Wow it has been a long time since I posted to this blog - over a year! The trouble is I am writing so many blogs at once, that I lose track of them. Really I should just amalgamate the lot into one enormous blog.

I can hear Ali playing the guitar. He has taught himself, with a bit of help from his friends, and is playing amazingly well as long as he has music to follow.

I'm just about recovered from having a few of Thomas's friends over for a party. He was 15 the other day, and wanted friends who live some distance away to come and play cards and eat pizza... so he invited them to stay over in the garden. They were supposed to sleep in the tent, but stayed awake all night, playing tag at 3am.

I like the idea of tents and camping, but really in a last days of the Raj, have the servants bring another footstool sort of way. It's just bloody hard work lugging everything you need, putting up tents, taking down tents, and the whole process of living.

I love the idea of a spherical treehouse. I have seen this website mentioned a few times recently, and it looks amazing. I'm just not sure I'd have the courage to put it too far up. 5 metres seems far enough to me!

Went to Camp Mohawk, to the Home Education group, with my mother and the children. The children took off straight away for their friends, and my mother and I stayed talking in the car, eating our lunch and chatting. Although we felt like a bit of a lie down, we decided to go for a walk, in the beautiful countryside on Crazies Hill.

The Camp is at the top of the hill, and we walked a little way down to get to a meadow, and took the public right of way across it. Almost immediately we came upon a scattering of primroses, followed by wild violets. A peacock butterfly fluttered past.

The weather was warm but dullish, and we took the left hand path, which took us through the woods.

The woodland is ancient, but has been scarred by a lot of plantations. You can see the difference immediately. The deciduous woodland has scatterings of violets, bluebells, wood anemones, lesser celandines, wood sorrel, there are birds and insects buzzing around. We took a small path off the main woodland path, because my mother was feeling adventurous, and gradually the path disappeared, and we found ourselves picking our way down a hillside covered in bluebell plants, although there were very few bluebells in evidence.

My mother is 68, but was forging ahead, and took me through some spongy ground, past a dead fox, and proposed that we should make our way over the trickle of water below by climbing across a fallen tree trunk, which was covered in moss. I declined to make a fool of myself falling 12 feet into the boggy mud around the water, and retraced my steps, but she was determined to explore and struck off to the right up the other side of the valley, which was pine plantation.

Here, it was very very spooky. There was no undergrowth at all, no birds singing, and even the wind seemed still...the trees didn't move at all. Many of them seemed to be dead, and there were a large number fallen over, prevented from rolling downhill by the fact that they were caught against other trees.

What was really odd was that many of the upright trees appeared to have had fires lit beneath them. There were signs of camp fires against the different trees. I began to sonder if someone had tried to set the trees ablaze....

We ploughed up the hill to an area where there was no discernible path. Oh my mother was convinced she had one, but as it inconveniently passed by every hawthorn bush in the vicinity, I was sure that only four legged creatures 2 ft or less in height could possibly have used the path regularly.

Eventually as the bushes and trees became more dense, and it seemed we weren't going to find another path, we again retraced our footsteps. As I passed down the hill I picked up a number of stones that were very smooth and almost shiny, and realised that they seemed to be sea washed....

When I got home I started looking at information about the area, and saw that they were likely to be sea washed...as the area around Reading was under water for a large part of its geological history. We are going to go back next week.

Woke 4.45 to hear the dog downstairs, barking to be let out. This is unusual: he sleeps in our room, and usually gets up when I do. I heard him bark twice, and thought perhaps my husband would get up. After all, I only had 2 hours sleep the night before, because our daughter was ill. But no. So I got up, realising I had a sore throat, and in all likelihood was going to have the thing my daughter had.

Thus it was that I got to see the sunrise, which was for a few minutes, the most amazing sight. In our house, we have brilliant views of the sunsets, but I don't usually get good views of the sunrises. Our hous is on a hill, which is such a gentle slope that until I had children I didn't really realise it was a hill. The back of the house looks down the slope, and there is a good open area where the sunset can be seen. The front of the house is overlooked by houses above, on the opposite side of the road, and they block out the sunrise.

This morning the sky was covered in cottonwool clouds, and it looked exactly as it would if you had taken a rool of cottonwool and eked it out across the sky. The underside of the clouds was highlighted in candyfloss pink all over the sky. It only lasted for a few minutes and bodes badly for the weaher today.

It's warm, and I cam hear the thrum of the fans in the children's rooms. I am sitting here in my dresing gown, but I think I will shrug off the top and sit here naked from the waist up. The heat is oppressive already.

I am drinking Fanta for my throat. I don;t usually drink soft drinks other than water, but we have some big bottles of Fanta bought for the children, and I just fancied some. I am worrying about the effect of this bug on Ali already. His Crohn's disease may flare again if he gets this bug.

Feeling oddly lucky today. I went up to Great Ormond Street hospital on Wednesday with my son, travelled on the underground, walked and taxied around the Russell Square and Tavistock Square area. Fate's an odd thing.

