Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • Conflicted

    So a young man has died at the hands of a ‘shooter’ yet again. This time it is all over the media because of who he is. His prominence in US politics has warranted flags at half mast.

    I know nothing about this man – to the horror of my children – because I was never his target audience.
    Is that why I greeted the news of his death with a sorrowful sigh, thinking “His poor family. How awful.”

    Did my sadness match or exceed my sadness when a young black kid is stabbed on a London street yet again? In that instance I think of a mother whose deep seated fears have been horribly realised.

    Did it match my sadness when a teenage girl gets a romantic notion in her head and disappears off to the desert and life as a bride of Isis? Leaving her family in desperate ignorance of her welfare, scared rigid for her life.

    The sadness is added to by the very fact that he advocated against gun control. He became yet another casualty of the US love of their right to bare arms. With the hubris of youth did he think he was invincible?

    At what point in life does it occur to you that the bad stuff that happens to other people can happen to you?


    Having taught young people who are regularly lectured on the evils of cigarettes, drugs and (somewhat hypocritically) alcohol, riding on the handlebars of your mate’s bike and/or dodging traffic on the precipitous dual carriage way where some student from one of three high schools gets knocked down seemingly every single year.

    So, I didn’t shrug and mutter “What goes around, comes around.” And wondered how long it would take the first posts to appear, pointing out the hideous irony of the death by gunfire of a man who advocated against gun control.

    He died before he had lived enough to feel that fear.

  • Failing the Sniff Test

    I was a tad perturbed when the Dark Prince was appointed as ambassador to the US. I remember thinking that this man has an amazing capacity to creep around the corridors of power, popping up at regular intervals to swipe a top job, only to lose it because the Jack Russell that is scandal is yapping at his heels again.

    This time he appears that he got a top job because the circles in which he moves – creeping or slithering depending on which personification fits your mental picture – which might explain the real reason why we were only hit with 10% tariffs.

    Removing him will no doubt trigger some spiteful response from across The Pond. This response may lead to job losses and further economic hardship. The former won’t effect this house because neither of us works in commerce but the latter, possibly. Therefore I say the following with a smidgeon of skin in the game.

    This isn’t something that fails a sniff test. It has the stink of the putrefaction that emanates from the local landfill sight on a hot day in June. It is asphyxiating

    Let us have the courage to take the hit, open the windows and let in some fresh air. And hope that the Dark Prince creeps off into retirement where he might slither around the pool of some billionaire to whom he can declare fidelity and love, sipping a pinacolada and plotting how he can sneak past those Pearly Gates, no questions asked.
    Please forgive mixed similes, I couldn’t make up my mind which personification worked best. Can you tell I am trying to teach grammar for the first time…

  • Brain Dead

    Three days in to teaching part time (one-to-one and adult learning) and my brain has already died. I can feel the cells pitching themselves over the cliff face a la Thelma and Louise screaming about where I can shove my power points as they launch into the sunset.

    Lord! It’s not like I am teaching six or seven different year groups or trying to get to know a new form. And I know where the photocopier is, because the buildings are either so small it’s quite easy or the photocopier is my printer, in my office, on top of the mini filing cabinet.

    Which, incidentally (the printer not the filing cabinet), threw a massive temper tantrum after I fed it indigestible fake Canon ink cartridges and took to printing everything with offset text so it looked like you needed your eyes checked. I have now soothed it with the genuine article and will have to exert a Costa ban on myself for the rest of the month to pay for them.

    This is unfortunate as the only place to have lunch in the vicinity of my one-to-one is the Costa. After a good hum and haw today, I decided to confine myself to a sandwich and fruit juice. And then made a hash of it by picking the posh hand and cheese toasty.

    I have also left my wireless mouse in the boot and it’s too cold and wet to be bothered fetching it. So I am using the left hand, vertical, wired mouse I bought by mistake which I keep meaning to give to my sister. And I have just had to correct my spelling of verticle – sorry vertical – which I spell correctly every week of the working year.

    Arghhhhhhhh!

    Wine…. wine…. it’s hump day… I can have wine….

  • Chucking Apples

    So, we had His Nibs home for an overnight stay as Grandma and Auntie E were coming for supper and he likes seeing family.

    One’s mountain goat monkey of a son has his uses. Specifically a perfect sense of balance and absolutely no fear of heights.

    On a rocky coast line this reduces me to a gibbering wreck of frayed nerves as he romps over bolder and flotsam and jetsam. In the back garden, it fills me with delight as I send him up the apple tree.

    With the promise of going to see his sister – and more importantly her fridge full of diet coke – he lent a willing hand to pick the apples at the top of our fallen apple tree.

