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Little monsters

Every year we get the return of these little monsters….

Stand on one of these and you know it, wow you know it. Try picking one up and it’s like those dreaded Covid vaccine jabs all over again, just this time 50 jabs for the price of one.

And yes, for a month, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. All these have to come down……

The other night I was listening to someone from one of the exam boards on the radio. Not intentionally, I was waiting for my so called football team’s match to start, it was the next programme. Anyways this exam person said something that worried me a lot…..

One of the big complaints about the UK school system is that it is too inflexible, almost like a factory production line. Pushing too many children, regardless of individual need, regardless of if it’s working or not for them, through the same education channels. A one shoe fits all approach. Then the kids get to exams and then often 10 years of schooling comes down to 10 or more written exams, crammed into a couple of weeks. Written exams just don’t suit every child. They often don’t allow the individual child to demonstrate what amazing talents and skills they have. Don’t get good grades in those written exams and you can be way too quickly written off.

Thankfully things started to change a little. More course work counting towards final grades in some exams, allowing scribes and allowing typed answers. Hawklad got a bit more time and was allowed to type his answers, two fingered typing on a school laptop. Surely more flexibility is good for our children, it must be about making schools work for each child.

Back to this exam person on the radio. He was talking about the spread of AI and the problems it’s causing. AI has apparently got so powerful, it is just too professional at writing top answers to whatever you ask it. He was saying that he’s been in meetings nationally were there has been real concern that the treasured school exam integrity is being undermined now. It’s too easy for pupils to use AI to write top mark coursework, producing complete essays in just a few seconds and because AI is developing, it’s way harder for exam boards to pick out those pupils who are ‘cheating the system’ . It is also way harder for exam boards to make sure those pupils sitting exams via a laptop are not also using AI to cheat the system.

So one option being considered is too go back to old school exams. Absolutely no coursework counting to marks, no use of laptops in exams. Pupils sit old school exams using just a pen. That way the exams reputation and integrity is protected……

I never heard him mention the needs of the children once. It was all about the needs of the schools, the exams and the economy. No consideration of if AI could allow for more individuality in schooling, provide more options for teachers to find what works for each child. If they did go back to just old school written exams, it’s going to hurt way too many kids, all to just protect an outdated system. What a huge mistake that would be.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 43 Comments

Night shift

Misjudged a late evening walk. Walking past a graveyard, located down a very deserted country lane, just as the night roles in. Always a bit spooky.

Somethings are always a bit unnerving.

In the UK, having to contact a company called BT, that’s unnerving. BT is a big telecoms company.

BT aptly can also mean Bloody Terrible…..

BT provide our broadband and telephone service. Both have been broken for 6 days now.

Do you remember when you had to queue when ever you went into a branch in person. Then the Call Centre was introduced and you ended up queuing for that, listening to the endlessly awful piped music and recorded message – ‘your call is important to us’.

Then CONTACT US ONLINE was brought in to stop the hours wasted waiting in person and on the phone. With good old BT you now have to queue online to use their online service.

Initially the wait time was 15 minutes, which in normal time was actually over an hour. The ‘less than a minute’ wait time turned out to be another 20 minutes. Deep joy.

Fast forward 6 days and still no telephone or broadband. Back on to BT again for the 6th day running. This time going old school, having to use my mobile to call them. Apparently to the BT person, we weren’t a customer priority as we were just a reduction in service rather than a service down issue. I was keen to understand if we only get two services from BT, and both are 100% not working, why wasn’t that service down. Service reduction sounds like we are still getting some services….

On the call, I think my tone went from friendly, to cordial, to a little gnarly… But nothing over the top, no raised voices, quite calm really. But it was a bit too much for Hawklad. One of the things he’s always struggled with is conflict. It throws him, he gets anxious, completely on edge. I have to be careful and over the years I’ve got better, much calmer, trying to avoid putting him through those emotions. Very few things brake me out of calm mode these days. My Football Team’s inability to pass to a colleague and the name ‘Nigel Farage’ are the only things recently to bring on the red mist. But I can’t micromanage every situation. When he went to school, one of the things that constantly unsettled him was the daily, frequent conflicts. Teachers raising voices, pupil on pupil stuff. He would frequently struggle to differentiate between real conflict, minor disagreements and play acting. I wonder if it’s because he struggles to read social interactions, pick up on tone, body language, taking some dialogue too literally. It could be that he really doesn’t like seeing anyone suffer or be hurt. But it does make the modern world a difficult place for Hawklad to fully integrate in to. We are still trying to figure that one out.

