… going to need a full reinstall which I’ve been putting off for ages … see you out the other side.

Wish me luck!! (I always forget to back up *SOMETHING* properly … )

Why are political parties surprised when they don’t do well in local elections or there is a low turn out? Surely if they expect us to be interested in them, then they should be interested in us?

For the council elections, we only had one canvasser come around to our house (no, not BNP!). He was the councillor himself, he was articulate, came across as generally interested in the neighbourhood, lives locally and patiently answered questions and generally justified his existence. Not one of the other candidates bothered to come around (and either Akra or I are usually in, so it’s not a case of just missing them). Last general elections we saw nobody, and our local waste-of-space MP only canvassed by telephone AFTER we’d already cast our vote (probably because turnout was looking a little low).

Is it any wonder that voter apathy is on the rise when the politicians are so apathetic themselves?

In other local news, those following my Wheel of the Year project will have noticed that one photo (the one shown to the right) has remained pretty static for the last 5 months. However, yesterday I got my opportunity to do something about that.

Our local Tesco (where the graffiti is located) is currently applying for planning permission to extend the store. I’m actually in favour of the expansion; I know many people (and several of my readers) seriously dislike Tesco and their business practises. However, where I am Tesco is a big part of this estate and I believe the expansion (which will also invest in redoing a local busy junction, improve connections to the local community centre, provide more business units creating a larger community resource) will be a bonus, especially to the elderly who rely on Tesco, our local community centre, the local post office and the buses running from Tesco to outlying areas and the town centre. I think the investment into this estate can only be a good thing.

Anyway, to get back to the point, as part of the planning process, they’re having a local consultation thing with a large display in the community centre with a guy from Tesco PR there as well as a local county councillor (probably still in office…). After voting, I got into conversation with them, gave them a thumbs up to the scheme (I think they found it a change from all the grilling they’d been getting) and then mentioned the area with graffiti – would it be possible for them to regularly clean it up? I explained that I’d been keeping a photographic record of the area and said that the graffiti hadn’t been cleaned since the project was started.

To my pleasant surprise, they took me seriously, made a note to speak to the Tesco manager and visited the area in question to see the damage for themselves. Apparently they were aware that the area was known for kids hanging out and causing trouble and ways of dealing with it were being investigated, so hopefully my comments might have been made to the right people for a change.

Here’s hoping June’s photo might be a little different…

Have you noticed how you spend the first two years of your child’s life encouraging them to walk and talk, only to spend the rest of their childhood trying to get them to sit down and shut up?!

Akra Jr: there’s a car stuck behind the sofa – Mum, get it…
Me: erm, can you think of a nicer way of asking?
Akra Jr: get it NOW …[pause]… pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!

Hmm.

Car currently still stuck behind sofa until I get around to it.

As if to punctuate the fact that Li’l Bhaji is entering the realm of toddlerhood (his second birthday is less than a couple of weeks away), we’re now thrown into the dilemma of The Bed [tm]. It was kind of inevitable really, especially as we’d relaxed into complacency: while Akra Jr was in a bed at the same age, we’d pretty much decided to leave Li’l Bhaji in the cot for as long as we could get away with – he’s fairly restricted in a Grobag (a baby sleeping bag) after all.

Wrong! Yesterday morning I walk into his bedroom to find he’s worked out how to completely unzip his sleeping bag and has one foot through the bars, resting on the adjacent bookcase and is in the process of hoisting himself over the rails. Plans fast forward a little.

Now the other problem is that we were going to appropriate a spare single bed from my mother once she’d moved house and no longer needed it. However, as plans have fast forwarded substantially (we were expecting to leave him in the cot until nearer three years old), we now have to either source a bed from elsewhere, or find an interim toddler-style bed until the standard 4’6″ bed is available.

As if that wasn’t enough, just to emphasise the parody our life is about to become, both children decided to take it in turns last night to have bad dreams, need the toilet or lose the duvet, cunningly waiting until we’d just dozed off again before the next crisis struck. With Li’l Bhaji being free to get out of bed as well, I rather think it’s going to be us that will be having the nightmares…