PUTTING ONE OVER

 Sometimes being in fostering has hidden perks.

So there I was in the doctors' waiting room waiting my turn. I was wet and cold with the winter rain outside.

I needed the doctor to see about a trapped nerve in my neck. It came on suddenly, I'd lain awake at night in discomfort, wondering where it had come from.

Probably picking up toddlers and holding them to my right shoulder (have you noticed almost all mums and dads of babies hold them with their head to the parent's left side, but when they get toddlerish you hold them to the right?)

Sorry, off message.

So. There were about 6 of us sat there staring at our mobile phones, me too, and because I'm who I am I said out loud:

"This weather makes everything feel worse doesn't it?"

There was a muttering of agreement, but one lady chipped in;

"It just goes on doesn't it? Cold and damp and grey. And they say the planet is warming up."

I didn't pick up on that. The planet is not just hotting up, it's burning up. I didn't want anyone thinkng I was a Just Stop Oil militant, although sometimes I wish I was.

Two of the other people waiting were men, they didn't join in the muttering, some men feel difficulties pitching into conversations women are having, I don't know why.

One of the women waiting was rather grand. She was togged up in her best, made up to the nines, hair well done, possibly a wig. Some people with not enough to do in their day turn a trip to the corner shop for a carton of milk into an event and deck up like they're going up west with a new man.

I put my foot in it.

I said; "Oh look at us all on our phones."

The grand lady said, grandly;

"I don't allow them in our house past the front door. When my children and grandchildren come to stay they have to put their mobile phones in a basket next to the front door."

Her remark was about showing herself being ahead of the game.

But you have to be up early to be ahead of a foster parent.

I'd recently been on a Blue Sky training session about mobile phones. Fascinating. I was able to reply to her;

"There are ways young people get round that sort of rule."

She replied "Oh yes? And what that may be? Their phone is sat there in the basket next to the front door."

So I replied;

"Well, I'm not saying your children or grandchildren do this when they come to stay with you. But let's face it, you're confiscating something that's important to them, and you simply might not be as far ahead of them as you think."

She replied; "How can they use their mobile phones when the phones are in the phone basket?"

So I said" "I'm in fostering. We get training in things like this. Do you want to know how the kids get round your phones-in-a-basket rule?"

"Yes!" she replied, a bit smug. How could anyone outwit her?

Answer; a foster child.

So I explained.

"They buy a second mobile phone for peanuts, you can pick one up for a fiver on eBay or at the market. When they get home from school they take the Sim Card out of their second phone and put that phone in the basket. Then they go upstairs, put the Sim into their number one phone and on they go.

The look on Mrs Posh's face was priceless.

It's the sort of street cred stuff we get tutored in by Blue Sky. It helps us know what's going on. The question of how we deal with what's going on in our home as foster parents is down to our own wit, but we have the the support of our social workers. 

Cheap of me, I know, but I enjoyed putting one over on Mrs Grand.