Tag Archives: Northampton

October 24, 2011 · 8:41 am

Limit school trips to one a year to stave off bankruptcy

BIG lump in my throat last Monday, as our Dougie left for a school trip to an activity centre somewhere near Swindon.

It was a week away where he was doing abseiling, assault courses, aeroball, archery, canoeing, climbing, fencing, orienteering, raft building, zip wires and general 12-year-old boy stuff.

Meanwhile, I was fretting, quietly, to myself. (Because no one else would listen).

After 14 years being a parent, I shouldn’t be fazed by trips. After all, our elder two have both enjoyed the famous ‘first nights away’ trip to Everdon and the PGL centre at Osmington Bay, Dorset, and braved the windy wilds of both Overstone and Hollowell Cub camps.

But as well as the (concealed) separation anxiety, there’s the cost.

We have to have a rule in our house about school trips: they chose no more than one a year and pay half themselves.

It might sound hard, but we have four children and not a huge income. The kids do have to really decide how much they want to go on a particular trip.

It makes them appreciate how far money has to stretch, although it does you feel cruddy when their wealthier friends are going on several trips a year.

This is nothing new. Back in the health & safety-free 1970s and 80s, neither Bloke or I went on many school trips.

There were always those who seemed to go on cruises and ski-trips regardless of their family’s financial background, while my most exotic destinations were to Butlins in Minehead and a one-night stay in London. I try hard not to repeat that parent mantra “you’ll appreciate it more when you’re older” because as a teen who didn’t get to go, it drove me potty.

Our boys’ school has already organised 2011 trips to Tunisia, Sicily, Turkey, Cornwall and the USA.

We parents were informed about Dougie’s PGL trip way more than a year ago in their first term at secondary school. Not only were we given a huge amount of notice, but also a good number of months over which to pay for it.

The total cost for the week was £300, with instalments due in March, May and July, giving us time to save up.

Meanwhile, the same school didn’t give anything like as much time for a planned trip to China. Yes, China.

Poor Jed, aged 14, came home recently raving about the chance to go on an eight-day tour in February.

The cost? £1,225. First payment of £200 immediately, with the rest in sizable chunks each month until Christmas. There’s no way we could find that kind of cash that quickly.

We had heard about the epic Northampton School for Boys China trip, but hadn’t anticipated it becoming an issue until Year 11 or sixth form. Turns out the school takes them from age 14-18.

Jed begged and pleaded, saying his friends were going, but we simply had to say no.

If he, and we, can save, it’s something he can do in a couple of years. A great opportunity, but not just yet.

So as we packed Dougie off on his UK-based adventure, my fretting started. Would he listen to instructions and not fall off the abseil tower? Would he resist peer pressure? Remember not wear the same pants every day?

Don’t tell him, but I was delighted to get him back on Friday. Even though he did bring back a suitcase full of soaked and stinking clothes because he’s fallen in the river while canoeing. . .

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October 18, 2011 · 8:49 am

After babyhood, prepare yourself for the shock and awe of the teenage years

PLENTY of people warn you about the impact a newborn baby will have on your life, but there’s a second phase of shock and awe to come which is less discussed.

When it comes to coping with teens, the conversation just becomes clichéd.

It’s true that they do, literally overnight, lose the ability to speak without mumbling and leave clothes and towels all over the floor. They do get spots and fill the house with a gagging fog of Lynx body spray (I’m sure if you have daughters it’s something like Impulse).

But who ever tells you how you’ll feel when they’re suddenly as tall as you, or have bigger feet than you?

Or when they start having friends whose Mums you don’t know from the school gates?

Or going to parties that don’t involve a bouncy castle injury and a piece of squashed birthday cake?

In a weird way, watching them grow up gives you delight and sadness.

Somehow the years between the ages of about two and 11 seem strangely simple, if a little manic. Even when I had four of them aged ten and under.

You know – most of the time – where they are, who they’re with, and what they’re up to.

Then suddenly, you don’t.

It’s easy, well, easy-ish, to allow them some independence. That mobile phone you finally relented on when they started secondary school, that might make you feel better because you would always know where they were?

