takhana

I was in senior school in the late 00s and I remember Tesco meal deals being £2.50 - I used to get a triple chicken Caesar wrap, a bottle of coke and a sharing pack of Discos. Bus tickets used to have McChicken sandwich deals on for £1 when you bought a return (£2). So I could go meet my mates in town, have a good day wandering the shops, have lunch and then call my parents for 50p from a pay phone to pick me up all for under £5. (Probably more early to mid 00s).

Journaling/memory keeping. I have photo albums, scrap books, even a 5 year diary (which I am woefully behind on atm) and keep a weekly journal too.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been drunk in a smoking area of a club and some chap has come up to you, stroked your scars and said “please stop doing that 🥹” Fucking wanted the ground to swallow me up there and then. Mortifying.

8 months pregnant so I think the protocol is just death tbh

I'm sure I've been told in the past that English is not a phonetic language, like Irish Gaelic and Welsh are. Or at least not in the same way. We have so many loan and borrowed words from all over the place I can't see how it is.

I consider myself pretty good at English language and I have cold sweats thinking about how I’m going to approach phonics with my toddler when he gets to that stage. Just makes no sense to me as I was an early reader who learnt to sight read by repetition rather than teaching.

Unfortunately I see this a lot at work (I work with older adults in hospital). The short answer is like you said - you can’t force him. Often it’s a coping mechanism for the loss of their long term partner. It’s not laziness or can’t be arsed but it’s not as easily sorted as just demanding it happens. Is he having any support for that? I’m sorry for the loss of your mum x Is the house habitable? Social services won’t really get involved in forcing the issue if it is. However maybe it’s worth taking him somewhere for a coffee and saying you’re happy to fund it, it’s not a burden and you want him to live a happy life doing things he wants not worrying about the state of the house.

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t mind the idea of using a babysitter, but paying £12.50 per hour on top of what ever activity we’re off to do is what stops us. We now live close enough to family that we don’t need to use one really but when we didn’t we considered it a few times but never pulled the trigger because it was the cost of a meal out and then £50 or more.

Mine stared me straight in the eye the other day at the dinner table and said “no mummy, you don’t talk with your mouth full” (whilst he had food in his mouth)

Well I mean context might be the key here. On some of our local courses I don’t ever see the front runners but on others I could be lapped twice if I’m slow enough. If you’re doing 35 minutes you’re not slow really, that’s slightly below average for one of our bigger local ones. The best parkruns I’ve been to have had self seeded starts and say if you think you’ll roughly do sub 20 start at the front, sub 25 behind them, sub 30 behind them and 35+ behind them with walkers at the back.

As a long time runner my absolute guilty pleasure is watching vlogs of stupid twats who think because they’re skinny and can do a few push ups they can run a marathon without training.

Trouble is I think if you’re a pretty decent climber and have the time and stamina to do a good couple of hours on the wall, it’s not too bad - but if you’re a beginner and your hands are shredded in 20 minutes and you can’t grip any more then it’s very steep!

That must be nice. \*cries in NHS\*

If I had a lot of money, the Lakes I think. The idea of having all that on my doorstep… the fell running, the rural places, the countryside. In my head I’d be able to afford somewhere secluded enough not to be totally affected by tourism. If I had the same money I have now, I’d probably try North Yorkshire. Good sized houses for far less than the South, not far from the coast, friendly people, still good countryside.

I’ve asked a few times. Once when it was 20% because we were a table of 5, but the food was awful and they took nearly 40 minutes to take our order in a near empty restaurant and another 35 to deliver any food. Another couple of times when food has come out wrong and it’s not been rectified or customer service has been appallingly bad.

Christ it’s got expensive hasn’t it? Me and OH used to go before we had kids, 2021 kinda time. Paid £8 a session but could stay as long as we wanted and it included shoe hire (was £6.50 without I think). The same place is now £13 a session without shoe hire. Insane cost.

It can be but in some of the more northern villages it’s quite reasonable. Tewkesbury is fairly affordable as long as you check the flood map carefully!

