Category: FAMILY

Heading Back To University – Part Two

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

It is early February and my daughter is returning to university after eight months at home, six of which she has spent on work placement in London. It has been lovely to have her at home and it almost felt like she’d never been away. When she first came home, in June, she didn’t seem entirely happy to be back. I think she had become used to eating what and when she wanted, coming and going as she pleased and now a little of her independence was gone upon her return.

Because she is doing a Business degree, two years of which involve work placements, she was unable to share a house with the friends she had made during her first year as they were all at university full time and I do think she felt that she was missing out socially. The Business students in Year Two and Year Three share the same student houses for a year. The Year Three Students have it for the first half of the academic year and the Year Two Students for the second half. In my daughter’s case, the contract with the landlady is for twelve students, it is all very complicated. Fortunately my daughter has made good friends with some people on her course and it is these girls she is now sharing with. In fact, this week, that are all heading off to Poland for somebody’s twenty first birthday. 

One of my work colleagues manages some student housing in the city where my daughter attends university and she said they won’t enter into such a complicated arrangement and a friend said they discounted letting their son do a course with a work placement because of the difficulty with finding housing. To be honest, it really hasn’t been a big deal, this particular university offer a lot of courses with work placements and the students always find housing but their choice may be a little limited. 

When I visit my daughter I usually take the train. It takes almost exactly the same amount of time as driving and you just step off the train into the heart of the city. Parking is near-impossible in this particular place as my husband and I found out the first time we drove. There are usually queues to even enter the car parks and, when you do, they are full, and roadside parking is mostly for permit holders only. This time we have to drive because my daughter is taking all her belongings back. Bed linen, pots and pans, clothes, sports equipment etc . I do wonder what students do if they have no access to a car. You can purchase bedding and kitchen sets from the university and arrive with just a suitcase but then all the household stuff will need to be stored somewhere during the summer. Or perhaps students enlist a parent or friend to help them carry it home on public transport. I’m probably overthinking it!

We arrive at the house, which looks small from the outside but the landlady has crammed six bedrooms in. The whole house is freshly panted in white and looks reasonably clean at first glance. My daughter’s is filled with furniture that most charity shops wouldn’t accept and the drawers and wardrobe are covered in grime, inside and out. We have to wipe down everything. There is a frayed extension cord and a filthy mirror which isn’t really a mirror but foil over some hardboard. The staircase down to the kitchen in the basement is a slippery death trap and nobody over 5’9″ can stand up straight in the communal living area. Even crouching, my husband hurts his head on the smoke alarm attached to the already low ceiling. The downstairs floor is uncovered concrete with an oily stain. My daughter is paying a small fortune in rent as are the other students and I feel that the landlady has done the bare minimum make the place comfortable. I am surprised the stairs even passed building regulations. I can see my agitation is annoying my daughter, she doesn’t want her friends to hear my complaining, so I keep quiet.

My daughter has chosen some bed linen from Urban Outfitters so we remove the existing, disgusting mattress cover and replace it with a new one. The room looks better once the bed is made. The wardrobe appears to have come from a 1930s boarding school and has hardly any hanging space but lots of shelves. Somehow we manage to find a home for everything. There are no locks on any of the internal doors, even the two bathrooms which are both downstairs, and my husband is understandably not happy about this. What if one of the other students has a party and my daughter is out. What is to stop anybody rummaging about or even stealing her things. Or worse still, coming into her room uninvited when she is there? He asks her to email the landlady and request locks but my daughter and her friends seem reluctant. 

My husband orders a new extension cable and we take my daughter into town for lunch. We have to keep moving the car throughout the day as the only parking spaces we can find are for a maximum of two hours. After lunch we go to Lidl and buy my daughter some groceries. She buys mushrooms and peas neither of which she will eat at home!

When my daughter was on campus she had everything on her doorstep but now she either has to walk or take the bus. If she just has one lecture it is a lot of effort for an hour. She plays a lot of sport and has said it is a pain going back and forth . Some of the friends she shared accommodation with last year are in the next road which is nice. She will be in this house until June when she will be home for the summer. She will then return to the same house in September until around Easter next year when her second work placement will begin. I spoke to her today and she seems to have settled in happily enough and had just cooked herself some sort of pasta dish with the peas and mushrooms. They must taste different when she cooks them!

