This post is intended as a big hint, so if you don’t live with me then, please, skip off to what you should be doing. Feeding the kids maybe or checking the lottery numbers? If you DO live with me, then you know how messy all my stuff is. How I leave paper and books and pens and paints and calculators and magazines and works-in-progress all round the place. You know I have only good intentions and I don’t mean to do it… but there’s no point in putting it all away if I’m going to need it later in the day, is there?

Anyway, you-who-puts-up-with-me-and-my-stuff, I saw this and thought of you. Well, actually, I thought of me but you were next. Promise!

You might not quite know what this is but go here for more:

Original Scrapbox

Mmm… oh I could put a lot of stuff in there!

Sometimes I am fed up of reading all this political crap, sick of the continuing battle with Badman, Balls, et al, over our wish to have them leave home education alone. Read this.

Sometimes I simply want to remind myself of all the good things in my life; all the magical, wondrous and funny things that having a family (and the occasional urge to get away from them) causes me to realise that my cups, do indeed, runneth over.

Here are a few of those favourite things.

A few years ago, a moderately hairy chest was all the rage. I remember being very proud of the fact that I had a boyfriend with at least three hairs on his chest. These days it seems that more and more men prefer the hairless look.

I can’t say that I like it – I think I prefer a hairy chest on a man. What do you think? Join the debate here:

Hairy Men are Gorgeous

Mass Lobby of Parliament on Tuesday 13 October 2009

PARENTS and their children will be attending a mass lobby of Parliament next
week to protest about planned changes to the law on home education that will
strip them of their rights and intrude into family life.

Nearly 200 adult supporters have confirmed with the organisers that they
will be attending the rally on Tuesday 13 October, bringing with them 190
children. Many of them have firm appointments to see their MPs.

The mass lobby has been organised in the wake of a Government review into
home education.

Graham Badman, former Director of Education at Kent County Council, who
carried out the study, recommended that local councils should have the right
to enter family homes and question children alone.

He also said that parents who home educate should be forced to register
every year and gave local authorities carte blanche to refuse registration.

The Review of Elective Home Education in England was accepted in full by the
Government, which wants to change the law as soon as possible.

It intends to use its Improving Schools and Safeguarding Bill to introduce
home education registration and monitoring legislation as early as next
month.

The Badman report and the Government’s eagerness to accept it has brought an
angry response from home educators.

Mass lobby organiser Claire Blades, 45, from Aylesbury, said: “No longer are
parents being trusted to make decisions about their own children.

“First we had the news that 11.3 million people in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland – close to one in four of the adult population – would have
to have Criminal Record Bureau checks.

“Then we had the case of the two policewomen who were accused of illegal
childminding because they took care of each other’s children on their days
off.

“Now parents who home educate are to be forced to undergo intrusive
monitoring in their own homes because they are not trusted with their own
children.

“By ignoring the onward march of legislation that intrudes into family life,
we are allowing ourselves to sleepwalk into a nightmare. It is time to wake
up and call a halt to the ever-growing band of officials who think they know
what is best for our children and our families.”

Home educators claim that the Badman report, published in June, is
inaccurate and shows little understanding of the home educating community.

So many home educators complained that the Children, Schools and Families
Select Committee ordered a short inquiry into the report.

Mrs Blades said: “Mr Badman claimed that the ratio of home-educated children
who were “known to social care” was twice that of the population at large.

“It turns out that that vague statistic came from a small sample of 25 local
authorities.

“The group, Action for Home Education, has carried out its own research
using Freedom of Information requests to all local education authorities in
England and the picture painted is quite the reverse.

“Interestingly, even Mr Badman has come to realise that his statistics are
flawed.

“On 17 September 2009, he wrote to all local authority Directors of
Children’s Services to say: ‘I would like to strengthen my statistical
evidence in advance of the Select Committee hearing so that it is more
extensive and statistically robust.’

“He practically begged the Directors of Children’s Services to help him
‘make the strongest possible case to the Select Committee’.”

“The picture painted of home education in the Badman report is
unrecognisable to the thousands of families in this country who exercise
their legal right to educate their children without sending them to school.

“It is unrecognisable to the thousands of grandparents, aunts, uncles,
cousins and friends who share the lives of home educated children. It is
unrecognisable to the children themselves.

“The mass lobby is an opportunity for us to show our MPs what home education
is really about and to bring important issues like inaccuracies and bias in
the Badman report to their attention.”

Press Release issued by the Badman Review Action Group.

Apologies for the lack of updates… I’m sure many are wondering where the blazes I’ve been lately. Not you? Oh.

The truth of it is that I have been working like a crazy Squidooing thing, completing assignments (RocketMoms) and beginning new programs (Giant Squid). Yes, they are strange names… but to me, they are Holy Grails – yes, plural grails.  Look it’s my blog and if I want two grails then I shall have them. Sooo.. I have created 30 lenses or pages. I need to make another 20 by mid-December and I will become a Giant Squid. It’s something I have wanted to be since I was at my mammy’s knee…. oh alright, since about two weeks ago then.

