Over the last few days we’ve had a spate of vandalism in the neighbourhood. Lots of smashed bottles, dog shit not picked up (not quite in the same league, but annoying all the same) and most recently the panels ripped off of street lights leaving the bare wires exposed.

This evening, I phoned up the county council to report a nearby broken street light and the woman at the council sounded really frustrated – they’ve had a run of incidents recently and it sounds like they’re flat out with repairs. She expressed concern that one of the culprits would electrocute themselves soon and said she’d be contacting the police as well (although catching them in the act could be tricky).

A neighbour has just walked back past the broken street light and discovered another one has been ripped out since we’ve been past this afternoon. This time they’ve managed to remove some of the wires too so there’s no lighting in that area. The community officers have been called.

Let’s just hope they get caught before either one of the miscreants, or more likely a curious small child, gets killed.

Our dining room table is on its last legs (pardon the pun). It’s wobbly, the surface varnish has been scraped away over the years, the seats on the chairs have split (this is the second recovering).

We’ve looked into repairing it and frankly the cost greatly outweighs any benefit, although to be fair it’s done its time – my mum was given the table as a wedding present over thirty five years ago. But it was the abuse at my household over the last 7 or so that really finished it off.

So, I’m looking for another one. A fairly simple task, one would assume, but not so in practise. Apparently, I’m rather demanding of my requirements as our new dining set needs to be:

• able to seat 6 (although we’re happy for it to only seat 4 while unextended)
• modern looking (no heavy dark wood colours – it needs to be light wood or white)
• easy clean (wipeable surface, preferably faux-leather seating to be able to wipe clean the seats too)
• not dominate the room – it’s in the kitchen, so no thickly padded dark back which seems to be all the fashion
• no wider than 120cm
• no longer than 120cm (but can extend to up to 150cm at a push)
• must NOT have a drop leaf (so unusable when it’s just the four of you as you can’t get your legs under properly)
• preferably square/rectangular rather than round as it’s just easier to move round the space in our cramped room
• maximum cost of £500 (although the cheaper the better given that the children are still young and I hate being “precious” about furniture)

I wouldn’t have thought it was that unreasonable a set of criteria – there must be a fair amount of families with young children who are pushed for space but still want to receive visitors from time to time who would LOVE a dining room table just like that. But I’ve looked everywhere and not found anything that matches. Anything that comes even slightly close has a major flaw like cream fabric seats (like I can see THOSE lasting long with my two boys!) or the dimensions are too big.

Then this afternoon I remembered that Ikea now do some home deliveries and checked on their site. Found this table and these chairs. Okay, so the fabric of the chairs is still white (WHY do they do this – I can’t think of a worse colour with children in the house) BUT the covers are removable and machine washable (and easily removable also means easily recovered too). Yay, I think we’ve found the one.

Then I noticed that the table wasn’t available online. AND it’s out of stock in every branch that’s even vaguely reachable from here. BAH!

Back to the drawing board.

You really know it’s summer when the door-to-door salesmen come out of hibernation.

Living on a new estate, we get more than our fair share and I’ve had three of them call on me within the space of half an hour – all of them while I was trying to prepare dinner.

I’m hormonal (just had the mirena removed and having my first period in four years) – you’d have thought they’d have been more careful… but ooooooooooooh no.

One of them was polite and lovely. I was equally polite in return. Thanks but no thanks. The other two… how many ways can I say I’M NOT INTERESTED before I give in and slam the door in your face?!

Now I’m not only hormonal, but I’m pissed off (and a bit pissed too, if I’m honest… it’s been a crack open the wine sort of day). Can’t find a sign on the internet that says no sellers without also saying no free papers (I love my free papers). So I’ve found a company that will make bespoke signs and fired off an order.

I don’t expect the cold callers will take a blind bit of notice, but at least I’ll be able to minimize my interaction by silently pointing at the sign and THEN slam the door.

Li’l Bhaji is in major boundary-pushing mode today, being constantly and deliberately naughty with a grin and cheerfulness that is actually harder to bear than if he’d been sullen and wilful.

I have just rather tearfully confessed to an online friend that actually, I don’t like my three year old very much this morning and was glad to dump him off at nursery for a three hour respite. I have been a shouty, vindictive bitch-monster from hell and I’m not proud of it in the slightest.

So the article Parent Rage in today’s Times was very timely.

Campaigners for children’s rights certainly take that line. The NSPCC’s campaign against child abuse makes an explicit point that no loss of self-control by parents is tolerable. It’s not just smacking that now qualifies as abuse, but shouting, belittling, almost any kind of deviation from the unruffled air of benign and imperturbable calm urged on us by the parenting pages and the plethora of television parenting programmes[...]

