Lle Llywela

Today, the 5yo should have been seeing Santa.

The event was organised by a local community group, based out of an old stately home near where I live. The initial plan was a masked-and-distanced in-person meeting in the very beautiful reading room at the house, but then with covid cases locally beginning to spiral, that plan shifted into a personalised video call with each child who’d booked.

Then on Saturday evening this latest lockdown was announced with almost immediate effect, only a few hours warning. And a little later we received an email from the very upset organisers to say that they were going to have to cancel the event and issue a refund, because the Santa Suit and video equipment are all locked away in the house (community centre), which because of lockdown they are no longer permitted to enter. There wasn’t time on Saturday night to retrieve it. So all those kids won’t be getting their call from Santa today after all.

Such a shame. Luckily we did get to wave to him on Saturday, as a different version of him did a masked-and-safely-distanced walk around the neighbourhood, accompanied by an elf I went to school with!

Also today, my brother rebelled against his work.

He works in a telephone support centre, taking calls from people having technical issues. They switched to homeworking back in March and that worked fine for months.

Now, this job has never been ideal. It is in another town and Bro doesn’t drive, so he has always had a really long commute on public transport, working unsocial and constantly changing shift patterns, so the move to homeworking was a blessing for him. He could work his shift without a 90-120 minute commute at either end, without having to worry about missing the last bus, without having to leave the house at 5am to get to work for 7.30.

At the start of December, with covid cases locally already beginning to spiral out of control again, the company abruptly decided to recall all service desk staff to on-site working, claiming they weren’t answering enough calls. The entire management, however, continued to work from home. This has been a nightmare for Bro, who has asthma and generall fragile health, once again condemned to hours on increasingly flaky public transport every day (a lot of services are no longer running, so getting to and from work is extremely difficult), as well as hours spent in a poorly ventilated building with a whole bunch of other people, in a town with soaring virus figures. Government advice still says that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so, but the company got around that one by claiming call centre staff as key workers.

Now this week, we are back in full lockdown with a new and even more highly transmissible form of the virus circulating generally. The company is still insisting that all service desk staff must continue to work from site, while their managers remain safe at home. The service desk staff have all been complaining, lodging health and safety appeals, to no avail.

So today my brother rebelled. He decided not to risk his health on public transport. Instead as his shift began he logged on at home to carry out his shift in safety. How the company will react remains to be seen. But they were endangering his life. He doesn’t need to be on site to do his job. If they try to sack him, he has a strong case to take to tribunal. And I will be behind him all the way!

(ETA: Apparently the entire team independently made the same decision this morning! Only one person went in, and that was just to collect a headset. Mass action for the win! The company will have a hard job sacking all of them!)

I haven't posted in a while - is anyone still reading here? How are we all coping in this time of plague? Lockdown has been a weird experience, no? Almost weirder still now that it is lifting slightly, so that we find ourselves living in this strange sort of half-and-half world.

As of one week ago today, I am now 'bubbled up' with my parents as an extended household, which means we are allowed to visit each other inside our houses and I can have Layla-May for sleepovers once more, which means my 69-year-old mum finally gets some much-needed respite from the full time care of an active 4-year-old. Layla has found our prolonged separation very hard, video calls and, more lately, picnics in the garden just weren't enough; until mid-March she had been with me every single weekend for two full years, and semi-regularly before that. Weekends with Aunty Jo have been her routine for as far back as she can remember, so the sudden loss of them was a huge break in the routine of a child who struggles with separation anxiety at the best of times, thanks to her hopeless parents. She was utterly ecstatic to be back, spent the weekend trying to reclaim every activity she ever remembers us doing together, and kept getting emotional about how lovely it was to spend time together again. My poor baby. I have a week off work at the end of July so will probably have her for most of that, to make up for lost time.

My brother has also got that same week off, so my older sister and her husband have booked an Air B'n'B in Cardiff for a few days that week, now that such accommodation has re-opened, so we can have at least some kind of holiday together, as a family, since our planned week together in West Wales at Easter got cancelled. It remains to be seen how well their children cope with the journey, mind - they've never travelled so far before!

