Naughty Lambs.

The weather in Pompey continues to be balmy, the snow keeps falling in Richmond, darn it. I say that, but I know there'll be deaths because in spite of the fact it has actually snowed before, no-one ever modifies their behaviour.

Outside of Austen and Sue's living room is a short flight of stairs to the bedrooms. The bottom step is the 'naughty step' where Holly is sent to sit for a couple of minutes time-out if she is naughty, which isn't that often. She does however like to practise dealing with naughty children, and she has two cuddly lambs that frequently get sent to sit on the naughty step. No other animals get sent there, just the lambs. I CANNOT help wondering if this is something she gets from church, where every Sunday she must hear,
'Oh lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world....'maybe she send them there in case she is naughty herself.

This morning we took Teddy to the Health Centre to get him weighed, checked, normalised. Seems he is fairly normal. Apparently boys' laziness extends even to their eating habits, and Teddy is to be given food that he has to chew more from now on.
The Health Centre was of course in general full of the unhealthy, honestly, and uncharitably, some of those people looked as though they'd been unhealthy since birth.
It has made me wonder how the system works in Britain. In Canada we have a swipe card called a Care Card, and wherever you go, they just...swipe it and they have your details on the system. In Britain you just walk in.
On Saturday I had to take Ben to get new specs. Because he's under 18 a large percentage of the cost is paid for by the National Health, but there was no check whatsoever that he was entitled to NHS treatment. I suppose there would be no reason to question someone with a bog standard English accent, but surely that can't be it, the staff listening to your accent. I've never questioned this before.

It has taken me a couple of days not just to get over the jetlag, but also to get back into things. For example, when I left Britain I had to change my phone from a contract phone to pay-as-you go. Unlike most young people in the UK, I'd never dealt with pay-as-you-go before.
I had to remember to charge the phone up before I left Canada. I then had to work out how to top it up with credit. I was happier giving Ben my credit card and phone and asking him to do it for me, but realised that was too wussy for words, so made myself find out what to do.

So now I'm off to Siberia. I phoned my sister last night to tell her what time I'd be there. If you look at a map of England it looks like it should take about an hour and a half to get to Norwich, but I have to get four different trains and it'll take me four and a half hours, though I do love the trains. As you get further from the soft south the trains in general get more cruddy. My sister assures me it's cold in Norfolk, they literally do get winds from the Urals. I wonder if she can draw down some snow for me.