2015-03-25T21:04:06+00:00

Episode 251: Hacked Off!

March 25, 2015/Judy E Martin/17 Comments

Isn’t it great how schools now have got with the times, make the most of the latest technology and have Twitter accounts etc. I am constantly checking on my daughter’s progress via the school website. I can read all her school reports (they can’t get ‘lost’ like mine did at times), I can see whether or not she is late for any of her lessons (she has been several times, as she never feels the need to hurry grrrrrrrrrr) and can look at how many positive events she has (lots actually which I am very proud about).

Anyway,I remember that just before she started the school, their website got hacked and some rather dodgy ‘glamour’ models appeared on it instead, advertising certain services that the school would not encourage in their young ladies!

Well, it got sorted, but now a similar hoo-ha has broken out over another school’s Twitter account. Someone has decided that their headmaster would look pretty good in a fetching pair of tight underpants, with a few macho tattoos to show off, so they superimposed his head onto a fit, muscular male body and wrote a caption congratulating the head on his new contract with an Adult Entertainment site!

This has not gone down well (if you, ahem pardon the pun) with the school or some of the parents! Apparently they have shut it down whilst enquiries are being made to try to discover the culprit(s).

It has been suggested though that the school’s IT department be praised if indeed a pupil is found to have been the perpetrator, due to their superior hacking skills!

Episode 233: Cold Comfort!

March 19, 2015/Judy E Martin/26 Comments

What is it about PE at school that kids hate it so much? I was not very sporty at school, and hated hockey, but I did like tennis and athletics in the summer months as well as swimming, which I loved. I suppose it has a lot to do with the cold and rainy winters we get here.

I know the weather made no difference to PE lessons whatsoever, We would still go off for a cross-country run (I hated it), slipping about on the muddy paths, or squelching through rain-soaked fields, often losing a shoe in the process. Oh yes, I remember those days well.

It seems that they haven’t changed that much as Miss Hap is always moaning about having to do PE, but she has to get on with it as I did. I know some parents will write their children a note to try to get them excused by the teachers, but in my day it would have to be a bloody good one as a ‘tummy ache’ didn’t cut it!

Anyway, one young lady decided that she would persuade her mum to write her a sick note for PE as it was ‘too cold’ to participate. Her mum did as she was asked and sent her smug daughter off with the note sealed to be given in to the head. However, the contents of the note was totally opposite from what this young shirker wanted….

Her Mum had posted a copy of the note she actually sent on Facebook. She accused her daughter of being lazy and told encouraged the teacher to give her a couple of extra laps to ‘warm her up!’ I thought this was really funny. I don’t know whether or not the girl saw the Facebook letter or not but I bed that was a nasty surprise!

Episode 227: School Dinners: Making The Right Choice.

March 17, 2015/Judy E Martin/16 Comments

When Miss Hap started secondary school in September, we decided that she would have school dinners rather than packed lunches. I was really surprised when I learned that her thumb had to be scanned as the technology used to determine how much money was available for meals would be determined by her thumb print linking to the account I paid the money into for her meals.

This is such a far cry from when I was at school. At primary school I think parent gave the money direct to the school as I don’t remember giving anything in, At break time in the morning, all of the kids had a free quarter of a pint bottle of milk. This was not always cold, and I do remember it used to taste a little ‘tangy’ at times, but we drank it!

Funnily enough, we ate and drank everything given to us as there really was no choice! for our lunch (or dinner) as we called it, we had a hot meal which usually consisted of meat, two veg and potato of some kind, followed by a pudding.

It was all dished (or slopped) out by a large, surly dinner lady you did not dare argue with, You then sat at your table and pretty much ate all you could. You would get told off for not eating your greens and very often told to eat it whether you wanted to or not. Occasionally there were even ‘seconds’ where you could go up for another dollop of food if you felt brave!

In secondary school. I used to have a packed lunch that I had eaten way before lunch time and usually before break! I had a couple of jam, paste or sandwich spread sandwiches and that was it! No crisps, yogurt, fruit or drinks for us! Ooh no, there was a water fountain at school if we wanted a drink.

Now, school dinners are so much more sophisticated. They have a varied and extensive menu, almost like you would see in a restaurant. They can pick and choose what they want to eat and there is no-one standing over them telling t hem to ‘eat their greens’. Presumably, children are considered to be more educated on healthy eating than we were.

