I am totally apologetic that I have been away so long.  QT1 tells me that I will never succeed with my blog because people will lose interest.  But work and life have been so busy that I have not been able to prioritise blogging.

Anyway things are starting to fall into place.  QT1 is in the process of having her jabs for the charity trip to Peru in early July.  Although unfortunately she has had a reaction to the typhoid and has had a temperature all today,  not at all well but drinking gallons of water, cold towels and paracetamol is keeping her going.  She was more upset that she missed her Saturday morning dose of Stagecoach.  I remembered belatedly that she reacted to the typhoid jab when she was a baby as well.  As the trip to Peru is a charity trip there is going to be contact with locals and more exposure to nasty diseases than on a tourist trip it can’t be helped,  she had to have the jab.

I can’t believe how expensive it is to have the specialist jabs like rabies and yellow fever.  Also she has to have a BCG which we all used to have at school for free but now you have to arrange it specially and again pay privately for it.  How do people manage to afford it when they are travelling regularly to foreign parts?!  The trip is turning out to be about as expensive as a wedding when you take into account the £4000 basic trip cost,  the equipment (about £1500 to £2000) and the jabs (about £500).  Although actually the girls at work tell me that it you don’t spend at least £15000 on your wedding it isn’t worth bothering!  Good job we are 22 years unmarried then.

QT2 holds a place in a 6th form rugby academy IF he can get accepted into the main college AND (big AND) get the GCSE grades.  However this does seem to have concentrated his mind,  he has been going to some revision classes and even attended some in half term.  So I am cautiously optimistic.   If he gets in he will also have to give up all of his hockey and club rugby which will be rather strange after so many years of practice and matches.  Because most of the practice and matches will be at college or arranged from college so we shall not have to do so much running around.

In the meantime older daughter is permanently penniless down at Uni.  Oh well I suppose one is only a student once!  She’s off to Croatia for hockey tour before Easter.  That has been at the expense of her Dad as well!  and still no job in sight.  Oh dear,  she says she doesn’t have time.  I guess her course (4 year teacher training) is full on and time consuming.  Especially when hockey practice twice a week and 2 hockey matches a week plus clubbing (Dance Rivals???  anyone know what that is???) are taken into account!  But she is doing well in her exams and is presently averaging a high 2 ii so not too worrying.

Work is rather stressful at present,  lots of changes,  people leaving, appraisals and the prospect of down sizing in the next year or so when the premises have to be given up.  I have even considered a change of career perhaps into teaching. But it turns out that a degree in law is not much use for wanting to teach in schools where only “school subject” degrees are really valid for the training.  I may have to look at FE or University teaching instead.  But that wasn’t really what I would have liked to do.

In fact if I ever win the lottery I am going to buy a beautiful hotel or bed and breakfast somewhere stunning (hopefully Cornwall although family might have other ideas) and run it hopefully along homely vintage lines with traditional meals and décor that would do as a television set for something based in the late 1940s….!