We are still waiting on the adoption. Everything was on hold for a while, thanks to lockdown, then as the courts were still handling some cases remotely, D&R managed to submit the adoption paperwork and waited for it to go through...only for it to be returned because the social worker had completed her section incorrectly! So they had to start again from scratch and resubmit. Yet another delay in a process fraught with complication. The children have been with D&R for 10 months now and are doing well, in general. The pandemic lockdown hasn't been easy for them, since it followed on from an extended adoption bubble followed by an informal semi-lockdown caused by a stalker - they thought for a while the children's location had been uncovered by the birth family and were on the point of organising an impromptu move out of area, but in the end it turned out to be a local woman with dementia who thought Miss E was her granddaughter. So with pandemic lockdown coming hard on the heels of that experience, they have all been slightly stir crazy, locked up in the house together for so many months without a break! Then, ridiculously, D&R got harassed by the children's social worker over Miss E not having started nursery - this during a nationwide lockdown with all the schools closed! The social worker hen demanded evidence of home schooling, which was easily provided since D is a highly qualified teacher with 25 years of experience behind her, the children are receiving an excellent home education, but she shouldn't have to prove it - 'regular' families aren't being asked to prove that they are educating their children at home. E&G are still in the 'looked after children' system, sure, but only because their adoption hasn't yet gone through - they have been placed for adoption and are no longer at risk, so why are the adoptive parents being scrutinised as if they were no better than the birth family? Are all foster placements treated in this way? Miss E was even all signed up for a place at nursery, she just couldn't take it up until the nursery re-opened - and then the experience of starting nursery unsettled her all over again, just another upheaval in her troubled young life. Little G, meanwhile, has hit the terrible twos and wants everyone to know it!

But these hurdles aside, the children have bonded well with D&R as a family and are growing up fast, three and two years old now, their previously delayed development coming on in leaps and bounds.

What else is going on? My cousin with terminal cancer is still with us and is doing better than was first feared. We have an extended family Zoom session every week, an ever-fluctuating mix of aunts, uncles and cousins, and he comes along to that most weeks. The cancer is spreading, they found new tumours in his brain and pleural cavity just the other week, and he is finding it increasingly difficult to string a sentence together, but he continues to make the effort - and manages to win the quiz most weeks, as well. I just wish he and his partner had been able to have their planned wedding before everything shut down. In theory they could try to schedule a replacement wedding now, even if with no guests, but I'm not sure they have the heart for it anymore, after everything.

Meanwhile, my very frail aunt L is back in hospital. Again. She has been deteriorating steadily this year - she had a fall and broke her hip early into lockdown, so spent a good couple of months in hospital, with the family unable to visit while she has been increasingly unable to cope with the phone that is now her sole means of communication. She finally came home from hospital two weeks ago, with a full care package in place, and within a week had fallen and had to be taken back in. When my uncle spoke to her the next day, she told him she was surprised when the ambulance reached the hospital because she'd thought the paramedics were just taking her for a nice little ride as a treat. Today she told me that being in hospital is like a nice little holiday. She is increasingly confused - and she's had scar tissue in her brain for years, ever since contracting a rare bacterial infection almost a decade ago, hasn't really been right ever since, but seems to be declining into full blown dementia just lately. Her only daughter, who has power of attorney, lives in London and is neurotic about her mother's health yet only rarely actually visits to monitor how well she is or isn't coping, living alone. It is all very worrying - especially with the pandemic, to which my aunt is exceptionally vulnerable, given the fragility of her health.

My 88 year old Nan, meanwhile, hasn't left her first floor flat since Christmas and we're worried that she might not be able to manage the stairs now, if and when she ever does agree to attempt any kind of outing, lockdown shielding permitting.

So many things to worry about, eh?

Meanwhile, I am still working from home and am likely to continue to do so indefinitely, until after Christmas at least - for now, the university is focusing on researchers and any teaching that can't be done remotely; administrative staff will be the last to return to campus. Since lockdown, I've been working on our very elderly team laptop which is still running Windows 8 and is beginning to creak (but is still in better health than my personal laptop, which is truly on its last legs), but have had a shiny new device procured for me, which should be arriving tomorrow. Sometime over the summer, I will be allowed to visit the office for one day only (actually, more like for one half hour only) to collect some bits and pieces like my chair and monitor, to help with home office set up, now that we are digging in for the long haul.

I remain in such two minds over working from home. On the one hand, I really love my new 10-second commute, I've gained about 2 hours a day just from that. I love the flexibility of working from home and I love being able to take tea breaks in my garden, either just to sit and read or to do some maintenance and planting out, etc. I've identified at least 13 different species of bee and five or six different kinds of butterfly in the garden this summer, which I would never have had the chance to see before, because I was so rarely in my garden during the day and there was always so much to get done in the evenings. So in that sense, working from home is great. But on the other hand, I find it really disconnected, it can be really hard to focus, and the isolation is quite hard, after working in a building with 200 other people for 11 years. I miss the casual social interactions each day used to bring and the general awareness of what was going on around the department, which occasional virtual meetings simply can't replace.

So, there are pros and cons, I guess.

I've rambled on long enough. How is everyone else coping with it all?

The weekend before last I was in Coventry for my brother-in-law's ordination - we made a full weekend of it with lots of sightseeing and a tour of Cadbury World while we were there.

And now this weekend coming is to feature a trek all the way up to Yorkshire for 'Family & Friends Adoption Training', although given that we've had an adoptive family member for more than 20 years now, I'm not sure what they are going to teach us, beyond perhaps everything we've been doing wrong all this time! But with D&R's final adoption panel so close now, every little bit of support helps.

They had a meeting last weekend with the kiddies's current foster carer - the respite carer who has had them full time for about 2-3 weeks, that is, since their long-term pre-adoption placement blew up. The meeting itself went well enough, the foster carer seemed lovely, and a bunch of dates were agreed for various steps in the process, but on the downside, she brought along her own social worker, who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the adoption, yet kept interfering - and not in a helpful way. Such as trying to insist that both children absolutely must sleep in the same bedroom as D&R for at least 6 months after they move in, because that's what they are used to in their foster placement...which is an emergency placement that they have only been in for 2-3 weeks, and in which the fact that the carer could only have them in cots in her own bedroom was seen as a negative that nearly led to them being placed elsewhere. So why is this cramped short-term measure being trumpeted as the ideal? Your guess is as good as mine. D&R's own social worker will fight their corner on that point - the children already have beautiful bedrooms of their own all set up and ready for them to move into.

The arrangements for the transition also proved a sticky point. The foster carer has an 11-year-old of her own plus a long-term foster child of about the same age, and kept bleating about how very attached they have become to the children (who, again, have only been with them full time for 2-3 weeks, and it turns out they'd only had them for respite care a couple of times before that, so this isn't exactly a long-term attachment). So the foster carer's social worker is insisting that her own children have to be part of the transition process, which is planned over two weeks - first week D&R spend every day in the foster carer's house, slowly taking over all parenting duties, then the second week the foster carer is supposed to bring the children to them every day, and stay in the background while they parent the children in their own home. This is the sticking point. It turns out that a) the foster carer doesn't drive, so wants D&R to collect her each day (she lives 40 minutes away), and b) she wants to bring her own children to D&R's house every day to be part of the transition. Which is really inappropriate for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is that a couple of pre-teens are not going to have the maturity to step back and allow someone else to do all the parenting of a pair of cute toddlers they are used to playing with and helping with. We suspect that the real reason the foster carer is making such a point of all this is that it will be school holidays and she doesn't have childcare.

And then there's the fact that the foster family live in Huddersfield - the same city the children are being removed from, and where D&R have been told never to take them in case of being recognised by the birth family - heck, those girls could be in school with members of the birth family, for all we know. And...one of the pre-adoption play dates being arranged for D&R with the children is in a soft play centre in Huddersfield...where their older siblings (who've been placed separately with a family member) could well be taken during the school holidays.

I suppose the real issue is that the foster carer has never done an adoption handover before, she only agreed to be part of all this as an emergency measure, and she is finding it all quite weird and hard.

It just all feels like such a minefield, and really highlights how different the rules are for foster care versus adoption. D&R have been given such a strict list of rules to abide by - down to not taking the children on holiday for a particular length of time, so that they will feel secure in their new home, not introducing them to new family members for a particular length of time and then how to go about those introductions, heck, even the initial slow, steady transition to their own care - whereas those same children, while still in the foster care system, even when they are on the verge of being adopted, can be moved to a new placement with a complete stranger at a moment's notice, their foster carer can introduce them to whoever they want, take them on holiday whenever they want, and no one bats an eyelid.

Honestly can't wait to get these kids out of the system and into a loving and stable family.

The final paperwork has been submitted. The intention is to keep their forenames and give them new middle names, as Yorkshire recommends not changing the names of adopted children - this can differ wildly between different local authorities. But if the names need to be changed for security reasons, those prospective new names have also been chosen and submitted. (I actually kind of hope they do end up changing the names, as it is quite an identifiable combination, but if not I daresay we'll learn to live with them!)

Still to come: farewell contact for the children with various members of their birth family, with whom letterbox contact will be maintained; an observation 'bump into' meeting for D&R with the children followed by play dates; pre-adoption medicals for the children; and then the adoption panel on 12 August!

So my older sister and her husband have been going through the adoption process for something like a year or more already, with various hurdles to overcome and setbacks along the way

They received the go-ahead yesterday to move forward with the matching process for a sibling group of a little girl and boy, aged two and one!

Of course, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems, so at the same time they were given this news, they also learned that although they still have several weeks worth of red tape ahead of them before they can begin the introduction-and-moving-in process, the children’s current foster carer (who has had them since the little boy was born) needs them to be removed from her care within a week, due to a crisis in her own family

But wouldn’t it be terribly unsettling for the children to be placed with a second temporary carer, before being transplanted again within a matter of weeks to their forever home? Why yes. Wouldn’t it be simpler to instead speed up the whole process and allow D&R to take them immediately, as a foster placement, for which they are fully trained, while the adoption process grinds along? Well, you would think so. Will this actually happen? Your guess is as good as mine. There are three separate social workers in the mix, all of whom have different opinions on the best course of action, some of them based on the best interests of the children and others based on the strictest possible interpretation of the rules, regardless of the needs of the children.

But whether this week, next week, or two months from now, it is almost certain that this little girl and boy will become my new niece and nephew! I can’t wait to meet them!

The face of concentration:

"I'm stirring and stirring, I'm a baby cook!"

It's been ages since I posted here! I have a whole stack of photos from various outings over the summer, and kept meaning to picspam them, but somehow I never quite got around to it - so those will have to keep for a summer retrospective post or two down the line, because instead I am going to skip over those other outings and picspam yesterday, which I spent at the Monkey World primate sanctuary in Dorset with Ian, Mum, Chelsea and Layla-May.

Now, as a family we have followed the story of Monkey World for the best part of two decades now, as the goings on at the park are filmed for the telly - which both raises the profile of their work and also provides a steady revenue stream to keep the park going. But somehow we'd never managed to make the journey down there - at two-and-three-quarter hours, it's a long way to go and back in a day! But with the park celebrating its 30th anniversary, and Layla-May about to turn 2, we decided to bite the bullet and make the journey.

The date of the journey was chosen based on Ian's shift patterns and my annual leave availability, so we were a bit dismayed when the appointed day came and brought with it torrential rain. Still, undeterred, we set off on our travels, and took the rain with us for pretty much the entire almost-three-hour journey - but then, as we got close to the park, a miracle happened: it stopped raining at last! And it stayed dry for most of the day, despite every forecast having predicted steady rain for the entire day - it was gloomy and grey, to be sure, with a bit of drizzle here and there, but unlike Legoland a few weeks earlier, we managed to stay dry all day.

And Layla-May had a wonderful time, splashing in all the puddles in her welly boots!


( Picspam continues behind the cut )

It has been a very long few days, celebrating the 21st birthday of the Small Sis


I feel old now! Ian and I took her to Alton Towers yesterday. Three and a half hours there and then back again, but it was totally the right day to go, a term-time weekday, overcast and a bit chilly - there were no queues for any of the rides, we just went straight onto everything. Even I did most of the big ones, some of them twice!

Today...there was less fun stuff going on, Mum and Dad and Chelsea had to be at the magistrate's court, because Mum and Dad are applying for a child arrangement order for Layla-May, which will give them joint parental responsibility, which is a really long story that I'm not up to going into right now, but it's been bubbling along for some time now and will continue to do so for a while yet, as the magistrate adjourned the hearing for eight weeks while CAFCASS do a report, and anyway, Ian and I took Layla-May out for the day while all that was going on, and she had an absolutely lovely day with 'Doh' and 'Ina' (last week it was 'Ani' - one day she will get all of Ian's syllables in the right order!). We went to Dyffryn House in the Vale of Glamorgan - it's only 20 minutes or so by car, and the weather was glorious, not a cloud in the sky.

Layla had a lovely afternoon. She spent a lot of time playing with dandelions, learning how they work


She took her turn sitting on the old stone lions, just like everyone else in the family before her


She practiced going up and down steps


And up and down, and up and down, and up and down some more! She also had soooo much fun splashing in the fountain in the Pompeian Garden - she does love water, so very much


And then we spent ages watching bugs and leaves floating about in the newt pond, but she wasn't allowed to stick her hands in that one, and because I told her so many times not to go in the water, she started saying it for me! "No-no, Lay, don't go water!" So cute!

We also took some time for a little rest


We are getting more and more sentences these days. "No, I not sleepy!" is a particular favourite. She also cracks baby jokes - she'll lie down and say, "I go sleep," followed by fake snores, which is hilarious if you are only one! She is almost 20 months old, taller than some two-year-olds, with a rapidly growing vocabulary. She's very happy and well-adjusted, which is all thanks to my parents, really, for providing her with such a stable home and a loving upbringing, while her parents take it in turns to flake out. Chelsea is back onto a relatively even keel at the moment, so now Jamie has vanished into the wind. Maybe one day things will settle down a little - here's hoping, for Layla's sake

I have fallen off the radar a bit lately - things have been slightly manic! But over the weekend my little niece celebrated her first birthday, so let us mark the occasion with a birthday post.

To celebrate, we gathered on Saturday at Cefn Mably farm park with a few small cousins, and Layla-May had her very first pony ride, petted animals and played on the swings and slide.


For the birthday itself, on Monday, we went out for a family meal, and Layla ran all over the restaurant making friends with everyone she met.


Then back at home, there was the ceremonial opening of presents, which was both very exciting and very overwhelming for a little one.


A tea party followed, and we learned that Layla-May really, really does not understand this whole 'singing Happy Birthday' thing, that's just weird! But she LOVES chocolate cake.

Happy birthday, Layla-May

Took a Mother's Day walk around Cosmeston Lakes near Penarth last week - crisp and clear, it felt properly spring for the first time this year. Plus, pretty!


Poppy and Alfie being cute


Yesterday I had an injured magpie in the garden - I was out pottering around in the sun, the bird was cowering in a corner behind my biggest pot, and I ended up spending most of the afternoon chasing the cats away from it! Mr Huntsman Alfie got bored and wandered off pretty quickly, but Poppy, who has never caught live prey in her life, remained fascinated and kept going back to edge in close and stare at the bird, like she thought if she stared hard enough it might walk into her mouth. I honestly thought I was going to find a sad little corpse out there this morning, but it seems to have recovered and flown off overnight. Either that or something else had it - but there's no evidence of a violent struggle, so I'm going with the happy ending theory!

Layla-May's future is decided: she is going to be a Time Lord! Here she is modelling her best First Doctor expression


Also: more cuteness

Layla-May is growing like a weed!



Three guesses who bought the bib in that last picture. I felt we should begin as we mean to go on!

ETA: one more, because: adorbs.