A really cool woman that I know slightly via the internet (and who also loves roller derby) divides her life up into segements. She has work, play, hobby and pastime. Within those categories she places all the things she does; roller derby comes under play, work is office but also laundry, pastime is watching lost. So that's very organised, but she also says that she has whittled her life right down to the things she likes doing best. Because perhaps in the past she had things like 'quilting' and theatre production' in her hobbies, now she just has 'writing'. She says that life is hard enough concentrating on the main things you do, without having all the other little categories all adding up and wanting input from you.

She has taken this idea of division of time to the extreme level, with weekly charts divided up into time groups and even pre-planned menus.

I don't think I could do that; for one, she doesn't have kids. But I'm thinking that in the main it's an excellent system. I might try it.

Flying a Kite by Rebecca Elsom

It seems to me the kite
Has all the fun,
The view,
The weightlessness
The wind,
Ecstatic shudders,
Tail streaming out,
The urging higher,
The exhilarating dives,
And me down here,
Left holding the string.

The Early Learning Centre have recently introduced a policy of gender branding the packaging and the colour of their toys, producing things in two colour waves, pink (for the girls) and blue (for the boys).

I am supporting the Pink Stinks campaign group http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/ in their boycott of the Early Learning Centre and I am posting my intial letter to the company here:

Dear Customer Services,

I have long shopped at ELC but I am writing to tell you that I am now boycotting your stores. I strongly object to your recently introduced gender branding, something which I feel is a step back and completely unnecessary. By presenting yourself as a bastion of education and play learning, you have a duty to children to present positive gender role models. This would obviously present itself as non-gender-specific branding for toys. The ELC has a very specific and easily recognisable colour palette. Toys should be packaged within the colour palette of the shop, not in the gender colour deemed 'suitable' by some unknown designer or branding advisor.

There are many shops in the UK who have a practice of gender colour branding, but none of those shops are presenting themselves as centres of excellence for play education.

I would like the ELC to rethink its branding policy. I would like a reply explaining why the ELC has recently chosen to incorporate gender branding, specifically the recent pink and blue run-out . I would like a statement from the company on it's policy of gender branding of toys and why it has decided now is the time to introduce this strange demarkation of toys.

I am supporting the campaign group Pink Stinks in their boycott of ELC and I shall be advising my many playgroup friends to do the same.

I do look forward to hearing from you, as soon as possible,

Kind regards

etc,etc.

I don't of course expect this to be the end of the conversation, I fully intend to continue correspondence with them; I expect the immediate reply will be that their market research shows the majority of their customers support gender branding and I am looking forward to receiving that letter!

The baby has decided that crawling and walking are not worth learning and that movement by Mummy is the way forward. He has taken to waving his arms in the air and pointing at me until I pick him up and then pointing imperiously towards the way he wants to go and saying, 'Dat!' in a commanding voice. This is often accompanied by kicking of his legs on my hips, much like you would get a horse to move forward.

I have become the Mummy Horse.

On the dire thing that is Secondary School Transfer.

Lately we've been navigating the murky waters of lake 'School Applications', something which has not been pleasant. We have planned and tested and practiced and crossed our fingers but all our scheming has not worked and it appears we have now sprung a leak and are rapidly sinking into the mire.

This manifests itself in the form of living six metres out of the catchment area for the nearest good school, despite being comfortably within in for the four previous years.

Six metres is very frustrating. It means that if we stand at the bottom of our garden we are probably still in the catchment area and Harry would now have a place. I have considered pitching a tent for Harry to live in, and then appealing.

As it turns out we don't appear to be living in the right place for, in fact, any school; the upshot of which is that Harry has been offered a place in a single sex school three and a half miles away, one that is mainly populated by expelled boys and boys with 'special needs in learning'.

How they can justify sending him to a school three and a half miles away when he lived too far away from the one that was one and half baffles me.

There's also the fact that I am morally opposed to single sex education because why would you want a child not to learn how to communicate with one half of the population, especially during the five most formative years of his or her life?

So I am angry, and frankly he won't be attending the school he's been offered. The school we applied for is the one he should have a place at. The appeals process is difficult and frustrating but I don't see any other path. The appeals board told me that we have to show why an already oversubscribed school should take on my child, and that there have to be exceptional circumstances for this. Well, I think in Harry's case there are.

Queensbridge (the school of choice) is an up-and-coming school with a commitment to the Performing Arts, and over the last four years the Headmaster has completely turned it around. That's why suddenly everyone wants to go there. So we were in the catchment area when it was rubbish, but because it's based in between two very wealthy areas of Birmingham as it becomes better the catchment area shrinks and the kids in the less wealthy areas suffer.

And Harry has worked very hard in Primary school. He gets good marks, he gets privileges and rewards, he is a talented musician, playing guitar at grade three level and playing in the Birmingham Central Ensemble, and he sings in two choirs; the Selly Oak choir and the Birmingham Central Choir. He even campaigned to get bike racks put in the school and now lots of children cycle to school.

So I'm going to appeal on that basis. I'm going to say that the school should provide him with a place because he would be an asset to the school in every way and because his education will suffer if he doesn't get a place there.

And then we'll see.

And we'll cross our fingers because he's currently number five on the waiting list owing the frankly ridiculous six metre boundary, so that might change over the next few weeks. But if we don't get a place then I have no idea what we'll do.

The whole thing is utterly terrifying.

Governemntal Hypocrisy.

The government provides Healthy Start vouchers to the tune of £5 per week for the purchase of fruit and vegetables for my baby (or me and my baby when I am breastfeeding, which I still partly am because he's only six months old.) These vouchers are for anyone who is in receipt of Child Tax Credit only, and is on Jobseekers Allowance or Income Support and has an income of less than £15,000 per year.

I have an income of considerably less than £15,000 per year, but because I work and so receive nominal Working Tax Credit I am apparently not entitled to these vouchers.

If I gave up trying to provide my own income I would suddenly become eligible for the vouchers, even though I currently have a lower income than I would if I was not working.

How can this be ok? I asked the woman on the phone why and she said that the government probably thinks you have an income of more than £15,000 if you're on working tax credit.

Well I wish.

I'm so pissed off. The government spends it's whole time saying it wants people off benefit and then it penalises those who are on the lowest income of all - people like me, part time workers trying to bring up a family on an income of very low wages and working tax credit. I'd be better off on benefit; and I wonder how many millions of us are saying that on a regular basis?

I think I feel a letter coming on.

I've been blogging since 2002, I've amassed a good deal of writing but I've done it quietly and off the the side. I haven't been all big in the blog community and I haven't got a whole heap of regular readers. I haven't really cared about that till now, but recently people I know who've been blogging for a much shorter time than me have been all proactive and involved and now I feel like I've somehow failed myself.

I feel like I should have been twittering and I should have had a RSS feed and I shouldn't have been afraid to go to meets, and I feel like I want to be on the 50 best Brum bloggers list. Which I am currently not. I wish I wasn't so afraid of throwing myself into the middle of things but I am; I think people aren't going to like me and are somehow going to judge me for crap, nefarious reasons, which is an outrageous thing to think about other people, because why would they do that to me anymore than I think those sorts of things about them? (Which I don't, just to make that clear.)

So my New Years resolution is to fix up Olulabelle.com, make a whole new site with links and a feed and a regular section where I post. And I'm going to start off posting about jewellery, the baby and general everyday thoughts. It's a bizarre combination I know, but there you go. At least it will be something.