It’s funny though. I was never overweight as a child despite eating everything that was put in front of me, but nowadays we have a huge obesity problem in children!

Episode 188: My Friends, The Google Family!

March 1, 2015/Judy E Martin/9 Comments

Today i have decided to pay homage to the great all-knowing, all sing and dancing ‘Google!’ Where would we be without it? How many times do you hear someone say “just Google it” when you have made yourself look a prat by not knowing something obvious? Yes, Google is the font of all knowledge, loved by all, but adored by dunces like me! Here follows my top reasons for using it:

‘Doctor Google’

We’ve all done it. Felt ill and looked up our symptoms on Google, only to scare ourselves half to death, convinced we are going to die imminently. It is worse if you look at images as well. After being told I had Impetigo, I was doubtful but looked it up when I got home from the doctors. Some of the images I saw were really horrendous, and not ideal tea-time viewing! Thank God I have already started taking my tablets before my scabs get to that stage!

‘Masterchef Google’

I do actually have a few different types of cookery books, but for some reason can never find what i am looking for. Miss Hap is very fond of giving me extremely short notice that she needs to bring in cakes or biscuits or something for school. Masterchef Google has come in very handy here. I have some wonderful recipes for cupcakes, ginger biscuits, and even a rhubarb and ginger grumble (that was for me actually when we had a load of rhubarb growing in the garden and I needed to use it).

‘Professor Google’

Ah this is one of the most useful of the google family! I use for the times Miss Hap has some particularly difficult homework that I have no idea how to do, but don’t want her to know how stupid I am. I can ask her to leave it with me for a bit, then use prof google to find ways to help me understand what she has to do in order that I can explain it to her!

It is invaluable for help with maths, geography, history and art; actually it has helped both myself and my daughter in researching most of the subjects she takes at school. (These kids don’t know how lucky there are, we had to plow out way through massive reference books or encyclopaedias)!

‘Detective Google’

This is a handy one for those that like to check people out (if you are feeling particularly brave, you can type your own name in and find out all about yourself)! If you are a nosey type of person, cautious, or inquisitive you can try to get a bit of a lowdown on people to see if they are hiding any dodgy photos or crazy family members. Unfortunately, unless they have done a particularly horrendous crime and been splashed all over the news, the chances are you won’t find out any decent gossip about them!

As you see my google friends are pretty handy, I know I might have missed some of the important ones out. Which ones do you use?

Episode 134: Egg On My Face….

February 2, 2015/Judy E Martin/11 Comments

“Mum, I’ve forgotten my bus pass” are not the words that you want to hear at 8am on a Monday morning! Especially if you are still groggy form a dreadful nights sleep…..

My eleven year old daughter is disorganisation personified! No matter how hard I try, how much cajoling, wheedling, and finally grounding , makes no difference at all. She has a head like a sieve (no idea where she gets that from), and no amount of nagging, or should I say ‘reminding’ gets the information into her stubborn head!

I am at home today, waiting for my car to be fixed. I thought I might go mad and do a bit of housework, and other bits and pieces indoors. So for that reason, I have dressed appropriately. A pair of leggings and a long line short-sleeved top are perfect for the tasks I intend to carry out,

They are not however, perfect for having to hot-foot it to the bus stop to deliver the bloody bus pass! I brushed aside the wearing of socks today, preferring to slop about in my comfy mid heel mules. The problem I had was that time was of the essence, as my daughter and her friend were hoping to catch the next bus at 8.20 and the bus stop is at least a 10 minute walk away.

I grabbed my heavy waterproof jacket and set off. As I was ‘clip-clopping’ down the road in my mules, I smiled at people who were scraping the ice off their cars, ready for work, There were a few raised eyebrows as they clocked my poor, freezing sockless feet in the summer mules, but i walked on head held high!

I phoned my daughter on the way and told her to meet me halfway. She agreed, but I finally caught up with her at the local park, about 2 mins away from the bus stop. Her and her friend sauntered in, totally unperturbed, scoffing sausage rolls (presumably with the money she got from the ‘tooth fairy’ last night)! She grabbed the bus pass, ignored my mini-rant, and dawdled back to the bus stop!

I sped home realising that I had left the pan on with my boiled egg for breakfast in it, hoping that I still had a home left! Luckily, there was a bit of water left in the pan and my egg was hard-boiled to perfection. Just as I like it!

