i was going to go for a fruit salad but my willpower isnt too great so skipped that and went for this instead! Still at hospital btw.

breakfast at the swannery Restaurant Bedford Hospital.

Half Term

OK so Half term is now all but finished, it’s Friday evening and we have the weekend to get through and then the kids are back to school.

As you will know we have has electricians in over half term and we escaped to a seaside sanctuary, we went to Southwold (in Suffolk) and stayed in a bungalow (here are some pictures etc) the property was well decorated and ideal for our needs although the garden wasn’t ideal as it was all tiered paving with loads of pots.

Anyhow, after we moved the Buddha and the breakables out of the way it was fine.

The whole week was really relaxed, the kids were pretty well behaved and we found an ideal spot to park and have access to the beach, Tuesday & Wednesday morning were not great weather but we had really nice days other than that, even those days were not exactly wash outs.

Holidaying that little bit closer to home did mean that we were able to have friends come and join us for the day, Joys parents came across on the Bank Holiday Monday and Meryl & Family joined us yesterday, which was fab.

Whilst we were away the electricians were working away, the original plan was for them to do the job in 2 phases, phase 1 over half term and phase 2 in August, when we would move into Joys parents to allow them to get on with it, as it turns out they managed to get the whole job done in 1 week, all except for half a days work having everything tested and certificated.

So we came back to a little disruption but nowhere near as bad as I had expected and they have done a fantastic job, the reason we had to have them in was because the wiring itself was the old fashioned rubber coated cabling and the rubber was perishing, meaning the whole, thing was pretty dangerous but we have taken the opportunity to have a few bits done to make it more suitable for us whilst we are at it, the whole thing has not been cheap but the end result, a safer house and a lot of improvements as well, is worth it.

Anyhow, hopefully we are in for good, and restful, weekend, I have promised to take Nat shopping for a new lampshade for her bedroom tomorrow.

I was going to upload photos with this blog post but they are on the camera which is in the car and I cant be bothered to go and get it so you will have to wait until I get around to uploading them.

Electricians & Seaside Holidays

Yesterday we had the Electricians move in for the week for phase 1 of our house re-wiring job, so we have moved out, we are in Southwold for a week.

We were around a bit during the day yesterday and it was good to see how well they were getting on with the wiring and electrics, attached are some photos of the work they have managed to get done in just 1 day, the lights are their first objective.

As you will be aware if you know us, we have some particular issues with our children, or more specifically Steven and pretty much everything we do has to be designed around his needs/demands, for example we don’t have anything within his reach that we don't want him to ruin!

The complication when it comes to lighting is that normal pendant lights and wall lights are a magnet for him, he loves trying to swing on them or knock them, our ceilings are a little on the low side and now he has grown a bit he can reach eh pendant lights without too much effort, with the aid of a short stick, in the dining area he just climbs onto a table and swings from the light! So we have had to go for recessed lights in most of the house, this has entailed a lot of holes being drilled into the ceiling for a number of lights.

The place we are staying in is very nice, we are really pleased with it, its nicely decorated, yet without loads of ornaments that needed moving on arrival and there is plenty of space, the garden isn’t exactly Steven friendly but that’s the only negative we have found so far.

Today we went down to the beach, I spent most of the morning playing with Nat and Joy was walking up and down the beach with Steven, we were on a really nice but relatively quiet beach, near the river estuary, and had a great time, it was warm and the sun was shining so it was quite pleasant.

After our beach session we went onto a place on the banks of the river, it’s a working harbour with loads of fishermen’s shacks, several places selling fish directly from their shacks and then this chippy, really nice food.

Then we headed off to the seafront, parked near the pier and got coffee on the pier, the wind had picked up by this time but there are some really cool wind shelters on the pier which are so effective.

I wont go into the whole of the day in detail but we have had a really good day, Steven has been a little pinchy so we are wondering whether there is a seizure on its way but other than that its been a good time.

Lunch time

Second Coming?

A useless bit of information for you!

Did you know that the very large type font that newspapers use for major headlines, you know the ones, they fill the front page used for the death of an important person or a major world event, well this font is referred to in the newspaper industry as ‘second coming font’

And they don’t usually acknowledge God!

MP's Expenses, an alternative view!

I have decided it is time for me to stick my head above the parapet on the issue of MP’s Expenses.
I will open my post with the words of Jesus in John 8:7 ‘When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
OK so who is without sin on this issue? On the whole the MP’s have actually not broken the law just exploited the system, yes this is taking advantage of loopholes and making personal gain out of it but who doesn’t?
There are expectations and it seems clear that, in a small number of cases there have been very blatant and serious lawbreaking but on the whole it is either exploiting and taking advantage of the rules or minor misdemeanours.
Have you ever brought home a pen from the office? Ever used the office phone to make personal calls or used work time to surf the net fro that bargain holiday?
Have you ever been given gifts by suppliers at Christmas? Is this right? Is there a difference?