We waited in the Costa Cafe for Ali's x-ray appointment, and the announcement for the Olympics bid was playing on a flat screen tv on the wall. I am renowned for my disdain about sport being the opium of the masses, having replaced religion, and I find it hard to care about sporting milestones, or sporting success.

We say that Sky said that the announcement was imminent, and watched as the two Singaporean presenters awkwardly complimented one another upon their appearance and introduced the announcement. I had bought a sandwich and a coffee, Ali had a soft drink, and we watched as they announced that they would play the promotional films from the five cities remaining in the race.

Paris had a very upbeat film, all primary colours and smiling people, obviously produced by an ad agency.

New York had, by contrast, a very sombre film, all black and white and no sport as far as one could see - sights of the city, a musician, very downbeat and dark.

Moscow's was different again, small snippets of film, which appeared to include thank yous to all of the other cities bidding for the games.

Madrid's looked oddly amateur, with talking faces suddenly projected from the screen, overlaying the city panoramas. We couldn't hear what was being said by the scary big heads.

Although I am partisan, I would have to say that I thought London's was the best of the films. There was music, there was a story which didn't require you to speak or understand English, and there was the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. I thought it stood head an shoulders against all but the Parisian film, and had more heart and soul than any of them.

We were keeping an anxious eye on the time, as we didn't want to have to leave without knowing what had been decided. Then they appeared to announce that the announcement was coming...and then three opera singers started to sing. There was an audible groan from the considerable crowd which had gathered to hear the announcement.

The singers finished, we were on the edge of our seats...and the camera focussed on a girl who was holding a cushion to enable her to carry the envelope with the result to the President of the IOC.

We waited with baited breath as she crossed the stage, and then the President bad her stand by while he said a few words...another groan escaped the crowd.

At long last, he took the envelope, opened it, and announced that the Olypiad would go to the city of...
...London! there was an involutary cry of YES! by all in the cafe, including me, and including the woman who, moments before, had said that it would be a nightmare were the Olympics to come to the town.

We finished our appointments, walked away from the hospital, to find a cab.

The next day, I listened with growing alarm as the reports of a "power surge" seemed to affect moe and more stations...when a bus exploded at about 9.45, it was clear that there had been a terrorist attack. I thought about the people gathered in that cafe, all jubilant that the Olympic were coming to London. How many of them were caught up in the horror, trying to get to work?

How easily we fall into terrible circumstances, and how easily we escape. A missed bus can save your life...a missed bus can cost you your life. Hitting the snooze button can save your life...hitting the snooze button can cost you your life. And no-one can know which will be which.

I went in to SL to a barrage of IMs asking if I was OK. Made a candle and a poem as a memorial to those who died. I can't bring the candle here, but I can show you the poem.

Spirits rising
They left expecting ordinary days
Instead found they were going on a different sort of journey
They left their cups of coffee and unpaid bills
Stepped out of their homes and away from their lives
And can't return
Instead their souls set free today,
In darkness and confusion,
In smoke and pain,
Soared away from their broken bodies
Into a life beyond
Light a candle for their friends and their families.
Light a candle for their children...
Their wives and mothers...
Husbands and fathers...
Light a candle for the loss
But their souls were set free today
Into a life beyond
The people in real need of light,
Of prayers and illumination
Set those bombs

Today has been one of the most embarrassing days of my life. I have to make a confession, and I am not sure that even now, a week later, that I am equal to making it, because the cringe-making aspects of it linger. But here goes....

We have been living next to some lovely neighbours. They rent their house, which actually belongs to one of the local churches. In times gone by, the vicar or pastor or reverend for the church has lived in the house, but their most recent vicar already has a house fairly locally. So the church has rented it out.

I have to say that the church makes a pretty unchristian and thoughtless neighbour. Where one would be able to ask a neighbour what their plans are, or talk to them about trimming the hedge or killing their vermin, a church is pretty difficult to talk to. At one point they let the house to a pair of drug dealers who roared around town late at night in their flash cars, and had noisy and terrible parties going on into the early hours and beyond.

These neighbours are American and have been understanding about the noise and mess of a three child house. In return, my daughter has regularly jumped over the fence to let them in their own front door, as they have regularly locked themselves out at the front.

We were out on Friday when the family made contact, told my husband they were going back to the States, and said that they had a few electrical things they couldn't take back to the states, would be like them. He said yes, and agreed to go round later than evening, but they weren't there. They came around later with a stereo which the children fell upon with delight.

They told us they would be leaving more stuff, some flower pots, a couple of rugs etc, at the front of the property and we should help ourselves. We said goodbye.

The following day I arrived home to find a rug I didn't recognise on the floor. They had indeed left a lot of stuff out at the front, about 20 black bin bags and some loose things...my husband had said that he would clear the black bags and he took the items they left.

My sister asked what was in the black bags. I told her I had no idea. My son told me that there was something interesting in one which looked like a rucksack. We decided to have a quick look before we took the things to the tip.

We found...
5 laptops, 30 ethernet cards, one leather rucksack, a blow up bed, a battery-powered inflator for said bed, a shoe box full of hotel toiletries, a clip-on spotlight, a table lamp, a door mat, a runner rug, a (new-looking) computer printer, a hold-all and a leather folder with notepad....