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Featured

Heading Back To University – Part One

On By samanthaIn FAMILY1 Comment

Yesterday my husband and I took my daughter back to university to begin her second year of studies. She had been at home for eight months, six of which she spent on a work placement in London. She is doing a four year Business degree with two, six month placements, one at the beginning of Year Two and one at the end of Year Three. My daughter was fortunate to find a work placement fairly quickly but, nevertheless, I think the application process is very stressful for the students. They cannot remain on the course if they fail to find a placement and it has to be a role which is relevant to the degree. It puts them under a lot of pressure at a time when they also have exams to sit.

The Placement Officers at the university released the available opportunities on a spreadsheet and then it was up to the students to send off their CVs and covering letters. Of course they were all applying for the same positions and it was difficult for them to see their friends being offered a placement before themselves. There were one or two roles on the list that we didn’t feel were necessarily right for my daughter, we didn’t want her to work for a company that didn’t even have a functioning website and was located in a not particularly safe area for example. I assume the university do their due diligence when sending these opportunities to the young students. A number of the placements were overseas, quite a few in Germany, so these were ideal for students with proficient language skills. There was one placement right in our town which would have been lovely and convenient but another student secured that.

Nearly all of the employers required online applications to be submitted, most of which take at least an hour to be completed. The covering letters of course have to be tailored to each position, it is all very time consuming. The interviews were all online, most students had at least two interviews for any role they were considered for.  My daughter was fortunate to be reasonably well paid for her placement but, by the end of the application process, some students accepted unpaid positions. As we live within easy commuting distance of London my daughter moved back home but students who live further afield also had to arrange and pay for accommodation near their temporary workplace. Living in any city is enormously expensive and I imagine it was difficult to make last-minute arrangements. I know all of my daughter’s friends were hugely relieved when they had secured their placements. 

I bought my daughter a couple of trouser suits for her placement, one from Next and one from Top Shop (still available at ASOS) but she didn’t wear either of them. The dress code in the office of the huge corporation she was working for was supposed to be Business Casual but it was actually extremely casual. My daughter, not someone who is particularly interested in clothes, wore some three quarter length trousers from Zara most days paired with a little shell top or cotton blouse. She just wore loafers on her feet. When it got colder she bought some wide leg trousers from Pull & Bear and wore a slim fit jumper on top. She said lots of people wore trainers in the office. Things have certainly changed since I worked in The City in the 90s.

For the first couple of weeks my daughter had to go into the office every day which, even with a 17-25 railcard is a huge expense. After the initial training period she was able to work from home for three days a week. She said there were days when she was the only one in her department who had gone in and that some people never seemed to put in an actual appearance at the office. 

My daughter was really well looked after during her placement and learned a lot. There were three other students from her course working in the same department. She said that the staff were very welcoming and patient if anybody needed any guidance. The students were expected to work hard and my daughter often had a long list of tasks to complete. They did a little bit of socialising after work but not as much as they would at university. I think it was a very positive experience for her. The company said they were delighted with my daughter’s performance and were sorry to see her leave. Unfortunately she can’t go back to the same place for her next placement so we will have to start the application process all over again.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Featured

Bass Guitar Blues

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

For a joint Christmas and birthday present this year we bought my youngest son a beautiful new Fender electric bass guitar. I must admit I was slightly stunned by how much these things cost but we managed to get the model he wanted in the sales . My son had said that he’d like to sell his old guitar but first it needed to be sent off for repair. As it was still under warranty I was able to return it to the company I bought it from but they were very clear that it must be properly packaged up as they would not be liable for damage in transit. As I had disposed of the original box ages ago I had to buy a new box on eBay for £15. It was too small. So I had to buy a bigger box on eBay for £20. Ugh, annoying. My son really looks after his things so his gleaming black guitar was duly packaged up and I arranged for the courier to collect it, another £6.50. When the very surly courier arrived I asked him nicely if he could make sure that the guitar was carefully placed on the van. I had marked the box This Way Up and Fragile, Handle With Care in thick red marker on on every surface. It is a bit of a clue isn’t it? Anyway, the courier grunted, gave me a contemptuous look, completely ignored my request to hold the box a a certain way and slung the guitar on the back of the van. Ok, to be fair, I don’t actually know that he slung my son’s precious guitar but I bet he did. A couple of days later I received an email from the repair company along with some photos of my son’s guitar. It had a big chunk missing out of it and was horribly scratched. Hundreds of pounds worth of damage, more than the instrument is actually worth. I nearly cried. 