Well, now it’s not only the ever extending leash, it’s the source of all the stuff you don’t know about. The Twitter feed, the faceless friends, the Facebook events, and freedom from family.

I can’t pretend I’m not jittery about seeing my elder boys grow up, grow away. And while I try to be cool, try not to hover, Bloke tells me I need to resist the urge to stop them making their own mistakes. I need to stop throwing up the metaphorical bumpers at the bowling alley.

I can’t help it, I still see my 14-year-old as that wide-eyed smiley baby who wouldn’t sit still for a moment.

Anyway, to revert to the clichés, I can still enjoy being an embarrassing mother. Apparently they are mortified when I get cross in shops, or try to hug them in public. Emptying their three-year-old sister Bonnie’s potty by the kerb when she’s caught short in the car is one of my specialities (needs-must), as well as wolf-whistling loudly in public spaces to get their attention. Strangely, they aren’t particularly bothered about the fact I write about them in these columns.

Slightly bruised by their casual list of my misdemeanours, I ask, “What about Dad, doesn’t he ever embarrass you?”

“Nah, Dad’s pretty cool.”

I give up.

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October 17, 2011 · 8:44 am

Homework ‘help’ is a battle of wills

HOMEWORK is a perennial problem in our house. Only a few weeks into term and they’ve all got their issues.

The elder two have to be threatened with a full-scale schoolbag search every other day in order to get them motivated, but eventually get on with it and get detentions when they don’t.

Meanwhile eight-year old Billy is fretting about getting more homework than he’s ever had to cope with before.

Previously his homework involved times tables, spellings and reading. Now it’s also ‘proper’ homework, worksheets and deadlines, for literacy and numeracy (that’s English and Maths to you and me).

And like his brothers, he’s finding brainwork clashes with his sport and social life. We have to sit him down and stop him getting distracted. (And getting distracted is his Special Skill). He’s not helped by the ‘help’ he gets from me either, as they seem to do sums in a far more complicated way than I ever remember and he ends up teaching me.

There is one person in the house who is delighted to hear the familiar cry of “do your homework.”

Bonnie drops everything and scurries off to collect paper and her crayon box and sits opposite Billy at the kitchen table, talking aloud about the flower that needs to be drawn.

She goes out of her way to distract Billy as much as she possibly can before having to be bribed away with promises of uninterrupted Cbeebies.

Someone needs to remind her about this early enthusiasm in a few years’ time, when she has to do homework for real.

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October 14, 2011 · 11:35 am

Want to play Fifa 12 on a cinema screen?

JUST a week to go before half-term and there’s a really good line up of events planned by the ‘new’ Northampton Leisure Trust.

This is the band of merry sports and playleaders formerly run by the Borough Council via Lings, Danes Camp, Mounts Baths and the Forum Cinema.

Now the whole she-bang has come together as a charity, and is offering events like tropical animal encounters, dodgeball, rock climbing, roller-discos and even the chance to play the new Fifa 12 computer game on the giant Forum Cinema screen!

To find out the full schedule you can download the half-term brochure via northampton.gov.uk, email jlocke@northampton.gov.uk or see the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/sportsandplay

 

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October 8, 2011 · 8:15 am

Meet Jemima, the latest addition to an already overcrowded house

Billy and Jemima

MEET Jemima, the latest addition to the household.

Yes, yes, I know I was avoiding getting a pet as we can barely keep up with the four little monkeys for whom we’re already responsible.

But I was sucker for those big eyes, that doleful expression . . . not from the hamster, from Billy.

So for his 8th birthday, we surprised him with Jemima, a Syrian hamster.

Actually, it wasn’t even his birthday yet. I collected her the day before, and I had three-year-old Bonnie with me.

There was no way we were going to be able to keep a secret for 24 hours, even though she and I had several chats about what a secret was.

“I know secrets,” she said, slightly put-out that I would think otherwise. “Peppa Pig has a secret box and then George cries and then they have a secret club with Susie Sheep but Mummy Pig gets it wrong.”

To tell her NOT to talk about it when we picked up the boys from school was a big ask.

The older two, who were in on the secret, managed to talk loudly over Bonnie in the car when it seemed she was about to blab.

