A rant about Blogger

I'm suddenly having to go through word verification before I can post to my own blog. Aaargh! This function appears to trip in after a certain number of blog posts - it's not on this one, for example, but my main blog evidently now warrants it.

And while I'm ranting, as this is rant corner ;-) I want to know why I appear to be buying a rampantly increasing amount of advertisments from my email host, AOL. I'm not going to click any of those links, I'm just likely to switch providers instead, so it's self-defeating greed on the part of AOL to try and con more money out of me in this way.

Anyone know of a good email provider who won't clutter up my screen with huge, annoying adverts? It has to be a user-friendly interface from a long-standing ISP.

Or maybe I'll stick with AOL as my ISP, because we need the unlimited download capacity, and just switch to using my google mail account.

Grim down South

Floods in London - front page international headline news! (Well, they were this afternoon.)

The recent floods in Hull barely got a mention.

Get tha' wellies on, London.

"It must be awful at their house."

"It's awful in there!" says Alice from The Archers about her parents' house after the arrival of her four year-old half brother.

The title quote was by pub landlady Jolene, and quite a few other Ambridge residents have expressed similar sentiments. Not one person has said anything positive about the pleasure of this little boy's company, purely by virtue of his age, as far as I can tell.

The consistent message is: living with young children is horrible.

This is a complete lie in my experience, which causes no end of problems.

What is it about four year-olds that's difficult? They're usually expressionful, enthusiastic, entertaining and good fun. They live in the here-and-now and are refreshingly honest and fascinatingly interested in life and in learning. I love the kind of questions they ask as they try to work the world out, and yes - they will reflect any duplicity, fear or contrivance right back at the people involved. Maybe that's why they're so unpopular in certain circles.

But if you're straight and respectful with them, they're no trouble whatsoever.