The Bathroom is a dangerous place

…as I’m sure you know.

Yesterday our son (age 5) fell as he climbed out the bath. He landed head first on the hard tiled floor, immediately next to the toilet.

I saw it all from the door way, you know how these things are in slow motion, but I was to far away to catch him.

He cried and screamed, “I need to go to hospital!”

I was so relieved, he was obviously OK.

There was no blood, so why did he think he needed the attention of A&E?

I am always telling him that bathrooms are dangerous, the floor gets slippery when wet and if he fell and banged his head on any of the hard surfaces he could die.

As he didn’t die, perhaps he will stop believing all my other warnings on subjects such as traffic and drowning.

My conclusion is that I now see there is good reason for all those fluffy bathroom accessories of olden times – like the toilet lid cover and the mat that sits around the toilet. They can help to soften the landing when you fall head first.

I’ve done a search but cannot find any toilet lid covers at all – aren’t they made any more, I am surprised.

I did find lots of links to those selling so called hygienic disposable paper seat covers, quite a different thing.

I also found a chocolate toilet 

which I thought I must share with you all!

http://www.creativechocolatesofvt.com/Products/Toilet_Basket.php3

Now, back to safety in the bathroom.

Why have we got hard, dangerous, slippy tiles? Well, they look really good; we have underfloor heating so they are warm under foot and water dries quickly; Mr Tara Plumbing chose them – it’s his fault.

I’d like to look into a bouncy rubber floor, as in the advert, you can watch it here if you are over 18:    http://www.budweiser.co.uk/budweiser.aspx

Finally, a little secret. In our area of the world, at Westwood, Margate we now have a

http://www.bathstore.com

Strangely, they must want to keep it a secret because it does not appear in the location by postcode finder on their website.

Reviewing our estimates

You may think calculating the price for a quotation is easy, after all we do it all the time. No, if you are seeking a quote from a builder or plumber in Kent, each job is quite unique and the spreadsheet we use has space for the following items:

1.Material

2. Labour

3. Fuel (hour far is the job)

4. car parking (if applicable)

5. a proportion of our overheads (you know, insurance and advertising)

6. smokers in the house? daily penalty for inconvenience. We may decline the work as we have to consider health and safety in the work place and providing a safe work environment for employees.

7. pets in the house? Possible penalty for inconvenience

8. Interesting people with interesting hobbies – price will include a discount – because we are interested in meeting you again and hearing more about your charity work, collection of African wood carvings or whatever (mostly because Mr Tara Plumbing and I are lonely people with no friends!)

9. friendly (sexy) housewife? secures discount of about 10% – the guys will enjoy working there.

10. Over the top sexy housewife who greets the workers in dressing gown or similar – add £100 per day danger money as no man can be left to work alone for his own safety. (Despite appearances, the men are frightened of these ladies!)

11. young children – usually discount – sympathy for sleepless nights, worry, single income household, etc…

12. teenage children – penalty due to obnoxious behaviour and the possibility they may destroy the work we’ve done whilst it is still in our guarantee period.

13. Messy house – may incur penalty depending on work

14. Rudeness on telephone or when we attend the house – huge penalty – we are not keen to see you again so we need a huge incentive to put up with you.

15. Invite us to a swinging couples party in your hot tub! We will come to the party but we won’t do the work in your house!

16. Then finally, add V. A. T., of course, 17.5%

So you see, it is not as simple as it looks.

Note: Item 6 & 7 depend largely on smell and there may be no charge if there is no inconvenience (& no smell).

Jingas – vegan shoes with a charity and ecology angle.

Regular readers will know that it was recently my birthday. My goodness, I dropped enough hints, yet not one of you sent me an ecard, let alone a Big Present!

Luckily Mr Tara Plumbing came up with the goods, all my desires were met! I’ve written about some of them already: dinner, theatre, books.

