After half term...
£30.00 for after school football club
£30.00 for school trip
£70.00 final payment for school activity week later in month (total cost £250 + spending money)
No cinema or climbing club for you this term, matey... 
and on Friday it's final payment £50.00 for scout's summer camp (total £180)... He had to miss out on trip to HMS Belfast and the various water sports options at local reservoir, poor little hard done by thing...
Not to mention the prescription swimming goggles he (really) really does need for both scout and school activity weeks and our summer hol 'cos he's like a blind fish out of water in the water and he's going to be doing some serious wet stuff on all three... And his scrips changed again, so he needs new glasses, and it actually works out almost as expensive to get his existing frames 're-glazed' as to buy new ones but he doesn't like the frames and then there's the bogof deal etc etc etc etc...
Meanwhile, I'm now living on porridge and water (oats is cheaper than bread), and having robbed Peter to pay Paul I am now robbing Percy to pay Peter back 'cos he's getting a bit antsy, and still wondering where the hell our holiday spending money is gonna come from 
And, I'm not complaining really, 'cos I know even if I'm having to juggle desperately we're still just in the black and will probably make it to Christmas without having to sell our furniture, but I do sometimes wonder what life would be like if I actually wanted a life too! And I do think, even though it makes me sound like an old man that kids get offered too much these days and the guilt/pressure on parents to fund all these brilliant ideas for trips and activity weeks and after school clubs that people keep coming up with is completely unfair on us and them.
When I were a lad I had one day at the seaside a year on the Kahnsil estate outing to Hastings. We ate samwidges and hard boiled eggs on the beach and threw pebbles at seagulls. One year I threw one straight up in the air and managed to split my own head open when it came back down on the same trajectory, but it was still the best 'holiday' I ever had because my brother got sunstroke sick and didn't want his boiled egg so I got two 
And at secondary school they did have 'activity week' but this also included the free option of 'art activities' for the likes of me, which was basically a week throwing modelling clay at 'Cat' Felix and flicking paint at Kevin Kibby when we caught him picking his nose and eating it.
Kid's today, don't know they're born, do they? Poverty was real poverty back then - not like poverty now with it's flat screen TV's and X-Boxes and Mobile phones... Mind you, if I was a kid now I'd trade all of them for a days pug-whanging up the twitten, but there are no twittens anymore and no pugholes to whang pug from even if there were...
God, I've depressed myself now, and I wasn't feeling that great to start with...
Ho bl00dy hum...
:D
Comments
Ba humbug!
Don't mean to sound rude or anything...but I'm soooo glad that I'm not the only one struggling with finances, especially in relation to kids...!New comment
I always wondered how those
pug dogs got their
flat, squished up faces,
you were pan-smacking
them, like little furry
tennis balls
No - it was my patented 'anti-yapping device', a small muzzle I got my mum to knock up on her knitting machine. I thought that a nice, soft wool one would be better than one made out of harsh old plastic or chicken wire, but hadn't figured the effects of rain into the equation... Sadly, after the first big storm, the wool shrank, producing the famous 'pug' nose.
Don't ask about the knitted willy-warmers......
:D
New comment
Ahhhhhh... you should try my patented coffee sucksock. I got my mum to knock it up on her knitting machine - it's a small woollen 'sock' (hence the name) that you dangle in your coffee cup, and it soaks up the coffee so you can suck it safely without any worries about spillage. Unlike a straw, the upflow of coffee is dependent on absorbtion rather than suction alone, so if you do laugh while drinking it doesn't come out of your nose. I've got to say early trials have been very positive regarding reduced spillage, choking and nasal blowback, but the coffee tastes awful. Sort of like it's been strained through an old sock. Mind you, if you drink regularly in starbucks you'll probably not notice anything unusual about it at all!
:D