Good luck tomorrow when the big burly daddy decides to see who's giving his missus lip


A-Ha! That's where her plan shall fail....I've got the day off tomorrow....which I will be spending hiding in my house 

Do not answer the door tomorrow! 

Mebbees if more people walked to school and met and chatted to each other etc.

Well. I'm with Rawky on this one. Where I live, the roads become completely clogged for 90 minutes each day with parents doing the school run. Thing is that most of them live just around the corner, plus they're mostly Hampstead "yummy mummies" who drive 4WDs which are only fractionally smaller than a tank. They park them, blocking the roads, and then stand around waiting for their kids to come out for 20 minutes beforehand, blocking the pavement as well.

Drives me bliddy crazy, especially since I used to walk home alone from school at a very early age.

</rant>

I'm with you Rawky, The furthest school form our housing estate is a 30 min walk yet every single school morning there's a queue of cars trying to get out of our estate.
I even see them get in their big cars drive to the next junction in our estate drop the kids at pre-school and then drive home, if they 'walked' across the green they would be there and back in less then 5 mins. Drives me nuts.
The council even put a pedestrian crossing on the main road as they were complaining that it was to dangerous to cross, do they use it? do they feck

I upset a load of Christians 

When I lived in my old house there was a large grammar school at the end of the road and every summer they used to have this lighthouse event at the start of the holidays. Run by the local churches - very happy clappy.
They used to ship kids in by the coachload and car load and would always pick up at 3 30 - just at the time when I was finishing a busy shift.
These flipping parents would double park in my road, the coaches blocked the other road - it was bedlam.

So I lost it one day with one of them and implied that they were filling their kids with a load of hog wash and maybe they should look to teaching their children morals and good behaviour instead of leaving it to a load of born agains.
I then followed the rant by posting  a remark on the local paper website - whatamistakatomaka

I am not going to heaven sadly

ditto this  ^^^. . 5 mile round trip to Jnr school . .all of my mates walked too. .were there less 'dangers' out there back then or did our mothers not care or are people too scared of the beasties or maybe even too scared to give kids any  independence nowadays?

was just wondering out loud... in case peeps thought I was criticising or owt.. . .just can't figure out why it changed so much, that's all..

I feel for you Rawky, my eldest son used to live near a primary school and it was an absolute nightmare trying to negociate between the parked cars.
The lady in question was in the wrong, because she pulled out in front of you. It doesn't matter whether or not she was indicating, she should have waited till it was safe to pull out.
However your last remark was a wee bit naughty - although understandable, as she was the one in the wrong and was being stroppy with you.
I'd not answer the door to strangers tomorrow, in case she sends her hubby round.

A school opened at the end of the main road to where I live,the road is verrrrrry narrow and there are lots of bad bends.Morning and afternoon you take your hands driving on it because of the cars parked outside the school,an accident waiting to happen tbh as drivers are forced to drive on the wrong side of this narrow road to get past the line of parked cars....The catchment area for pupils leaves no room for doubt that they all do live maximum of 5 min's away,lazy parents in the extreme.

The only danger that has increased is from the larger number of cars on the road....fuelled by all the primary school kids being ferried to school when most of them could and should walk. No wonder there are so many obese lazy kids about!

I walked to school when I was a kid too..   2 and half miles there, 2 and half miles back.. though there was a bus that went half way if we could be bothered (or hadn't spunked the money) to catch it.

it wasn't without incident...   smoking, drinking, a couple of fights, and two flashers!


When the distance to my kids schools has been walkable... we walked.   But sometimes its not that simple...  you may not have time to walk your kid to school and then walk back get in your car & go to work...    you may be picking your child up straight from work.   Often these days the distance is too far to walk and there isn't a bus...   you either drive to pick them up,.,.. or the LEA sort out taxi's.   

Daughter tried catching the 3 buses home from her grammar school for a while..   apart from the trouble on the bus...    it meant her not getting home til 6pm..   with 4 hours homework to get thorugh, and eat, and get changed...  there weren't enough hours in the day.


As I said earlier...   the parents picking the kids up hate it too.   Do any of them look like they are having a good time?

that's what i thought too Croc but wondered if from out of nowhere and unbeknownst to me the country had been invaded with all sorts of peado's/beasties in the past 20-30 yrs so there are much more per capita than there ever was,  hence the need to drive kids, even if there is public transport in place for those that have a lot further to go..  weird one how that came about

ahah that may explain some of the change. .as back then most mothers did part time work til we were old enough to walk/take a bus by ourself then they went full time. .well that's what my mum did 

That's Secondary School though Ditty...primary schools will have very few kids that don't live within walking distance...some parents may be going or coming back from work but by no means a majority I'd hazzard a guess.

