On the 12th day of christmas

my SS sent to me a packet of yummy mint aero bubbles! And yesterday a lovely shopping list pad made by House Mouse. I think House Mouse is just sooo cute.

Today I have been down to the job centre to sign on for Job Seekers Allowance. The people were very nice but even in the nice new building with every reason for me to be there it still felt intimidating. As a professional teacher I am 'allowed' to only look for teaching jobs in the next 13 weeks. After that I may have to look for other jobs. Since a term is 13 weeks and jobs come up termly, not weekly I thought this a bit unfair but its one of the things you have to agree to. And I also have to make at least 3 applications a week. I tried explaining to him that in the time I have been looking (since last may) there have only been about 7 or 8 jobs that I could have applied for so how am I going to find 3 per week? He said they expect you to cold call. I explained that Head Teachers expect a certain etique to be followed and cold calling is not part of that. In fact with some Heads cold calling could actually put them off giving you any kind of job. While he agreed with me, and even looked on his computer to discover there are zero teaching jobs in the whole of Kent, he still insisted I have to sent three applications off. So I have no idea how I get round that one. I guess I will have to find out when I go to sign on in a weeks time. *sigh*

Anyway back to scrapping. Well I would have done some last night but for some reason we suddenly lost all our terrestrial telly channels. After I had pulled the tv forward, checked all the wires, unscrewed and rescrewed all the connectors, it became apparent that the Dover mask was playing up. So when Martin came home I asked him to push the telly back in to place. Thats when we lost all our sky channels! So another 90 mins playing about to discover it seems to be the video recorder - it may have lost its tuning and all the channels go through it. So bypass that and ...its 11.25 and way too late to do any of my christmas journal.