    Regular readers of my private Facebook page may just remember that our beloved but somewhat ancient apple tree fell down last year in a particularly vicious storm. Well, the taproot did not sever so the tree is still going and has chosen this year to produce an abundance of fruit.

    Before any more littered the ground in horrid brown spotty heaps, I decided to retrieve the rest and take them to the local apple press.

    His Nibs is careful in his climbing, making like Catherine Zeta Jones and those red laser lights as he negotiated random branches and twigs. He is also careful in his picking. Handing down pairs of apples, carefully deprived of twigs and leaves.

    What he is not careful about is how said apples are put in the tub when he is at ground level. ‘Put them in carefully!’ I wailed, ‘Don’t throw them!’. Only to wince as another handful was dropped from a height that ensures bruising.

    Got my own back by making him lug two heavily laden tubs out to the car.

    I was somewhat pleased with our haul, thinking that a large tub and two thirds wasn’t bad off a single tree. So when the teenage boy at the apple press said, ‘Oh there aren’t very many.’ I was a tad miffed.

    So I am looking forward to receiving half a dozen bottles of this year’s vintage, which I will distribute to Grandma et al and then proceed to leave in the cupboard until Christmas when I can think about spicy warm drinks. It not being cider, I can indulge in mixology… getting ahead of myself.

  • And She’s Gone

    Which is a shame. Not because I particularly agreed with all her ideas. But because she was a truly inspirational figure; a gymnast slip mum who worked and fought hard to get to the very highest offices of the land.

    What will be shuffled to the bottom of the various columns currently being bashed out on laptops across the land is that the majority of the Magnus report refers to her integrity and honesty, the complexity of the process es she was trying to put in place and the punishing expectations laid at the feet of those in public life.

    Rayner has no choice but to resign and further distraction while the Labour Party wrangles its way through reshuffles and elections is inevitable. However we may come to regret the loss of someone who has direct experience of the social service system, disability resources and legislation not to mention working in a low paid, menial job struggling to make ends meet.

  • Ahhhhh yes, Mr Tice

    Once again you speak with knowledge and wisdom. Or not.
    The first morning I put my son in a taxi to school he was not even five years old. I was petrified and heartbroken.
    The nearest appropriate placement was 15 miles away. In the opposite direction to our daughter’s school.
    Now, you could argue that any number of families from her school could have been asked to help out. And we have been blessed with numerous friends who have been unfailingly generous for 28 years.
    But repeated favours do become onerous and seats in cars are limited.
    I would also ask why you might not have the same expectation that families who live in rural locations where there is no safe pavement to walk along are not expected to take their children into school. They have cars, sometimes more than one car. Yet a bus is provided to ferry their offspring to establishments barely a mile away. Can they not be expected to get up and dressed and save the council a small fortune?

    But no, their children are able of body and mind and their parents make up too great a proportion of the electorate, so you are leaving them alone.

    And does it need to be said that if you have fought the battle to get your child into appropriate provision somewhere, some place that does not require residential space because it is so far away the drive would be hours rather than minutes, their disability has to be significant and you have evidenced it? Evidence which you have not based your judgement upon.

  • Trust Fund Baby or Not

    Trust Fund Baby was a term bandied about for many years to highlight the wealth afforded to the offspring of the fabulously rich who populate gossip columns and Made in Chelsea.

    However parents of disabled children across the land also take out trust funds. These are not million pound pots but rather safety pots to stow monies for vital expenses such as legal fees when you have to take County to court over provision. We set one up for His Nibs alongside power of attorney and Court of Protection deputyship. It took and takes forever (she says as she contemplates annual accounts due in shortly).

    This is a long and arduous process which is hideously complex and difficult to navigate. We were guided through the process by an expert in these matters but I still spent several weeks panicking that we had done something wrong when His Nibs was transferred to Universal Credit this Summer and his finances were put under the microscope.

    Add divorce and property into the equation and you will be doubly mired in a legal quagmire. Which is why I have every sympathy for Angela Rayner. She was given duff advice from a professional (now three according to BBC News) and acted on it in good faith. She is now rectifying the error.

    The media is having a field day digging around in the back passages of this government, and calling out those who are doing wrong. In some cases, rightly so.

    But in Rayner’s case the picture is more nuanced. And should be treated as such. And should be viewed through a more compassionate, informed lens. As a special needs parent you spend your life having the realities of your home life exposed to all and sundry which can be painful and humiliating when it is just social services and the DWP. When the national media start on a muck taking mission this exacerbates an already horrible experience.

    I have two suspicions:

    One is that those who live and work in Westminster are aware of Rayner’s personal situation and are treating her with informed compassion. Hence Badenoch’s rather muted attack in the House of Commons.

