Bullying

This is just a short note really to reply to Dani's message in my last post.

As a victim of bullying in primary school myself, I know all too well what is going on in her mind.

The boys used to spit at me and call me names because my surname was Heeps and I can still remember my so-called friends trying to strangle me with my satchel strap and me running up the school field hardly able to breathe just to get to my Mum waiting at the gate. It took 2 parents a knife to get it off me and the following day the headmaster blamed me for their actions.

So yes I do realise saying 'just ignore them' isn't easy for them to hear and that it is easier said than done.

The Bug is Back

Or it is at the moment.

As the kids were let out of school half an hour early for the England football match, Marion went to play out on her bike. Two of the kids were also on their bikes and she went to go and play with them and they started being nasty to her, calling her names, telling her that her bike was childish and rubbish and then her friend Megan ended up being called names by them too. I did tell them both to ignore them and just stay away, afterall bullies want the attention.

Then Megan left to go ice skating and Marion to Activ8 and she went on her bike. When I returned, Alex and Jasmine saw me, but didn't realise Marion wasn't with me and they both yelled "quick, let's get out of here before she sees". When I got to the front door I noticed an A4 sheet of paper hanging out the letterbox. They'd drawn a no entry sign and put Marion's & Megan's names inside it; to the right of that they'd put "you are suckers" and then underneath all of that "you are not aloud on the drive". Of course the pair of them had gone hiding into their houses.

While Marion was at Activ8 I went to look for a new needle and found a chart I thought I'd got rid of and I just decided that would be small enough to get my teeth into, to get me back into stitching.

When we came back from Activ8, Jasmine and Alex were back out playing, so I said something to them about expecting better from them and that I didn't appreciate the note I'd found, Jasmine stopped to listen to me, but Alex just had a stupid grin on his face and carried on riding his bike, she strongly denied having anything to do with it, but I'm sure she egged him on because she's that kind of girl (all sweetness and light, but with a mean nasty streak) as she'd said earlier on that nobody else was allowed to play on the street, only her and Alex. It doesn't matter who wrote it, I didn't appreciate it and I made sure they both knew that their parents would be informed if they did anything like it again.

Megan's Mum was none too pleased either, but we told the girls to be the bigger person, ignore them and just stay away from them when they're playing together.

I looked through my fabric and came across this one from Dyeing4U (it's a great shame they're not still around) called Innocence. I'm using a hand dyed thread, but there was no name or colour on the label. So this is as far as I've got - anyone got any ideas as to the chart design?

Longest Day

Today is the longest day of the year, Summer Solstice and then the days grow shorter.

I haven't managed any stitching over the weekend, I had a terrible headache on Friday and woke up with a migraine on Saturday and I felt awful. I did read quite a bit of my book read in the afternoon, Suffragette Girl by Margaret Dickinson and it's brilliant, I couldn't put it down and I finished it yesterday.

Sunday was another quiet day as, although not as bad as Saturday, my headache was still there. But I did start another book called As Time Goes By - Harry Bowling.

I feel much better today, just tired. I must remember to pop out and get myself some stronger painkillers tomorrow, so that I have them just in case.

Back on Blogspot Once More

Well here I am back on blogspot, but obviously a completely new blog (I'm still locked out of my other one after 2 years of trying to get them to work out that it wasn't a spam blog :( ) , moving back from Wordpress.

Over the half term holiday they had to do a painting, collage or drawing of a flower related thing. Marion had seen a water lily in a pond somewhere and that's what she wanted to do as a collage. I drew and cut out the butterfly, but the rest was all her doing with some help from her Granny.

Here she is showing off her masterpiece:



She was invited to a birthday party yesterday and she knew that Kieran likes pirates, so she asked me if she could make him a pirate birthday card, so I gave her the bits she needed and helped her a little, but here she is with the finished card:



Here's a close up pic of the birthday card and we found out on the way to school this morning that he was thrilled to bits with it.