so far so so-so

On confirming my train tickets today, I was rather disappointed to be informed that
Return travel must not be in the past.

Apparently the rolling-stock isn't quite up to speed yet...

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-time-travel#ContentTabsAnchor

Well, I mentioned how the meeting was quite a congenial one in a previous post...

The Hearing Support Service have already earmarked another 1:1, and the LEA will continue to pay. In the meanwhile, his current 1:1 will continue to work with us from home, getting Firstborn out to colleges and looking at tasting appropriate courses...

There is some concern that he might not be ready for the full-time hit, so there are other options to explore too (like part-time school gradually feeding into the college etc)...

The LEA will also cover transport if needed for a term or so...

I've got to meet with the 1:1 tomorrow, and also with Social Services, who've been utter cack so far, and we'll see if they've got anything more to offer than feeble excuses for leaving him twisting in the wind for so long...

Duvet darkness...

Big, fat dark-drops bursting like exquisite meringues...

On your tongue...

Kids (apparently anyone under 60) who were meant to be in bed last night, found it impossible to stop leaving messages of condolences to each other, wreathed in roses and hearts...

This will probably continue for a while, until they have established as firmly as they possibly can (which isn't very firmly at all) that Michael Jackson :

A : Wasn't pregnant to Madonna

The breast-beaters nearly brought Google to it's knees last night...

Great showman; great songs; great dancing...

Total loop though...

Blame it on the buggy...

I nearly learned the harmony to 'The Man in the Mirror' once, and when I told the kids they asked 'Mike who ?'...

Now they're inconsolable (but still put up a fight when asked to visit their gran in hospital)...

Hells Bells, that went quick...

One minute we were shaking Firstborn into his first 'proper' pair of trousers (literally putting them on over his feet then picking him up by the waistband and jigging about until the waistband was up under his chin)...

The next minute he was in his leaver's assembly in a pair of kecks which inside leg measurement exceeds my height with 4" heels on (me not him that is, I phrased that badly)...

The meeting went really well and will be 'Deafstarred' in due course...

I was going to go in all guns blazing, but at the end of the day bearing in mind that shit does happen, chose to talk things through and crack on...

There is much to look forward to...

Of course not all of it will come to pass without several degrees of compromise (and some of it won't come to pass at all) but we are happy with what he, and we, have got for now ...

At the end of the meeting I fell tearfully on the necks of those with whom we've had a long professional relationship witnessing Firstborn's gobsmackingly rocky ride headlong into semi-adulthood, before bidding fond farewells and going on our optimistic way...

There's a couple of cans of Guinness in the fridge for the 'littl'un' when he comes back from school for the last time...

And no more sodding uniform to wash...

Hooray !

*waves pom-poms*

(I've been racking my brains and I honestly can't remember leaving school)...

The concerns about his previous abnormal MRI result have been put to rest because there has been no change in the 12 weeks of waiting for this one...

This means that it's unlikely to be MS or a brain tumor...

It's just him, and probably the thrombocytopoenia that got to us/him while he was still in-utero ...

When I was heavy-with-child, and we were still painting the yet unknown little baby's room in lavender and lemon and plugging in the night-lights...

Apparently kids with the same MRI imaging are unilaterally impaired and bilaterally deaf from birth...

Should we be glad that he's had 15 years of hearing, to have it so cruelly taken away, or not ?

He was sat in Child Outpatients today...

The littl'uns were playing on the rocking horse and he had his hoody up and his hearing-aid off... all 6' of him hating every moment, yet trying to deal with it in his Asperger's way (ie: not)...

We shall meet with the neurologist from AlderHey in a few weeks...

I'm glad to the point of crying-with-gratitude so much I'm in danger of losing my eyeballs , that apparently all we have to deal with is his complete hearing loss...

On the other hand...

I'm hating this...

(Especially as his 1:1, who's full-time funding we have faught for tooth and nail, has decided to work for the school and not for Firstborn)...

Et tu Brute ?...

But that's another story...

Which will wait until Friday...

Aaaargh !

That insidious bloody telly ad...you know the one ?

With thousands of people toeing a painted line on the playground of their lives, looking bewildered and confused in an amateurly dramatic 'Joey-from-Friends' kind of way...

Then they cross the line with a skip and a hop (like in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind') straight into the slavering maws of Finance Products Ad Land, leading to an instant and inexplicable smoothing of the furrowed brow (where Botox and yoga have failed) and becoming the most amiable and liberated of peeps...

Well actually...