I know that in the industry I used to work, Transport within the Building industry, the giving and receiving of gifts was common place, and yes there were times that this influenced who received work/contracts or preferential treatment in one way or another.
Oh yes I hear you say that the difference is that it’s the Taxpayer being fiddled in this case well in many cases the taxpayer will have footed the bill for these fiddles as some of the projects were road building or infrastructure projects and even where it wasn’t the taxpayer footing the bill the additional cost would have been added on to the final price of, say, the house building project so individual members of the public will have been footing the bill.
AND let’s take it a stage further, what about tax declarations? Who, if they knew they could get away with it, would accidentally ‘forget’ to put some small item on their tax form or even inflate a tax deductible item or try claiming tax deduction on an item not used for work? I would hazard a guess that there are a good few tax forms each year that are economical with the truth, the fact is that the majority of the British public are at it, or would be if they thought they could get away with it.
Take another example, buying alcohol/cigarettes from France, now many of us exploit the tax laws to buy cheap booze or cigarettes from abroad? OK yes it’s legal but is it a loophole? And let’s twist the thumb turns a notch, what about buying for a mate? Well that is not legal, the law says that what you buy and import must be for your personal consumption so who doesn’t agree to buy some supplies for a friend whilst they are ‘over there’
And what about the black market economy? This is where people work for cash instead of providing an invoice and putting it through the books. Have you ever asked a tradesman to do a job and he has offered you a discount ‘for cash’? Have you agreed? Well you have been complicit in an act of fraud.
I am not wishing to generalise and accuse everyone in the UK of fiddling, most of us are generally law abiding citizens but even so we are prepared to exploit the rules even if we won’t consciously break the law, personally I try to keep within the law but I know that there have been times that I have strayed the wrong side of the law and got away from it! There are more times where I have taken advantage of the anomalies to reduce the amount of tax I have had to pay.
So what am I saying? Am I condoning the MP’s and their actions? No certainly not!
BUT don’t go too hard on the MP’s because after all they are human, just like you and me, yes they should be there to look after the interests of the people they are elected to serve but at the same time they are entitled to claim expenses and to have money coming in for the hours of work and energy they put into trying to run this country.
I have a feeling this subject just won’t go away but for one am extremely bored of it already and I would love to have the same kind of scrutiny be made of the reporters and media barrons who are making such a big deal of this situation because from what I know the media industry is among the worst for this sort of practice.
Therefore I come back to the words of Jesus ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone’
The passage goes on to say: ‘Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Notice he didn’t say she was without sin he just told her to mend her ways; I have a feeling that the MP’s will be much more scrupulous in their expenses from now on, at least for a few years! However, what about other industries? Will they continue in their ways or will they actually clean up their acts as well? My guess is they will only clean up their act if and when they are caught out.

Locks Away

At the weekend we managed to loose the key for the side door into the garage, no big problems you might think, keys get lost all the time! True but this is the only key we have AND the garage is difficult to access via the up and over door, we cant get our vehicle into the garage anyhow and use said garage as storage space, added to that we need access several times a day, the fridge freezer and tumble dryer are in there and we store a lot of dry food, boxes etc, in there too.
So Saturday evening when we discovered the key was missing we went into a mild panic and searched high and low! I wont apportion blame but we know who was the last person to have it and it wasn’t me  anyhow, in the grand scheme of things its not the end of the world, a major irritation for the weekend as there was no way I was going to call a locksmith out at the kind of likely call out charges for a weekend, it would have to wait until Monday.
This morning I called our good friend Derek, who co-project managed our church building project with me, on the basis that if he cant fix it he will certainly know a person (being politically correct even though it was almost certainly going to be a man!) who could!
To my surprise he said he would be round in half an hour and have a look.
Anyhow, we gained access to the garage via the up and over door, no mean feat without getting knocked out but we managed it, and Derek set too cutting out the old mortice, we already had a combination lock that I had planned to fit to that door, the door is in pretty constant use and we wanted to have a way of stopping Princess Nat and Stevey from gaining access without the messing about of having to remove the key each time as well as overcoming the ongoing problem of forgetting to lock the door when we go out or remembering after we have locked the main house up so having to unlock the house again to hang the key up.
So within the space of a he hours we had the old lock cut out and the new combination lock fitted, anyone who knows me will know that I have a real thing about keys and am really keen on combination locks because it over comes the whole problem of loosing keys etc, I also hate carrying too many keys around with me so it is really nice now to see the door fitted with a brand new combination keypad lock.
It was a job that I could have done and, under normal circumstances would have done well before now but at least it’s now done and we can safely say that we won’t loose the keys for the garage again!
Although we will have to see how much the whole thing will cost us, I am also hopeful that Derek might well be able to sort the main up and over garage door as well, he certainly was going to look at this but I was out when he had finished so didn’t get the chance to speak to him about it.
The thing about this is that it is so good to have a friend who is able to turn his hand to just about anything, someone that you can call on to help in times of crisis and who will either be able to sort the problem or point you the right direction for someone who can! Thanks Derek for all your help, you are a little star and I still want to adopt you as my dad.
D

