While we’re on the subject of privacy issues…

We went to our local Wacky Warehouse yesterday and before we could go in and play they asked for my postcode and house number. This was for a cash transaction of a couple of quid! What possible legitimate reason could they have for that information in exchange for a mere hour’s worth of play?! (My friend did jokingly suggest that maybe it was in case you were tempted to skip out and leave the kids behind…)

According to the Data Protection Act I am entitled to know what they are using the information for. I should have called them on it then and there, but Akra Jr was getting rather impatient to play and Li’l Bhaji needed feeding. I sense a strongly worded email coming on…

I’m fed up.

I’m fed up with the holier than thou attitude that unless you follow the exact brand of spirituality that I do then you’re not a “proper” adherent… worse, you’re shallow, ignorant, naive or just plain stupid. You’re along for the ride, following a bandwagon.

Have I had a run in with a street evangelist? No.

Have I got fed up with the latest violence done in the name of fundamentalism? No.

I’m fed up with pagans.

Paganism. One of the most diverse and personal faiths I know of. Pinning down broad brushstrokes of belief across the whole community is extremely hard – yet why do I find just as much (if not more) intolerance here than in any other religion?

It does not make you a “better” pagan if you have elaborate rituals monthly, nor if your Book of Shadows is thicker than anyone elses, nor if you’re a tenth generation family witch rather than a “fluff bunny” Wiccan.

Just as a “better” christian is not one who prays for hours, attends bible group daily and takes every opportunity to spread the good news.

Intolerant, bigotted fundamentalist beliefs are as abhorant to me no matter what religion they originate in.

WHY do they expect everyone to find truth and spirituality in exactly the same way they did? WHY do they expect a newcomer to have as much depth of spirituality, wisdom experience as someone who has had a decade or two to explore their beliefs? WHY do they not see the hypocrisy when they’ve spent so long complaining about the world’s intolerance towards pagans? WHY does their faith seem to hinge around proving to themselves that they are more spiritual than everyone else?

For the record, some of the most spiritual people I know of any faith actually have a fairly simplistic belief system. It’s just they’ve let their beliefs sink to their soul, it’s in their hearts, it shines through their eyes. My beliefs tend to be more at the intellectual level, because that’s how I’ve been made – to constantly question and re-evaluate. All of us approach these things in our own individual way.

Some people should really know better.

So, I’m on the way back from taking Akra Jr to Tumbletots…

*takes a deep breath*

• Li’l Bhaji wakes up a full hour early in the car and starts screaming

• Finally get home and bump into next door neighbour’s mother who is looking after their baby girl
• Manage to extracate Akra Jr from peering into the buggy saying “hello” over and over again while Li’l Bhaji working himself up into a real hungry howl of indignation
• Get inside. Akra Jr demands a DVD and a snack
• Can’t find the damn DVDs anywhere… the little git has hidden them
• Li’l Bhaji still howling. Now Akra Jr howling and accusing me of breaking his toy snake (wooden part of the tail missing in action)
• Doorbell rings… ARGH!
• Some woman checking to see that we’re receiving the free paper (eh? they phone us once a fortnight to check too… are they made of money?). Enlist her help for missing snake part.
• Postman arrives.
• Get back inside. Akra Jr suddenly remembered he “put the DVDs in a drawer”. Finally find one, bung it in the machine. Too many adverts to skip through (menu button disabled … a thousand curses to Disney).
• Get Li’l Bhaji latched on (poor mite)
• Li’l Bhaji finishes his meal, Akra Jr reminds me of forgotten snack.
• Get snack.
• Search high and low (okay, inside the car, outside the house and all around the lounge) for missing snake part. Yay, found it! Akra Jr grudgingly says thank you when prompted.
• Li’l Bhaji starts to cry again – he’s tired this time
• Take Li’l Bhaji up for his nap
• Akra Jr wakes Li’l Bhaji on no less than three occasions while I’m trying to settle him, due to “scary bits” and untimely end of film.
• Come downstairs at last. Now Akra is trying to enlist conversation via ICQ. Fire off a couple of sentences. About to sit down.
• Damn, still have my mother to phone (she left an answerphone message yesterday while we were at parents-in-law)
• Pick up the receiver. Another answerphone message. From my mother. With sarcastic comment wondering if we were still alive.
• Reassure mother I’m still alive. Wind up the conversation fairly quickly as I realise Li’l Bhaji is awake and crying again.
• Still winding up conversation. Doorbell rings. Manage to put phone down. Notice with relief that Li’l Bhaji has fallen back to sleep with no intervention.
• Open door to welcome distraction of friend and her toddler. As long as they don’t require coherent conversation I should be okay.
• Whirlwind of toddler manages to find a big puddle out in the garden and sits in it.
• Find spare nappy, shorts and a carrier bag to put wet clothes in.
• Akra Jr informs me he’s wet his pants. He’s soaked through. Remind him of location of potty and find him clean pants and trousers.
• Li’l Bhaji wakes up. Is in grumpy mood.
• Friend and toddler leave after toddler misbehaves and ignores instructions. Akra Jr ignores request to stay inside as Li’l Bhaji working himself up to frenzy and I want to go see to him.
• Akra Jr picks up a fistful of small stones and throws them.
• Akra Jr slightly pissed off by his mother taking affront at this, swooping in and bodily heaving him inside the house
• Akra then informs me he’s leaving late due to hacker incident at work.

