcastle makes a very low offer to students doing dd's subjects for her chosen degree, so that makes it an obvious insurance choice. She is thankfully well ahead of the game, unlike many of her peers, and completely unlike her poor sibling was. I'm certain second children have it so much easier, not least because parents finally have it a bit more sussed when it comes to the second one. I suppose ds' faffing around has been a Salutary Lesson to dd.

Good luck tomorrow, MI.
Lalsy, maybe another 18 months will make all the difference? I wanted to go early this morning, but at 8.45 dd was still in bed. I can see now that it is anxiety, but it is still infuriating. Not least as I battle my own anxiety issues on a daily basis and therefore have to come up with a double dose of "oomph" to even get us out the door. Very much the story of our life at the moment.
Am well jel of Beachy's gloriously-attired and clearly confident dd. I want one!!

I went to Bath uni as an undergrad and as a post-grad. Have a relative who is a lecturer there. Would not, for various reasons, recommend to dd. Way too light on arts subjects, for starters. Is a fine place for meeting engineers, if you like that sort of thing.

Stropps, 18 months is a long time for teenagers........she may well surprise you. That double dose of ooopmh can be hard to find. dd was also dead set against a gap year and I am not sure what she would have done in it, if UCAS with its limited options (she is doing a rare JH) and decently organised system (which she was qualified and set up for) was so darn terrifying. She, and you, will get there .

That's certainly true about second children in this house, Molly.

MollyAir we had a topping virtual party with the girls from the Chalet School thread for my 65th. Folk dancing in the field and a midnight feast of sardines and Calvados. Ripping fun.
Now today, I am going to have a completely new experience when I go to watch my GDs in a Cheerleading competition. My DD has told me to bring my earplugs.

We all (yes both teens too, of their own volition!) went to bed at 9pm last night!

Stropps, I think DD may want to join you and MrsS's DD in the Shed-At-The-Bottom-Of-The-Garden! However, she is saving up for a gap year which, if it comes off, could be the making of her. I am not sure how it works with uni applications though
As you know, she is also a July birthday... I was the oldest of my year and couldn't wait to get away!

Rudy, is she planning to meet him? Will she wear a bra on her head?

Mrs S sorry to hear about mum.

I think people underestimate issues such as size and the campus v city v town questions of Unis. When I went I applied without having seen them - purely on the course! Have to say if I'd soent three years at lancaster I might have killed myself - luckily only did a 1 year very intensive MA

Borneo Beachy - joins Cremo on well jel bench...

Here I had an email from ds basically telling me I make him feel bad about himself :(. Shit - getting that wrong aren't i. Will have to rethink.

What on earth are you lot doing up??I'm in a freezing train about to zigzag across East Anglia with the eventual aim of reaching Norfolk (weekend works).

My dad (an academic) actually insisted I had a gap year. They sent me back to India for a few months, which was varyingly enjoyable (three of my school friends were killed in a crash just after I got there. It has only recently struck me as odd that my mother informed me about this by sending me a letter with a clipping from the local paper. Obviously I read the clipping first. I was standing in a station queue at the time). Then I spent the rest of the year working out who I wanted to be, which much to my dad's chagrin involved not playing the violin, getting up early and getting a temp job but hanging around with lefties and lesbians, knitting my own garments, giving up meat and Objecting To Things.

BD

BD, one of my old school friends loved Lancaster - horses for courses!
Is your DS at home? Can you have a chat with him to find out what he means? Teens and pre-teens often say things to make you feel bad because they are feeling bad about themselves - don't feel like it is all your fault.

MI, I was asleep just after 9! And I have to get DD up at 7.30 on a Sat for coaching, so I go to the gym early too!
MI, I think that my DM might well have informed me in a similar way - how times have changed, thankfully.

BTM - on his way back - was at his grandparents. I think dp had the 'you play too many computer games' convo which will have segued in DS's head into 'why can't you be more like x or y' as apparently I compare him (unfavourably) with others.....