Lewis again

Found out today that my ten year old son had an 'incident' at school yesterday.

This is to be expected.

He has Aspergers syndrome, but owing to some confusion over the evidences provided to East Sussex County Council, instead of being statemented in time for the start of this school year, he got a note in lieu, something which does not provide extra funding.

His favourite classroom assistant, Zoe, (at one point the only person in the school who understood him, according to Lewis) was the casualty of that, her hours were reduced from full time to two days a week.

Bless her, she hung on in hope for as long as possible, but had to quit this Tuesday gone.

This, according to Lewis, has changed everything, although he wont verbalise it. He feels his (lovely) teacher doesn't properly understand him without Zoe to translate and things are on a downhill slide, blatantly obvious in less than two days.

So, Thursday, another child starts picking on Lewis during a break time. This is fairly normal, or it used to be without an interpreter hovering in the background to give him essential tips on social interaction, if needed, before it got to 'smack in the teeth' time. His reaction, given that he feels isolated, misunderstood, picked on etc was probably not that outrageous, but he apparently gave as good as he got.

Upshot: both kids get detention, in separate rooms.

Lewis, as you can imagine, thought this was unfair, and on a matter of principle, refused point blank to go to his detention. He demanded that someone go to fetch, in his words "One of the Morrow-Nobles" (thats Zoe, or her sister who is a full time teacher there for another year group). He just wasnt going to budge until told to by someone he could accept the instruction from.

Eventually the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) told him she was just going to stand in the corridor with him until he calmed down and went to start his detention.

His dead-pan answer? "Well you'd better go and get your sandwiches then, you've got a long wait."

I repeat, the kid is ten.

She knew enough to walk away. Without someone to lobby, he gave up and walked to detention after all, but if anyone expected a normal child, this reaction of his would have only piled on the pressure, maybe resulted in a restraint hold and a forcible march to an increased detention. He would have been kicking and screaming about his human rights for the rest of the day, complete with irate language. Heck I wouldn't put it past him to phone Amnesty International.

Thank God, when the SENCo told me about this she was laughing at it all. I was so relieved that he hadn't alienated himself from yet another adult, that I forgot to be angry until half way home; angry that, with the proper support, he wouldn't have been thumped in the first place, nor, with his gigantic social blinkers, pushed into a position where he thought that extreme measures were the only way out. Angry that he then had to go through all that stress and upset for the sake of a five minute detention.

Easter holidays start today. The SENCo will be at work next week, trying to sort out all the paperwork surrounding Lewis, either to re-present the evidences for the current statement application, in April, or for a new application, in May.

Good 'ere, innit.

Wanasucklemons

A friend of mine over at Homeworking.com is having trouble with Wanadoo Broadband. This is the story, as she told it to me.

She cancelled her contract ages ago, in fact her original contract was with Surfanytime, a company later taken over by Wanadoo. She retired to SPAIN in 2002 and apart from selling the house, closing down the phone account etc etc, she of course sent notification to cancel the broadband. Hell, she sent notification to cancel everything.

Anyhow, come the beginning of this year, 2005, she spots a tiny amount of money trickling out of her account on a regular basis, traces it back to Wanadoo and totals it up to £380 (about $800) - pretty hefty all told, when its coming out of a pension.
(Actually, I want to get back to her on that because their current rates are £17.99 a month and £380/24 months = £15 something - it could be that the cheeky erm gentlemen actually reinstated the contract)

So, she wrote to them and got two identical and dismissive letters from the same 'person' (probably a computer program) sent in separate envelopes on the same day - which certainly set my alarm bells ringing about levels of customer service and personal attention. I mean, do what?

The letters both said they had no record of her cancellation, didnt give a rats fart that the telephone line the broadband had been connected to had been disconnected, nor that she could prove when she moved. Or words to that effect.

So she wrote personally to the Managing Director, explaining everything, saying she was prepared to believe that they or Surfanytime could have lost the cancellation details in the handover, and asking very nicely for her money back.

Long wait. FIVE WEEKS wait.

What does she get? ANOTHER snooty letter from the same signatory as the first two. Even the MD, faced with a direct request for help from a member of the public, shoves it to one side for the minions or the number cruncher to deal with.

All that hassle, all that money gone through their oversight and bad administration and she gets not a flicker of understanding from them.

Wanadoo? Wanabloodydont.

So THAT explains why they target their current adverts at teenage headbangers...................Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The Ides of March

The Ides of March was/were (?) yesterday. We survived. Like full moons, for me its one of those things that just happens, then I realise afterward and the penny drops that for one day it had really seemed that the world was mad, or at least more mad than usual. Its a bit like waking up from a thrall.

So, who were you tempted to murder, yesterday, and why? Who tried to stab you in the back?
Name and shame time LOL, so please comment.

P.S. Maybe this is lunacy, or tempting fate, but it seems its all over now and today is going to be a truly lovely day..............................

Beautiful Girl

My 20 year old son is home. He rolled in at eight this morning having rolled out almost exactly 48 hours earlier. His girlfriend had driven half way across the country to meet him, and picked him up while we were all still asleep on Sunday morning.

They spent the day in Eastbourne and the night in a hotel he had paid for (or you could argue that any one of a number of people had paid for - the kid has his own National debt), before discovering that she was allowed to go out fishing with him when he went to work on Monday. She spent the day on the boat and while he worked she was either throwing up or having panic attacks about throwing up some more; all day. The whole crew went home at the end of the shift, leaving the two lovebirds alone on a smelly crabbing vessel, how sweet.

This morning there were too many crew so he took the day off. His poor beloved drove him the ten miles home and dropped him, unexpected, on our doorstep, before starting off on her own 200 mile journey back to reality. Apparently she was crying, but I'm not too certain why, whatever he says. Could be relief.

