Parafox

As an aside to my post regarding meeting our grandaughter, we were walking to the meeting venue and passed a end terrace wall that appeared to have had green paint chucked on it. Mrs P said I wonder if that's a Banksy? I said nah, looks like someone's thrown paint at the wall. Turns out: "A mural that appeared overnight on a residential building in north London is the work of Banksy, the anonymous street artist has confirmed".

Thanks for the reply. Best wishes and "keeeeeep posting"!!! Cue music.

It's in Nottinghamshire. **** 'em.

@Izzy says hi.

Alphabetti spaghetti. Eat and learn.

From the NHS website: Routine PSA testing is not offered on the NHS. You may be offered a PSA test if a doctor thinks you have symptoms that could be prostate cancer. The only routine test I'm aware of for men is for bowel cancer, which is every 2 years between the ages of 54 and 74

Women between 25 and 64 get a routine cervical smear test every 3 to 5 years depending on age. Why don't men get a routine prostate screening test?

Quite a substantial protest going on now at TH stadium by fans who have stayed behind. Again, showing our lot up as being gutless.

What are you talking about. Turncoat.

A week or so ago, I pulled alongside an artic and the driver had a film playing on his mobile. A "professional" driver of a vehicle capable of killing. As someone who has a class 1 licence, this is appalling and shames the rest of us.

Thank you both for asking. It went well. The organisation is a privately funded (through clients and other revenue streams) called Family Futures and they provide support and advice for "looked after" children and their families. They help to engage these children in opening up about their feelings and worries and provide them with important information about the reasons for being adopted or fostered and guide and support them through the potential emotional fallout of what they have experienced. In our case, we had already had some contact with our grandaughter through the post adoption contact mailbox scheme where annual letters and photos are exchanged between us and her ant her adoptive parents so we kind of knew bits about her life after going into care and knew what she looked like from the photos we had. Prior to going to meet her, we were full of anxiety, hope, excitement not knowing how this would pan out. We knew that the specialist had asked Ellie to write down questions that she hoped we could answer about her birth mum and her 6 months living with us 16 years ago. When we walked into the room where we met Ellie face to face for the first time we all fell apart with emotion. Tears, hugs, kisses. A long period where none of knew what to say but all we could do was look at our grandaughter in almost disbelief. She's tiny, delicate and very pretty. So much like her birth mum at 16. She was dressed in a pink velour tracksuit that her birth mum would have approved of. She sat between her adoptive parents for a while then decided to come and sit with me and Mrs P. She held our hands as we started to answer the questions she had for us (which she had written on a large sheet of paper at a previous session she had been to) and it almost broke my heart. Having to tell her the truth about the difficult early life her birth mum had and the short life Ellie spent with us was really difficult and clearly upsetting even though she knew quite a bit already as the adoption process requires all the information available, but to hear it hear it substantiated directly from us was tough for her and us and we had to stop a number of times for us all to have a breather. In between times Ellie kept looking up at me and smiling. I so wanted to just scoop her up hold her like I did when she was a baby. She was quite shy, which is understandable in the circumstances, but our concerns about her not engaging with us or treating us like strangers was totally unfounded. It really was like meeting a long lost loved one for her and for us. She seemed so relieved herself that we were what she remembered even at that young age and what she hoped we would be like from our contact letters. The brief attachment we made in the first 6 months of her life seems to continue to be there for her and certainly for us. She still has and still cuddles, a pink hippo soft toy we got for her after she was born and her adoptive parents said she hardly goes anywhere without it, even trips abroad. She's had a difficult life but her adopters are dedicated to her and have given her the best, most positive life experiences she could ever have even in often quite trying situations as she displays so much of the behaviours that her birth mum did. And they continue to do so which is so gratifying and important to me and Mrs P. We have another meeting with Ellie at Family Futures in April. In the meantime we are getting together ourselves to have a day out and we will take our other adopted daughter, Beth who is Ellie's aunt, with us so she can meet her as well. Beth had to say goodbye to Ellie when Beth was 9 yrs old and was devastated as she had formed a deep attachment. Now we are getting our relationships back and all seems good. On a slightly negative side, Ellie's birth mum is back in the MHU as she isn't coping and needs additional help. She does know about our contact with her daughter but that's not the reason she isn't managing in the community. Also, we have a second grandaughter that has been adopted. She's 14 now but the adopters don't allow contact so it's unlikely we'll see her any time soon.

Nor Faes or lurch, then?

That's a show I'd watch.

Touched it onto the post looking at the replay

Was a knob, is a knob, will continue to be a knob

4 2 3 1

That really is a low benchmark

If you go to jail, someone there will do it for you.

I wonder what possessed Arsenal to buy Sterling.

No striker. A bit like us.

Maybe we should ask @Spudulike

Make BOT great again. Especially with Aldi's tiger bloomer.

I had an old Focus nicked off my drive. I thought it had been stolen to order. Seems I was correct.

Would you lick it off? Without or without butter?

Travelled to London with Mrs P to a contact meeting organised by an adoption support organisation to meet our granddaughter who we haven't seen for 15 years since she was taken into care as a baby. I can't describe the emotions.