I must say I was always envious of kids that lived nearer school so they could stay in bed longer and get home earlier... .I never lived near any of mine and lived an eck of a lot further from work too so was always out with the Lark and back with the Owls.... and I am not a morning person at all ..thank gawd for autopilot  

Trust me - these women don't go to work.

Plus my mother worked all the way through my schooling, which is one of the reasons I used to walk home.


You bet they do. They're laughing and gossiping (and ironically, generally ignoring the kids).

Same here Olly. My primary school was well over a mile away, right next to the nearest bus stop so we still had to walk that far before we could get a bus when we went to Secondary school, which was another couple of miles on the bus. Mind you in the summer I spent the bus fare on ice cream and walked.

I think you should keep a box of chocolates in the car Rawky - and give them to her next time you see her

Or ... as you are usually at work, tell her she can park safely in your drive when picking her kids up

we have the same problem, lazy assed mums in huge cars, double parking & on the zig zagz.. should all be ticketed .....not exactly setting a great example are they.. good on you

yeah I often walked home from secondary school too Croc, partly cos the rule back then was first one in cooks dinner and if I got the bus it was always me but if I walked there was a chance it was somebody else so I got a break.. and the otehr aprt was cos we were on the outskirts of town and passed all the other schools and could check out the boys up close..  we'd got bored of our lot.. 


oh look at the time. .tis late for me to still be online. . time to wander off

not necessarily true...  2/3 of the kids at our village primary have to come by car...  we are a "linear" village (stoopid name)...  basically meaning we are all clustered round the A134....  a seriously busy A road that often has no footpath.. .


lots of the smaller villages are having their primary schools closed and the intake shunted to the school in the next village...  this is only going to get worse.    


I know they must exist.. these mum's that drive round the corner... but the agro of getting kids in the car, strapped in, defrosting the car...  blah blah blah...   so much easier to walk.

So are they out of their cars then?     standing at the gates..   the mumsy mafia?

If its that lot you hate... then go for it...  they did my head in too!



but on school runs in general....   its not all about lazy parents & lazy kids,   there is nothing enjoyable about having to do a nightmare school run twice a day.    If there were any other option I'd take it.

That's them!

Ditty i did qualify earlier about it being difefrent in the sticks.  In the towns though theres no excuse for probably more than half the parents that drive their kidsto school.

ditty there will always be legit peeps like you who have no choice but to drive but in less villagey areas where the intake is local and from the town the majority of the cars are probably not needed as there are more bus routes  or tis not a huge walk ..

it's those ones that still insist on driving that cause the most problems I think

oops Croc said it better and shorter than I did

I still think Rawky should buy her chocolates

I think he should put dog do up her exhaust pipe....

Thats me

But i dont drive, i walk there and back twice a day, and i dont ignore my tiddlypeeps.

Are you craving chocolate atm by any chance? lol

You didn't tell her she didn't know the offside rule, did you?



Agree. And she should also learn to use her mirrors, signal when it's clear and manoeuvre when it's safe to do so (as the Highway Code teaches you). The amount of people I've seen do that over the years then get the arse when you pull them on it. Hopefully it'll make her think! Saying that, I think if that were me and she'd said she didn't want her kid walking home cos of weirdos, I would have said 'with driving like yours weirdos are the least of her worries, trust me, she's got a better chance of making it home in one piece if she walks!'

No Jen (just had a bar)

But I am just remembering having young primary school age children and rushing, and shouting, and feeling inadequate coz they didn't get 10/10 for their spelling, and dealing with hubby working practically 24/7 while dealing with a dying relative and trying to keep smiling for the kids, and then someone does just one little thing and the tears start to flow ...

Thorntons should do it Rawky

Nah, no chocolates 

Rawky!

You've no heart

My sister used to live in the first house next to the school. She used to drive.

I'm not even kidding.

I can see why you get so mad.  I live in an estate with two schools at the end of it and every morning I have trouble crossing the road to get to the bus stop, in the afternoons when I'm there I can't drive out of the estate between school home times because the queue of traffic around the estate is horrendous.  And it does annoy me that people drive small distances to collect their children, especially when it's raining..ffs they're not going to melt!

But your last remark was out of order

My sister in law lived in the next house to the school ... she was late every morning, she said that those of us who had to walk 2 miles to school had the option to run and make up the time, which she didn't

  
I'm guessing that's a  regional variation !

What me? Telling Rawky he has no heart?

I was only joking ... honest