Peggy Burke

Our 7 year old granddaughter was taken to A/E today with a suspected broken finger. Wishing to ingratiate herself with the nurse she decided flattery would be the best option. "Your hair is beautiful, I wish I had blonde hair. Although I suppose you must dye your hair that colour. Yes, I can see dark hair at the roots. Is that dark bit your natural colour?" Good job it didn't need any treatment, think the nurse might have gone easy on the pain relief!.

No further comment!

To say children in UK are not taught to write is just not true. In many UK infant schools, including the one I was deputy head of, certainly children are taught cursive script from school entry. However cursive script has nothing to do with being able to speak and write correctly. What it does do is help with spelling giving the flow, rhythm and shape of the words. In many cases children are not exposed to a good role model of spoken English by the television presenters on children's TV, nor I'm afraid to say, all too frequently, by the adults around them. If they haven't got good oral language skills then they are not going to have good written ones either.

Thanks Guys for all your help. Will definitely try the hoover remedy. Haven't ever done that so won't hurt. Also Chesters thoughts regarding the battery is interesting. I had to replace the battery and rather than buy a Dell one which was going to cost £105 the computer repair guy recommended a generic one at £85. However the machine doesn't pick up the battery and I have to hit F1 when booting up for the laptop to actually start up. The battery therefore doesn't charge. Not an issue as I very rarely use the laptop away from a power point and therefore haven't bothered to do anything about it as it's a minor inconvenience. However I wonder if this could be contributing to the problem and whether I need to bite the bullet and splash out on a genuine Dell battery.

Hi Guys Need some advice before I call in a computer repair man. My Dell Vostro is running very hot - not causing any problems that I'm aware of but think it could do in the future. It sits on a laptop desk with a cooling fan but that doesn't seem to help. The rear left hand side gets so hot at times I can barely put my hand on it. All suggestions gratefully received. Thanks Peggy

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office: "Dr. Jones, at your cervix." ************************** On a Septic Tank Truck: Yesterday's Meals on Wheels ************************** On a Plumber's truck: "We repair what your husband fixed." ************************** On another Plumber's truck: "Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber." ************************** On a Church's Bill board: "7 days without God makes one weak." ************************** At a Tyre Store "Invite us to your next blowout." ************************** On an Electrician's truck: "Let us remove your shorts." ************************** In a Non-smoking Area: "If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action." ************************** On a Maternity Room door: "Push. Push. Push." ************************** At an Optometrist's Office: "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place." ************************** On a Taxidermist's window: "We really know our stuff." ************************** On a Fence: "Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!" ************************** Outside a Car Exhaust Store: "No appointment necessary. We hear you coming." ************************** In a Vets waiting room: "Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!" ************************** In a Restaurant window: "Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up." ************************** In the front yard of a Funeral Home: "Drive carefully. We'll wait." ************************** And don't forget the sign at a RADIATOR SHOP: "Best place in town to take a leak." ********************** Sign on the back of yet another Septic Tank Truck: "Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"

As it was a gorgeous sunny morning Steve and I decided to take a walk round Wingham before the next lot of snow arrived. Whilst Steve did his rounds I took some pics on my mobile phone. The Coarse Lake from 'Grassy Bank' Looking the other way across the Coarse Lake from 'The Egg Box' No hiding place from predators on the islands! Looking across the Carp Lake Now it's snowing again so I wonder how much more there will down by morning?

The only way to get back into my good books is to let me have a cuddle with Cosworth

Excuse me Mr Burgess, extra BBQ perks slipping away, not likely, you're not gettting anything at all!!

Joking apart really looking forward to seeing all you guys. Can't believe we're really planning the 2010 Fish-in already. Last year's seems like yesterday!

It's the usual top quality Bramwells. Bring your own Saucy git!!!!!