Anyhow I got the two younger ones dressed and out to school almost on time, in spite of the 6' plus frame of their older brother seeming to be lounged across every inch of sofa and stood looming in every doorway, all at once; even in spite of him channel hopping the TV from the news to something more to his taste, which is always guaranteed to have the kids more interested in that than their breakfast and destroys any limited appreciation that they have of time passing.

So, I'm back home and trying to do some work, or at least gear my brain up to a state where it can think, long enough to work out which work to do. Andrew, of course, 'keeps out of my way' by channel hopping the TV, loudly, until he settles on something that has him laughing hard.

I gave up and ended up laughing with him and have wasted the entire morning on........ the 2003 'Made for the bin' movie: Beautiful Girl (see title for clip), about a cute little tubthumper who goes up against a load of varyingly anorexic broomsticks in a beauty pageant.

Its not the cast that got to us, not the premise, nor the slapstick and so-called comedy hooks like the mother's laugh, no it was the serious bits, the 'hearts and flowers' underlying messages of the whole movie as displayed in the pageant. We were wetting ourselves.

First there was the green goddess swimming costume. How they squeezed that poor girl into it was beyond me, if she'd farted she would have ripped stitches and given her bum cheeks friction burns. You could have taken an electric drill to one of those buttocks and got nowhere, so tightly were they packed. I hope she sued for the pain of nappy rash / bed sores / whatever you would call that sort of torture.

How in hells name can anyone make a 'big is beautiful' movie and then dress the girl like she's been through a trash compacter to shave off a few inches? Hypocritical, you think?

Then there was the song 'I am beautiful' and the end speech about how everyone is beautiful and being individual is what makes us special. Fine, I'm all for the truth of that, but it was done with so much syrupy sentiment, so over the top and gushy that we were wetting ourselves laughing, whilst trying not to puke at the same time. We were also waiting for a flase eyelash to take off and flap round the auditorium, or for the four inches of red lipstick to crack and start an avalanche - yeah plenty of natural individual beauty showing through that job.

Behind all of that was the outrageously conceited concept that you can base half of a movie on the 'message' that fat girls and thin girls can be friends. Doh, no, really, can they? Gosh mister, you have saved my life, I never knew. Revelation.

I was going to say they overdid the saccharine, but hey, I suspect it was aspartame.

Back to work now, I guess, as soon as I can figure out which work, where..........

Would you Adam & Eve it?

Thats cockney for believe, for those not in the know.

Got this by email from a friend (thanks Robin) and its worth a chuckle:

One day in the Garden of Eden, Eve calls out to God, "Lord, I have a problem!" "What's the problem, Eve?" "Lord, I know you've created me and have provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, and that hilarious comedy snake, but I'm just not happy." "Why is that, Eve?" came the reply from above. "Lord, I am lonely. And I'm sick to death of apples." "Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you." "What's a 'man', Lord?" "This man will be a flawed creature, with aggressive tendencies, an enormous ego and an inability to empathize or listen to you properly. All in all, he'll give you a hard time. But, he'll be bigger and faster and more muscular than you. He'll be really good at fighting and kicking a ball about and hunting fleet-footed ruminants, and not altogether bad in the sack." "Sounds great," says Eve, with an ironically raised eyebrow. "Yeah, well. He's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. But, you can have him on one condition." "What's that, Lord?" "You'll have to let him believe that I made him first."

JUSTICE!

I am watching the Red Nose Day television.

McFly are doing their single, and accompanying, rather sheepishly, is a silver haired Chris Evans!

He looks just like John Major! ROFL

Ooh all the crap of the past few days has faded to insignificance, that is just so much like DIVINE JUSTICE.
Hahahahahahahahahahahah

My brain is full off loads of real life rubbish that you don't want to know about, trust me. Hence the lack of input on here for a couple of days. Maybe the only question I could share is: Where has Bloglines gone today?

So here is something amusing thats not on my brain at all, but was sitting at Yahoo begging to be shared:

How Gay Are You? (Courtesy of Channel 4), found with loads of other funnies at Yahoo UK

TTFN

Will the real ALASTAIR CAMPBELL please stand up?

Sharp, Smart SheWeevil pointed out a blog (where does she find them?) claiming to be written by Alastair Campbell; not any old AC but Tony Blair's 'Media Chief' described in this BBC profile.

We did discuss this, albeit at very little length, because an obvious element of doubt was immediately injected for three reasons:

1. Neither of us seems to be very sure just how safe blogs are as statements of personal opinion, whether they rate as a public diary or as a written statement of fact. People have lost their jobs over derogatory remarks made in blogs, but can you be sued for libel or defamation?
2. Would someone charged with the defence of a public image publicly refer to disparate individuals or groups as, respectively, Manc twat or bunch of wankers, even if it was very funny?
3. When this blog began the posts were being made under the initials NMW, not AC as they are now. A polite query in the comments resulted not in a direct answer, but in the change.

So, 'Alastair', if you are reading this, I find your blog extremely relevant, hysterically funny and surprisingly interesting. I also suspect the author to be a very likeable and intelligent person with a wickedly dry sense of humour. In fact I would love to drag you into a discrete local pub, get rat faced with you and take the piss out of the world and his dog. My only stipulations would be clean floors against the possibility of falling over laughing and a very convenient convenience.
As to whether you are who you say you are, well you don't appear to be linked to any traffic generators, nor to receive many comments as yet, but as your blog is public I really hope this will direct a few more people over for a shufti.

P.S. To those who read the early version of this, yes its true I can hardly think nor spell today. The poll site also failed to mention they can screw up blog entries and are best used, by idiots like me, in a sidebar. Sometimes life sucks - deal with it! ;-)