Busyknitter

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this year’s ceremony. I think you’ll all agree that it has been an eventful year for the Knitting family. So let’s get started with the awards.

Traveller of the Year
Mr BK wins this hands down with his long weekend in Gothenburg in January and a spectacular road trip across the US midwest in May. To be honest, there hasn’t been much competition in this category for some time, but the committee hopes that 2006 may be a little more exciting for the whole family .

Sportsman (or woman) of the Year
Nominations: 1) S for learning to swim, 2) Mr BK for taking the initiative in joining the new fitness centre and inspiring the rest of the family to join 3) BK for getting organised enough to cycle to work nearly every day in the summer 4) T, for his enthusiastic enjoyment of his bike trailer
And the winner is……………………..S. Well done, that young man.

Educational achiever of the year
A joint award this year. 1). S had a happy Year 6 in a brand new school. Moving away from Suffolk resolved quite a few issues for him. He finally got an official diagnosis of developmental co-ordination disorder (aka dyspraxia), improved his handwriting tenfold and won the school maths prize at the end of the year. He’s now settled into high school and seems to be loving it. 2). T started nursery this year, and has made fantastic progress. The local primary school have worked their socks off to help him and he has been very fortunate to have the amazing Mrs B as his learning support assistant. However, we, the school and the LEA have all come to the view that mainstream school would not be suitable for T when he goes into Reception next September. So last week, we received a great Christmas present in the form of a letter of acceptance to the county’s special school for children with autism.

Accident of the year
Nominations 1). S, for falling off his bike and breaking his wrist in the middle of the Forest of Bowland. 2) BK for falling off her bike and breaking her dignity in the middle of the office car park 3) T for falling off the bed and pretending to dislocate his shoulder until the paramedics turned up and showed him up for the fraud he was.
And the winner is ………………S again!

Leap in the Dark Award
To BK for deciding to leave the NHS after 16 years and dip her toe in the muddy waters of Further Education. Gulp!

Saintly Professional of the Year
Nominations 1) Mrs B - T’s learning support assistant, with a special citation for the beautiful photo diaries of T’s time at nursery 2) SC - Speech and language therapist, for teaching us all PECs 3) FB - Learning disabilities nurse who has helped us transform T’s sleep routines and restored our sanity.
They all win.

The muddy nappy award for useless professional advice
Goes to a certain paediatrician, who when asked for advice about exploring dietary intervention for T, claimed not to know anything about it, didn’t know anyone who did and suggested we look it up on the Internet!!

The Wool Basket Community Support Award
Goes to our local church, who have always welcomed T and his funny ways with open arms and a source of real, practical help. God bless you all.

Family Blogger of the Year
No contest Aww, shucks

Well, we’ve ordered a turkey this year, the first I will ever have cooked in 18 years of marriage. First couple of years we were fed by either my Mum or the MIL. Since then we’ve been studiously not having turkey as a means of fighting back against everything that we find just too stressful and horrible about Christmas. But it never works. Like the poor, Christmas is always with us.

So this year we have caved in and have ordered a bloody great free range organic gobbler, which I’m going to have to cook. All tips and suggestions gratefully received.

Post mortem
Organising the meal (so that everything is ready and hot at the same time) - 9/10
Knowing where butchers put turkey giblets - 0/10
Properly cooked turkey (ie not overcooked but no food poisoning either) - 10/10
Creativity with the veg- 5/10 (nowt wrong with steamed sprouts and carrots)
Crunchiness of roast potatoes - 8/10
Feeding the inevitable vegetarian (cheese sauce to go on her veg) - 6/10
Getting pleasantly sloshed on sherry and champagne while cooking - 10/10

S came home with what I think was supposed to be an easy piece of homework. He had to find and cut out 6 pictures of celebrities, paste them into his workbook and describe them in French.

Now, we are actually pretty strict about homework help. We’ll try and explain a concept that he hasn’t quite grasped or we’ll discuss an idea with him to stimulate his thinking. But help him with the actual work? No way. I did my fair share of boring crap when I was at school, now it’s his turn.

We took pity on him tonight though . It wasn’t the French, that’s easy peasy. But find 6 pictures of celebrities? Cruel.

Here is the list of publications we scoured
- Today’s Guardian
- The local free sheet
- The Economist
- Easy Living
- My mum’s Oldie
- My mum’s Home and Country (the Womens’ Institute magazine)
- Some back copies of the Sainsbury’s magazine
- Health Service Journal (piccie of Patricia Hewitt anyone?)
- Public Finance (we were getting really desperate by this stage)

And here is the final roll call of celebrities that S has used
1. Tony Blair (Guardian)
2 Madonna (Guardian TV page)
3. Princess Anne (Home and Country)
4. George Best (Guardian - taken from a picture of the crowd at last night’s Old Trafford game)
5. Nelson Mandela (Guardian - photo of a painting being unveiled somewhere)
6. The Queen (a stamp)

The whole thing was a complete pain in the whatsits. Perhaps I’m going to have to take out a subscription to OK Magazine to support my son’s education!!!