Family grew up there and I know it fairly well, the bad bits are quite large for a town that size.

Ehh, we’re on a combined of £95k and in Bucks, it’s doable in the right area and as long as you’re not expecting a giant house with land. I know plenty of people on less (and I grew up here so I know the area well!). Oxfordshire I know less well but have relatives in some of the more rural parts and they’re certainly not on over 100k combined salary! Just avoid Banbury and you’ll be fine. Going somewhere a bit further out like Cheltenham (the villages around it before you get to the Cotswolds can be reasonable) or even south Birmingham way is a good way of getting more bang for your buck whilst still being in that middle England area.

Is my wage the same on the year off as it is when I’m working and my overheads are the same? Cos realistically you can have all the grand ideas in the world but if you’re not earning more and you’re not “occupied” by work 40 hours a week you’re going to be spending a lot of money you probably don’t have. I’d love to spend a year getting my drawing and art better so I could finally set up the business I want but it’d be tricky alongside not spending all my pay cheque in one day.

“Your monkeys, your circus!” - made me chuckle and reminded me I had indeed volunteered for that shit show 😂

Ahh, we’ve all been there. Toddlers make you say the most ridiculous shit. Tonight we had to convince mine that the milk in his cup was exactly the same as the milk in the cup he slightly prefers. It was a full scale meltdown.

You know what, I’m not sure. I have seen some of our other neighbours park on their grass bit though. I suppose anything’s a driveway if you want it to be!

Ours has a covenant that all driveways must be 50% paved and 50% grass. The estate was built in the 80s and the two (lovely, I must add, so not a moan) couples who’ve lived on our road since it was built are the only two houses that both have completely paved driveways 😂

There’s a huge one in Tewkesbury - https://www.tewkesburymedievalfestival.co.uk/

My toddler (3) is aware of coins/cash money from our arcade habit at Butlins 🫠 I’m not proud of it but equally I am secure in knowing he wont be in this situation!

Very few people who are plastering it all over social media.

To add to this - 90% of people boasting about shit they’ve got on SM are putting it on credit cards or Klarna and have huge debts that they can’t pay off.

Yep. Same. Thanks for the extra info on the act!

That doesn't worry as much as kids being abused or in servitude because their parents can get away with it.

I feel for you. I get a lot of FYP tiktoks from the homeschool ilk... not sure why, I'm not arrogant enough to think I could teach my child better than any actually trained teacher could... but the vitriol a lot of them have about social services and the new proposed (?) checks that are coming in is enough to tell me that the vast majority of people who homeschool really shouldn't.

One of the first things my (not-English, important I guess because she's from a country where it's normal still for women to give up work completely after childbirth and not return until the kids are teenagers) Aunt said once I had my first was "don't believe them when they say you can do it all, because you can't." It's true. We cannot have a full time job (37.5 hours a week and commuting time) as well as take the kids to and from school, as well as be there for them after school and at weekends, as well as look after a home, as well as look after *ourselves*, as well as take part in hobbies and meet friends and enjoy life in the same way as someone who doesn't have children (for whatever reason, whether chosen or not). As women now we're told that when you're of childbearing age you must decide to have kids and then you must do the absolute most alongside it. Women are often - not always - the default parent, rather than the higher earner. FWIW, my view on work completely shifted 180 when I had my first. I worked hard for my career, got a Masters to go into it, and for the first 6 years threw myself at it often working 2 - 5 hours extra a week. I used to feel guilty for taking annual leave (made worse by working in a time sensitive healthcare position) and stress about being off. Since having him I no longer work extra hours (rare exceptions to the rules being if I am literally unable to leave for safety reasons, because... healthcare). If I can't come in because he's unwell, I let them know and then think nothing more of it. My annual leave is carefully planned around us as a family with a couple of days reserved here and there for some me time. I no longer truly care what job I do - and quite frankly when I've had my second (due in July) the bar for me walking away from healthcare is going to be so low. I'll pick up a casual bar job or something for a few years so I can take them to school and pick them up and have some time to sort out the house in between, not worry about covering myself for school holidays or sickness. It really does shift your mindset.