I just thought I should add that I have some new jingas. I discovered them in an advert in The Big Issue. Colourful footwear which is also vegan. Not that I’m planning to eat them.

Plants and even edible pants, but edible footwear, I can’t see it catching on.

The vegan claim is that they contain nothing of animal origin. They are also sweatshop free shoes which are made in Brazil and 5% of profits goes towards funding a social project in a Rio de Janeiro.

So what are they like to wear. If you click on the link below you will find that they are fairly cheap and like most things, you get what you pay for.

They are very flat, thin and flimsy, think ballet shoes, plimsolls or slippers. They are NOT for serious walking. They are cheap, comfortable and colourful. I love them!

I’m a thoroughly modern woman: I rarely walk anywhere. The only long walk I take on a regular basis is across the play ground when I take my son to school. By the afternoon I can’t face such another huge trek, so Mr T.P. collects our son!

I drive to the gym so that I can sit on a stationery bike and cycle the equivalent distance that I covered in my drive there and could have cycled for free on a real bike. On a real bike, however, there is the danger of an accident, or that I might miss the day time repeat of Frasier.         

Get your jingas here: http://www.jingashop.com/

An interesting feature of Jinga’s is that on their website they also claim to give a certain amount of the profit to charity. This year, on TV in an episode of The Apprentice and in Dragon’s Den, some of the UK’s most successful business people have poured scorn on some entrepreneur- wannabes’ confusion between charity and business.

Alan Sugar pointed out that it was administratively almost impossible to promise to give a % of the retail cost to a charity and also, that in doing so, you are effectively telling the consumer that the price of the product has been inflated to include a charity donation. On D.D.  Mr Balantyne (from ice-cream van to gyms), pointed out that as a member of the public, a business person or as an investor it was more tax efficient for him to give to charity personally and directly, so that the money can be gift aided.

I think what the gurus are saying is that it is better to run a good business, be successful and profitable. Then give as much money as you want or can to charity. I seem to recall the Body Shop lady say something similar, too, but I could be wrong.

Of course, if the business is a failure then charity gets £0.

Great conveniences

Mr T. P. has utilised his plumbing skills all over Thanet. When we eat in the Surin at Ramsgate he will remind me that he did the plumbing in the whole building when he was just a boy, I think it was 1863, but I may have some of the details wrong. We go to Posillipo, in Broadstairs a similar story here (in the twentieth century). Yet again, another report on the plumbing, when I gave birth to our son at Margate Hospital.

At some point in his life he seems to have worked in every street.

One of my birthday treats was dinner at the Tamarind Indian restaurant in Broadstairs. The Niramish was wonderful and smelt exactly the same when on its way out of my system, some 15 hours later!

Mr Tara Plumbing has NEVER worked in this building! Furthermore, he was full of complements for the men’s private facilities. Excellent quality fittings installed by a first class plumber, he said.

Tamarind is a beautiful restaurant, it has stylish, modern decor and they were also playing really nice world music. We were even lucky enough to get a sea view. By the way, there are cloth napkins. We used to frequent another Indian restaurant on this Isle, for many years it served us well. Suddenly, the front of house staff changed, the quality of the food dropped dramatically, and an obvious warning sign was that the cloth napkins had been replaced by PAPER ones!

With a 5 year old we find it’s best to arrive at restaurants as they open, at 6pm, to avoid the little one falling asleep at the table, very messy, with face in dinner. Asian waiters are very child friendly, so our son loves going to Indian/Bengali restaurants, where the staff give him special attention to make him feel welcome. He always orders the same thing: Tarka Dhal & rice.

FA cup Final

Even though Mr Tara Plumbing’s team did not win on Saturday, he still reported a great day out, to the new Wembley Stadium. 

Leaving Ramsgate at just after 7am he was on the first train into the Stadium Station, at something after 10 am.  With his father, they reported enjoying the pre-match build-up in the Champagne Bar, before sitting in their ‘club Wembley’ seats for the 3pm kick-off. 

