Snow Day

So yesterday was a snow day. All the Birmingham schools were shut because, gasp, shock, horror – there was about two inches of snow. Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded so much if I’d had lots of annual leave left to take, but when you have calculated it to use up the last few days during half term, it does rather scupper one’s plans somewhat to have to take an unplanned for day off, and all for the benefit of a couple of inches of white stuff. Given that we are constantly (as parents) having rammed down our throats the importance of our children attending school EVERY DAY (yes, even when the parents are ill or have a major problem that might prevent the child from attending, according to the letter we had home the other day), isn’t a blanket closure of all the schools rather a contradiction??

Imagine my delight (can you sense the sarcasm??) when I got a phone call this morning after I’d dropped Ethan off at school to tell me that the Headmaster had decided to cancel the after school club for the rest of the week. WHAT?? I am totally enraged by this. Apparently he wants everyone to get home straight after school. But, hang on a minute – I PAY for Ethan to attend after school club. The purpose of the club is to help people like me fulfil their commitment to their employers, ie be at work for the time they are supposed to be. Now, if there were two foot of snow outside, fair enough, I could understand the shut down … but for a couple of inches (besides which, most of the snow around here at work has gone already), it’s just bloody ridiculous. Aren’t they supposed to have a responsibility to the parents who pay for the service? Thankfully for me, I can get Sean to pick him up if necessary.

So it seems that they think there is a health and safety issue to having children at school during adverse weather. Of course, they could slip over on the snow. But then again, they could slip over when we have icy weather (which we tend to have right through the winter) – so that’s that argument given no validity. The school is centrally heated, so no problems with minimum temperatures not being reached. They can keep the kids in at breaktimes, like they do when it rains – another non health and safety issue.

Okay, so my kids might slip over and hurt themselves in the snow. So to keep them healthy and safe I should keep them at home then? Okay … so I’ll have to do the same when its icy too then, in case they should slip. But it’s icy probably for half the year … so maybe they should only go to school in the summer? Oh, but in the summer they might get sunburnt at playtime, or stung by a bee or something. Oh right … maybe I should just pull them out of school completely then, and then there can be no risks for them to encounter …

Anyway, so we had a snow day yesterday. I could have gone to work and taken Ethan with me, but I wouldn’t get any work done in between the moans of ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m bored’, ‘I want to go and play with the toys in reception’, ‘Can I play on your computer’, ‘I want a drink’, ‘I’m bored’ etc etc etc; so I took the day off. At least I got a little bit of a lie-in (though not much).

Sean decided to take himself off to Solihull on his bike (is he mad? I wouldn’t ride my bike in the snow!) to see his grandparents, so that left me and Ethan at home. I let myself be persuaded to go out the front to throw snowballs, but after ten minutes my hands were blue, so I stood there with my hands in my pockets and let Ethan throw snowballs at me instead. He had gloves on, his hands were nice and toasty. It didn’t take me long to get thoroughly bored, and eventually I managed to persuade him to come back inside, where we had lunch and settled down in the living room for the afternoon.

While Ethan played on my computer and watched TV, I got my spindle kit out again and had another go. I ended up spinning half of a sliver/top/whatever it is supposed to be called – that was from splitting it lengthways. I’ve discovered that I need to split it into eighths – so split it lengthways, then split each half again, and then again. It’s not perfect by any means – I need to practice joining more fibres to be spun, as I’m getting thicker lumps of yarn at the joins, but on the whole it’s not too bad – I would say it’s reasonably even. Ish. When I next get time, I am going to spin half of a pink sliver and then see if I can ply the two together.

Also on the spinny/crafty front, I succumbed to the temptation and ordered some undyed BFL roving and two hanks of undyed BFL aran, and I’m going to try my hand at dyeing them. I chose aran because I need to knit myself some Fetchings, and the other hank is for Andrea, my lovely lovely wonderful German sister-who-is-far-too-young-to-be-my-step-mother-in-law! (Yes! You guessed right, she’ll be reading this at some point!) She also wants some Fetchings, and I think I might have volunteered to knit them for her … but maybe if I hand-dye her a skein of yarn she’ll be so impressed that she’ll knit them herself?! I can but try *tee hee*. I don’t want to faff about with chemical dyeing, so I shall be going down the food colouring route instead – cheap and easy - I managed to get a couple of bottles in Sainsburys tonight to start with, so let's hope the wool turns up tomorrow.