Pointless conversations...

A man called me today about Great Ormond Street Hospital. Yep, I agreed with him, lovely hospital, very good work, blah blah blah. Then he came out with:

"Right, so can you give us £20 a month?"

I actually laughed out loud at that, and had to explain that I would love to but having no money at all would make it quite impossible.

"I quite understand," says man, "blah blah blah, lovely hospital, sick children, now how about giving us £10 a month?".

So again I say, would love to, maybe in a few years, but impossible. Sorry.

"Oh ok," says man, "blah blah blah REALLY sick children, I am sure you appreciate just how SICK they are and how much they and their parents are suffering. How about £3 a month?"

Me: "You can keep asking but I still have no money".

By this point I was quite cross, was he going to keep going till we got to 1p a month or something? Maybe if I'd kept going he would have agreed to give me £20 a month instead. I hate being made to feel poor, and explain why I have no money. He should have given it up at £10 and said "well if you could contribute whenever you feel you can that would be lovely". Instead he's made me really cross, but at least they won't keep ringing me up now asking for money. Whoever trains these people to ring random numbers and ask for money really has the wrong idea, keep going on and on at poor people who have explained why they can't help you is actually having the opposite effect. Barnardos actually launched into a graphic description of child abuse to me one Friday evening and it was only afterwards I realised how offensive they really were - how do they know I haven't been affected by awful things and their idiotic attempts to get donations had stirred it all up again? Grrr. I am learning to be rude to cold callers but I really wish I had told that one where to stick it :)

Holidaying in Essex

Due to lack of funds this year, we just had 4 days in a caravan by the seaside in Essex. I don't think we will be doing it again, staying at home for a week seems preferable at the minute. The "high"lights were:

1) Eating lunch and being disturbed by local druggies arguing over a stolen phone. This included much cursing and "swearing on my kid's life" that the man with the phone bought it "legitimately" off a girl's one night stand who handily nicked most of her stuff in the morning before he left...

2) Walking along the beach and stumbling upon a topless granny trying to top up her tan. This might have worked in Magaluf. Not in a very breezy sunless Essex seaside with the tide coming in.

3) Going out for tea to the local pub and disturbing a bunch of kids smoking dope on the pub climbing frame and blatantly making drug deals on their mobiles. As my 2 year old was breathing in their smoke I got them chucked out and then had husband refuse to speak to me for getting involved. Would he rather we had to deal with a 2 year old on a comedown than say anything?! I am 35. They were probably 16. They can bloody well sod off to the local bus stop and do their drug dealing.

4) The "entertainment" at the park in the evening involved 2 very young and camp reps trying to get a reaction out of about 7 bored and fed up holidaymakers. But we did trounce the competition in a tv themes quiz and won a clock. Lovely. We didn't dare go back after that as they looked quite cross.

5) Spending god knows how much money trying to win a teddy for littl'un on those machines where you have to pick them up with a scoop thing and hope they don't fall off. We didn't win one, they are so fixed. It would have been cheaper to just go to a shop and buy one.

6) Being invaded by ants on our first night. They were marching under the door up 3 big steps into the caravan and we were in peril of being bitten to death. Littl'un enjoyed stomping on the incursion and then a handy application of fairy liquid along the doorframe seemed to stop them for the rest of the holiday.

And the lesson is? Stick with Cornwall, it may be further but it seems to have less druggies and random freaks. Everybody we saw was either disabled, on drugs, drunk, or clearly on the social with several little kids clinging to them while their druggie dad was arguing with someone else. Classy.

Late night munching

So some highly paid boffins have just published a study which says that "eating late at night = weight gain". Honestly, did they really need a study to show that?! How do people get paid to come up with doing studies like this?! It's like asking me to study if pregnancy = weight gain. In fact I am going to submit my proposal to some scientific board and my expenses will be "cookies, ice cream, crisps" and in about 8/9 months I can prove my theory :)

Soul mates?!

In a vain attempt to keep my brain engaged, I've been doing jigsaws - 50p from the local charidee shop, can't be bad! Anyway, so far none of them have been missing any pieces, which made me suspect that someone who volunteers there tests them all before they sell them. Then the last one I got, someone had separated the outside pieces from the inside pieces and bagged them up all neatly!! I am not alone!!!

'Orrible kids

So we went to a play place today, hadn't been before but it sounded alright. And I came THIS close to duffing up a 5 year old boy who was the incarnation of Damien from the Omen. He was there with his gran, who was oblivious to his bullying, snatching, and general nastiness. He even tried staring the adults out after upsetting their kids! Little sod. I used to think I wanted to be a teacher, but unless it was the Anne of Green Gables type school with beautiful, polite, intelligent kids dying to learn and totally in awe of me, I'd be no good, I'd have expelled half the class before hometime!

And don't get me started on the cafe - 10 minutes to make 2 coffees and then when they were THIS close to me, dropped on the floor and we had to start all over again! Sigh...life out of the workplace isn't so much more relaxed you know!

Kiddie park or drug den?!

So I was a very good mum today and took littl'un to the park. Doesn't happen often, I must be sickening for something. Anyway, there were a couple of other mums there, but then they left and we had the whole place to ourselves. Apart from 2 teenage boys hanging around outside the gates. After a while I got a bit nervous, they were definitely waiting for something. Then some other teenagers came into the park, and the first two went up to them, blatantly sold them drugs, and then returned to leering at me. So we left pretty soon after, and when I looked back, they were sat on the kiddie swings rolling a big joint!! Every damn time we go to that place we see drug deals, the car park is a hot spot for people to drive in, talk to the local hoodlum on his bike who just happens to be hanging around, and seems to know everybody, and then drive off rapidly with a big bag of something illegal in their dashboard. If the police cracked on to this they'd make more arrests in about 2 hours than the rest of the week wandering round the streets! Bloody drug dealers!!

Parenthood

So against everything I said last time round, I'm having another baby. Lovely. Due just before Christmas - so that is cancelled then! So far it's been going as before, not many symptoms which is good, but I am the size of a house already, not so good. Anyway, also like last time round I had a letter from the hospital. Following my blood tests, they want Mr Babs to have his blood tested for some medical thing that mainly affects african men. So I rang them up and said he'd already been tested the first time round and did he need to be tested again as he still isn't african? The man laughed and said "no, but we assume pregnant ladies are with different partners than the last time round so we had to check". Lovely. So the prevailing opinion in my part of the world is that all the women have babies with different dads. I really love Essex.