Lizzie’s Pad

Grab and piece of paper and a pen and draw a self-portrait in under 2 minutes. Then share it with us!

I did this in Paint as I don't have a means to upload paper pics right now, but I will do one in a mo on paper that I will share later.

Share a sentence from one of your favorite books. 

She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on.

Peter and Wendy

This sounds like such an excellent idea. The Eden Project is encouraging people to get their neighbours together and have a big old open air party on July 19th.

See if there is a party planned near you for the Big Lunch.

Right now my girlies and their pals should be relaxing after (hopefully) whizzing through their first major exam, R.E. GCSE.

It was only yesterday that H breathed a sigh of relief that all her SATS were over, but they are in a group of kids that are guinea pigging taking a GCSE at 13-14 in Year 9 instead of Year 11. I helped out with their revision by making flash cards, which I dutifully wrote out in the neatest handwriting I could manage with my dodgy old wrist and it was so weird listening to them quizzing each other on euthanasia and conversion last night, knowing that they were doing it to gain a mark that may or may not mean something to their future.

My biggest hope is that they have learnt what it takes to work at their exams so when they finally get their options for the next two years that they work hard at it to get what they want.

I found out today that my old junior school headteacher has died. The wonders of facebook meant that I could see that he passed away at 85 just a few days ago, something that I wouldn't have otherwise known.

Mr Herbert, obviously known as Mr Sherbert and not so obviously known as Hedgehog, was the kind of headteacher every school should have. The school was warm and we were all encouraged to be polite to each other and to visitors and although I attribute some of the good manners I have to a good start at home, I firmly believe that the reinforcement of those values at school was what really imprinted on me.

Visiting the school after I had left, I was made well aware that the same system was in place with doors being held open for me and the pupils walking with order towards their destinations. It was like coming home.

I passed on those values of being well mannered and helpful towards others to my children and have often had comments from people about how polite they are, which is a terribly sad state of affairs. Being polite shouldn't stand out. It's increasingly obvious that not everyone had a Mr Herbert showing them the way.

Actually, what I wanted to tell you all is that I now have access to your emails because someone on your email address book, in some cases you yourself have forwarded them to me.

When you want to send funny emails on, please consider the privacy of other people. Your email program has a three buttons: To, Cc and Bcc.  On Hotmail you have to click a button that says to show two of them, but they are there.

When you put an email address in the To section, absolutely everyone else that gets that mail then gets to see everyone else's email address. They then forward the mail on to other people. Do you really want your email address going off to strangers who could use it for unscrupulous means?

Cc stands for Carbon Copy. It's really quite the same as the To section in as much as all the people you put in there will also know now that mail has been sent to all of them.

By far the safest option is Bcc. It stands for Blind Carbon Copy. It should look for all the world as if you were the only one who got this mail. Actually, there are a huge number of people I have sent this on to and I got every single address from a 'Wow isn't this great!!!' style email that had been forwarded to me.

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So, what can you do to stop people sending you mail you don't want, selling your address to porn bots or subscribing you to newsletters you don't want to know about?

When you get a mail that is just so good you have to share, there are simple steps to breaking that chain. By the way, speaking of chains, just because an email screams 'SND ME TO 8 PPL NW OR NVR FND TRU LV!!!' - do you really think that's true? Looking through the forwarded mail I get, I think it is. It isn't. Break that chain!

1. Delete any emails showing in the body of the email.
2. Be brave - take off anything that says send me to however many people 'or else'.
3. Send it to all your mates, but use the Bcc: box.

Why not try your new skills with this email? Teach everyone on your address book how not to pass on your email.

Lizz

On the anniversary of Agatha Christie's death, I'd like to share a quote attributed to her which makes an awful lot of sense...

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

How many of us make plans but never actually get round to that first step?

Today I got my first good look at KT's van after our trip to collect the boys from Northampton.

It. Is. Filthy.

I kind of thought it would be; after all, the Great British Winter is wet and sticky and mucky. During the trip I twice had to clean off the lights. We had to stop at least five times so I could throw screen wash at the windscreen as the wash from the bottle had frozen in the pipes. KT accidentally set the wipers going before the wash had been sloshed on on one occasion and remarked how much dirt slipped off the screen before the wash cleared it. The next time we stopped, he did the wipers to show me and I got to see the lovely thick line of dirt slowly run dun the screen. Ick.

So, why don't vehicles have mud flaps anymore? Seriously, any time it's getting warm you are almost always guaranteed small stones will be chucked up by the vehicles in front. When it's freezing cold you get the grit that's supposed to stop ice forming flung at you. When it's wet, you get wet stones, dirt from the roads, all assorted other crud that's lurking, just waiting to be slingshot by some rubber to bounce off something else.

Bring Back The Mud Flap!