*screams very loudly*

Still, kids are in bed now. Thank God.

I had the trip into town from hell today. It was the first time I’d ventured out into town with the two of them, though thinking about it retrospectively, a Saturday probably wasn’t the best time for our maiden voyage even though Akra was around as a result.

First of all, we popped into the library to get some new books for Akra Jr and sign up Li’l Bhaji for a library card (well, you can never start them too young, can you?!) This was when Akra Jr decided to throw a full blown wobby. Have you noticed how kids manage to do that in the quietest place possible in order to attract the most stares? Mummy and Daddy severely Not Impressed[tm].

We are obviously gluttons for punishment, as we decided to follow that up with a full-blown tour around the shops – we needed to buy a present for a friend, use some vouchers that we’d received as a present and Akra needed new slippers. Shouldn’t be too long. Oh, but it felt like eternity.

You see, the biggest problem is that Worcester is not geared up for prams or pushchairs. Having more than two parent and child parking spaces in the multistorey might have been useful for a start. With one child, you can just about wing it in a narrow space by getting really close to the car one side of you, leaving a bigger gap on the child’s side. Extracating two children from their carseats in a normal space though is rather more interesting and time-consuming. Public transport not an option as even on the disabled access buses, they won’t let you leave the pushchair up, unlike London Transport which positively encourage you to make full use of these areas.

Then we battled our way around town. You can understand the smaller shops being a bit narrow and pushchair unfriendly, but in general you expect the larger chains to be more amenable to parental shopping. Debenhams seems particularly terrible for this – you could hardly get past the racks of clothing, let alone let someone through walking the other way. Their coffee shop (which is supposed to win awards for child friendliness) was so narrow and packed there was feasibly only one table you could park a pushchair nearby, and guess what, that was taken. We then got stuck on the lower ground floor because there was only one lift and every time it arrived it was packed due to people getting on at ground, but wanting to go up. Five missed lifts later we finally got out of the building.

And people move out of London to get a better quality of life for their children… *shakes head in disbelief*

Long live internet shopping.

… no. 264:

Driving to Tumbletots after only 2 hours sleep the previous night, Bob the Builder CD on permanent loop, 3 year old screaming at you because he’s dropped his soft toy and you refuse to attempt to pick it up while driving, and a lorry travelling far too close behind when you have had a prior accident with a lorry rear-ending your vehicle…

Still, at least Li’l Bhaji was asleep at the time for a change.

The good thing about being 8 months pregnant is that you can do fiery anger at the drop of a hat. The bad thing about being 8 months pregnant is that you can do fiery anger at the drop of a hat.

You may remember that three weeks ago I had a bit of a run in with the Student Loans people in that I have no physical proof that I am not earning anything and choosing to be a stay-at-home-mum. Well I had another letter from them yesterday – as Paula predicted on that original posting, they noted that I was paying by direct debit, but that I now had arrears on the account, could I please pay promptly.

Fueled by pregnancy hormones, I telephoned them up and screamed at them. How DARE they take money out of my account when I had sent all necessary paperwork three weeks ago on request. How DARE they then send me threatening letters demanding money with a clear statement on the back that they would charge me an additional ?15 per piece of correspondence they had to issue to chase up the money. If they didn’t sort it out RIGHT NOW then I would be billing THEM FIFTEEN QUID FOR EVERY PHONE CALL OR LETTER I HAD TO MAKE TO SORT OUT THEIR COCK UP!