We realised there was no way Jemima was going to stay in our room overnight without Bonnie exploding with excitement, so we brought her cage into the boys’ room early. Billy was delighted.

We had a hamster before, when Jed and Doug were little, and to be frank, it wasn’t a happy arrangement. They were probably too young.

Doug had been nipped on the finger early on and had refused to have anything to do with the (oddly-named) Outfit from that point. Jed was sporadically interested but all the mucking out and feeding fell inevitably to me. When Bloke bought a more interesting cage with tunnels and pipes, Outfit stubbornly set up camp in one corner and refused to move.

Jemima is a whole different hamster. She was her pet shop’s ‘handling hamster’ during children’s clubs and so doesn’t mind being picked up and held.

She gets excited and swings from paw to paw along the roof of her cage when Billy gets up in the morning and comes home from school.

She takes to her exercise ball like an Olympic athlete in a Zorbing ball, shooting across the room bashing into the piles of discarded clothes and general rubbish scattered around the boys’ room. She doesn’t even wake them up when spinning in her cage wheel at night.

Sometimes, when I’m popping in to pick up the aforementioned laundry, she comes to see who’s there. I find myself mesmerised as she scurries around her cage, swinging and climbing, stashing food in her cheeks for later.

Both the older boys enjoy her company, putting her in her ball when they are meant to be doing homework. And as for Bonnie, she has introduced yet more conditions into her daily routine, including saying Good Morning and Goodnight to the hamster that so far hasn’t bitten her.

Of course, within the first few hours she’d had a nibble on both Dougie and Billy’s fingers. It was just after reminded them that fingers must never be poked into the cage as Jemima will think it’s a carrot. They learned their lesson, and thankfully we’ve had no nipping since.

In short, we’ve been very lucky to get such a lovely hamster. Only thing is, because she was adopted, we haven’t a clue how old she is. They live around three years, and we’re hoping she’s not actually an unusually active granny hamster otherwise we’ll soon have a houseful of heartbreak on our hands.

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October 7, 2011 · 8:38 am

Watch for spots of chickenpox

POOR little Bonnie. What a week she had. In her own words, she’s been chicky-poppy.

Yes, the youngest member of the family has finally caught chickenpox, about three weeks after a bout of it started going around her nursery.

It seems the entire town has been going down with it. It sounds terrible, but I’d been willing for her to get it sooner rather than later.

Not only are the symptoms much worse and prone to complications the older you get it, but I was also due back at work. As any parent will tell you, it’s on the day you’re about to move house, be at an unavoidable event or the first day in a new job that your offspring get poorly. Chickenpox is the confirmed long-haul childhood bug – a week at home, at least.

Bless her, we should have twigged that last Monday would be the start, when she was grumpily uncooperative at breakfast. She brightened up as soon as she saw her friends at nursery but by the time I collected her she’d developed three or four spots which the staff had recognised as varicella – chickenpox to you and me.

Some countries actually include chickenpox vaccine in their childhood inoculation programme, but in the UK they consider it a mild illness and most people have had it by the age of ten.

It’s thought that once you’ve had it, you’re immune, but there are plenty of people who’ll say they’ve had it twice. It’s best for pregnant women, new-born babies and those with low immunity conditions to avoid being around chickenpox due to possible complications.

Despite having been through it three times before with the boys, I couldn’t remember exactly what happened next. Do they get tired and go to bed? Feverish? How long do the spots last? Well, fresh from the battlefield, I’ll tell ya.

First the spots are red, then they blister (DON’T pop them, they’ll spread and leave white scars). Then they go cloudy and dry up with crusts (NO picking). Most of the spots appear on the face neck, around the hairline and on the torso, but you can get them everywhere.

Some children get very miserable with a fever, sickness and the spots can get very sore and infected. And the most contagious period appears to be before they even have any spots. Bonnie seemed completely well and was bounding around after the first 24 hours.

However, the spots kept coming. . .

bribery

Monday – She went to bed after a spoon of Medised with fewer than ten spots, and woke up with dozens.

Tuesday – I carefully gave her a bath and tried to get every spot covered with a splodge of calamine lotion. She looked in the mirror and said: “I is a ghost!”