I still have the problem of trying to get my daughter to remember her bus pass in the mornings. Any ideas?!

Episode 117: The Tortoise or the Hare?

January 21, 2015/Judy E Martin/12 Comments

My daughter seems to have got two speeds…slow and even slower! Ooooh it does drive me mad! She has the attention span of a gnat, and whilst cutting out pictures to stick into her art project, she starts curling up the leftover strips with the scissors! Aaaggh! This has to be in tomorrow (she has had 2 weeks to do it though) and she is faffing about, playing with scraps of paper! There is no sense of urgency with anything at all, least of all homework!

Getting ready in the morning is nothing short of an ordeal for me and Mr Grump (when I am there as most of the time I am already at work).We are both very organised; we get up in plenty of time to get ready. Not so Miss Hap!

We wake her up, she mutters;we call up to her, she grunts;we tell her that she now only has 15 mins left and to hurry up! She gets stroppy; the front door bell rings, she clomps down the stairs like an elephant with hobnail boots on! She’s gone, and our nerves are shredded! Thank God for breakfast Club at school, as God knows how long that would take at home!

You would think that having us for parents, she might have picked up some of our habits, like for instance, packing the stuff we need for the next day, the night before…no, why do that when you can get the school to phone whilst we are at work asking us to bring in her dance kit/science book?

My daughter has boundless energy and is always dancing, skipping, shuffling and generally running around except when I ask her to do something for me. She then seems to go into reverse (probably a ploy so I don’t ask again)! How long does it take to make a cup of tea?!! God help me when I decide (soon) to get her to help me with the washing up!

Maybe it’s me?… perhaps I am the one who should relax more, instead of running around like a blue-arsed fly, getting het up, in my haste to get things done on time!

After all, I’ve lost count of the times I have been somewhere way too early and have had to sit twiddling my thumbs waiting for everyone else to turn up! Or I have got ready so early for a function that my outfit has got creased from sitting about in it for ages, and my make up got smudged!

There must be a happy medium!

Episode 44: Left To My Own Devices!

November 14, 2014/Judy E Martin/Leave a comment

As if I am not clumsy and awkward enough, I also have yet another disadvantage to add to my long list of unfortunate traits…I am left-handed! I don’t think you right-handers realise how much of a nuisance this can prove to be to us at times….

I remember how awkward it was at school to have this ‘affliction’. When I was very young we were taught how to knit (I don’t think it is generally taught in class now). being the only leftie, I found it quite tricky to pick up, but for once I was lucky as the teacher was able to show me how to do it left-handed. Mind you, that doesn’t alter the fact that every knitting pattern I have ever attempted to follow assumes that everyone is right- handed and I just have to swap everything round!

P.E. was also a little odd for me at times. When we were learning how to throw the discus or javelin, I had to stand at the opposite end of the line to the others,as our missiles would be travelling in opposite directions and we wanted to try to avoid any collisions or people getting hurt!

The only thing I don’t do left-handed is set the table the wrong way around! It was drummed into me from a very early age, the correct way to use a knife and fork,and lay a table,so that has never been a problem!

Mr Grump. is also left-handed (he puts the knives and forks out the leftie way). so he understands the difficulties that we face. A few years ago, I was trying to teach my daughter how to tie her shoelaces, She couldn’t get it no matter how many times myself or Mr Grump tried to show her (neither of us were dexterous enough to be able to do it right-handed); in the end my Mum taught her how to do it!

It is so much easier being a leftie now that I am older as some lovely people have considered our plight and invented some rather practical gadgets for us! The left-handed scissors are marvellous; no more cack-handed attempts at trying to cut things out nicely, hacking away frustratedly.The fountain pen! At school we had a very fussy history teacher who insisted we use fountain pens, and there were only a few left-handed nibbed ones at the time. If you tried with a normal one, half the time you would be scratching about with no success, until suddenly SPLAT! A huge blob of ink would land on the page smudging anything you might have already managed to write!

Even sitting next to a right-hander could be awkward, I have to turn my book/paper 45 degrees to the left when I want to write, and I find that occasionally,if the person is sitting to my left, and are a little close, I will unintentionally bump them with my hand thereby mucking up their work!, or they end up accidentally nudging me and messing mine up!