There was a lot more, but we didn't want to be intrusive and sort through personal items, at least, I tried not to do anything which I wouldn't like anyone else to do to me. I didn't look at the papers and correspondence, for example.

On Sunday my son went out to War Hammer, and I was typing on the computer. There was a knock at the door and I ran downstairs in my decorating clothes, no bra. I was expecting it to be my son.

The couple were standing on the doorstep. They had a card in their hand. They had come to say goodbye, and were clearly expecting an invitation to come in and have a cup of tea. But I couldn't! in my living room were 5 laptops...30 ethernet cards...etc

As I talked to them from behind the door, I became exquisitely aware that I was standing on a doormat (rescued from their bin bags) with a runner rug behind (rescued from their bin bags) my leather rucksack on the stairs (rescued from their bin bags) and a box of three soaps (rescued from their bin bags) sitting on the hall window ledge.

I nearly died with embarrassment as they told me how grateful they were that John had taken the bags to the tip and they handed me the card. I don't know what I said, I was too embarrassed to make sense. I think I have post traumatic stress disorder now. I keep getting flashbacks.

I muttered, said goodbye, good trip, and shut the door, and sank to my knees. AAARGH

To make matters worse, the card contained vouchers for Marks and Spencers and kind words. I may even be able to look at it without blushing by 2008.

My mother keeps saying...you never have to see them again...they did say that they wanteed you to feel free to help yourself to anything...you never have to see them again. It doesn't seem to be an effective treatment, I'm still getting the flashbacks.

Up at 5.30am. I just can't sleep, am on worry overload at the moment.

Last week, I was worrying that the hospital were planning on operating on my son without checking how the stricture he has is doing. He was admitted to hospital at the end of May with high inflammatory markers, pain and vomiting. Things had settled down fairly quickly, but not before he had had a barium enema showing a stricture.

He has active inflammation at that point, and so I was glad that the surgeon ordered a barium follow-through, thinking this would show what was going on, whether the stricture was improving or getting worse. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the hospital last Monday, it became clear that they were only going to look at his small bowel, to ensure there weren't any other problems going on, and they didn't plan on looking at the area of the stricture again.

He was really upset, thought that if there had been any improvement, the first time they would find this out, would be when he was on the operating table, and it was too late. I phoned the consultant from the internal phone on the reception desk, but got a very obstructive and unhelpful secretary who was very unhelpful.

"What do you mean you want your son to have other tests? Have you seen the surgeon?"
"Well yes, but when he said that he was ordering a barium follow-through, I thought in my ignorance that this would show the area of the bowel where the stricture is."
"So...does he think the operation is necessary?"
"Well, obviously he does, or he wouldn't have scheduled it."
"So...you disgree with him?"
"No, I am not saying I disagree with him, just that I think it would help my son to be reconciled to the fact that it is necessary if he felt reassured that they had checked that the stricture hadn't improved. We thought they would check that today; they aren't going to."
"So...did the surgeon say it was necessary to check it?"
"No, obviously not, because they aren't checking it. But I would have discussed that with him if I had understood that."
"So...what are you asking me to do?"
"I would just like to ask for some sort of test to reassure him that the surgery is necessary...maybe an ultrasound, as the narrowing has shown up on the previous ones?"
"So...you want me to ask if he can have an ultrasound, even though none of the doctors think that is necessary? I just want to be clear on what you want...."

AAAARGH. She wasn't rude, but she made it perfectly clear she thought I was being ridiculous, and somehow managed to convey a sense that I was being unreasonable and demanding as well.

I waited to hear from them and nothing happened and so I contact the PALS people. These are the Patient Advisory and Liaison service in the hospital. I wasn't optimistic.

I sat on the local Maternity Services Liaison Committee at the local hospital for a couple of years, and also on the Patient Panel locally. A friend was chairman of the local Community Health Council too. I gradually became more and more sceptical that these committees actually achieved anything - I thought they spent a lot of time patting themselves on the back and achieving very little.

An example: the sub-committee which had been formed to look into seasonal bed shortages reported to the patient panel. There was a long report, with a lot of figures, and they declared their committee's investigation a success. I looked at it, and it appeared to show that seasonal bed shortages were worse than ever, and the sub-committee has provided no solutions to that problem, and had effected no change in the situation. I asked by what criteria they judged it a success?

I got some old-fashioned looks and a lot of shifting in their seats. Normally it seemed that they tended to pat each other on the back for a job well done, and didn't consider whether the committee had achieved what it set out to achieve, or had changed the experience on a single patient. They had successfully gathered information and report back with it. That's why they were a success. I found the people generally to be obsessed with their own pet subjects, self-satisfied and unable to judge objectively what was going on.

The only people who seemed to be looking at things the way I did were the Community Health Councils, who did seem to me to gain a pretty good overview of what was going on in their areas, and to be committed to changing those things which needed changing. I was pretty pessimistic when the government disbanded them all in favour of Patient Advice and Liaison Services within hospitals. for a start I thought it was unlikely that the PALS services would have the required independence to be able to investigate internally, and I was also pessimistic that no-one would have an overview of the services in an area any more.