Thank God I'm retired and out of education. Sadly this humorous post sums up the attitude of many parents. Their children can do no wrong and it's the schools who are to blame. I always had a rule that if children wasted their class time they completed their work during their break or lunchtime play. I was taken to task for taking away their child's playtime on a number of occasions. I also had an incident after a school sports day when a child who didn't win a race was taken home for the rest of the day because 'he was so upset'. How will that child cope with failure in life? With nearly 40 years teaching experience I could go on and on but won't.

I've just received a non-e-Bay payment without any problem. With regard to your dilemma, could you contact your seller via e-Bay messaging explaining the problem and ask him to send you a Paypal request for payment? This would take it out of the e-Bay Checkout system which seems to be the problem.

So you think you're going to get some? You'll have to get in line behind Budgie and Andrew!!!

Steve has asked me to post that he'll probably be taking bookings from Friday of next week, 1st May. He and the bailiffs are very busy at the moment getting everything ready, although Glyn is on crutches. Everything is late this year because the ground is still water-logged, but all should be ready on time. Then after the fish-in they can turn their attention to the back lake (that is not open for fishing) and that requires a fair bit of maintenance. Do watch out for an announcement on Friday of next week.

I have an external hard drive but I also use an on-line backup. Running a business it would be a disaster if my accounts were lost. My son-in-law recommended Mozy and I set my laptop to backup to it every evening. www.mozy.com. It's free for the first 2Gb. If you're looking for a good backup program I'd recommend Acronis. It backups but also you can use it to completely wipe your hard drive if your selling/disposing of your computer. Another feature is it allows you to install programs to a separate partition and if you find there is a problem you can remove it without the program having mucked up your PC

I've tried it out and quite liked some of the features - especially the fact that it saved your tabs without having to remember to tick a box as you do on Explorer. However I've found that I can't load pictures into Photobucket when using it and also our webmaster has advised against using it at present as there is a risk of losing data when working on the website. I've therefore scrapped it and gone back to Explorer.

Steve's right, it is one of my 'hobby horses'. I really can't understand how UK can grind to a halt like this. Why are the London buses not running? You wouldn't find public transport cancelled in Germany for a few inches of snow. As for the lack of gritting that people are complaining about on the TV I quite agree. There's no excuse, this snow has been forecast for days and so there's been plenty of time to prepare. It's just started snowing here again, quite heavily so I'd better go and check the birds have got enough food. They were outside waiting patiently when we got up. The pheasants and other ground feeders were looking forlornly at the snow and wondering where breakfast had gone.

Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty with a physical cause. Unfortunately too many people have jumped on the band wagon and labelled themselves dyslexic when in fact they've either not applied themselves at school or have been the victims of poor teaching. Dyslexia affects the ability to read, write and spell and also in some cases maths skills. It also has a tremendous negative effect on self-esteem. This link to the Glasgow Dyslexia Centre may be of interest http://www.dyslexiatreatment.com/famous-people-dyslexia.php