[...]Back in 1947, long before Supernanny was thought of, the renowned paediatrician D.W. Winnicott wrote an amazing thing: “Let me give some reasons why a mother hates her baby,” he wrote. “The baby is ruthless, treats her as scum, an unpaid servant, a slave. . . He is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubt herself . . .” Oh my goodness. He just came right out with it. Let’s hear it again, shall we? Mothers (sometimes) hate their babies. We could continue this line of thought: sometimes they hate their toddlers, too. And their bigger children.

And their teenagers. Especially their teenagers. Sometimes we hate our children so much that we wish we’d never had them, or that we could run away from home and be ourselves again – have fun, get some sleep, have a conversation, or simply not just have to keep telling people what to do, nonstop, all day long.

It’s an excellent article, and I thoroughly recommend you read the lot.

My favourite bit though is the list at the end of suggestions on how to keep your children happy in the car. It describes the usual bunch of entertainment ideas then at the very end suggests:

- Install a cage partition, as for dogs.

Perhaps I should invest in a kennel?

If ever there was a reminder to have a camera on you at all times this is it.

On Sunday, when out on a bike ride with the boys, we almost got mown down by a mini motorbike on the footpath from our house to the playground. We managed to get Li’l Bhaji off the pavement into the grass verge fairly quick, but Akra Jr got flustered and didn’t know which way to go to be safe, dithering in the middle then going in the longest direction to the opposite verge. Fortunately we’d spotted the mini moto maniac fairly early on and the time wasn’t crucial. I swore at the rider as he went past (yes, I know, great parenting example) but he didn’t seem that bothered. I wish I’d had the time and foresight to take a photograph.

Today, I have just seen (another? the same?) idiot entering the footpath system near my house. Again, the camera was just out of reach and I didn’t register quickly enough to take a mugshot. From now on I’m carrying my camera everywhere and I WILL get a photo of the reckless bastard to turn in as evidence.

The footpaths around where I live are brilliant. They have a small cycle lane painted on them and they connect the supermarket with the community centre, pub, school and playgrounds. At peak times they are heaving with very young children. In off peak times it’s still rare not to see a few toddling about. There is going to be a very very nasty accident soon if this guy isn’t caught soon and his bike confiscated and crushed.

I’ve contacted our local community officer and they’re going to keep an eye open, but at the end of the day they have to actually catch him in the act.

Let’s hope a child isn’t killed first, eh?

A few months ago, our local council changed our bin system. We got brand spanking new wheelie bins (hurrah, double the size of our old bins and plenty of space for recycling with doorstep glass collection at last – no more bin bags hanging around) but at the same time they downgraded our grey bin collection (the non-recyclables) to a fortnightly collection.

Now technically, as the grey bin is double the size of our old “standard” sized bin, this shouldn’t be a problem. Only with our old bin, we just put out any excess bin liners we generated. With this system, any bin bags put out will not only be left behind, but “invalidate” the whole collection (i.e. they won’t take any of your rubbish). If the lid on the wheelie isn’t closed completely (if you stuff it that bit too far and it’s open a crack) it will also get left behind.

The green bins have equally become far more complicated. The booklet that tells you what you can and can’t recycle needs to be kept permanently by the door as reference because they’ve changed many of the things you used to be able to recycle under the old scheme and I can never remember which way around it is. We can now recycle more plastic (1 PET, 2 HDPE and 3 PVC), but they won’t accept any brown or black plastic regardless of labelling where previously you only had to look for numbers 1 and 2. They won’t accept foil any more. They do accept egg cartons now, but won’t take cardboard. The list goes on.

I get confused – how will the elderly cope or those not particularly invested in recycling? Again, if you get one thing wrong, the whole collection gets rejected. Not quite so much of an issue with the recycling (as you just pick out the offending item) but still a pain when you have to wait another fortnight to try again.

Now in general, this system should work okay for us. We are committed to recycling. We don’t buy a lot of overpackaged produce or foods. We have a waste disposal unit in our sink. We do have a toddler in nappies still (we postponed training after a stomach bug put us back at square one) but unlike a newborn you get through far fewer nappies a day. We only have two small children rather than teens so our rubbish generation is comparitively low to many families.

However, we’re struggling. Most times our bin is three quarters full with still a week to go before collection. With a bit of squashing down we can usually cope until the next fortnight. I’m dreading the smell in the summer with rubbish left in the heat for a fortnight rather than a week – but at least the foxes and cats can’t rip it to shreds when you put a chicken carcass in now.

Then Christmas happened. To be fair, we’d expected a trip to the tip just after the big day anyway – with all the best recycling will in the world, there’s still an awful lot of toy packaging that is non-recyclable (why can’t manufacturers change this?!) and that tipped (tipped… geddit…) us over the edge. That was fair enough – inconvenient but fair. Then Boxing Day evening, Li’l Bhaji started throwing up, the rest of us followed and as the vomitting subsided the diahhroea began (sorry, that’s probably too much info, isn’t it?).