I am still sceptical about that - I think that the government aimed to reduce the amount of critical responses it gets to its changes in health care. But as for the second, I have been pleasantly surprised.

The PALs in the hospital took up our case very quickly, talked to the people concerned and said that there was some merit in what we said. They agreed to cancel my son's operation and to do some more investigations and I heaved a sigh of relief. My son was also more relaxed and happy than he had been since they talked about operations.

So...we are due back for another barium enema, and of course, he has started to flare up again, and now I am worrying that I did the wrong thing. Had I not interfered, then he would be scheduled to have his operation in less than a week. As it is, we are supposed to go in this morning, but if he is flaring again, then the likelihood is that the stricture is still there and as bad as it was before.

It is difficult to know who to go to because he seems to be caught in a no-man's land between medical and surgical which means that he has two sets of consultant, registrar and a medley of House Officers and Senior House officers, all involved in his case.

He is feeling ill, was hot last night, and I have no idea if I will be doing the right thing to take him in for the test or not. He has diarrhoea, and that will make the train journey difficult and stressful. Bloody Crohn's disease...I hate it.

Add in the fact that our financial problems seem to be getting worse and worse, and you will see why I am up and typing into this Blog at this time in the morning. Hell's teeth.

What I love about being online, is the connections that I make. A few days ago, I took on the job of making an avatar for SecondLife of the main character in Cory Doctorow's "Someone comes to town, someone leaves town". In the course of the making, I visited the website of the author, and realised what a very interesting man he is :-).

http://www.craphound.com/
Not only that, he's releasing this novel on the internet for free at the same time as it is published in recycled trees...and there is a creative commons agreement that people in the developing world may take and use his work for free. You can see more in the link above.

I am also very impressed by the artist who made the cover of the book, and have been visiting webpages to see other examples of his work. Dave McKean is his name.
http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/

A couple of weeks ago, I made another avatar, for one of the people attending the Supernova conference...and in looking up photographs of the man, found information about his work into "The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge University Press). " Also fascinating.
http://communication.stanford.edu/faculty/reeves.html

Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel that my life is going to be too short tobe able to do justice to all the connections and links I am finding to things that fascinate me. I think it is my blessing and my curse, that I am interested in almost everything and can imagine myself working in many different environments. It is a blessing, because I am rarely - strike that - never bored. I always have things I want to do, read, visit in my head, and I am usually very excited by something I have been thinking or reading about.

It's been a huge asset when home educating the children, because there are very few subjects I don't feel interested in, very, very few. It was also an asset when I was working as a writer for Lloyd's Register, because I was able to throw myself into any story I was asked to write about, and find the contents fascinating.

On the other hand, it makes settling into one direction very hard indeed. I played the piano for a party at the meeting house a few weeks ago, and people are still coming up to me to tell me how impressed they were with my music. (I had composed the music which I played). Many of them have said that I ought to investigate publishing it. But I also make jewellery, and have often had people say to me that I ought to investigate having my necklaces made commercially. And I have written professionally. And I love family history research and would love to do that for a living. And I am very interested in health and especially a fusion between conventional and alternative forms of healing. And I am interested in education, and would like to write about alternatives to the current model of state-funded huge secondary school.

When I pick up a paper, to look at the jobs, there are very few I can't imagine myself doing. I am articulate, literate, numerate, have common sense, and I work loyally and hard for any company which employs me. I am intelligent and a good manager, and I love being responsible for a department when I was working full-time, before I had the children. I find that the huge variety of choices makes it hard for me to choose to go in one direction or another... it has lead to an almost total inertia.

Not quite, though. I have been commission to write a guide to Second Life. The company I found produces guides to a large number of games, and doesn't do one for SL at the moment, and so I pitched the idea to them, provided an outline table of contents, and they bit. So that's why I am writing that at the moment and not this blog....

Well...hmmm it has been a little while since I updated this web journal. I see that one of my friends from SecondLife has started a journal, made two entries and run away, and that seems to be par for the course for a lot of Blogs. I think part of the problem is that people realise that if they are identifiable, it becomes very difficult to avoid revealing other people's secrets in a blog. I think a few days down the line is usually when people start to realise things would be so much easier if only their blog was anonymous, or at least unfindable using a search on their name.

I don't have any excuses really...i just forgot. Things have been a might stressful around here, and so I haven't updated...and now there is a lot of catching up to do....

Perhaps I should just start where I am at the moment. OK...my son was due to have surgery at the beginning of July, but that has been postponed in favour of further tests. My husband, after not drinking for a year, has decided this means he isn't an alcoholic and he can drink again. I found the half empty bottle of gin, and we had a short conversation before he poured it down the bathroom sink. I told him I wasn't up to a full-on row while we are so worried about our son, and so he has agreed to stop drinking for three months so that we are past this difficult part.

