Curtains!

I have reduced my curtain-ironing time to 45 minutes per curtain. It looks like last time I ironed one of them, I scorched it, but it shouldn't show much - it didn't last time they were hung. I'm glad I've got that out of the way. Now all I need to do is iron the muslins, which are much easier (they hang sheer, which gives the same opaque effect as net curtains without being hideous).

Rob slept badly last night - well, not badly; the issue is that he didn't actually sleep very much. I hope he has enough energy to rehang the curtains when he gets home from London. I'm not able to hang them myself.

I'd love to get the full-length curtains in the library cleaned too, but I can hardly lift them dry. I don't think laundering them would be a good idea. I should see if Rob can take them to a dry-cleaners tomorrow, maybe, during his lunchbreak.

Thanks heavens we have no curtains at the back of the house. At least, none I care about.

Smacking Laws

So, the should you be allowed to smack your child law thing has come up again.

I think that this would be a good law. I think that outlawing smacking would make it much easier to police abuse.

I wrote here that:

One reason that the state is imposing so many Good Behaviour laws - like the drinking in the street laws that have recently come into effect all over Reading - is because the population is generally irresponsible and unwilling to become responsible. Most of the adult population I have encountered in this country need a nanny. afpers and their ilk are a minority. Many adults think that TV and PC are a new spelling for Babysitter and Education. People will sue because it rained on their wedding day and the Met Office got the long-term forecast wrong ("It was supposed to be mostly dry in August!").

How should the govt, whose only authority stems from the ability to arrest and detain, make the "adult" population more willing to accept responsibility? It's the only way I can see to avoid the necessity for nanny laws.

I do believe that a no-smacking law would reduce the severity of abuse many children have to experience before it becomes possible to do something about it through the official channels. I also believe that most instances of smacking are not abusive. I think that making it necessary for parents to find a different way of last-resort disciplining their children is less damaging than allowing ordinary abuse (parents who hit their children too much or too hard) and/or the other problem I have seen - parents who believe that ordinary smacking is enough to discipline a child, because look, when I hit her, she stops doing it! (I have seen parents who do this consistently and don't actually succeed in teaching their children anything at all except "stop when they hit you").

It would be lovely if Free NHS Parenting Classes were offered to everyone who got pregnant, along with regular support group meetings until your last child has left home (so about age 26 nowadays), but I can't see people agreeing to pay for this. People already complain about the high costs in this country. I suppose they do that everywhere; certainly they do it in Ireland now, and they used to even five years ago, when living in rural Ireland was cheaper than living in London.

I should use another rant for "you have an NHS! Have you any idea what it's like to live in a country that has no NHS?!" so I'll stop now.

Quizzage

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