    My second is that the media gun for Rayner because she is the embodiment of several bette noirs: a single mother, a divorcee and someone who may have had the temerity to have claimed benefits (shock horror) at a time of need. Oh and I forgot the other bits. She’s a woman and she is working class.

    So, if you are outraged over your cornflakes, imagine that you too have a child with high, life long needs and you need to ensure that those needs are met well after you have pottered off your mortal coil. Now think about your will sitting in your filing cabinet. Quadruple the pages. Quadruple the time and effort you put in to drawing it up. And quadruple the attendant fees. Add in a sprinkling of exposing the very private issues you face on a daily basis and you might come somewhere close.

  • In Anticipation of an Indian Summer

    The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, again. The Lord giveth us sunshine and warmth. The Lord taketh away, again. And giveth us torrential rain, damp socks and frizzy hair.

    Am a tad vexed. Why the Lord didn’t giveth torrential rain when my plants were still alive is beyond me. But perhaps he is trying to tell us something…

    Now, according to my reading in the Museum of Quebec, the First Nations believe there are six seasons. So I am going to wear my vest and stop chuntering in anticipation of an Indian Summer.

  • Acquiring a Best Friend for the Man (or Woman)

    Having been terrified of dogs as a child (a function of growing up in London and a particularly neglected and fearsome dog at the bottom of the road who cornered me on my way to primary school before a kid from the council flats opposite took my hand and led me away) I have only gotten over my fear by living in a semi-rural area where dogs get regular and significant exercise and appear in pubs.

    I am now a complete convert. This is a good thing as dogs absolutely love me. Evidenced by the number of them who goose me when saying hello. I used to walk a particularly pretty miniature schnauzer who I managed to leave outside a shop and had to race back to collect. I think I confessed…

    Anyway Best Beloved had tried to get a rescue dog as a family pet for our 25th anniversary. We both agreed long ago that we wanted a mongrel rather than a breed and I was not keen on the new fangled crosses (cockerpoos and so on). We are both aware that dogs are a big commitment, can chew your furniture and favourite shoes and are require kenneling if you are away and have no one to dog-sit.

    However Best Beloved was thwarted at every turn, mostly because we already have cat. And possibly that we weren’t immediately inclined to contribute a monthly direct debit (certainly not until we had balanced the costs of keeping said dog and established that charitable donations were feasible). But also by the very idea that we were not prepared to take out a second mortgage’s worth of pet insurance.

    While I do think pet insurance is important for dogs as they are expensive beasties, I can’t help feeling it is a bit of a racket. And that veterinary medicine is turning into a bit of a racket altogether. I say this because I have heard veterinary staff talk about ‘pup’ as mid-wives talk about ‘baby’ while at the same time recommending a myriad of costly treatments and procedures (which mid-wives do not do) that are only optional if you have the hardest of hearts. Which personally, I do.

    Our longest surviving cat came to us from (emigrating) owners who provided all sorts of certificates for vaccines, treatments and teeth cleaning. I put these in a drawer and forgot about them. Florence lived to the ripe old age of 19. I rest my case.

  • Wobbling Heights

    Geddit?! Pun on Wuthering Heights ??!! Never mind.

    Isn’t it odd how things change during the course of your life. As a child I was notorious for bouts of crippling vertigo and once got stuck up a castle in France because the steps from the battlements only had a single railing. My mum had to come back up and get me.

    I am not a big fan of heights still. Best Beloved and His Nibs are both mountain goats and spent several years scampering across the crumbling cliffs of South Wales leaving me clinging to the grass, petrified to move while His Nibs shrieked “Come ON!” and tried to propel me forward if I was in his way.

    Places I have got stuck include a mountain pass in the Pyrenees where I stopped the car and jumped out because the sheer drop on the side of the road was freaking me out and a rock face in Turkey where the instructor had to walk me down by vertically straddling my body and moving my hands and feet with his until we reached the bottom.

    I also cannot watch my children go anywhere near the edge when there is a steep drop on the other side. Or watch any child hang over railings, particularly near running water. I remember being hung over the railings of a ferry when I was very small and being absolutely petrified. I think my dad thought my squealing was excitement.

    I have always thought my sisters did not share my fear. But this summer has revealed that one cannot cope with the escalators in the big Oxford Street John Lewis which open up to a huge sky light and shake quite a bit as they go up and up towards the roof. And the other doesn’t like wobbly wooden bridges across muddy tracks and rock strewn paths. I am with them both on these as I don’t like the ground wobbling beneath my feet however far below, but it is quite nice not to be the only one who requires rescuing by one’s mother.