Our financial situation hasn't improved in a year, and is exacerbated by the fact that along with the gin bottle, J has been concealing the post. I borrowed some money from my father which helped pay off the worst in the past couple of months, but our financial situation is not helped by the fact that the company that J does most of his work for tend to be rather backward in paying up the dosh. They have excelled themselves this month by not only not paying up on time, but by deducting costs which have been paid to barristers which ought not to have been and deducting a larger percentage than had been agreed.

It is really getting to the point where we might be better off on benefit. I have applied for some jobs, but the logistics of home educating, and being there for my son if he does have to go into hospital, have made it quite difficult to see how I can do it.

I also feel quite resentful that J has a profession and qualifications and yet seems content to sit around waiting for work to fall into his lap.

Got to go - I am being pushed off the computer. Will try to do this first thing in the morning in future, which should prevent interruptions :-).

Aaargh...the day from hell. It started with the dog suddenly barking at about 7am, so I staggered from bed, tripping over boxes of books, to let him out. It was cold, and the overnight freeze had turned the snow of yesterday into iced granite.

I tidied, did some washing up, looked at email. Day break was bright and clear. Heard a bark. The dog for some reason I couldn't fathom, was on the patio table. And seemed to be unable to get off it again. He was sitting in the ice and melting snow, and needed me to stagger over there and get him down again. I did.

Kate, who is nine, got up first. She wanted something nice for breakfast, fancied french toast, but we only had two eggs, and Alistair always has first dibs on those as he is on a special diet. We decided to go to Sainsburys to buy some more eggs. As Kate didn't want her brothers to come, they were passionately keen to go. They got up, got dressed, and argued amongst themselves about whether they were coming or not, and what we would buy.

Frantic barks from the garden. Dog on patio table for the second time, unable to get off. The children used treats and cajoling, but it wasn't working, so I had to go out and lift the daft animal off the table again. What the attraction was is beyond me, as he was plainly terrified once he was on the table.

Taking no chances, Alistair and I turned the patio table over and rested it on its top. We usually do that anyway in about November, as strong winds have carried away more than one patio table. The weather has been so mild until now, that we hadn't bothered with it.

Went to Sainburys, bought eggs and a lot else besides, and was cross questioned by nosey cashier..."your children not in school today then?" followed by - when I had explained they are home educated - "You a teacher, then?" and a loud sniff when I explained I am not.

We took four boxes between us for packing books into, and marched off home, an icy wind blasting round corners at us all the way home. The children were keen to watch neighbours over lunch, but Greg Dyke's resignation was all over the tv. We watched, I gnashed my teeth and then visited the BBC website to make my opinions known.

How the government can have cobbled their intelligence dossier from one thesis and a couple of other sources, provided no evidence that any of the things in it were true, and then act in this way towards the BBC is beyond me. I visited the Number 10 Downing Street website yesterday and left feedback there to that effect too.

Oh rats, dropped pomegranate bits all over the keyboard. Read somewhere that for women of a certain age, pomegranates have something in them that nothing else has, and have been eating them a-go-go ever since, hoping that whatever magic they do, will work for me. I've been feeling fit to strangle someone. I expect it is my hormones if I have any left.

Pomegranates don't help with frustration - they are the most infuriating fruit to eat. The have the bizarre capability of producing an unfeasibly large mound of debris which appears to defy the laws of nature by exceeding the size of the original fruit, even after you have ingested several thousand small pockets of juice...and spat out the pips. They are so bloody fiddly
and they make the keyboard sticky.

The peasants were revolting this evening. One son decided to clear out the sofas in the hope of striking gold, and lo! he found a ?2 coin and the other son instantly claimed ownership of it. It seemed wrong to deprive the one who had bothered to search the sofa, but on the other hand wrong to deprive the rightful owner as he had been discovered, so I made him give the ?2 back, and gave him ?2 to replace it.

The other son then started throwing a teenage tantrum about it being unfair to reward someone for stealing his money. After some swearing and shouting, I sent him to his bedroom, and he refused to go. Thus I could be seen womanhandling him up to his bedroom, much to his amazement and disgust. We had another shout at each other in his bedroom before I left him to it, only to find that in the meantime Kate and Thomas had had a fight over a piece of bubble gum, and Thomas had deliberately sabotaged the bubble gum as he knew it wasnt his.

Kate was demanding 20 pence compensation and I fel as though my head was about to explode. I would like to have a husband to call in at these points, but J is an all or nothing sort of guy - either he ignores it completely, or he goes so far over the top, that he is in outer space....I sent them to bed and stormed off downstairs.

I did some ritual banging things about in the kitchen, finished the washing up and then treated myself to a couple of squares of stale chocolate, a pomegranate and a cold cup of tea. Boy do I know how to live, or what?

Things are getting worse again. Telephone calls from credit card companies that haven't been paid...husband with blank expression when asked why...aaargh.

We have made a plan for moving and releasing the equity in the house to buy a new house somewhere else...but it is going to take quite a lot of money to bring this house up to saleable standard. I am packing our books away in boxes - we have thousands - to store at my mother's, while we decorate. J seems to think this can be achieved while lying horizontal in bed. As Del Boy would say, he suffers from sticky sheets....

I have never been able to stay in bed once I am awake. I have to get up and get going, can't lie about snoozling and sleeping. If I go back to bed, I am either VERY tired, or ill.

J on the other hand, can easily sleep until 2pm if he has no committments, and then get up and lie on top of the bed while he watches TV or reads papers, or does the crossword. That would drive me crazy. It's fine if we have nothing that needs doing. But when we have 101 things that need to be done, it is infuriating.

I have lots of things I can get on with, but I can't transfer all the books to my mother's, and I can't do all the things he can do. Our house is stuffed with Do-it-Yourself equipment I have been struggling to live with for the past 20 years - we have a tool for every job you might like to mention. This should be a positive asset in the current situation, but strangely it isn't. Aaargh.

In the general sort out I am coming across diaries I wrote when the children were babies, and which are written in fugitive ink. One of the diaries is barely readable now, in a couple of years it will be unreadable. I should type it up, because I feel sure that Ali will love it when he gets a bit older...but how to find the time?

I want to stop the world for about a week to give me time to catch up. Oh well...maybe when we are out in the sticks and J is working back here during the week, I will have time to do things like that.

Haven't looked at this for a long time...which will be evident by the long gap in entries, of course. have been meaning to go back to regular diary entries for ages. Now I have paper diaries, diary entries in my word files, diary entries all over the place.

Things are changing - I suppose that's why I want to be writing a diary. We are looking to move, and are preparing the house for the possibility that someone else might come here and see it as somewhere they might want to live. This is the other reason to be writing a diary - avoiding getting into the loft to see what a quantity of rubbish needs to be shifted when we move.

The children are all being horrors this week - maybe the idea of moving has unsettled them..I don't know. Currently I can hear Delta Gudrun at maximum volume fighting with something else.

The dog is helping by redesigning the garden for us in the current wet weather.... He has carved a new path for himself in the lawn, and brings a quantity of mud in every time he comes in.

We are looking to move to Norfolk or Suffolk, as the moe might allow us to be without a mortgage. It would involve a lot of very real changes - I have lived in this area for thirty years, and I know a lot of people locally. One of the things I like is the feeling of belonging that it gives me - I can find a house of someone I know in most streets in my area, which isn't something that many people can say in a commuter belt where there is a high turnover of families.

Still, it would have a lot of advantages, especially for the children. And if I manage to write for a living, it would mean that I could work more or less anywhere...in theory.

The stereo wars upstairs are getting louder, and the pasta is ready, must go. I won't leave it so long before I return.

Woke up this moring with a crick in my neck, having spent the night on the sofa. Kate started throwing up at 3.30am night before last, and the impossibility of looking after her on her cabin bed when she needed to rush to the bathroom meant that we ended up downstairs, plastic wastebaskets in hand.

Monday October 28
We travelled to Suffolk to see Matthew Manning. I had been intending to travel by train, but at the last moment John's interview was cancelled and so he was able to drive us. Thank goodness that he was, as there was total choas on the train system, following the storm the day before. My mother came and picked up T and K and then we set off at about 10.30 - only half an hour late. The journey was fine, although there were a lot of trees knocked down by the wind, at the side of the road. We arrived very early, and decided to have lunch in the pub. Hartest is a very olde English type of village, with a green, lots of old cottages, and a proper pub with nictine yellow walls and horse brasses. It must be popular in the summer and at weekends, as there were vast rooms of empty tables, and a very comprehensive adventure playground in the garden.

We sat and ate green lipped mussels while Alistair sipped a glass of water. He was quiet and a bit apprehensive, never having visited a healer before. We went for a short walk around the village and then arrived for our appointment fifteen minutes early, as instructed.

Sturgeon's hall is a yellow painted substantial house overlooking the village green. There was an instruction to enter the house using the stable door, and so we found ourselves in a large waiting room with a big fireplace, lots of paintings and comfortable sofas. We were greeted, and then sat on the sofa. There were some interesting books, including a What Doctors Dont Tell You publication about different diseases. I quickly looked up Chron's disease and scribbled down some recommendations about alternative treatments. MOst of them I knew about, but licorice root was a new one on me.

The previous patient made his way painfully out of the treatment room, assisted by Matthew and two helpers, and two sticks. I thought initially that he was an old man, but he didn't appear to be. I was afraid of seeming to stare, so concentrated on returning the book to the table, and getting our things together. We were called in.

I have read so much about Matthew Manning over the years, seen him on television, followed his career with interest. I wondered if I would instantly feel a bond, or feel the power of his healing ability. I warmed to him immediately, he was very relaxed and friendly. He talked to us quietly about what was wrong, told us that treatment might not make any difference, although the other people he was treating with Crohn's had responded to treatment.

The treatment room was a lot smaller than I was expecting, with a warm yellow decor and little stars. Matthew put Alistair on a chair in the middle of the room, and gave him some cushions to put under his feet. Matthew put on some music and then just placed his hands on Alistair. I closed my eyes and tried to meditate and "hold them in the light" as Quakers say.

The time seemed to pass very quickly indeed. It seemed like only a couple of minutes, but must have been half an hour. We came to, said goodbye, and then made our way back to the car.