Yes, I bloody well do want to beat the crap out of the system to within an inch of it's sorry self-serving, self-satisfied life...

Then I'd like to crush it like a flea 'twixt my thumbnails...

But first I have to find it ...

Have you seen it scurrying about anywhere near you ?

Who do they think they are ?

There are hundreds of them in the sad remains of the garden, voraciously chomping their way happily through the blackfly-infested nasturtians...

Still...

Could be worse !...

Between education and catastrophe...

Said the interminably optimistic H.G.Wells ...

After all, half a sixpence is better than half of nuffin' innit ?...

We are all expected to be so grateful for what we've got, that we're supposed to think that we've actually got what we wanted, and anything more than having our hopes and dreams fed to the pigs (not of the curly-tailed variety) is not for the likes of us...

Because we apparently have a bad dose of The Great Fucking Easy ...

Who's stupid idea was it to put hundreds of books on shelves in the auction room for sale individually ?...

I was in an out of the auction room like a fiddler's elbow today...

After dropping Firstborn off at school an hour late after WW111 and trying to buy our tickets to Bournemouth (which couldn't possibly be done as they were changing the guard and adding up the small change in the till over and over again because they were 15p out)I popped in for the first time...

Whilst waiting to bid I picked up a book and started leafing. Then I started reading, and read right through the first lot I wanted, a set of womans biker leathers which apparently went for £24 (gaahh!)...

So I put the book back and home I rushed ( phone hozzie, hoover, bleach, scrub, check watch, fill in DLA form tickticktick whatever)...

Back in the auction room I picked up the book I was reading before and waited (this time with an ear open, although I'm really liking this book )...

I wanted a fabulous watercolour landscape for Beloved for Father's day, but we're at the silly-money end of the room now, where they're selling jelly-moulds at £100 a pop...there's only two of us bidding, but this guy wants it bad, and even though I throw in the £24 I saved on not getting the leathers I must admit defeat and upon being outbid, put the book back again...

I dashed up to the station to buy that ticket (the mystery of the missing 15p having been resolved). I was informed that if you buy a family railcard you save oodles. I did. And you do too...

A pair of small Victorian watercolours in intricately carved frames had caught my eye because they were of waterfalls (and I do love waterfalls), although they weren't a pair because they didn't match, so after a bout of shopping at the CO-Op I picked up the book again to pass the time (with one ear open) until the lot came up and I got them for £18...

Then I picked up Firstborn from school and stopped off on the way home at the auction room to pick up my booty, and whilst I was there I gave them an extra quid and had away with the book...

It's 'The Knot Garden' by Geoff Nicholson...

You can't put a hyperactive ASD lad in a tube, give him a panic-button and expect things to go well...

We've agreed on a rub on the head...

That's because he can cut out and snuggle back down...

How would you do it ?

Water-pistols at dawn ?

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

My 87 year-old mum went into hospital today because when I went to take her for a scan I found her unable to walk and in great pain (a minor matter that our social and healthcare systems find themselves free to overlook)...

She would think this poem was all about her, but as I read it...

It's not...

Because he kicked the table-leg he got a splinter in his toe...

Because he is a mucky lad it's gone septic...

Because he's got a septic splinter in his toe he thinks it will get him out of going for his MRI tomorrow...

This MRI ( four months on) will fill in the gaps between when he first went completely deaf and now...

Minor details...

Like whether it's a tumor or MS or somesuch shoite...

I'm going to throw off a note...

'Dear Miss Radiographer

He's forgotten his kit and has a splinter in his toe'

So sorry matey, not going to happen...

What I can do is put a plaster on it...

My flaunting honeysuckle looks mildewed but I think it's absolutely covered with spider-mites...

Yesterday I made a concoction of garlic, bicarbonate of soda, milky tea and soap and blasted it to kingdom-come ...

(I wonder if it cures hangovers too ?)...

It's worth a shot !

Our polling card was like, 15 feet long and full of 'Oyez' Indepedent bollix...

Some of which had political slogans including the word 'British' attached to their logos just to make you bulldogs salivate...

Lest we forget Nationalism and how very fucking well that turned out last time...

I really feel like I'm turning in my own grave here ...

On the Jonathan Ross show...

'If I am sure of only one thing, it is my doubt'

Putting aside for the moment that he is the hottest ape on two legs just EVAHH...

He can be a little bit dour when he puts his mind to it can't he ?...

(And yes, it was a very good thing that he put the studs in )...

The little star with big dreams...

Hey...

We all have our Angelina Jolie Ballerina moments...

Give a girl a break !