Tiger Feet

…for the first time in aaaaaaaaaaaages… so we went out for a splash in the puddles.

Our fourth trip to the eye clinic today.  Little’un’s eyesight is still improving and we are refining the patching method so as to encourage further improvement.  Intead of doing fairly benign tasks such as eating lunch or watching the telly whilst wearing her patch, Little’un must now use her close vision more and do tasks such as colouring, jigsaws or bead threading with the patch on.   It’s going to be tricky to get her to concentrate on those sorts of tasks for the required time (2-3 hours a day) but the end result is worth it so we will persevere. 

A nice picture to share with the family, my daughter and my Mum 
 

We went to southern Spain for our holiday this year - I have been at pains to make sure that everyone knew we weren’t going on a McHoliday to Blackpool-in-the-Sun but once we got there we realised that whilst there aren’t a vast number of British holidaymakers on the Costa Calida there are plenty of expats.  There were a couple of English radio stations and plenty of English speakers in the shops; handy really given that the Yorkshireman speaks but a few words of Spanish and that is still a few words more than I do.

I felt a bit outside my comfort zone being in a country in which I couldn’t understand the language at all - our last few trips abroad have been to the French speaking region of Switzerland (waves to GGM) and I speak French well enough that once it’s combined with a bit of international hand waving and facial expression wrangling (yes I do look like a loon), I can more often than not make myself understood.  Being able to understand the basics of a language makes life so much easier I find.

We didn’t do much whilst we were away; the weather was glorious so we indulged in lots of beach time and relaxing on the roof terrace of our holiday let.  We did a bit of sightseeing but Little’un would quickly get bored so chilling out by the sea suited us all.

Murcia, whilst beautiful in places, isn’t the prettiest part of Spain and the some urban areas looked badly cared for in the extreme.  There is a massive problem with litter and graffiti in  a lot of places.  That said, the beaches were all pristine and had great facilities with the bigger ones having public toilets and play areas for kids.  The beach where we stayed at La Azohia was fabulous - small but sandy with interesting shells, pebbles and rock pools and a gentle slope out to a crystal clear sea.   A couple of cafes nearby meant that there was somewhere to buy a drink and an ice-cream and to get out of the sun for a while.  We went a bit further afield and tried other beaches but came back to this one every time.

We took the nursery Holiday Bear with us and somehow managed to get it back to the UK intact and unlost.  I spent more time worrying about its whereabouts and safety than I really wanted to but hey-ho, we will be doing a wonderful writeup for it and Little’un will be able to show off a bit to her friends so I suppose it was worth it!

I certainly hope to return to the Costa Calida at some point, especially the little beach at La Azohia.  I think I may learn some Spanish first though.

Take a look at this footbridge.  It’s not a particularly pretty footbridge, granted, but it’s a footbridge of which I am most fond.  This is the footbridge that connects us to our preferred school for Little’un - the footbridge that the County Council will not take into account when calculating our route to school.  As footbridges go, it’s not a bad one really, is it?  It is sturdy, it is paved, it is easy to cross without suffering the inconvenience of getting one’s feet wet in the drain beneath.  However, because it is merely a footbridge and not a bridge across which one can drive one’s gas guzzling environment wrecking Chelsea Tractor, it is not recognised.

Given that Boston is notorious for a) its obesity problem and b) its traffic problem, it seems frankly ridiculous that walking routes to school are not used to calculate distances.  In our case, instead of a 10 minute walk I am going to have to bundle Little’un into a car and drive her across town to a school 3 miles away.  During the morning school-run rush hour that three mile drive is likely to take the best part of half an hour.  I won’t be able to leave the car at home and get the bus (bus? hahahaha, bus!) or cycle as I will have to get straight to work from the school drop off, a further 15 miles away.  There is another school that is closer but I have many and varied reasons why I don’t want Little’un to go there. 

So take another look at the footbridge.  If we lived pretty much anywhere else in England it would be good enough for children to cross to get to school.  But not here.  If you can explain to me why it’s not utter madness, I would love to hear from you.

[fume]

We were back at the eye clinic today.  The sight in Little’un’s lazy eye has improved vastly and the optometrist is very happy with her progress - she can see far more clearly from the lazy eye than she could at our last visit.  Because she is very longsighted in that eye she still needs to wear glasses to see at all, but to start with her vision was poor even with the specs and happily that is now no longer the case. 

Normally Little’un’s sight would be allowed to continue improving just with glasses for the time being, however as she starts school in September they are going to bring forward the start of patching in the hope that it will be dispensed with by then and we therefore won’t have to endure the nightmare hassle of patching her after school.

The idea is to put a patch over her good eye in order to force her lazy eye to work harder.  The harder it works, the stronger it will get, and the more her vision will improve. 

Little’un has been persuaded that this is a good idea by being issued pink patches with flowers and suchlike on them.  She is a little concerned that her friends will call her a pirate* but other than that seems happy enough with our new game.  She will have to wear it at nursery through the week so we shall see how that goes. 

 Given that this is only our third appointment, I am delighted with her improvement thus far.  We have been warned that the rate of improvement will slow down as time goes on and will eventually plateau but if we continue with the patching for a few months then we will get the best possible result.  All in all a very positive visit.