I must say that I felt very relaxed and calm. I had been suffering from a headache and feeling very stressed out, but as I walked back to the car I could feel how much tension and anxiety had disappeared. The effect is still with me three days later.

Tuesday, October 29
We had to go into town for a number of errands. I needed to pay in some money to my bank account, we had to buy a birthday present for my niece, and pick up a prescription from the doctor's surgery. On our way back from the doctor's, Alistair and Thomas were having kicking competitions, to see who could kick the highest, and I suddenly realised that Alistair was running and jumping - something he hasn't done for months and months.

Wednesday, October 30
Started several hours earlier than planned, as far as I was concerned! I heard Kate make a funny noise at about 3.30am, and called out to her. She woke, ran to the bathroom and started throwing up. She was sick every half hour for the next few hours, and we decamped to the living room. She complained of bad stomach pains, and was yelping in pain - to the extent that I thought she might have appendicitis. She slept fitfully on the sofa, as did I. Alistair woke up at about 10 am, and was bouncing about in a way that I can't remember him doing for years. He was very happy and seemed excited too.

Kate was very disappointed that she wouldn't be able to go to her cousin's birthday party, but didn't want to because she was feeling so poorly. She seemed to improve in the middle of the day, but was feeling ill again by the time that the boys had to leave for the party at 4pm. I gave her some paracetemol for her headache, and stopped worrying that she had appendicitis and started worrying that it was meningitis....

I was thinking this morning that my first web diary, which I started in 1998, we actually one of the first Uk diaries. When I first went online, I found it very frustrating that nearly all the websites on any subject were American - including most of the family history sites, which were a main interest then. Nowadays, there are lots of UK sites, and nearly all television programmes and radio programmes are supported by a web site.

In 1998, I was using an old Macintosh Power Mac to access the internet, and found that any sites with a lot of content, or with audio or lots of moving graphics, took forever to load - and often the sites bounced me off before they could load. The BBC site used to shut me out because the loading time was so long.

When I made my own website within a month of getting online, I made sure that I stuck to a very basic design and didn't shut out people because they didn't have a powerful computer or fast connection. I hope I would be as thoughtful nowadays, although I now have a broadband connection and a pretty powerful computer.

All the children and my husband have a cold now. We have the son of a friend spending the day with us. My friend is away in Dublin for a conference which she is helping to run, and her son has a training day, and so to the delight of my younger son, whose special friend this is, he will spend the hwole day and not just the time after school with us.

I decided yesterday to get on and finish off some do-it-yourself jobs. Ages ago I bought some plywood to make a bed guard for K's bed. She has a cabin bed, but we had to buy a new mattress, which turned out to be too deep for safety in a cabin bed. I bought the ply to stop her rolling off in the middle of the night.

I had marked out a shape to cut out of the playwood, started cutting it with a jigsaw months ago and gave it up as too hard. Yesterday I took the jigsaw and a lot of elbow grease, and finished the cutting out, and then painted the board, both sides. She wanted blue and purple in a swrily design.

The children looked at the paints I was using and asked if they could paint their wall in their bedroom. I started painting their room ages ago, but they couldn't agree what colour to do the other walls, which still have a rather insipid flower patterned wallpaper on them. So we mixed up some blue pigment with some green paint and got a rather fetching aquamarine colour, and we all painted the wall. It meant moving a couple of hundred books and videos and two bookcases, and of course we had some dramas. K kicked over the paint soon after starting, and so I had to carefully slide the newspaper containing more than half the paint we had made up, onto a sheet of hardboard and then we had to paint like crazy before the paint ran off the hardboard or solidified.

K also managed to get paint over her trousers, which made her wail for ages. She has one pair of jeans which she wears constantly and gets very upset if they aren't available for wearing. After twenty minutes scrubbing and soaking I managed to get all the paint out. I had to get up at 6 am to make sure that they were put in the tumble dryer so that she could wear them again this morning.

Still, we finished the wall, and managed to put the furniture back, and it looks miles better. Now all I have to do is paint in and around T's loft bed, which won't be an easy task.

My dear husband came home drunk and went into mega tidying up mode as soom as he arrived. It is best to either get out of the way or shout at him until he withdraws to our bedroom, I find. As I was still reorganising in the children's bedroom, I left him to it. He is supposed to be cutting down, but has been drunk the last four nights out of four. What he is using for money I can't imagine.

I have been researching alternatives for congestive heart failure for my father, who is quite poorly at the moment. I discover that CQ10, Vitamin C, Omega 3 oils and L arganine plus gentle arm exercise will be helpful. Not sure that he will take them though. He gets so fed up with taking pills and medicines that he ends up taking some things every other day - probably dropping his intake below the leval at which it would be helpful. I have tried to point this out to him, but he is very resistant. The trouble is that he was always so healthy and fit and active, he finds it difficult to think of himself as being unwell.

