kids

Not always moaning . . .

/ Tony / 1 Comment

We currently have an exhibition in Leeds highlighting the sewerage systems’ problems. One of the most significant issues is so called “Wet Wipes”. It seems that these do not degrade over time, and will stay as they were made forever. Thus eventually blocking the sewer pipes.

This is my argument: “How are manufacturers allowed to get away with creating a product that can only go into land-fill?” The water companies say they should be placed in the bin! That is fine for the odd one or two to go in the bin, together with the polythene bin liner. But if you have a young baby, that can amount to a lot of wipes, in polythene bags, every day. Surely it is in the interest of everyone for these wipes to be fully biodegradable?

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We get our broadband and television services from Sky. Recently we were informed of the latest price increases. However, we had been told last year to contact them before the increase to see if anything could be done to keep the increase to a minimum. So about 3 weeks ago, K**h rang Sky to see what could be done. After about an hour of talking, a deal was agreed upon. The agent explained that the current router we had was rather old (about 4 years old) and a newer, much better one was available. We were told that it would be here within the week, and to be honest, it was.

The youngest was on his biweekly home visit (he is Autistic and lives in a residential care home) so I waited until he had returned before attempting to install the new router.

It all went fine at first. All the devices, laptops, phones, and tablets were connected without any problems. I then had to connect the router to the “Sky Box”. Now, this was a two part operation. Firstly, the main box had to be connected, and then I had to connect the “Sky Mini Box”.

To cut, a long story short, it simply would not connect. I went through all the guides I could find, but eventually we had to call Sky. After about 50 minutes in a queue were connected to a “service engineer”. This gentleman attempted to get me to go through all the things I had already attempted. After another 30 minutes, a supervisor (I believe) took over the call and asked me to reinstall the old router and that an engineer would visit to get us back up and running.

The engineer arrived the following week. I explained that I had connected all the devices without a problem, but just wasn’t able to connect to the Sky Box. He replied, in a very patronising way that ” … it is a very simple procedure …” I had to go out for a blood test (another story!) and when I returned we had another new router, which was working. It seems that he had tried everything he knew and was getting very flummoxed. It was then that K**h suggested that ” … could the router be faulty?” He said that he didn’t think so, but he would try another one from his van. Ten minutes later and this new router was connected and he was on his way. Simple as that!

But wait! There’s more.

The youngest son (R**s) was due home on Friday. He would be expecting that everything IT-based would be the same. To all intense and purpose, it was. Everything was going smoothly until the early hours of the morning. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but R**s likes to have his television on all night. It’s on very quietly, but we understand it is a comfort for him.

At around 4am I heard him call out. I got up to see if there was a problem with him and noticed that his Sky Mini Box was off. I went downstairs to check the main box and that was off also. I pressed a button on the handset, and the box began to start up. I made the assumption that the box had had an update and needed to restart.

The same thing happened last night/this morning. The main Sky Box had turned off. I got it restarted and everything was okay again. When I got up, I Googled the problem and found that one of the settings had been set to “Eco” mode. This meant that at 02:30, the box would power off and restart at 05:50. The idea being that it saves money.

We had never had this before, so it must have been changed by the engineer without asking or mentioning it.

Problem solved! We can all sleep easier in our beds tonight!

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On a lighter mood. The half-term holidays are over here. I don’t know why it is but at half-term, some parents of very young children (and I’m talking 3/4 year olds) like to bring their offspring to the cafe for lunch. The cafe where I work two days a week is an older persons cafe. It’s not a place for young children to work off their youthful energy. But still, they come and the majority of them enjoy making a mess. Food dropped to the floor, drinks spilt, cups and glasses broken, are all things that happen during half term. But it’s over for the time being and we can get back to being a “grown-ups” place.

Kids . . .

/ Tony / 1 Comment

So what is it with kids and Supermarkets? I had to go to the local Aldi on Sunday. The car park was full and upon entering the store, I was amazed by the sheer number of children with their parents. The typical scene was two parents and two children. But one family had the female (presume mother) pushing a twin push-chair, male (presume father) pushing the food trolley with a child in the seat and surrounded by three other children. Two of the children had scooters and the third brat was kicking a football. Why? Why do they all need to go to the supermarket? It is totally beyond my comprehension.

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I am a member of the social network called nextdoor. I don’t often look at the messages/notifications and have most turned off. I’m not really interested in saying ‘hello’ to all and sundry, so I only have the emergency and urgent notifications turned on.

On Monday, I had just got home, around half past five, when a notification came through on my phone. The message was basically this: A mother posted that her children were ‘paddling’ in the river, when she noticed some young men on the bank opposite watching the children. She also claimed that they looked of ‘Indian descent’

Firstly, I asked myself, “What does a person of Indian descent look like?” Were they carrying the national flag of India? Were they dancing to some Bhangra music? Or was it just that the shade of their skin was ‘Indian’ as opposed to the shade of any other Asian country. My second question was, why did this ‘caring’ parent allow her children to play in open water? There have been a number of deaths this last weekend directly related people trying to ‘cool off’ in rivers and lakes.

Again, on my way home, I saw many children playing in the river Wharfe at Wetherby, with their parents watching. So irresponsible in my mind.

360 degree turn around …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I find more than a little ironic that a couple of months ago, parents were being demonised. Their kids were using their smart phones to chat with their friends instead of having face-to-face conversations. Condemned for allowing them to sit in their rooms with their tablets and laptops. Now look at were we are at. Kids cannot meet-up with their friends to do homework, play or even just talk. No, now its all changed, and now parents are being lambasted for doing the opposite of what the experts have been telling them for the past few years.

This virus seems to have turned the world on it’s head. I remember reading that we are now a nation of on-line shoppers and that this was having a devastating effect on the high-street. Now we are finding that the high-street is shut and have to turn to on-line shopping. I’m not sure how many, if any independant grocers or vegetable shops are open, but if any are, I cannot see them staying open much longer if the staff start falling ill. So supermarkets are now the good guys.

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On another point, the postman has just delivered today’s post. This consisted of a bank statement, a birthday card, and a couple of letters. But what I find unacceptable, is that also included with what might be important information was two leaflets for house renovations and a ‘news-letter’ advertising local restaurants! Surely this kind of stuff is not necessary. I also notice that television advertising are still showing people getting together in pubs and restaurants. There was even an advert for a well known burger chain that closed it’s stores the day before the advert was shown!

Kids go shopping and other things …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

One of the more unusual things that the local Education system has come up with is staggered half-term holidays. The example I would give of this is, that in Leeds area, half-term was last week. York however has their half-term this week. Now the thing about half-term is that it seems to a great excuse for some parents to take their kids  on ‘shopping’ expeditions!

Yesterday, Mrs H and me decided to take a trip to the York Designer Outlet. I didn’t particularly want anything, but K*** had somethings she wanted t look at. The place was packed! For those who don’t know, it’s an out-of-town shopping area that has mainly ’designer’ shops and a few chain restaurants. Shops like L K Bennett, Gucci and many other big names. So it’s not the kind of place that first springs to mind when taking children, in the 5 to 9 age group out for the day. I can see it being attractive for kids in their middle teens, but not young children. But they were there … in their hoards!

The problem is, that most of them are so load and badly behaved. There was one family that annoyed me greatly. It was a mother with three kids that could not have been aged more than 10 or 11.  I was waiting for K*** to finish in a shop, and in this particular location there were two BMW cars on show. The mother (and I’m assuming she was the mother) was using her mobile phone, and it must of been a quite important call as she was totally oblivious of what her offspring were up to. These ‘childer-beasts’ seemed to thing that it was perfectly acceptable to take it in turns to climb in and out of the two expensive vehicles, banging doors and sounding the horn.

Another example of this behaviour was the two ‘things’ that thought it was fun to run up and down the travellators in the wrong direction, bumping into people. These kids just don’t seem to have any respect or manners. I hate to say the obvious but, “It was not like that when I was a child!”