Even GUITARS can be a problem! A couple of years ago Miss Hap went to guitar lessons (they didn’t last long as she didn’t have the concentration span; she would upend it and twirl it round like a double bass, or swing it back and forth kicking at it)! Anyway.. I sat in on these lessons (I felt really sorry for the poor guy trying to teach her) and watched carefully, planning to help her practice at home. Well, I could only really attempt to get the same notes out of it if turned the guitar the other way up…far too complicated for my brain!

Mind you, after all this time I have adjusted and adapted to the rather biased right-handed world we live in. After all, I am already pretty clumsy and heavy-handed, I can, and do trip over anything (sometimes even nothing), and I am practised in the art of walking into the glass patio door! (Oooh, I still remember one Christmas at my sisters,where I went smack into the glass doors landing on the floor. luckily they were extremely tough,and didn’t break. although there was a nice knee and head print on the door Suffice to say it kind of spoilt my evening and I went home with an egg-shaped bump, and massive headache! Still I provided some unexpected entertainment for them all, as they were pretty open in clutching their sides laughing at my misfortune)! So being a leftie is a drop in the ocean compared to my other weaknesses!

Episode 36: Too Cool For School……

November 6, 2014/Judy E Martin/4 Comments

When Miss Hap returned from school yesterday afternoon, I was really annoyed! It had been raining heavily all afternoon,and she came squelching into the house absolutely drenched! To say she looked like a drowned rat was an understatement. Her hair was shedding droplets like a dripping tap, her school blazer sopping wet, and for some reason, she had draped her new dance hoodie around her neck so that was sodden as well!

The reason I was so cross was that she had been warned that it was going to rain, and that she should wear a proper coat to school (with a hood) over her blazer so she wouldn’t get soaked.It is bad enough that I am already ill and feverish, I didn’t want her to become unwell also. What made me so mad was the fact that she would rather get soaked to the skin than wear a coat that is not the right brand,or considered ‘trendy’ enough for her. She once wore her Superdry coat to school (that is the right brand) but it is not really designed to fit over a blazer, jumper plus shirt, and after feeling bunched up and uncomfortable ditched that idea, but still refused to wear the ‘sensible’ school coat….

I am one of six children, and when I was her age I didn’t have a clue about fashion, or brands or anything like that (according to Miss Hap, I still don’t)! I remember when my sister was 11 and I was 13 we had crimplene jump suits (mine was red and had a little logo on it saying ‘The Fonz is Cool’ (remember him from Happy Days)?! I thought I was the bees knees in that suit, It was nicer than my sister’s which was green and the logo was ‘Mercedes Benz’. Unfortunately even though I am 2 years older than my sister to the day, we were always dressed in matching outfits as children.

Most of our clothes used to come from the Supermarket when, even then it was not cool, and myself and sister were often called the ‘Tesco Tearaways’ due to where Mum bought most of our clothes from! Having said that we did have Clarks shoes, which may have been a bit more upmarket but were clumpy, ugly and worst of all ‘sensible’. (Miss Hap has only just stopped wearing them, as even I know it will kill off any street cred at secondary school)! Oh yes, I know all about wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes but I think I was about 15 before it bothered me not 11!

I was talking about this to Mr Grump, as this has been an ongoing issue between us and Miss Hap, as it is not just clothes, it is phones, and the latest games/consoles/laptops and God knows what else. If Miss Hap feels that she has got it rough then she should spare a though for poor old Mr Grump as he was growing up, He also didn’t have a lot when he was young, and his mum struggled to meet ends meet. However, she was a very creative and clever person, and used to knit him things. I roared with laughter though when he told me that his mum had knitted him a pair of swimming trunks,yes SWIMMING TRUNKS!!! As soon as he went into the water with them on, they went all baggy and saggy, and it was a job to keep them on!

Miss Hap is pretty lucky really, All of her school clothes had to be bought especially because of the logo that is on each item, except for shoes and coat. I still have an old school photo of when I was about 15 with a jumper on, that my mum had knitted and I’m smiling!!!

Rhyme and No Reason!

Blogger, author and rhymester who likes to find the humour in life.

Tag: school

Episode 251: Hacked Off!

Episode 233: Cold Comfort!

Episode 227: School Dinners: Making The Right Choice.

Episode 188: My Friends, The Google Family!

Episode 134: Egg On My Face….

Episode 117: The Tortoise or the Hare?

Episode 44: Left To My Own Devices!

Episode 36: Too Cool For School……

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Blogger, author and rhymester who likes to find the humour in life.

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