I asked the guitar company how I could go about claiming compensation from the courier but they told me that it had not been sufficiently packaged. This despite me using the worlds’ most expensive cardboard box, bubble wrap and plastic bags. So, instead of being angry with the miserable, incompetent sod of a courier I started berating myself. I have an airing cupboard full of old mattress protectors which are padded, why didn’t I think to wrap the guitar up in one of those? Why didn’t I buy more bubble wrap? I lost SO much sleep with this whirring around and around in my head. I still haven’t told my son about the damage and we haven’t had the guitar back yet. Fortunately he is thrilled with his new model. He is a good natured boy anyway and will probably just wonder what his daft mother is getting so worked up about. What’s done is done, there is no point dwelling on this. These things happen sometimes.

It must be nice to go through life not worrying about anything, just brushing problems off like water off a duck’s back .  My daughter has just come back from Cape Verde and is now wearing bracelets and a T shirt emblazoned with the island’s motto No Stress. Hotel guests were greeted with Hakuna Matata which, if you have ever seen The Lion King, you will know means No Worries or Take it Easy, It is a Swahili expression used by people who are clearly more laid-back than I am.

No Stress definitely isn’t my motto, more’s the pity, but perhaps I could try Less Stress, it would probably do me good.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Header Photo by Susan Mohr on Unsplash

Vampiric Friends

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

I saw a wonderful post on the Facebook page of The New York Times this week describing a type of person that most of us come across at some point in our lives, The Energy Vampire. The piece, written by Jancee Dunn, resonated with me so much. Until recently I had two major Energy Vampires in my life but one of them appears to have decided that I am no longer useful to her. This was somebody who I had always been more of an acquaintance than a friend until I bumped into her during Lockdown whilst out on a walk and we decided we would walk together once a week. The walk itself was beautiful but very secluded in places and I felt safer with somebody else. It soon became apparent however that this person was just going to spend the two hours or so it took to complete the circuit talking about herself. She was clearly very unhappy and complained about everything and everyone. If I interjected at any point during the monologue a fleeting look of irritation would cross her face, she’d mutter something and carry right on speaking. I really tried my best to listen and to be supportive by simply being there however, on one of these walks she didn’t ask me a single question about my life until we were approaching her driveway. She then appeared to remember that there was actually another person present and half-heartedly asked how things were with me. It was so obvious that she wasn’t interested in my reply that I made my excuses and took myself home. I felt utterly exhausted and not from the walking.

Perhaps I am being a little uncharitable, it must be awful to go through life finding fault with everything and maybe she was suffering from low-mood. I try to be a compassionate person but friendship is a give and take relationship and I can’t be friends with somebody who barely acknowledges my existence even when I am standing right next to them. This particular person has now moved to another area without so much as a goodbye so I was spared the awkwardness of distancing myself.

The other energy-draining person in my life is a relative. I rang her recently to give her some exciting news concerning one of my children. I was one the phone for an hour and hung up without even having an opportunity to impart my news. Instead, I had to listen to a long, boring story she had told me at least three times before about people I don’t know. I tried to blurt my news out but she just raised her voice over mine and in the end I just zoned out and gave up. Despite being a close relative they barely ask about my mum and dad who are struggling at the moment and this just demonstrates how little they really care. I don’t have the option of cutting this individual out of my life but I have reduced the number of times I ring to check up on them. I always have to work myself up to call because I dread it so much.

Perhaps we all have the capacity to be Energy Vampires when we are going through a bad time. Sometimes I will pick up a certain friend for a trip to the cinema or to a restaurant and, before she has even put her seatbelt on, I will be blurting out everything that has annoyed me since I last saw her. Usually though, after a few minutes I realise I haven’t even asked how she is and I hastily stop talking and check in with my friend. Sometimes, she does the same thing. We should all be able to vent to people who care about us and we should afford them the same courtesy. If it is all talk and no listen though it is probably time to reevaluate your relationship.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Header Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash

Featured

Goodbye to 2023

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

It is New Year’s Eve and the most exciting thing I have planned is my Tesco delivery. All three of my children are going to various parties and I am on chauffeuring duty for my youngest who has a house party to go to. I wonder if the parents realise they are going to be besieged by sixteen and seventeen year olds or whether they are going out themselves. It’s my son’s seventeenth birthday next week and I am waiting for the “can I have a few friends over?” request. It never is a few but I don’t mind, as long as nobody is vomiting. Unfortunately once they reach sixteen it’s not really a party unless someone is sick, for some reason is it usually one of the girls. I’d rather them all be safe at my house or, preferably somebody else’s, than hanging around somewhere. My son knows no hanging around allowed!