Wednesday – spots were appearing in her hair, her ears and even on her gums and an eyelid, poor girl. I gave her some children’s allergy syrup (chemist’s own-brand Piriton) to reduce the irritation. We were both getting fed up of Peppa Pig repeats on TV. She was bored at home and desperate for the spots to go. So bored, that at one point when our backs were turned, she sneaked into our room and painted her face – and our bedsheets – with purple glittery cream eyeshadow and black mascara. Argh!

Thursday – I had an excruciating hour in the dentist’s chair booked, so Bloke took over the morning pox-sitting duties. I understand there was a lot of bribery involved during my absence.

By Friday she was totally crusty, and theoretically no longer infectious, so didn’t miss out on Billy’s eighth birthday party on Saturday. She wasn’t even scratching too much.

Then on Sunday afternoon, inexplicably, unexpectedly, somehow she managed to poke herself in the eye with toy plastic sunglasses. She spent the entire night waking and wailing as her tears made the swollen eye even more sore.

Even as I’m writing we’ve been trying to persuade her – while she’s in screaming banshee mode – to take some Calpol and try a cold compress on it. She’s now tucked up, finally asleep, sprawled across our bed. It’s going to be a long night . . .

. . .UPDATE. . .

Back to school after a week off, and she still has slight fading marks after 14 days. . .

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October 6, 2011 · 9:29 pm

Dangerous streetlight switch-off may signal end of paper-round

OUR eldest, who turned 14 this week, started a paper round at the beginning of the summer. A paper round he may have to take early retirement from thanks to the council street-light-switch-off.

As his pocket money comes in the form of a £10 a month phone top-up, he was always moaning about lack of cash.

The Thursday paper round pays pitifully little for around 150 papers, but at least it’s regular cash in his bank account, independence and responsibility.

We’ve had a few lively discussions about it, as he’s already bored with the routine of dragging his heavy trolley around the streets on a night he could be playing yet more rugby.

And his plan to get at least one brother to help in return for him taking on their chores is proving unreliable.

However, since Northampton’s street lights have been turned off, we’re wondering if it’ll be us who call a halt to his employment.

Last week, despite the glorious weather, he had to come home early without delivering his full round, as it just got too dark to see. He ended up doing the rest the following day, on his birthday.

In our street, a town centre location, they haven’t turned off, say, one light in two on each side of the road, but turned off the entire right side of the street. The light from the two remaining on the left is too distant to be of help.

I’ve listened to the arguments about street lights. I don’t object to some going off as long as it’s not affecting residents. Or even all of them in the early hours or moonlit nights!

But when the clocks haven’t even gone back yet and you can’t see where your car is in the street, or where someone’s front gate is, isn’t that just asking for trouble?

I’m even thinking about investing in headtorches for the school runs once winter arrives. It’s a ridiculous situation. Especially when empty council-run buildings stay lit-up at night like ruddy beacons.

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September 30, 2011 · 8:27 am

Get ready to apply for school places for September 2012

BONNIE wants to go to school. She’s only been in nursery part time for a year but has now decided the time has come to move onwards and upwards.

She can’t quite get her head around the fact she’s not old enough yet.

After all, some of her mates from nursery have donned their smart jumpers and headed off into the big wide world. So why hasn’t she?

We’re telling her gently that she’s not old enough yet, and that after the next summer holidays it will be time for school.

Yet at the same time we’re getting letters about applying for her place right now. Scary huh?

The applications process starts almost 12months in advance, with primary school preferences to be in by noon on January 16, 2012, and the even more imminent and controversial secondary places in by 5pm on October 31 this year.

If your child is turning 4 between September 1, 2011 and August 31, 2012, then you’ll need to fill in primary forms, by post or online.

If your child is in year 6 and turns 11 between the same dates, the you’ll be applying for secondary school about now.

I’ve done this process several times over now, including an appeal, and it doesn’t get less stressful. You just have to hope for the best.

