Category: Family

1.30am

As I start to write this, I have no clue what the result of the Scottish Independence vote will be.  To be honest, I don’t think it really matters, even though it will be history in about seven hours or so.

As an exercise in dividing the nations, it’s done a sterling job.  Many Scots have divided from the English, and the yes and the no from each country is divided against each other.

It wasn’t about Salmond, and it wasn’t about Cameron.  It ‘s a vote for Westminster or the Scottish Parliament, but that message didn’t get through.  I found the TV coverage pitiful and biased, but hey ho, I can’t influence that.

I have to admit, I had a wee bit of a wobble at the polling station, but the cross went in the yes box.  It’s the hope you see.  I’m a glass half full sort.  Our NHS seems to be reducing, we have food banks, elderly people without care support, disabled forced out of their homes, unfair bedroom tax and lots more.  I can’t blame people for wanting to give it a go themselves.

Although my parents generation are more in tune with the union, it was because they had historical industries where they felt proud to be British.  With little of those industries or trade unions left, the younger people in our country are not seeing that meshing of populations, or meshing of ideals, goals or thinking, but there are enough of the elders around to make the final decision.

Actually, the young have been raised on a diet of banking scandals and unfair distribution of wealth, which always seems to favour the already wealthy.  The elders should win this vote, but in another thirty years time, it could be very different.

5am

• The vote is in and we bottled it as a nation.
• Fear won over hope.  That’s pretty understandable, given that people tend to be resistant to change.  They almost always resist change in the workplace, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they resisted it for life.
• The onus is now on Better Together and the no voters to PROVE their positioning.  But then again, it makes no difference to us, because we can’t do anything about it, even if they give all our money to the man on the moon.

The one thing I have to hope for, is that whether we are independent or not, the damage between the populations can be fixed, and we can carry on living and working together as close neighbours and friends.

The decision is made, though I think it will only fuel further divisions among the populations of the UK.

I really hope not.

We all need to kiss and make up  now, while we watch Government either fulfil or renege on their promise of more devolution for all of us, not just Scotland.

Long term readers of my blog will know that I have adopted children, one of whom has full-blown foetal alcohol syndrome and is in a dedicated special school, where he is now settled after a few years of sad instability at the hands of the education department staff.

He is now 12 years old and heading towards the teen years very fast.

He has also just begun to learn how to join simple words from some simple letters. Read cat sat on the mat, but not so advanced yet. Just the cat is a huge deal.

For 12 and a half years, he has rarely watched TV, and on the rare occasions he has, it hasn’t been sustained, but more of a one-off.

Imagine my surprise when he came through to see me last night.  He’d been in the family room while I was in the lounge, reading in peace.

“Mum, the news is bad.”

“What’s on the news?”

“Well, the army has killed two of their own people.  Cigarettes are now banned forever so dad has to stop smoking or he’ll be in jail, and Saharan sand is smothering everybody and we’re all going to die.”

Then, off he pops, happy as Larry, to listen to more gore from the news while I go and put on the kettle.

For the first time in 19 years, the cup came to Aberdeen Football Club.  I remember the last time our local team won it and I took my kids down to see the parade this time round.

It started here: the win against Inverness Caley Thistle at Celtic Park where the sheep won 4:2 on pens.

Forty thousand fans made the trip to Celtic Park, and although we couldn’t manage the match, we all watched it on the telly, and breathed in as it went to extra time and then penalties.  Inverness played a cracking defensive game and it was touch and go all the way through.

Winning on pens didn’t matter, as we brought the cup home.   The kids have supported the Dons all through the last decade of losing streaks and it was lovely to see something positive and share in a winning club while they are still kids.

Well done the Dons.  We went down to the cup parade today.  Sadly the sun was in our eyes and it was difficult to get pictures, but you get the idea.  There was lots of cheering, clapping and singing going on as the bus set off on its way.  We were at the start, but on Union Street it sounded like a footie match in progress.

Fabulous…..It’s a memory the kids will never forget…

“I’m going round to Jacks to play tonight,” my eldest enthuses before school.  I listen and then tell him I’ll still pick him up at the usual time after school and if he is still going over to play, I’ll drop him off.

“We’re not allowed to play anymore,” comes the sad face when I picked him up from school.

“Why, what’s happened?”

“Well, you know mum, he’s grounded and has to do chores.”

“Aww, that’s a shame, what happened?”

While secretly glad I didn’t just assume he would be going off to play at Jacks and went to make sure, I was a little gobsmacked and slightly shocked at the response.

“He got pushed over on the hill at school, and his clothes are muddy so he’s got to do chores for going home dirty.”

Whether that is true or not is neither here nor there, but the child believes he’s being punished for coming home mucky.

I really can’t understand the mentality of any parent who grudges their kids a little muck here and there.  Ok, it might be a bit boring and cumbersome to have to wash clothes and yes, it might be a bit annoying if you were heading out and about, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of kids being punished for coming home with some dirt on them.

Before someone says it, I can understand where someone is so skint that the price of hot water is a challenge, but come on, for most of us, it isn’t really an issue.

For the kids I am talking about, they are mostly middle class comfortably off families with often several holidays a year and gourmet fast food outlets on speed dial, so it’s not as if they can’t afford a cycle in the washing machine or they have to slave over a sink with a washing board and a bar of soap.

I don’t understand the “must be clean at all costs” school of parenting and I suspect I never will.

Kids should be allowed to get dirty, mucky, muddy and downright filthy with black gunge under fingernails.  Those are memories they’ll remember and a quick soak in a tub washes it all away.

Why are so many parents against their kids getting mucky if paying for electricity and hot water to wash the clothes isn’t a problem?

Don’t they understand that for most kids, getting mucky means they have usually had fun?

I guess I’ll never understand it.

As a family, we spent an absolute fortune on swimming lessons when my kids were younger.  I found it hard to see any actual difference in their ability to swim after a couple of dozen lessons.

I’m not sure if it was the way they were taught that my children found difficult to follow, or whether they were just not interested, but we gave up and just went swimming ourselves for years.  Swimming aids are great for boosting confidence in the water and we used a few different options from floats to noodles to get their confidence in the water.

When were on holiday and in Aberdeenshire, we decided to book eldest and littlest in for intensive swimming lessons.  Middler is at special school and they have swimming lessons weekly there, so it seemed pointless to expose him to more lessons that he was going to find difficult to follow.  My brief to the staff was that I didn’t care if my kids could swim “properly.”  I just wanted them to be able to keep their heads above water and be able to breathe if they landed out of their depth in a pool, river or anywhere else with some water they could land in.

It took a while, but by the end of the first week, they were managing to hold their heads up and take a breath which was all I really wanted to be able to happen.    It’s all very well being able to swim underwater, but it isn’t any use if they can’t breathe.

My kids go through swimming googles like nobodys business.  They have a bad habit of leaving them lying in changing rooms or forgetting to pick them up when they leave the pool.  It’s probably just as well there is a great range of fun kids swimming goggles from Zoggs so we can just go have some more.  I’ve learned to always keep a spare pair or two in our swimming bags, but for some reason, we always seem to run out of them very quickly.

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