Waist Coats at Dawn

This morning at church we had The Bush preaching as part of our global watch Sunday, when he got up to speak he had a bag with him I wondered what was in it but I am well used to him producing a few visual aids so didn’t give it too much thought.

Anyhow as I was getting Princess Nat to her children’s group session The Bush produced this rather colourful waistcoat.

For those who don’t know, Pastor Mowmow has adopted the waistcoat as his trademark item of clothing, he is usually seen preaching in a waistcoat but other than that very casual clothing, so Phil decided that it was time he fell into line and wore a waistcoat for the occasion, not sure whether the passion will catch on and if it done really don’t see The Gib wearing one in such, er, beautiful? colours!

The best bit of course was that the joke was pretty well lost on Pastor Mowmow as he was out dropping his son into Kings Kids! So I did explain to him why Phil was wearing a waistcoat!

Joy’s comment was that in Ron’s days (this is over 20 years back!) it was ties that were the necessary accessory to be a part of the leadership team and to be on the platform, there was one most memorable sketch done at a Christmas Party to do with the wearing of spotty ties and stripy ties as a code of conduct but I wont go there it was very funny at the time.

In Peter Dye’s time it was jumpers which became the trademark and now we have progressed onto Waistcoats.

(Just for those who dotn realise I am adopting some nick names for people from Hanny Pants who blogs a lot and has come up with nick names for everyone I thought it might be fun to use the same names for people, where I remember to do so I have added new nicknames where I have not seen what she uses!!

A&E on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, not my venue of choice!

I might as well just launch straight in with my first blog post and comment on life!

OK so last night, well 2.30 this morning Steven had a pretty bad seizure, if it goes on over 5 minutes we have to sedate him with a medication called Bucal Midazolam, which we had to do on this occasions, the seizure still did not stop and after a further 5+ minutes we had to call for an ambulance.

Rather unusually we had quite a wait for the ambulance, it took 20 minutes from calling them to their arrival.

Anyhow, he had stopped fitting by the time the ambulance arrived, this is not unusual at all as it happens all the time, often the paramedics still want to take him in but on this occasion they were happy with us keeping him at home as we felt this was the best, he was now stable and there seemed no problem.

Steven did have a further 2 seizures in the night but these were both self limiting!

Anyhow, back to the paramedics, whilst they were with us they said that whilst they were on their way to us they got a message to say we had told the control that he had stopped fitting so it was being downgraded from a red call to a green call (the control usually keep us on the phone until the paramedics arrive these days) the green call means that they had up to 2 hours to attend, this had caused an argument between them and control as they were saying it was unfair on us as parents to be messed about like that, what would they do if it was their own child? I think the general thing was that control wanted to re-route them to another call to some drunks in the town centre.

Now I have no problems with people having a good time and going out clubbing etc but should a drunk party goer be given priority over a child who is having a seizure?

Usually if you go down to A&E on a Friday or Saturday night the place is full and overflowing of people who are there simply because they have had too much to drink, it may not be the drink that has directly lead to them being there but it certainly contributed in one way or another, I know because we have been there, sitting around at A&E waiting for Steven to be treated whilst the staff are busy patching up the drunks and partygoers!

On the whole the staff at A&E do a fantastic job and I have nothing but the highest admiration for them and the work they do, I definitely could not do their job, and that’s without the abuse and aggressive behaviour they have to put up with.

I am aware in writing this that I have to be very careful how far I push it as people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, those of you closest to me know what I am talking about but the question then is:

Where should the priorities lie at A&E, how should they decided who gets treated and in what order?

Should they tolerate drunken behaviour from patients/friends? Because some of the behaviour at times is appalling.

Do the staff have a right to refuse treatment?

Should people have to pay for treatment in some circumstances? If so, who decides on the criteria for charging and what circumstances should impose a charge?