Funnily enough, the poor sod on the other end of the phone was slightly subdued, put me on hold and called through to Head Office. My letter of three weeks ago was located and I was promised that it would be dealt with as soon as possible and that no money had gone out of my account yet. We shall see.

Did feel a bit guilty when I’d put the phone down, though. It was hardly the pleb’s fault, and having worked in Customer Services myself I really should know better…

I have a student loan. Not a huge one, but big enough.

I have deferred it every single year so far – I have never earned enough to meet the requirement to pay it back and at the moment I earn nothing, nada, zero.

So, I send back all the forms saying I don’t earn anything except child benefit and tax credits. They want a letter from my employer to confirm how much I earn… um… I write a letter explaining that I am a stay-at-home mother with an almost 3 year old and am heavily pregnant with a second child. I do not work or have an employer.

I hear nothing else for a month. Today, I get a letter informing me when my repayments will start. The repayments aren’t high, but high enough that they would seriously screw our finances up, especially with a baby on the way. Anyway, I’ve deferred, right?

I phone them up. Apparently my deferrment application is “incomplete”. Oh thanks, and you were going to tell me when exactly? WHY is it incomplete? Because they need proof of my earnings.

TWUNTS! What POSSIBLE “PROOF” CAN I GIVE OF NOT EARNING ANYTHING?! I am not registered unemployed as I am a stay-at-home mother. Everyone gets child benefit (well, there’s the small requirement of having children, of course), so that’s no indicator of no income. It’s possible to self-certify a tax return but not a loan deferrment application?!

Anyway, after much discussion with them, they tell me that they will accept a letter from my third-party support person. So, I load up my original letter in Word, replace “me” with “my wife” and “my” with “her” throughout, leave it on Akra’s desk to sign when he gets home. Apparently, that’s good enough. Because having my husband sign is obviously so much more trustworthy than me.

*FUME*

Went to pick up Akra Jr from nursery yesterday afternoon to find them all congregated outside the building (our local community centre) with two fire engines parked outside. The poor mite was huddled against a member of staff desperate for a wee (he had point blank refused to go in the bushes, so well trained he is to only “go” in the potty!!) and freezing cold (as per fire regulations, they were not allowed to pause to grab coats). They had been out there for ten minutes by the time I arrived.

Getting home was fun. I cuddled him some of the way, using my coat to warm him up. Other times he ran ahead to generate some heat. I could hardly walk this morning, so badly were my hip and pelvic joints affected by carrying him. Akra Jr’s slight cough and cold have got a lot worse, not surprisingly.

The cause? Well, jury is still out, but the current theory is that someone didn’t extinguish a cigarette properly. Inside the Centre. Which is a Smoke-Free zone.

So, because some moron didn’t think the rule applied to them, everyone had to evacuate the building (for over an hour in the end), dozens of small children were chilled to the bone, and I’m unable to move without pain.

Don’t ban smoking. Ban fuckwits. Much more effective.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been participating in the monthly secret present swap over on Mumsnet. It’s a sort of secret santa only every month instead of December – we have a budget (usually under ?10) to send a parcel to another mumsnetter. It’s great fun, as it’s only a small amount – I have as much pleasure (if not more) choosing something for the other person as receiving my parcel.

There’s only one fly in the ointment: Royal Mail First Class post. It wasn’t until I started expecting parcels on a regular basis that I realised how unreliable it has become. Today’s parcel had the 9th of February on the 1st Class label (you get printed sticky labels rather than stamps these days if taken to the post office) – that’s EIGHT DAYS it took to arrive here. One of last month’s parcels (it was a double event – a swap for kids and a swap for mums) took over THREE WEEKS to arrive here. Both of these parcels originated somewhere else in the UK.

You know, when they say x% of First Class items arrive next day, I really expected that the rest would arrive the day after. I was obviously very naive. First Class post isn’t that cheap – so why are we getting a third class service?! I now wonder about all the parcels I’ve sent out – particularly for special events like birthdays. I always try and post them a couple of days before the big day – should I be allowing a couple of weeks to be on the safe side?

Plug Pulled on ‘Angel’