Did you miss me?

I hope so!!! ;-) Anyhoo I am back from my little jaunt to Chester. It was a conference for work and the first conference I have been on for 5 years!!! I like going to conferences as they always make me enthusiastic for my job which is lacking seriously of late. It is a brill opportunity to update knowledge and network. Sadly networking was limited as there were only some 60 or 70 delegates which is just the smallest number I have ever heard of. Still I managed to pick up some props for teaching and updated my knowledge a bit. There were a couple of very interesting speakers who presented work I am going to follow up on as it was quite interesting and relevant to lots of my teaching. I did not go alone Paula was with me and we joked a bit about what I would blog about our trip. We did get a little lost (well not really lost more side tracked) not sure if that was my fault as the map reader or the AA instructions but we were at one point heading for Peterborough rather than Chester!!! Anyway we got to the hotel had a fab dinner and then crashed! The conference was Friday and Saturday but we managed to get a little shopping time in on Friday afternoon! I bought my raclett cheese so Tony and I can have a raclet (sp?) sometime soon. Paula was quite worried about the smell but the cheese was very well behaved!!!
We left the conference early as Paula's sister was rushed to hospital with appendicitus and it was a 5 hour journey. It was not an emergency to get home but we wanted to be on our way in case of any problems!
I have posted a couple of pictures of Chester!!! I have now just found out that I was very close to one of my friends off Frit Happens which I am completely gutted about I could have met up!!! I know where she lives roughly but my geography is so crap I did not realise that it was near to where I was going! :-(

The picture I have posted today is my first attempt at an idea that has been poottling around my brain for a little over a year now! It is an Art Clay pendant with one of my handmade glass beads floating in the middle! There are a few things that need refining but I am very pleased with it! Please excuse the cruddy picture it is taken with my mobile but hopefully you get the idea!!!
Right gotta go, hubby home and we have a trip to Asda to keep us amused!!!

TTFN x

A trip to my local police station.

No not because I am in any trouble and nor are either of my children. I have been working on developing relationships with the police for my youngest daughter. For some unknown and bizarre reason she has developed what can only be described as a phobia of police. She is constantly talking about them and seems quite nervous and when I asked her why she was doing that she said she did not want them to come and take her away from me!!!
My dad is a retired policeman and still works as a civilian in my local police station so I arranged for us to visit him today to try to help Savannah deal with her fears. It has worked a treat I think. We spent about an hour there and everyone we met was completely awesome. She got to see inside a police car and put the blue lights on, she got to see 3 different kinds of police hats but would not wear them!!! She got to pick up a stab vest (or try to have you ever felt the weight of those things!!!) and she saw a pair of handcuffs up close. She got her fingerprints done and generally was shown around. She got some high visibility stickers to take away with her and my eldest daughter now wants to be a scenes of crime officer (or CSI officer as they are now called) and get into forensic science. I always wanted to be a forensic scientist but did not nother as it meant I had to go to University to get my degree and when I was doing my A levels that was the last place I wanted to go. As it happens I have now studied to that level and above so perhaps I could have done it but Imogen was well interested in the whole finger prints and catching criminals etc.

What is such a shame is that the police now do not do any kind of "community" open days or at least ours don't. Things like that are so important for our children. They learn that police are not people to be scared of and they develop a healthy respect for what they do do and what they stand for and maybe this is where todays society is going wrong.

I am not going to get into the debate about why todays society is so much different from that when I was growing up and seriously at 37 I am not that bloody old, but there are major problems with todays youth and having a healthy respect for the law and the people that represent it is one way of helping that happen. That said I am also aware that there are inherent problems with some of the people in these positions of power!

Anyway that was not whay I was writing this. I just wanted to say thank you so much to my Dad and to the police officers that I met today at Margate Police Station who helped me to show my daughter that police are not bad or evil. And maybe you could take a leaf out of the local fire fighters and do the occasional open day for the local community to build a relationship with them and improve relations.

TTFNx