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Gone mad …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

So, have you got this Pokémon Go yet? It seems that if you haven’t, then there is something wrong with you! It is sweeping the country like a plague. Everybody appears to have the app on their phone. The reason for it’s popularity? “It gets kids out of the house” … “The kids are not sat glued to a computer screen” … “It’s a great social thing (whatever that means)” These are just some of the comments I have heard to justify this new craze. Really? Kids are still walking around looking at their phone screen and from some of the news reports, not taking notice of their surroundings. I’ve heard of people walking of cliff edges looking at their phones. People walking into the road to catch these imaginary creatures. Just today, I heard of someone walking into an army minefield. What is going on? Have we really come to this?

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Holiday …. all done

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Well back to work tomorrow. In some respects, the week seems to have flown by. In others it dragged a little. The drive there was quite reasonable. It was all motorway, M1, M62, M60, M61, M6, M55 with a short distance on an a road at each end. I don’t mind the motorways. I don’t seem to get a frustrated on M roads. We only had one hold up. It lasted for about 40 minutes and was due to some kind of spillage on the M6. A couple of very stupid girls in the jam. Sat in the middle lane, music on full blast, bouncing up and down in their seats. Suddenly the passenger opened the car door and started dancing in the middle of the road. Stupid.

Weather was kind to us though, no rain to speaBlackpool Tower Circusk of until Friday, but quite windy. I caught a bit of sun on the the Thursday and Saturday. On Tuesday we did the walk from the lake at St Anne’s to Lytham which was nice. Wednesday saw us in the Blackpool Tower. We went to the circus, but it was not the youngest’s type of thing. He lasted an hour, which was not bad for him. It is not the same though. I was quite disappointed with the whole show. The clowns seemed to reply more on vocal humour than the slapstick. Mind you, no body can come close to Charlie Caroli, and I think was expecting too much. Thursday was a trip to Marton Mere. We saw the leaflet last time, but never got there. Interesting place. It seems it Marton Mere is a 10,000 year old lake. One of only two natural lakes in Lancashire, and it was remarkably clean and litter free, despite  being next to a caravan site.

Saturday, saw us back up at Lytham/St Annes again. A different walk this time, and a lot less windy. Here comes the rantLytham Windmill … I get sick of seeing dogs everywhere. I worked it out, every third person/couple/family had a dog or dogs. They all seem to be on extremely long leads, when they are on leads at all. I never remember seeing as many dogs when I was a kid. And talking of kids (rant part two), why are they so noisy these days. Always screaming, and out of control. not like when I was young……… showing signs of age now.

One annoying thing though. I like to walk through the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. Very rarely go on any of the rides (too pricey these days), but I enjoy marvelling at the amazing The Big One attractions. Not any more …… there is now a £5.00 charge for people just to walk round. So that means, those who go with their kids, and look after the bags and prams, now have to pay for the privilege. An absolute disgrace, and I think may be a wrong move, as I think some people just won’t go.

Set off home on Sunday at around 10:00 (I like to get home early on the last day) and was home for 12:15. It could have been 11:30 if we had not stopped for coffee.

All my plants/seedlings were okay. Eldest had done quite well there. The house was okay, no problems there. Just one problem, but we talked it through, and I think he got the message.

Kids, banks, computers and other annoying things…..

/ Tony / Leave a comment

So here’s the thing. He says he is going into town to get his tattoo finished. How long we ask. I don’t know he replies and off he goes. One and a half hours later, he’s ringing up. Can Dad pick me up. What time we ask. Don’t know he says. You must have some idea we say. Well we are starting again at 10:30 (pm that is). Well how long will it take (bearing in mind that his last bus is 10:50) I don’t know he says. I’ll crash at R**’s. Nooooo way. So now I’ll ring him at 11:00 and take it from there. Kids.

Then there’s the bank. You enter your login, unique customer number, password and then the bl***y thing falls over when you enter the answer to your security question. ‘There is a problem…………please ring 08456*****’. So I ring and am told that ‘someone has attempted to log into my account’……’yes … me!!!!’ I’m all for security, but it can go over the top sometimes. All you need is a gadget that creates a unique number. The council has then, why can’t the banks.

Then what …… Internet goes down. Well not actually stops, but get so slow as to be practically useless. Worse than ‘dial-up’.  All working now though.

Rant over.