Not trying to find snarky but what did you do to find books before social media existed? I used to spend hours browsing the local library and WHsmiths on a Saturday looking for my next read. And if it wasn’t a good one then meh, no big deal. I think we put so much pressure on ourselves now to always be enjoying things and forget that sometimes the pleasure only comes if you have some discomfort first. Classics are always a good place to start though, they’re classics for a reason!

We did similar, I’d send him rings I liked and he’d ask if I liked stuff when we were walking around town. I knew what style I wanted (Georgian, gold, interesting setting not something “normal”) and am quite particular about jewellery so we somewhat worked together on it He absolutely smashed it out of the park with my ring which I adore so it worked.

I think my parents protected us from Dunblane a bit (I was 6 and my sister was 8) but I remember Princess Diana dying the year after incredibly vividly.

This absolutely terrified me as a kid.

I'm a 90s baby (11 when 9/11 happened) so I'm not sure if I'm misremembering this but weren't the IRA quite actively bombing English sites in the 90s? Also Dunblane, Princess Diana's death, the MMR scandal, Harold Shipman... I'm being a bit contrite but I dunno if now we just have access to so much information from everywhere it's hard to remember that shit people and shit things have always been happening.

Challenge them. It legally has to be things they will use and that are detrimental to not give them or something. Several people have managed to get it back and the charges changed at their nurseries.

I mean I dunno if the advancements in childcare are a huge step forward. Making it so that people have to pay a huge amount of money every month (before the recent government funding changes) to the point where lots of people are working only to put their kids in childcare seems a bit backward to me. In the 90s and 00s you could leave your kids with a trusted friend after school until you got home and do the same for them on a mutual arrangement. Now it’s all paid for and it’s all incredibly expensive.

Straight off the bat I'll admit here I am not a dog person and will never own a dog myself, but I do wonder if this is quite a recent change? I can't remember many people I grew up with (in the 90s) who had dogs having parents who were able to let them out at lunch or mentioning a dog walker during the day. Certainly the people who owned dogs on our street when I was a kid walked them in the morning and then in the evening but it would have been very unusual to see a dog walking van turn up on the street (during holidays for example). Or perhaps it's similar to childcare now vs the 90s - 30 years ago a lot if not most households had one parent working shorter hours around childcare or not at all as options were so much more limited then. It's an interesting thing to think about!

A mini chopper like this - https://share.google/Gb1guve9rqauT8fYN Got it from the middle aisle of Lidl a few months ago. OH scorned me. We use it almost daily to chop onions, garlic and anything that needs to be very finely chopped (like mushrooms if we were making mushroom meatballs). It’s hand operated with a pull cord to turn the blades and you can control how small the pieces go.

I work with social workers fairly regularly. In a decade, I have yet to meet one who did anything useful or that I couldn’t have done quicker myself.

No he loves them! Which is why I don’t really get it. I’ll work on it. 😂

Gosh, you’re a pessimist aren’t you! Cheer up, life isn’t that bad.

Yeah this is what I said to him yesterday - we’re definitely in the blink and you’ll miss it age so why not spend the money. It’s not something we could buy 20 times over but we could definitely ‘safely’ to afford 3 as a one off for the whole year but he’s more reluctant.

He knows he’s more useful to me married than not ;)

Well this is what he said. But ultimately that’ll end up in him sitting inside playing on his computer whilst we go and have fun, and if I’m going to solo parent I’d rather we just divorce and he pays me the child support 🤷‍♀️ JK, he’s a wonderful dad and does a huge amount with our little one, but has a tendency to want to slob around doing very little most weekends as he was bought up in a family where days out where very rare and for special occasions.

This is what I said to my husband, we could pop in and out when we wanted. His argument is we don’t have enough free time to use it. 🙄

Trying to convince my husband to get us annual passes. We’ve got a 2.5 year old and I’m convinced it’s a great deal but he says not.

Thanks, we will head in early!