I have never really enjoyed New Years’s Eve. To be honest, I find it a little depressing. My friends would persuade me to go to the to the pub as a teenager and there would invariably be creepy men demanding a kiss at midnight. In 1992 my now-husband and I went to a NYE ball when on a skiing trip in Colorado and I even managed to be miserable there. I seem to remember everyone (well, the women) wearing taffeta dresses while I was in an itchy angora jumper and ski-pants having not known where we were going. So much for last minute, vague arrangements. I have never worn ski-pants again – the only person ever to have looked good in them is Audrey Hepburn. The last time we went out for NYE was about three years ago to friends for dinner. Usually my husband stays up to watch proceedings on the television and I try to be asleep before midnight but there are usually loud fireworks gong off in somewhere in our village. Even my parents, nearly ninety years old, have more fun than me, going to their neighbour’s house for drinks and nibbles.

I pop round to my parents’ house and give them a hand with a few bits around the house, my mum seems a little confused as to who I am at one point. I then send my daughter off to her party with a bottle of prosecco and settle down to watch Suspicion, a 1941 Hitchcock thriller with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.  I can’t say I am suffering from FOMO, it is blowing a gale outside and I am quite happy to have a sedate transition into 2024. It has been a somewhat difficult year what with my dad’s heart attack and my mother-in-law’s recent long hospital stay but we are still all here and that is something to be grateful for.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

Featured

Busy Doing Nothing

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

It’s December 27th and I am not in a good mood. I have two weeks away from work for Christmas, unpaid, as I have to work on a self-employed basis since the pandemic but that is a whole other, moany post. Since last Christmas I have only taken one week off so I have been looking forward to relaxing but, here’s the thing, I seem to have forgotten how. If I am not running around wearing myself out I feel anxious and lazy.

It has been a busy couple of days. At very short notice my mother-in-law was discharged from hospital on Christmas Day so my husband has not been at home very much at all. He spent Christmas day at her house refilling her kitchen cupboards and organising carers for her. I had our three children for Christmas lunch as well as my parents and brother. I did all of the cooking and clearing up. I had to collect my parents and, at the end of the day, drive them the short way home. Getting my house-bound mum in and out of the car safely was stressful but my oldest son did a wonderful job of helping. By the end of Christmas Day I was completely frazzled. On Boxing Day I went for a walk and had a big tidy up of the house. Oh the excitement!

Today I decided to let myself sit on the sofa and watch one of those soppy Hallmark Christmas movies. I was about fifteen minutes in and thoroughly enjoying the film when suddenly I realised it was 11am and there I was, a fit and able person, watching TV in the daytime, surely this is an actual crime. The film now spoiled, I went upstairs to sort laundry , barking complaints at my daughter for dumping just about every garment she has ever owned in the wash. Jeez, what a misery guts I am. Perhaps, I think, I will pointlessly catch a train to Tunbridge Wells and have a pointless wander around the shops, at least then I will be doing something but I am thwarted as the trains all appear to be cancelled and I can’t face driving around trying to find a a parking space. In the end I walk to my parents house and do a little bit of cleaning for them, I instantly feel better for having done something useful.

I wish I was a laid-back type of person, it would probably be far better for my health but that just isn’t my personality type at all. I don’t remember ever seeing my own mother sit down and rest during the day except perhaps on a Sunday afternoon when we would watch Hart to Hart or Butterflies together. If I wake up later than 7.30am I feel an instant sense of panic and guilt. I feel I should be up and doing something. Why am I like this? I read somewhere that we are Human Beings not Human Doings and sometimes we should allow ourselves to just…be.  I do worry about the link between cortisol, the stress hormone, and cancer. Apparently cortisol levels are higher on waking which is why I probably feel at my most jittery during the mornings. I need to make time for some deep breathing exercises and maybe I should try meditation.

My off-switch kicks in around 8pm and then I will take a bath or shower and maybe read or watch some TV . My daughter and I are revisiting old episodes of Dr Who. Probably not what I would choose to watch but she will be returning to university soon and it is a nice way to spend some time together. Phew, I can finally let myself relax. Hopefully I won’t wake up at 3am worrying about a mistake I made at work in 1997. 

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash