Party political broadcast

We've not lived in France long, compared to the French people who live here (well, d'uh!), and as non-French residents we don't have the right to vote in la presidentielle, but schools can be a rich fermenting ground for ideas.

Apparently (I was out to work today before the sun rose, as is normal every other week) youngest, 6, came downstairs to breakfast this morning and on entering the kitchen asked, generally, "So, who do you think would be the better president for France? I don't think Sarkozy would be very good for Brittany; on the other hand, Sègolène Royale isn't very good in international politics." First words he said, I am assured, and a pretty good recollection of what he said, though to be fair it was said in a mixture of French and English. All 3 children are bilingual and often forget their parents aren't, so they try to make allowances, when they remember.

Of course, proud but slightly bemused mother asked if this was because they'd been talking about the elections in class with maitresse. Replying with a look that said 'credit me with some intelligence' and with a sneer in his voice, he said, "No, we've been discussing it in the playground."

6 years old. I ask you.

Mind you, this is the same 6-year-old who went to his 8th dental appointment in 3 months the other day, and didn't want the replacement dentist while his own was en vacances, he'd become used to his own. His dentist is a young but balding chap of about 35 with a chin piercing, fortunately hidden from curious eyes and questions during treatment by his face mask. Eight visits so far, almost weekly save for the 2 week holiday break, because youngest has/had several holes (teeth formed too soft in utero, all bar four of top set taken out when he was 3), but the French dentists, or this one in particular (don't know if it's standard practice but it ought to be), believe in treating one hole per visit, and if it's a big hole, 2 visits, so the patient doesn't get deep-rooted fears of dentists - for youngest, it's worked, he's perfectly happy to go back for subsequent treatment, as long as it's the same man. And it's not private, but done on the Carte Vitale system.

Gradual introduction to the infliction of pain (his mother refuses to take him, she was badly treated on that front under the NHS) has obviously made him phlegmatic about changing situations - politics might well be one of them.

We were tuff in those days!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!
(written from an Australian perspective but still true nevertheless)

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a flat bed truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Burger King or Red Rooster.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy fruit tingles and some crackers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in them, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms.......... WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time.......no, really!

We were given BB guns and sling shots for our 10th birthdays.

We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing at Maralinga in 1956.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

Football had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bullies always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents got married before they had children and didn't invent stupid names for their kids like "Kiora" and "Blade"

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

PS -The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age

Making a post on your own blog and telling Purple Coo about it

When you are in your own blog, in the top right corner you will see your email address and next to it a link for Dashboard; click on Dashboard and it will take you to a page similar to the one below (which is only a part of that resulting Dashboard page):

This Dashboard shows you what blogs you have the rights to post on. (If you click on the picture it will take you to a larger size, where, hopefully, you can actually read what I've written.) If it doesn't, the first comment, in red, is, this will be the title of your own blog. The second comment is, this is where you click to post a new blog on your own blog page.

If you want to write a blog on your own blog page, click on the green + sign and New Post listed for your own blog page and you will be taken to where you can write a Post (for which read a new posting), which will appear to everyone else who visits your site as a blog, because it will be a posting you have made on your own site.

Then, having written and posted that, you can go to the coochat.blogspot site and announce, by making a comment on the single post on that site, that you've blogged.

Retrieving your blogs from elsewhere

Just been over to who gives a duck to experiment with blog retrieval. Mandy is creeping up the rated blogs list, closely followed by Milly - all we need now is a Molly on the scene and they'll have it all wrapped up. EJ is still top of the tree for the moment, though.

I wrote all the stuff below, and believe me it takes a lot lot longer to write than to do, so don't be put off, only to discover that the Janitor has given a solution already on his page here. And by the way, highlighting by dragging the cursor DOES copy over photos as well, at least on a PC. By all means, if his method's easier, go for it, but having typed what I've typed I'm not going to delete it all now, and you're welcome to read it.

Step 1.
Open a blank Word document.

Step 2.
Easiest (relatively speaking) way to retrieve your blogs is to find your pages on that site, then positon your cursor at the start of the first one on the page (which will be the most recent one on that page) - see pic below, the writing in red says Cursor should look like this, NOT an arrow.

Selection of page showing starting position of cursor

Then, left mouse click on that position, let go and move down the page to where you want to finish cutting, aim your cursor at the end point, hold down the Shift key and left mouse click again, STILL HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY. This will (should) highlight the section you want, which is the wordage in the middle section of the page and not all the bumf on either side - it will also include any photographs/images/avatars you have on your blog - see pic below.

Selection of page showing highlighted content

Right click and choose Copy (or CTRL-C, or under the Edit menu choose copy), go to your Word document and Paste (rightclick/Paste, or CTRL-V, or Edit/Paste). It will be in small size font, but you can then go through and move things about and change sizes etc, now it's at your computer. Then, you're free to post it as a blog or blogs on your own site, where you can put it in the right order.

Alternatively, open a New Post on your blog site and paste directly into there, where it will be a readable size.

Posting avatars that show up on CC&W

jackofall



What we are referring to as an avatar in this particular instance is NOT an avatar; an avatar is an icon (image or symbol) which can be placed next to your name in a forum, as happened in the other place when we posted on chatrooms. What we want/would like to happen, at Children Chocolate & Wine, is to have the picture we use for our avatar to appear with each post we make - n'est-ce pas? And not just next to any comments about posts, which is what happens at the moment with the images we've put in the URL picture link on our Blogger profiles.

The only way I've found of adding the image to each post is by uploading the image each time I post; sometimes I forget and then it's not there, but I'm training myself to remember. I've also added a clickable link to my blog next to the picture, and I have to remember to do that each time as well.

Adding clickable links

When you write a Post on a blog, as opposed to a comment, below is part of the screen you should see, whether you've got a PC, a Mac or a NacMacFeegal, (though if you've got one of them, I should count your whisky bottles, and your white spirit bottles, before you go to bed). The symbol to click on for adding a clickable link is circled in red.

Can blogs be edited?

Prompted by a posting on purple coo, I'm doing a very brief blog to se if it can be edited once I've hit the publish button.

And that's all folks.

...later

Yes, they can, click on the pencil symbol next to the comments word. (Only if you're the blog owner, of course)