I never saw him after breakfast that day, he returned home after midnight.

Am I a football widow?  No, I don’t think so.  Mr T.P. does not watch every match (although sometimes it seems like it!), and when football does have his attention then I have unusual hobbies and interests of my own to indulge in.  I’m sure their aren’t many women who asked for Euclid’s Elements for their 39th birthday! A maths book so old it predates Christianity by hundred of years.

“Euclid’s Elements is the most successful textbook ever written. It was one of the very first works to be printed after the printing press was invented, and is second only to the Bible in number of editions published.

“It was used as the basic text on geometry throughout the Western world for about 2,000 years. … was included in the curriculum of all university students, …Not until the 20th century did it cease to be considered something all educated people had read.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid’s_Elements

Death by Fatal Murder a play by Peter Gordon

I got to see the local production of the show at Minster Playhouse Theatre, near Ramsgate, Kent. 

Brilliant. Non-stop word play; comedy which came at you at an unfaltering swift pace; many (so called) stand-up comedians would be delighted to have this material.  Furthermore, an unpredictable story, kept us on the edge of our seats. Some predictable one liners and inuendo, added to the charm.

It was like Midsomer Murders, but with Inspector Barnaby replaced by a Clouseau, mixed up with some of the linguistic skills of Del Boy!

What superb writing, I will be looking out for other products of Mr Gordon’s pen.  If you also want to know more, I found this: http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsG/gordon-peter.html

My man is hot stuff!

We were sweltering hot stuff in the bedroom last night!  No, we didn’t invite any special friends over for a private party in the boudoir.

Mr Tara Plumbing ~ you know 20 years of experience as a heating engineering ~ accidentally (he says) hit the wrong button on our idiot-proof boiler.

                        We had the heating on ALL night.

I thought it was warm when we got in to bed. I asked Mr T.P. to open the window (I always open it, he always shuts it), we have an on going battle for ventilation.

He replied that it was open, I later found this was a blatant lie. I record the details here as I might latter use them in court, as grounds for divorce.    There is the small detail that we are not actually married…    That’s another story.

Into bed we get, I’m hot and bothered, it turns out so is Mr T.P. but opening the window was not on his mind.  Reminiscent of the late Mr Doubtfire (the film with Robin Williams) he uttered something like our favourite line, “brace yourself…”

Continuing with his sweet nothings in my ear: “I’m ready, I can’t wait for your to catch-up.”

If any thing happened, I missed it, I was laughing so much.

We fell asleep exhausted (it was way passed our usual bed time) and we woke up feeling most uncomfortable at about 5am! But it wasn’t until 7am, when I finally dragged myself out of bed that I discovered the reason for my bad night.

            The heating had been on the whole time.

Think of the bill!

Mr Tara Plumbing believes I am descended from a Northern race of people who are well know for their thrifty, frugal ways.    I just think energy saving light bulbs and a warm blanket are all we need to be comfortable.

BTW – If you enjoy reading my blog, you can subscribe to receive it as a daily email by clicking at the top of this page on the right.  It will save doing a search on Mrs Tara, every day!

P.S.  A little up date, in case you are interested – I’ve done the stuff for the Inland Revenue – there was no crisis. 

UK entry to Eurovision, Scootch

Big argument in our house. Mr Tara Plumbing says it is a political issue. I say it was just a poor entry: surely it can not be a surprised that the UK got so few scores in Eurovision with such a corny little number.

I can imagine nations around the world watching scootch in open mouthed amazement “What is that? That is Soooo bad,” they’d be saying, in their native tongues. “Is it a joke?”

In our house, however, Mr T.P. grabs for his glittering-spangle hot pants and bounces around with aeroplane- wing-arms wide apart several times a day singing along to this UK tune.

“It won’t win,” I say. I prefered the crotching grabbing moves which accompanied the Hip Hop entry – Big Brovas, I think they were called.  This music is more international, I would have thought.