And yep, still no broadband……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 48 Comments

Edinburgh

A blustery old day for an adventure. A four hour car ride heading north, brought us to wonderful Edinburgh.

Eventually we gravitated to Edinburgh Castle.

The Castle has so much history and atmosphere, but the thing that always gets me, is the view.

A view with added Rainbow…

It was busy in the Castle, really busy. Fortunately we bought tickets the night before, as on the day it was completely sold out. This was a challenge for Hawklad. Under the right circumstances he can just about cope with crowds, but this at times felt too uncontrolled, too unpredictable. He feels more comfortable when a crowd is heading mostly in one direction, where he doesn’t have to face too many faces heading towards him. But here people were heading in all directions, way too random for him. It wasn’t just visually, unpredictable sounds, from all directions proved disorientating. He did manage to see a good part of the castle but some places he respectfully declined.

We agreed on a winter trip back here when hopefully the crowds will have thinned a little. That might well be a two woolly jumper trip…..

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We need a bigger bin.

‘We need a bigger bin’ doesn’t seem to have quite the same dramatic ring as ‘we need a bigger boat’ from Jaws….

Houston We have Problem….

In the great scheme of things, it’s not an Apollo Spacecraft is running out of fuel level crisis. It’s not even anywhere near the patio weedkiller isn’t really working with the Red Weed from War of the Worlds emergency.

Ok it’s just a wheelie bin issue…

But a common one round here.

As a cost cutting idea the local Council changed our recycling collections from every 2 to 4 weeks. To be fair they did give us a slightly bigger bin but in the good old days, every two weeks you would just pile up all the cardboard next to the inevitable full recycling bin and it would be collected. Now if it’s not in the bin, it ain’t being collected….

So these days, after about 2 weeks you see local residents employ various strategies to fit more and more into the already packed bin. Some carefully cut up the cardboard into smaller pieces (takes them hours), some madly folding and refolding as if in a crazy origami tournament, others have bonfires, others just start cramming cardboard into the normal refuge bin. I’ve elected for the get the ladders out, step into the full bin and start jumping up and down to compress. I dread to think of the internal pressures being applied to that poor wheelie bin. You never see good old Dr Who having to do that with his Tardis.

Anyways enough of Yorkshire Troubles.

We clearly haven’t had enough Castle trips this summer. Let’s have a look at Warwick Castle, one of Britain’s finest historic sites. Brings back a ton of memories, I went to university many many moons ago at Warwick.

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Castles and more castles

The summer mission to visit castles continues…..

Two Northumberland entries today, the first is Warkworth Castle. A grand old castle dating back from the 11th century. The tropical northern weather and the occasional civil war has taken some toll but it’s still mighty impressive.

The second castle is one of our favourites. Set just a few feet from the North Sea, we have Dunstanburgh Castle. Very much a ruin, but what a location. You walk from a beautiful seaside fishing village of Craster.

Along the coast…

And after a couple of miles to the remote old castle.

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Waterfall

England’s largest waterfall by water volume….

High Force in County Durham. A 70ft waterfall.

Given the lack of rain this summer in the north, still an impressive site. We have been here a number of times over the years but this was definitely the quietest it’s been, normally it’s truly thunderous. Streams feeding into the river are dry.

Most unlike our usual northern weather.

Always a bittersweet feeling for us here. This was the last place we visited as a family of 3 outside of Yorkshire. Over 9 years ago now but on this visit it felt a lot longer to me. At times almost like a different life, different world. As I tried to recall the memories they felt like faded old photos, proving difficult to hold onto, losing their colour. TIME and LIFE I guess inevitably has that effect. Eventually we have to move on.

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Castle Fest

It’s been a bit of a castle fest this summer……

CASTLES seems to feel like one of the few things that the UK can still do well.

But then again I’m not sure how many castles here, especially in the north, come with wine vineyards. This beautiful castle in Switzerland does.

Spiez Schloss.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 36 Comments

Potter

Off we headed north to beautiful Northumberland. On this trip we were visiting a wonderfully well preserved castle.

Alnwick.

I first came here when I was at Uni, many many moons ago. It was the first time I had seen a castle that wasn’t in ruins. One you could actually walk inside, through all the rooms. It had paintings, sculptures, carpets, glass in the windows, complete ceilings. A fabulous library. It was lived in. That’s how the aristocracy lived….

Now walking around Alnwick Castle in 2025, it’s still beautifully maintained but now there is an added dimension.

Countless kids and yes some adults dressed up as wizards…

Never seen so many Harry’s and Hermione’s.

This castle is now almost more famous for being used as a film location for the first two Harry Potter movies. The first flying lesson, the early Quidditch training, Harry and Ron crashing the flying car will all filmed here.

On our trip there was no car flying but two wizard tutors were gamely trying to teach as many as possible how to fly a broomstick. As we walked past a line of broomsticks we were asked if we wanted a flying lesson. Hawklad ran off and I politely pointed out that my huge backside would need a jumbo jet sized broom, not one of those titchy things.

Later I realised maybe they had thought I was in character, looking like Hagrid who had really let himself go…..

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 32 Comments

Time

Someone asked why do we go to so many concerts…

The obvious answer is that we both like music. I seem to have inflicted my musical tastes on Hawklad so it’s also easy to agree on which bands to see.

Maybe part of it is also to try and create as many memories as possible. It’s not always easy for Hawklad to feel relatively as ease in the wider world. But we have found a way to make concerts work for him. They are definitely something we can plan and do, minimising some of the risk factors for him. Concerts in that sense are easier to setup, much less problematic, more controllable than say going on holiday. Since our world changed we have been able to make happen quite a lot of concerts without encountering too many things going wrong. Over those nine plus years we haven’t managed yet to go on holiday. Still just feels a step too far for him yet. You can’t micromanage every factor that could happen, but at least with concerts there is a level of predictability that makes them safer bets for Hawkkad.

But we are still trying to find a way to make a holiday happen.

So we found ourselves at the new state of the art arena in Manchester, to see ELO on their last tour. This time life’s unpredictability happened to the band. Poor Jeff Lynne broke his hand in a taxi accident just before the short final tour started. He was also struggling with a systemic infection which was getting worse. The concert was really good but you could see Jeff was starting to struggle. He managed to finish the set but needed to sit for the final few songs and was quickly helped off stage at the end. Subsequently he had to cancel the final two concerts so currently we saw the last ELO concert. Maybe they can still do something down the road when he is properly healed.

Driving back from the concert I realised just how many of the bands I grew up with, bands I love and now Hawklad loves, are getting older. Time is moving on. More and more we are seeing bands on their last Tours. Some stars are sadly passing on. Hawklad never got to see Ozzy, we tried twice but the concerts were cancelled on health grounds. Wasn’t to be. I saw him once in the eighties, never imagining that would be the only time.

Time moves on….

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Summer Mist

Summer Mist is usually a bit of a rarity here.

Sat in the waiting room at the local Vets, waiting for the Nurse to do her stuff. Sometimes a Dog’s Life doesn’t sound too appealing. Nor does the Veterinary Nurse’s Life…. The Nurse was going to really earn her money by emptying the MadDog’s Anal Glands.

The Pet Owner can do this at home… I think NOT….

As I arrived I was handed a number of information leaflets to take home with me. Covering things like Tick Prevention, Pet Insurance and Dog Walking Services. About nine years ago I was also getting handed leaflets. Everywhere I went, everything I did, I seemed to come away with even more leaflets. Banks were the worst for this. How to deal with Grief, the help available to the Bereaved and lists of what to do next. My pockets were stuffed with them. For me, it was just too much. Overload. I couldn’t focus on anything, reading words would have just gone over my head. I can’t remember what I did with all those leaflets, hardly any got looked at in the end. All I wanted was for someone to quietly and quickly just do what was needed to be done, so I could get out of wherever I was, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Just like what the Mad Dog must have been thinking when he was with the Nurse.

After the ordeal, the Nurse offered the Mad One a small Dog Treat. Sorry if that was me, I would want so much more after that torture. At the very least, a free call to my Lawyer.