Underwear....
The computer has been naughty - not sure whether it has reformed itself once and all or not but at least it is working this morning.
Haven't blogged because of the computer problem and also have (again) been away. Some features of society were very evident while I was away - one of them was underwear (sorry, children, this MIGHT seem a bit biological, but there IS purpose in it!).
At the beach one gets accustomed to people covered in the equivalent of underwear (in quantitative terms)all day long, one doesn't bat an eyelid. One is thankful, indeed, that one isn't in less respectable places where there is LESS covering. However, one thing which baffled me this time was the presence of boys - on bikes or walking (sometimes, astonshingly, with their MOTHERS!!!) - clad in shirt,poorly fitting jeans (designed to drop to about hip level at the top) and underwear with the label carefully stitched on the outside of the back of the waistband. I thought (fleetingly) of sewing labels on the back of my sons' underwear stating something like 'hey, everyone, I'm wearing underwear' or some such. I mean, WHY ON EARTH do normal-looking young men feel the need to make this fashion statement (I assume that is ALL it is)?. Are children in school so totally controlled by peers and marketing that they will do ANYTHING to be socially acceptable?. And for how long is its power effective. More to the point, WHERE will it end? Just as clothing manufacturers thoughtfully developed the item for the tops of bodies where long sleeves (in a contrasting colour) are stitched onto the sleeves of t-shirts (so you don't need to buy two pieces of clothing to be fashionable and thereby run the risk of overheating into the bargain) : so manufacturers, perhaps, could develop the convenient method of keeping those jeans from falling off completely by stitching on the top a (suitably-labelled) imitation-underwear section. Oh well, it wasn't one of the HIGHLIGHTS of the holiday, just one of the most baffling things. So glad my children didn't go to school and develop this slavish dependance on big marketing companies and go about looking like total idiots. No doubt their mothers LAUNDER these clothes.....

One of the highlights was meeting a little girl on the beach who has down syndrome - and another was meeting a man at the camp-site whose 71st birthday is was on the last day we were going to the beach. He blessed us with a £10 note for ice-creams and we brought tears to his eyes by singing 'happy birthday' to him. We, in turn, blessed the ice-cream lady by telling her that we were ALL having an icecream today, and why. What a wonderful thing the free market is!!!

Having expected, since February, that Victoria was going to have to have another operation, I didn't make any plans to go to Cefn Lea until after we saw the consultant at the end of July and found that she wasn't going to need it yet. Then, of course, it was too late to get accommodation so plans have been cobbled together at the last minute making me appear to be (as too many homeschoolers) lacking in committment to 'support' such events. hey ho, might not get a place to display my books now but hope to get some fellowship with some folks I haven't seen for a couple of years - and maybe connect with one or two who might be helped in their homeschooling by exchanging some of the money the Lord has entrusted to them for one or two of my curriculum packs. In either case, the business is paying the fuel, it can afford to at the moment.