Admittedly we’re now in the enviable situation of having ‘sibling link,’ or a brother or sister already in the schools we prefer, but I certainly wouldn’t assume that’s a free pass. In fact I know it isn’t. Every year we hear the stories of children ‘failing’ (inappropriate word, I know), to get into a school their sibling already attends, or twins being sent to different places.

The idea of parental ‘choice’ about school allocation has screwed up the whole system. It’s led to inequality and over-subscription, messed up the norms of catchment and community and in some cases caused irreparable damage to families.

The stark fact is, unless you have the cash to send them private, you have no choice. You can express a preference, but ultimately, it may be useless.

We’re a perfect bad example. Our sons all went to a primary school that wasn’t our nearest. Due to a complicated story involving us getting jobs in Northampton 13 years ago when we still lived in Bedford, our boys ended up at the school where they’d been to nursery.

Back then there were spaces. Now the same school is oversubscribed, and we’re living on the opposite side of town. Meanwhile, I know nothing about the school nearest to us, which is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

Do we move Billy out of the school he’ll have attended for five years, away from his friends, the teachers he knows and the excellent after-school club? Do we take Bonnie away from her nursery pals?

So, get ready to visit the school open days, weigh up the pros and cons and fill in those forms. Then endure the agonising four months waiting for the decision.

The biggest test you’ll face is staying positive, keeping your anxious anticipation to yourself.

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September 29, 2011 · 2:25 pm

A little late, but I’ve never been good with figures: Numberjacks review, Royal & Derngate, Northampton

IF you’ve seen the Numberjacks TV programme on Cbeebies, you’ll already know it’s more odd than even.

What with computer generated talking numbers alongside human baddies, including a creepy bloke in a white top hat and frockcoat called the Numbertaker, yes, very odd indeed.

So imagine this transferred to a live stage show at Northampton’s vast 1,400 seater theatre – with fewer than 50 in the audience.

If you were going expecting a ‘like the TV show’ experience you’d have been disappointed, as well as £10+ per ticket poorer.

The only ‘real’ Numberjacks appeared on a giant TV screen well into the show. Numbers 1 and 4 staggered about as tatty foam shapes with legs, and watching a human ‘Number 3’ emerge from her parked foam ‘body’ was surreal, too much like that scene from ‘V’ and altogether a little disturbing. Almost as disturbing as the actress’s high-pitched shrieking.

The two main characters, a cleaner called Jamie (think CBBC’s Barney’s scruffier cousin) and waitress Astra (a younger, brunette version of Amanda Holden) managed to somehow string out a plot and interact panto-like with the audience.

For all its weirdness, Bonnie, who loves the TV show, and her fellow pre-schoolers were gripped throughout. Bonnie sat on my knee whenever the Numbertaker came on stage and has been talking about him as some kind of generic bogeyman everytime she wants to get out of doing something ever since: “I can’t, the Numbertaker will get me” kind of thing.

I don’t think it’s Royal & Derngate’s fault, but the production people of this touring show need to have a good long think about whether this should have been booked for such a huge space.

If they’d sold tickets at say, £3 a head to local nurseries and reception classes, and filled the Royal stalls, I think they’d have a larger number of children enjoying a theatre trip and a better atmosphere in which to show that both theatre, and  numbers, can be fun. If a little weird. . .

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September 29, 2011 · 2:07 pm

Primary school parking police need to be checking for more than just a week

I SEE the police are being called in to target one school a week to ‘crack down on’ dangerous and inconsiderate parking by parents.

Primary schools attract spectacular examples of bad driving each morning, from blocking driveways and parking on corners to running red lights and dangerous speeding.

While the secondary schools have their issues, it tends to be over faster, as you aren’t expected to deliver them to their classroom door. (There have been mornings I’d have been happy to open the car door and just tip my uncooperative teens into the road.)

But unless the police patrol all year, rather than one week, things won’t change much in the long term.

Stupid lazy parking does have consequences. At a Northampton rugby club recently, one lad was seriously injured and an ambulance was called.

Despite many previous pleas and warnings, someone had parked their car blocking an area reserved for emergency access. The ambulance had to reverse and detour across fields, which caused a delay getting to an already distressed child.

You might think ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ but that could literally be a matter of life or death for someone else. So don’t do it.

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