We recovered fairly quickly – all of us, that is, except Li’l Bhaji – the one in nappies. Ten days it’s taken for him to recover (we think he’s better now, but not holding our breath) and you can imagine the rubbish generation we’ve created. I just know what you’re going to say – real nappies – but we have given them a good trial of several leading brands when Akra Jr was small and they didn’t work for us at all, and to be fair the sickness bug hit our small washing machine hard too, there’d have been no way to have fit the extra washing in for the nappies as well.

Still, at least we have a car and they don’t charge to visit the tip … yet.

Apparently, over 70% of Worcester residents want the county to return to weekly rubbish collections for the grey bin. There are reports of festering piles of rubbish that have been left behind (presumably because they’d made the heinous mistake of not making the lid close properly) allowing an explosion of maggots and rats. Unfortunately, it seems the council have over-extended themselves somewhat as it’ll now cost them �400,000 to return the collection to a weekly system.

And guess who’ll have to pay for that?

Three random things that have aggravated me in the last 24 hours in no particular order:

• Grandparents: when taking your grandchild to swimming lessons please don’t applaud repeatedly and shout suggestions of technique to them. For one, it distracts the child. Secondly, it annoys the teacher. Finally, and most importantly, it completely pisses off the parent sitting next to you who is trying to read her Practical Photography magazine in the only half hour she’s had to herself all summer.
• Drivers who pootle along at 40mph in a nice wide, straight and open “National Speed Limit Applies” road (with unfortunately no overtaking opportunities due to level of traffic) but then speed up when they reach a 30mph zone. Wankers.
• Pissant bullying lawyers who suddenly offer no-win no-fee for superfluous libel cases. Because obviously being a top childcare guru just doesn’t pay enough to obliterate any site on the Internet that doesn’t agree with you. Naming no names of course. (Legal fund here. Petition here.)

Out of curiosity (and tight finances) I sat down yesterday to work out how much childcare would cost if I were to go back to work, and what salary I would need to get to make it worth the extra hassle and inflexibility. I had a vague inkling before I started that take home pay wouldn’t be that impressive given that I’d need to pay nursery fees for Li’l Bhaji and after school care for Akra Jr, but even I was shocked when I worked out that it would cost me over �12,000 a year to go back to work full time.

So how to people manage it? Certainly the jobs around here (given my qualifications) I’d be lucky to get anything above �14k p.a. – so after tax I’d be virtually paying for the privilege of working. Do people just carry on through regardless just to keep their career going? Do they just get much better pay then I could look to earn? Or are they lucky enough to have grandparents living nearby willing and able to look after the kids for free? The other option, of course, would be for me to work evenings and weekends – but then that leaves you with no downtime whatsoever which, given my current unimpressive immune system, probably isn’t ideal.

Either way, looks like we’re going to have to pootle on best we can at least until Li’l Bhaji starts school when it might actually be financially viable for me to be in the workplace.

I need to rant, and damnit, this is my blog and my rant space. Be aware that rational responses to comments left may have to wait until tomorrow when the red mist has subsided.

So over just a couple of days, I firstly get a very abrupt response from my MP (yes, I was foolish enough to send yet another letter about ID cards) with no intention of letting the facts getting in the way of his made up mind… again. Still, at least he didn’t send me 20 trees worth of paper explaining why he was going to completely ignore me this time. Then today, I get a letter from the planning office – long term readers may remember my concern over a planning application for a mobile telephone mast at the bottom of my road. It’s a grand total of 3 lines long including the greeting and the signing off. The abridged version (cutting out not very many words in the middle) was “Thank you for your letter, the decision was to approve”. Never mind all the complaints, never mind the very sensible suggestions of a better location for the mast. Just fuck you, we’re going to do what we damn well please.

WHY do I bother? Is it any wonder that people are disenfranchised with politics when they barely go through the motions of “listening” or “consulting”? I’m oscillating between wanting to throw up my hands and descend into apathy, or going into full offensive protest mode.

But then, what’s the bloody point… eh?

Yet again I get another form letter without any human being apparently having read any of my original complaints. Things I still have not had satisfactory answers to:

a) WHY has this been delayed several times each by 1-2 weeks, when the original display on the 2nd of December was 24 hr dispatch (supposedly in stock).

b) WHY was the first indication that it wasn’t going to arrive in time for Christmas long past the time I could have ordered from another retailer, leaving me to go around the shops with 2 small children on Christmas Eve – possibly the busiest time of the year.

c) WHY can you not string a personal response together to even ATTEMPT to scrape some shred of dignity and actual customer service.

d) WHY has my request of reparation not even been acknowledged. I think at this point the very LEAST you could do is some sort of money off voucher for future use.

e) HOW THE HELL am I supposed to cancel as half the order has been dispatched and nothing on the site seems to let me cancel that one item?!!

Looking forward to the next highly amusing auto-generated reply. In the meantime this is getting posted to my blog and every message board I have ever posted to.