News and Blog

From desperation on a wet Saturday I dragged all 3 boys into the local stores to try to get all the school gear (apart from labels) in the one shopping session….am I mad? Saturday, kids and shopping just does not compute. Anyway all is well – some £400 and 4 hours later we have all the kit we were missing and even the shoes. But I do have some bones to pick and some praise to give!

• Why does the shoe shop insist on giving people a ticket and getting them to sit around waiting for up to 40 minutes to fit the shoes when they could measure each child and give them their size on a post-it and then like one of my kids, if they do not need new school shoes, I could go away. If they had gone up a lot in size I could elect to wait…. a great time and motions study could be done there! I was really pushy and said their old school shoes may still fit so I jumped the 40 minute queue to get them measured on the machine and then unfortunately found I had to wait the 40 minutes anyway, but the fitting was much quicker as they had already been measured.
• How many kids are either too skinny or too stocky for the standard mainstream store trousers? From what I see quite a lot. I have to give a big cheer for British Home Stores where all the mums I met along my travels between the other stores ended up together in the changing rooms with the “generous fit” range of trousers, and a slimfit range with the tabs at the size to bring it….any relief, my son is not a 6 year old that is so fat he is wearing a size 14 but actually he is only a generous fit size 8 !!!! And even the length will not need taking up. Haleluyah! Will definately be back to BHS for school kit in future.
• Why do you think when kids get bored they start to run loops of the store instead of finding a quiet seat somewhere? There was no coca cola injection prior to the shopping trip, no sweeties dispensed to hype them up, yet a half hour wait in the uniform shop and they were as high as kites! “Embarrased mother of 3 boys arrested for swearing in public” yes, can see the headlines now…I was relatively restrained and controlled my temper until we left the shop and the old ladies standing about and then let rip with verbal chastisement . The threat of no sweeties all day does the trick nicely for the 6 year old but does not wash for the older 2. Never again. Would rather take them home and try on or go to the shop with one kid per day until I get it all done…and never again on a Saturday.
• Being a seller of labels had to have a good laugh at the uniform shop staff struggling with their name labels machine as they could not get it to work, after moving plugs, banging it, pushing buttons or whatever the frustratred customer left with no name tapes. Very tempted to hand out business cards to them as they left but controlled my desire!
• Kids wanted to go the Beanscene for a drink and muffin but after seeing they are in admininstration on the television news report I decided to give it a skip…who knows how long those muffins have been sitting there in the cabinet? Maybe sales are down and they are not turning over so fast. I do love Beanscene in the evenings as the girls can walk down there and bring their own wine…would be missed if it shut down. Fingers crossed it manages to sell to a better management team and continue on trading.
• Do you believe in fate? Standing buying school blazers and I met another lady also with a boy, also from Australia and also called Ann-Maree, plus her son goes to the same school and she also lives in Stirling! Very very weird.
• Also this weekend we did a major springclean of our bookshelves and got rid of all those books that we had kept since university days “just in case” we needed them…and of course we never did need them and never will…things move on and techniques change. Speaking to friends this afternoon they were doing the same thing. Heard of spring cleaning but seems that post summer cleanouts are also the norm! Maybe cleaning out the uniform and putting labels and the thought of kids getting back to school inspires you to clean out not just old school uniform but also everything else.
• Talking of cleanouts, Ebay is fantastic for that sort of thing. Have friends and family who have sold everything from bathroom suits to old kitchen cabinets, clothing and swap cards on ebay succesfully and we have sold some too…would definately recommend giving it a try if you have never used Ebay it is very simple to set up something to sell.

Well been a busy but successful weekend albeit a little boring and mundane. Looking forward to tomorrow…off to watch Dr Who with the kids!