I'm agonizing over our next visit to the hospital, next Monday. I woke at 5 am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Research on the internet for information is frightening and frustrating. I already know about Crohn's disease in general terms, and I have a lot of notes about the various treatments and the alternatives. None of them seem very good - most people relapse, and many need surgery for strictures and obstructions. (/p)

(p)A had a colonoscopy five weeks ago, and biopsies were taken which identified Crohn's as the disease he has been suffering from for the last 18 months. He has been on a liquid diet since the colonoscopy - not easy for a 12 year old. But I have been proud of him and the way that he has managed to follow the diet. He has even been cooking for the rest of us, as cookery is, cruelly, one of his favourite activities.(/P)

(p)When we went to the hospital a couple of weeks ago, his blood tests showed that things were moving in the right direction - his inflammation rate was down to normal again, his weight and blood iron rate were moving up. Even so, the consultant said that he would only agree that his Crohn's was in remission if the next colonoscopy on November 1 showed that all the inflammation was gone, AND the biopsies showed that there was no active Crohn's in his colon. (/P)

(p)He said that even if he appeared to be better, even if his blood results remained good, if there was active Crohn's he would advise prescribing a steroid.

(p)When I was in the room with the consultant, it all seemed to make perfect sense, but when I was recounting the conversation to my husband, and later to a friend, it no longer seemed to make sense. If he is improving, why would we want to add in an aggressive treatment like a steroid, which carries all its own side effects and risks? If he is improving why would we want a second colonoscopy, the first having been very distressing (although A was sedated not to remember the pain he suffered)?

(p)The consultant said that at A's age, the disease could be just as damaging as the steroids, but that isn't what I have read - the research I have seen indicates that the growth retardation of the disease is reversible, while that of the steroids is not.

(p)I am dreading the next appointment, because I don't feel I am good at challenging the doctors, and I know that my husband isn't. As a fellow professional (he's a solicitor) he has a very deep regard for the professional training of doctors. Even though this nearly killed him a couple of years ago. (Our local hospital admitted him for a bowel obstruction, and then ignored him for 10 days, dehydrated him so effectively that his kidneys stopped working for a while, and generally tried their best to finish him off on a number of occasions.

(p)Even when I demanded that a doctor should come and examine my husband, the junior doctor who came made comments like "Do you have any medical training, Mrs B?" When I remonstrated with him and said that no-one had examined my husband for days he said "I am here, I see him." I really lost it at that point and said "You know that seeing him is not the same as a proper examination. I'm very concerned about his condition, he has been deteriorating every day and no-one seems to take the slightest notice." He examined him, and suddenly everything was urgent and an emergency - although it still took them some 30 hours to get him into surgery.)

(p)I find that my son's diagnosis has sent me straight back to that time, and also to the time when he was my first baby, a time when the responsibility that was vested in me as his mother was almost overwhelming. I saw in his deep dark eyes that he trusted me, expected that I knew what I was doing, and I didn't!

(p)Meanwhile, life goes on, and I have the same stuff to deal with as usual. Not enough money, the endless, endless questions about why I am home educating. You'd think after three years that this would bother me less. I begin to think I should be like those snappy people who turn up on the web support lists, who simply roar "Mind your own business!" when asked why little Amy isn't in school.

(p)Yesterday I slipped out of the house leaving my husband in charge. A friend trades in Traidcraft and Tearcraft products, and every year at about this time she has an open day for people to order or buy Christmas cards and presents. The children normally go, but they all have stinking colds, and as J was around, I decided to go on my own. Where in previous years I have built up a huge order and paid by cheque, I raided J's wallet and only bought what I had the cash to pay for.

(p)I was enjoying my time away from the house - I was given a very pleasant cup of coffee, and she always bakes a lot of cakes and biscuits for this event, so I had a cube of ginger cake too, free, but with a donation to the world hunger fund if desired. I was enjoying them when a woman I have met on previous occasions came over and asked where the children were. I explained they were bunged up with a stinking cold, and no doubt infectious. She then began to browse on the table next to my chair and suddenly turned to say "What will you do about secondary education?"

(p)I replied that I intended to carry on home educating. "But what about physics? Chemistry? all those other subjects which schools offer?" I said that the children don't seem that interested in physics, although actually, thinking about it we have done quite a lot about magnetism and gravity. We have chemistry sets and have done some chemistry. I tried to explain that I think of things in such a different way now, that I regard education in its original sense as drawing out gifts and qualities from the child, and not filling them up with facts and figures.

(p)All the time I was really quite resentful. I shouldn't dream of approaching another parent and demanding to know why they have sent their children to a particular school, or to know how that school manages to teach independence of mind when all pupils are taught in the same way, or independent research when groups of pupils must work together in order to share out researces and time. Or why schools only measure academic performance, when the adult world requires so much more than this - creativity, innovation, initiative.

(p)I read the Times Educational Supplement (TES) each week, and was interested recently to see that Richard Rogers, the architect, didn't read until he was 11. There is a new test for teachers to give to children who aren't performing well academically, which tests their spatial awareness, as this was the area in which Rogers was a genius. It seems that many children with dyslexia and problems with literacy may have hidden talents for spatial awareness. Although what they will do with the information if teachers discover hoardes of children with a genius for spatial awareness is anyone's guess....