Giant Squids get special presents…. special privileges. No, I’m not sure what they are but I want them.

I have also earned a ton of money on Squidoo – loads of the stuff. Hang on, I’ll go and check the latest figures….yep, thought so. $1.63. In total. Cool or what? Okay, so I’m not doing this for the money. It’s for love. Okay? I get to write, create, read, explore, learn and meet lots of lovely Squidoo-ers. What more could I want? Indeed.

So what else has been happening in Ragged Edge Land? A holiday to the very pretty Isle of Wight. Courtesy of a good friend who allowed us borrow her house in return for keeping an eye on her rather ancient pony. You can bet your sweet fanny-adams that I was terrified she would drop dead during the week we were there.  At the same time I was fretting about our nearly 18 year old cat that we had left at home for our neighbour to feed. Luckily no animals were harmed in the course of our week’s stay. Relief abounds.

Anyway, seeing as you’re here, you might as well pop over and look at these… go on, you know you want to!

My Child is Obsessed with Lego
Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce
My Passion for Art Journals
1970s Theme Night
Traditional Welsh Food
Brynna and Llanharan
Zentangle
St David’s Day
TeesOnline
Top Ten Writer’s Software/Resources

See you soon!

I was kindly given permission to use some wonderful photos on a Squidoo lens I am in the process of making. Here is one of them:

To see more of these wonderful photos and read up about the area click here:

Brynna & Llanharan

Oh and there is also a fabulous Youtube of a Welsh Male Voice choir singing “Myfanwy”

I love drawing Zentangles. I also love incorporating them into all kinds of other artwork. I’ve had a few emails lately asking where people can see more of them and learn how to create Zentangles themselves so I have made this page:

How to Zentangle

Photo courtesy of JMitaStudios

I love real dairy milk butter. From real dairy cows. I really do. I use it for spreading and frying (I don’t do much baking!). I use it for my kids’ cuts and grazes; it’s like a little ritual if someone bumps their knee, we make a big thing of putting butter on it to make it better. And it does.

Butter has managed to get a pretty bad reputation being a saturated fat and all that. However, we have been butter consumers for thousands of years and it’s only in the last 20 or so that we have become terrified of it. Please note that as we restricted our intake of saturated fats, we correspondingly increased consumption of grains and other ‘empty’ carbohydrates…. notice the general population becoming slimmer, fitter and healthier? No? I wonder why that is then.

I am convinced that having a diet rich in butter is good for me. My skin is good – I am healthy. I am almost 51 and that photo (the one top right, not the one above – she’s younger and far prettier!) was taken earlier this year. I have no arthritis, no chronic illnesses, nothing, nada. I am not saying it’s only due to eating butter but I do think that eschewing current advice regarding healthy eating is part of it.

Do you know that over the years an excess of carbohydrates will often lead to Type II Diabetes? Do you know that the current advice given out by Diabetes UK is to eat MORE carbohydrates? How screwy is that?

DuH likes his carbs, it has to be said, and recently was warned that he was headed rapidly towards diabetes. We immediately cut down his carbs to 60g per day and three months later he has lost 20lbs and there is no sign of impending diabetes doom. Magic.

Anyway, where was I headed with this? Oh yep… I have decided to create a page dedicated to the delights of real dairy butter. Come over and see; leave a comment – I’d love to know what you think.

Butter!

We are all enjoying Levi Roots’ Caribbean Cooking Made Easy at the moment. If you are lucky, you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer, although it isn’t available in all countries.

Caribbean Food Made Easy

For loads of recipes, tips and the contents of the famous ‘Sunshine kit’, visit my Levi lens:

Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce

Recipes, hints and tips for using Levi Roots’ famous Reggae Reggae sauce. Jerk chicken, pepperpot stew and salsa. Yummy!

Levi Roots took the UK by storm when he appeared on the popular TV program, Dragon’s Den in January 2007. Despite making a slight hash of his pitch, he secured a deal of £50,000 in return for 40% of his business. The rest, you could say, is ’sauce-story’.

(CBS) Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of the lead researchers for the Merck drug, Dr Diane Harper, is speaking out about its risks, benefits and aggressive marketing. It is highly unusual for a researcher to publicly criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved. Gardasil has been associated with at least as many serious adverse events as there are deaths from cervical cancer developing each year. Dr Harper says patients should be told that protection from the vaccination might not last long enough to provide a cancer protection benefit, and that its risks could occur more often than the cervical cancer itself would. Merck’s aggressive marketing of the vaccine has given women a false sense of security.
Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News

*** I would suppose a similar story for GSK’s Cevarix, which is used in the UK.

Lovely people.