* Edit - I dropped Little’un off at nursery with her patch on today so as to explain the process to her carers.  As soon as we walked in through the door she was lynched by hordes of little boys who were fascinated by her pirate patch [sigh].  Thankfully they were jealous rather than scathing however there were tears from my poor little girl.  The tears have thankfully now dried and the children have been asked not to use the “p” word in connection with her patches.  Hopefully that’s the end of that.

Little’un has not got a place at our first choice school.  The school which, even though only a 10 minute walk away is apparently too far, because a footbridge across a drain is not counted when calculating the distance to school.  The route is calculated by road and because we have to drive a far longer route than we would have to walk we are further away from the school (according to the County Council) than enough children to fill the available 40 places.

Bugger.

We will be appealing against the decision.  Watch this space…

I’ve just spent the last hour watching The Woman Who Stops Traffic.  I’m really annoyed about it.  Annoyed because it seems to have completely missed the point when it comes to sorting out the traffic problems here.

Boston is a small market town miles from anywhere.  It is probably safe to assume that a lot of people who live here don’t work in the town centre and have to travel out of town to work.  Similarly there are a lot of outlying villages and I would also hazard a guess that residents there have to travel a fair distance to work.   I drive through town every day to get to and from work, as does The Yorkshireman.  Neither of us works in Boston town centre and there isn’t any way of getting to where we need to go by public transport.  We don’t want to run two cars, it’s expensive and a pain in the arse but without our cars we would not be able to get to work.

I can see the point of encouraging people out of their cars for short journeys but I would hazard a guess that a lot of people aren’t driving just half a mile.  My theory on why the traffic is so bad here at times is that there are only four routes in and out of the town which often get snarled up at level crossings and the endless traffic lights.  There has been a long standing campaign for a bypass that I have a lot of sympathy with.  There’s also a lot of heavy traffic here as lorries transport veg from Lincolnshire all over the country and into Europe, and vice versa.

Since the programme was made there has been a huge undertaking to sort out the traffic light phasing on the main thoroughfares.  One big roundabout has had its traffic lights switched off permanently and another is undergoing a trial switch-off period.  The traffic flow has massively improved as a result, to the point where even people who only visit Boston once in a while have commented on how much easier it is to get there (yes, it’s true - earthquakes aside not a lot happens around here so traffic flow is a topic of conversation).

Public transport around the town is being improved with new buses ordered and new routes planned.  Buses will be far more frequent meaning that I will be able to get a bus into the town centre without having to wait anything up to two hours for it.  The town centre is actually a walkable distance, about 1½ miles, but to walk there and back with a tired three year old?  In the rain?  When I don’t have three hours to spare?  Knowing that there is likely to be a bus when I need one will make me far more likely to leave the car at home.  That said, I will still have to schlepp a fair way to the bus stop - even the new improved bus routes don’t come that close to where I live.

The people of the town were shown to be… now how can I put this… not exactly open to the idea of change.  I will admit that there is a large element of you’re-not-from-round-here-are-you-we’ve-always-done-it-this-way-and-aren’t-about-to-change-now.  However people’s behaviour is also governed by circumstance, and the general circumstance here is that people generally have to travel 5 miles or more to do whatever they are doing or go wherever they need to go.  There are few or no shops left in the villages.  The majority of the area’s secondary schools are in the town and have geographically large catchment areas.  The majority of workplaces are outside town, off bus routes.  Working hours vary so much as to make car sharing tricky in a lot of cases.

So todays not entirely shocking revelation is… it just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you see on the telly. 

Last night, at around 1am, I had a dream.  I dreamt (dreamed?  never quite sure about that one) that I was shaking in my bed - there was a rumbling sound and everything was moving.  I woke up (sort of ish), turned over and went back to sleep, thinking nothing more of it.  This morning as I dropped Little’un off there was much excitement about an earthquake, 5.2 on the Richter Scale no less, with its epicentre around 25 miles from where we live…

I was slightly disappointed not to have woken up properly and experience it for real as it were.  Little’un’s key worker was all of a dither; she and her partner had woken up, switched the news on to see what was happening and within half an hour they’d received numerous texts and phone calls checking that they were OK.  People were out on the streets in their dressing gowns discussing what had happened.   “What fun!” I thought.  The Yorkshireman had been asleep downstairs and had half woken up and wandered outside looking for lorries going past the house (at 1am on a cul-de-sac) or cars embedded in the front wall with no result and, I think, assumed he must have dreamed it too.

Thankfully Little’un slept through it, as did the cat I believe.  This morning the press seems to have gone mad, reporting every concerned dog and fallen chimney as breaking news regarding the “Big Quake”.   Shall I email the BBC?  “The quake almost, but not quite, woke me up.”  Now there’s a news story if there ever was one

I got soaking wet on the way to work one day last week as I had to stop and get this shot - unhappily for me the wind was blowing in my direction so as soon as I opened the car window I got the full force of the gale in my face.  I had a quick look for the pot of gold but unfortunately had to continue on my way to the office as it was nowhere to be found.   Back to hoping for a lottery win for me.  Should maybe buy a ticket though if I am to stand a chance.