An interesting reply Corydoras and there are some points that, as a Primary Specialist who has spent most of her career teaching 5/6 year olds, I would comment on. French children are able to learn to ready purely with phonics because French is a phoniically regular language. I speak French and have been very involved in the introduction of French and German into Primary Schools in Kent The teaching of a second language is now a statutory requirement in England for all children from the age of 7 and many schools are now teaching French, or in some schools Spanish or German, to children from the age of 5. German is also a phonically regular language. Once you've learnt the sound a letter string makes it remains the same no matter what word it appears in. If only this were true in English eg cough, bough, enough etc As I mentioned in my previous post different people use different skills when learning to read. We all have different learning styles, aural, visual and kinaesthetic and it's therefore important that this is recognised when teaching both children and adults. There was a period when the main method for teaching children to read was 'Look and Say' and this was very much the time of the 'elastoplast' tin. This was fine for children with good visual memories and also worked well when a word had a clearly defined shape. Most children would learn to read the word 'aeroplane' very easily because for a start they could attach a visual image to it and also the word itself is shaped like an aeroplane. Just write it down and then drawn a line around the shape of the word and you'll see what I mean. However when asked to memorise a word like 'is' or 'on' many children stumbled because there was no visual image to attach to it and the word does not have a particular shape. This is another reason that we don't introduce children to words written in capital letters. They all have the same height and therefore no easily memorable shape. This is where a knowledge of phonics is valuable. However try applying phonics to the word 'yacht"!! Cursive joined script is also now taught in many infants schools in UK. Certainly in the primary school that I worked in for the last 16 years of my career this was the case. Pens aren't introduced in the infant classes but I personlly don't think that really matters. What is important is that children learn to develop a legible, fluent handwriting style. It always seemed crazy that we taught children to write one way, ie print, and then 2 or 3 years later promptly taught them something completely different. As regards schools having stopped teaching grammar there was certainly a time in the late 60s and 70s when it wasn't taught well in Primary schools in England. However this is certainly not the case now. Parts of speech, nouns, verbs etc, plus tenses, punctuation and literary devices such as alliteration, hyperbole, ellipsis etc are all taught as part of the Literacy Strategy and introduced at the appropriate age. To reply to your comment about British children being taught in groups and huddles, this has certainly not been the case in my experience. Certainly children do work for some of their time in groups. Very often these groups are made up of children who are working at the same level in a particular subject and they have spent part of the lesson being taught as a whole class focussed on the teacher and whiteboard (most schools in UK now have interactive computer controlled boards). They are then set tasks in their groups at their appropriate level to reinforce what they have been taught in the session and these groups are led by the class teacher or teaching assistant providing further focussed teaching. It would be interesting to hear others views on this subject.

It is an interesting topic and one as a primary school teacher, albeit retired, have some thoughts on. The system that Vagabond refers to is 'alive and well' and being used in schools today. However as he quite rightly says it's not a method that will cope with the irregularities of the English language. It's for that reason that a mixture of skills are required and some suit one person better than another. In the example given we are using our ability to recognise word shapes, make generalisations and also contextual clues to decode the written word. For those people who have better auditory skills than visual ones, then the phonic approach proves more successful. In general however children learning to read are taught to use a mixture of visual, auditory and contextual skills. With regard to spelling this has now been proved to be very much a visual skill and again because of the irregularities of the English language, phonics in many cases just won't work. Children are now taught to memorise the shape of the whole word rather than try to break it down into its individual sounds although this can work for phonically regular words. I use to teach children little tricks to remember how to spell some words such as ' say it how it's written', eg to - get - her for together and Wed-nes-day. For homonyms (words that sound the same) you can remember the difference betweeen 'hear' and 'here' by remembering you 'hear with your ear' and 'here and there'

STANLEY LED Tripod Light I bought this light from LIDL a few weeks ago, in fact bought a pair. I've found them good for taking photos of my paperweights coupled with a fold up light tent that I bougt off e-Bay some years ago. The light tents come in various sizes and I've found the large one the most useful. They fold up into a small bag like those fold up tents so store very easily. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/items/_W0QQ_nkwZlig...fromZR40QQ_mdoZ Don't know whether these would fit the bill Elton but may be of interest to others anyway. Now available on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-95-112-Tripo...t/dp/B000CC2KP4 Mine in fact came with the key ring lights as well which living out in the sticks has proved very useful

I had a call a couple of weeks ago on my mobile querying a small amount being demanded from my card by a firm in the US. The credit card company was suspicious and checked with me and of course it was bogus. It appears that these swines go for a small amount and if that goes through then go for the big one! I've noticed the US credit card companies are very securtiy conscious as our customers are often asked to confirm their purchases with their company before the payment will be sanctioned to us.

Youtube Video ->Original Video This is a goodie!!!

I have a Canon Pixma iP5000 and I've not had a problem with ink consumption or the cost of refills. Having said that it's a model that doesn't require Canon replacement cartridges. I buy mine from Choice Stationery together with cleaning cartridges and they're excellent value. Can't recommend them highly enough