I personally think the celeb mags which sprang up in the last decade or so have fostered a lot of the insecurities, especially amongst young people who haven't even stopped growing. I'm always shocked when I hear of parents of perfectly normal looking kids allowing or even encouraging them to get cosmetic surgery or other invasive treatments.

If it worried me, I'd do something. Having been too thin for years (and eating everything and anything), I've now gone the opposite way. I must say, I'd rather be a stone over weight than too thin but, I don't think it's anyone else's business and think magazines should mind their own business.

Well I'm starving....I'm going to have cornflakes with full cream milk and sugar!!

Hopefu;;y, you are now asleep or else you'll be shattered by the time you get here. I must say, I wish it were GWTW we were going to see.

Should be going to bed but I keep remembering things I need to do.

You'll wake yourself up if you're too active, Nina.

I know but I'm organising an event for 200 children tomorrow and I'm worried I'll forget to do something.

I doubt it - but you'd just deal with it if you had.

That's true but when one's dealing with children there is always a tendency to make quadruple sure you've covered every possible base you can imagine and almost totally unlikely ones too.

 

I could never fully relax when I was in overall charge of a large group of other people's precious children here or abroad, although I knew I was prepared for virtually anything. It's so rewarding to open up new horizons to young people but it's a huge responsibility too.

 

It's a shame that The Child Protection Act actually made it more difficult for organised activity groups like Guides, Youth Clubs etc. because volunteers dried up because they had to get police checks and the average law abiding person doesn't want to put him/herself through it just to help out. That meant there weren't enough leaders to work in more manageable smaller groups, which put more stress on those who did, who then dropped out. I was one of the latter, despite my long service.

 

I have quite enough with small numbers of kids. These days, thay aren't all well behaved.

I'd be worried if they all behaved impeccably.

 

Just thinking of the children in Village Of The Damned (original version) - so spooky.

If they all remembered "please" and "thank you" and had a modicom of common sense - I'd take that as normal. High spirits I expect, rudeness and disobedience in those circumstances, I don't.

I agree. It would be nice to hear please and thank you more often from adults in the UK too. Rudeness, loudness and aggression plus litter are the things which always make me m ad and sad in comparison when I've been out of the UK and just returned.

I think the litter thing is mostly some people trying to look big. They don't.

It's not that there aren't enough litter bins or they're not big enough or they aren't emptied enough.

 

It's persuading people to use them is the problem.

People don't seem to care anymore about the state of the streets.

I'm not knocking all smokers but, around here they seem to take the cellaphane of the packet and drop it, and then the cigarette gets dropped as well when they've finished with it. Some kids unwrap sweets and just drop the paper - so automatically that they don't give it a thought and their parents just don't care - and don't start me off about chewing gum

 

OK rant over and back to as normal as I get.

My apologies for shutting down so quickly this morning. without a word. We had a terrible thunderstorm, so bad that I actually shut down my PC and unplugged it. Then I had to go out. When I got back, I had to sit in the car outside the house for a full ten minutes because the rain was absolutely torrential. I couldn't believe it. Still, it'll save me washing the car for a bit.

I've been really lucky. We've had 3 or 4 showers and they've all missed me.

We had a heavy downpour yesterday. Luckily I was sitting in a pub at the time so avoided getting wet. Didn't have a coat with me.