“It’s the best entry in years,” he replies.

Gina G was good (1990’s) -  remember she came second. I rest my case.

2 Teas or Not 2 Teas ~ is that the Question?

We are conducting experiments on the work force. No ethics committee approval. No signed consent forms from the workers themselves. So if you see anyone in a Tara uniform, please do not mention a word about it.

The working title of the study – the correlation between sugar and productivity among workmen in Kent – a preliminary investigation.

Mr Tara Plumbing thinks they all work harder if they are force fed cakes in the morning, but I think a more healthy diet would be better, that’s why at home we go for porridge and fresh fruit smoothies.

The literature tells me that the GI composition of the two contrasting breakfasts means that the workers will have a burst of energetic behaviour after the cakes (so the boss can see they are working) but this is followed by a blood sugar dip – when they all need to slow right down or even rest – which would be around the time the boss has left the site.

Our breakfast, on the other hand, should mean we do not have highs and lows but just sustained energy until lunch time.

My preferred lunch is at about 10.40am and consists of cake!

This brings me nicely on to the subject of HOT Beverages (with the compulsory builder’s 2 sugars) : should customers provide or not?

As a company insider I can tell you it is certainly NOT expected, and between you and I, Mr Tara Plumbing would discourage any thing that interrupts the work! Slave driver!

My own view, when I’ve had people working at my property, is that is nice and courteous to offer a drink if I can, but not compulsory. Frankly, I might be too busy to make TEA or I may be out of some vital ingredient (milk, sugar, tea bags, cups).

If I want the job done quickly, it stands to reason that offering liquid refreshment in the morning may be to my personal benefit because everyone needs to dehydrate in the morning and it will be better if I have refreshed workers on site rather than dehydrated ones who need to disappear to a cafe in next to no time.

If there is one thing that annoys me it is workmen who actually ask me to make them a cup of tea – how rude. When I say “one thing that annoys me,” that is misleading. There are many things that annoy me, and they increase in number daily as I become a grumpy old women, furthermore, most of those things relate to bad manners (not the ska group, Buster Blood Vessel, long tongue, lip up fatty…).

I must end now, I’m gasping for a coffee.

Sex education of children ~ in school & out

How are babies made? We have consistently told our son that we made him out of love. This answer is no longer sufficient.

Firstly, he wants to know if he can make a baby with me! Well, we do share special love, but I’m his mum and he is 5!

Secondly, did it involve lots of kissing? He wants to know – because he is very jealous – there is to be no kissing or cuddling between Mr & Mrs Tara Plumbing without our little Boy getting in the middle. You’ve heard it said many times – children are a great contraceptive.

Now more detail is required.

I’ve told him what goes where.

What does my little boy say – just two things:

“Mummy, did it tickle?” and “When I’m a man I don’t want to do that”.

A young girl, only 9 or 10 years old, should she be aware of contraception- what do you think?

Let me tell you what I think:

children should be informed with honest answers to their questions at whatever age;

sex education should be taught at primary/junior school age;

girls should know about sex and contraception by the time they start menstruation (which is often at around age 10).

In this country we have a terrible record of high teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It is common for teenagers to have sex, their first experiences, whilst drunk and without condoms.

In a great TV programme, C4 show that things could be so different:

http://www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/L/lifestuff/content/up_close/letstalksex/?intcmp=homepage_box1

I find it totally amazing that a parent has complained that her daughter (who is approx. 10) has been discussing condoms with another child at a Canterbury school .

It was excellent that older children got a very FULL education in Holland which included practising with condoms – of course, they were in senior school when it got to that, and the condom practical was on ‘artificial’ objects!

I have been lucky enough to meet Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans. He told me that he was motivated to change things because MANY young girls were committing suicide when they started menstruating because, back in those days, they were frightened, they did not know what was happening to them.

Ignorance is dangerous and scary. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx