After the recent media interest in how we are raising our children as a generation of cotton wool bound, nervous and unadventurous nancies I just wondered what everyone elses views are?

In brief it states that by not letting the children out to play we are infact cosseting them , making them unable to make friendships and rearing them to be paranoid.

I don't let my kids out to play in the street. We have a fab park just about 200 yards from our house, but I can't see it from my windows - I don't let them play in there alone. I escort Grace to school as it's too far to walk, but even if it was just up the road I certainly wouldn't let her go by herself.
Our town was home to Amanda Dowler - taken from a road near to my house in broad daylight and murdered, her killer has never been caught.
Sarah Payne lived just across the road from me, although she wasn't killed in the town, she did live here. I see her Mum everyday walking her younger daughter to school past my house.
The latest woman in the news murdered after going on a date - she lived in my town too.

I live in Surrey, crime is low here apparantly, perhaps we have just been unlucky, but these fears are very real to me.

Not to mention the fact that the children may get knocked over and killed in the road.

I know that these crimes are few and far between but, would I take the risk? No way.

With the tragic case of Madeleine McCann so recent is it any wonder hat parents are feeling more protective of their children?

We have friends over from school, I take them to friends houses, we meet up out and about with friends and at the park I keep a resonable distance, sitting on a bench with a magazine, but I cannot afford to give my children more freedom. Certainly not the freedom that I enjoyed as a child.

How sad.

I've been so busy lately I've had no time to jot anything down at all here!

I'm bogged down at the moment with essays for college - the final 2, yay!!

It's half term next week and I have taken the week off work to have a lie in spend some quality time with the children, but I will be back soon....!

Bye.

Wowzers I'll be first in the queue for this;
 
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6606927.stm

Wedding went brilliantly - everyone looked fab.

Grace took her bridesmaid duty very seriously, and appears in practically every photo, move over Where's Wally we now have, Where's Grace .

I will post some pictures as soon as I work out how to get them from my new mobile phone and onto my pc, so don't hold your breath heehee!

A very close friend of mine is getting married on Saturday, Grace is bridesmaid and I'm a witness.

Choosing something to wear has been a nightmare, I'm not massively overweight but neither am I a size zero. Why don't shops cater for women with a bust and a great flabby rubenesque body?
I'm a size 12/14 and it's so hard to find dresses that fit and look nice, so I've finally settled on this  http://www.next.co.uk/page.asp?b=G32&p=20&o=1

The multi embellished print dress.

It looks niceish .

Still Grace is going to look fab, she's having her hair in a french plait and she has a beautiful dress from House of fraser. The only thing missing will be her front tooth which fell out at the weekend .

Oh and in other news the bunk bed drought has been rectified and they will be with me next Thursday!!

I feel the very need to rant about something.

Childrens Television, in the press today, we are being advised to limit the amount of television that our children watch.

Now, I know that we shouldn't abandon our children in front of the tele, but we all do, at some time or another you have something that you need to get on with and the television is a fantastic babysitter.

In this modern age of digital television, we don't even have the worry of there not being anything suitable on. There is a whole channel - CBeebies - for those among us with no children , dedicated to amusing out littlest members of society.

This is a very important job, amusing our littlest, and I have often entrusted my children to the channel for disgustingly long short periods of time. So imagine my utter horror, when a few weeks ago, I actually sat with the children for the briefest of moments and saw exactly what it is that they are watching, CBeebies newest creation.........

In The Night Garden.

The programme is 25 minutes long - 25 minutes too long in my opinion.

The main characters are - Iggle piggle, upsy daisy and makka pakka.

They live in a garden, they travel in a big hot air balloon called the pinky ponk, they also travel on a train called the ninky nonk. One of them pushes a trike called the og pog, they have little friends called the pontipines and the tomblioos...............

There is no proper speech in the programmes just a narrator telling you over and over again that they are going for a ride in the ninky nonk or whatever.

It isn't educational like The Tweenies it's utter trash - and my kids aged 3 and 6 absolutely love it...........

With programmes like this being aired to our littlest folk it's no wonder we have such a high amount of 16-24 years olds out of employment or education - they've all lost the will to function!

Today I've been really busy getting Thomas out of his bedroom and into Grace's.

We were supposed to be getting bunk beds before Mum moves in but the arseholes at Argos have informed me that they have actually sold more of these particular beds than they have in stock. This therefore means that they won't be able to deliver them as they had promised, and infact I may have to wait yonks.
But I was reliably informed by the idiot nice man on the phone, that I've chosen the same product as everyone else, that's why they are suffering this drought......! A bunk bed drought have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?
At least this means that when I do eventually get them, we'll be dead trendy .

So anyhow I've managed to fit Toms starter bed into Grace's bedroom and all the toys and crap is in there too and it all fits - both kids went to bed ok this evening, and I only needed to read the riot act to them once for messing about.

So everythings fab

I took the kids to McDonalds because I couldn't be bothered to cook thought they deserved a treat.

I ate a cheeseburger and fries. I also ate a cream cake today and a king size Twix.

So I'm going to have a bath while Giles eats his dinner cos my mouths watering and I'm starving.......

....Is it normal for one person to consume so much yet still be starving?

1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time.... I know where my watch is, do I point at my privates when I ask where the toilet is?

2 People who are willing to get off their arse to search the entire room for the T.V. remote because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change the channel manually.

3 When people say "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too". What good is cake if you can't eat it?

4 When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is. Why the hell would you keep looking after you've found it? Do people do this? Who and where are they?

5 When people say while watching a film "did you see that?".

6 People who ask "Can I ask you a question?".... Didn't really give me a choice!

7. When something is 'new and improved!'. Which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it, couldn't be new.

8 When people say "life is short". What the hell?? Life is the longest thing anyone ever does!! What can you do that's longer?

9 When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks "Has the bus come yet?". If the bus came would I be standing here?

Someone emailed me this and I thought it was mildly amusing for a Thursday morning...

THIS, yes THIS is my 100th postD

I have very little to say but was anxious to get to the milestone

I think from now on I'm going to try to post something everyday........

I'm feeling pretty content right now........

a curry is cooking

I've managed to print my power point presentation for tomorrow

Holby City is on

............it doesn't take much