Foreign Perspectives

The Child Development course has what’s called a “seen question” on the exam paper which is sort-of a misnomer. Yes, they’ve given us the actual question that’ll be asked but it really more of a project than a simple question to answer in that we’ve to research the topic and provide a coherent answer citing research evidence to backup that answer.

That wouldn’t be too bad (says he, not having done it yet!) but the first hurdle is that there are five very different topic areas which we need to choose between first. Going by the study guide that choice should only take a day but that only works if you’ve a strong preference for one of the topics or a dislike for four of them and otherwise you could easily find yourself reading through quite a chunk of stuff just to make that choice.

In practical terms, I found it relatively easy to eliminate three of the topics. The legal one sounds interesting in principle but highlights right at the off that it contains quite upsetting material on child sexual abuse so doesn’t sound like something that would be pleasant to work on to me. The education one is very much a “for teachers” topic and doesn’t grab me. The health psychology one just sounded like a lot of marketing drivel. Which leaves the ones on autism and specific learning difficulties.

I’d thought initially that it would be very much a toss-up between these two but the presentation of them made it quite an easy choice. In practical terms I think that, although the autism one would be very interesting, you’d really need to have some experience of the condition to be able to do it as it’s presented in what seems, to me, to be a very confusing way. To be fair, it’s trying to show what autism is like to those with that affliction but it just served to confuse me as to where it was going with the topic.

Which leaves me with specific learning difficulties and that’s the option that I’ll be running with.

One of the challenges that people face as they get older is the increasing number of health problems that tend to crop up. The question, of course, is what to do about them.

In most cases these start as relatively mild problems. So mild in a lot of cases that people can wait quite a long time before they go to see their doctor about them which can make them a little more serious issues by then of course but not necessarily serious in a dramatic way.

For instance, if you’re like most people in being a little overweight and not taking as much exercise as you should then chances are that you’ve higher blood pressure than you should have for your age (it’s something that goes up as you get older). Go to the doctor and, if it’s high enough, chances are they’ll prescribe some medication to get it down to where it should be. The snag is that, in most cases, this medication is a “for the rest of your life” deal which is obviously not such a great idea if you can avoid it. And, you can usually avoid it in this case if you’re prepared to put the effort into it. That effort entails getting that weight down, taking more exercise, reducing your salt intake and taking charge though measuring your own blood pressure. Sadly, most people just don’t bother to put that effort in yet the effort required, in most cases, is minimal. After all, it’s not that difficult to change from normal salt to the “low salt” variety, we can all fit a little walking in and blood pressure monitors are very cheap these days.

In terms of mental health, if recent studies are anything to go by, it seems that similar options are open. We’re seeing the first of the anti-dementia drugs these days but they’re likely to be “for life” deals as well. As with the exercise for your body, those recent studies seem to indicate that exercising your mind tends to, at least, alleviate dementia. Surely it must be a better plan to exercise your mind than to go onto medication?

Although you’d expect that most holiday accommodation would be completely full over the majority of the peak summer that’s not always the case.

For instance, whilst we’re expecting to be close to full capacity over the period, in fact we had several days last week when we were completely empty. How come? Well, what happens is that the place fills up completely at the weekend relatively early in the year which in turn means that people who are looking for a longer holiday often can’t get booked in if it crosses the weekend.

Now, in principle, we could block out a few rooms over the weekends for those longer holidays but then that’s taking the risk that those blocked out rooms wouldn’t fill at all. In practical terms it’s quite difficult to do that blocking out anyway as many online reservation sites don’t allow for that to be done, or at least not in a way that saves those rooms for longer bookings.

Thanks to the free wifi service offered in McDonalds it seems to be attracting an increasing number of itinerant bloggers.

Almost every time we’ve been in lately (and, yes, we’re one of that band of McD bloggers whilst we wait for our ADSL connection) we’ve seen someone whipping out the laptop in a relatively quiet part of the restaurant. Thus far, our record is four separate surfers but I’m sure that’s a record that’ll soon be broken.

It’s not really surprising that they’re attracting these folk: after all that word “free” is quite a pull. What is more surprising though is that the majority of these people are lugging around full size laptops rather than running with the likes of my trusty Aspire One. After all, at under £200 for quite a usable machine it’s not out of the question to buy one pretty much just for the holidays and these days you can even get them “free” with some broadband packages.

Is it a worthwhile marketing strategy for McD though? Well, in that the restaurants obviously need a connection of some sort for their credit card machines it’s largely a no-cost service for them so there’d appear to be no downside in offering it. Moreover, few of the itinerant surfers leave without buying something so it would appear to be all upside for McD at the moment. Whether that would continue to be the case were significant numbers of surfers to start using the stores is another matter. It certainly works fine if there are a handful of people using the service but if there were, say, 10 or more then a) the seats are going to be taken up and b) the service is going to slow down. Still, at the moment, it seems like a great idea.

When they’re booking a place for their holidays people often make assumptions about what that place will be like not so much from the description (which few seem to read) but rather from the place that they’re booking it through.

For instance, we’re in that hazy middle ground between B&B and hotel which means that we’re listed on a wider range of sites than a place that fell exclusively into either category would be. As a rule those coming to us from the hotel listings tend to expect a level of services that we simply can’t meet at busy times when we’ve found that some expect a level of staffing more appropriate to a 50 bedroom place than our own humble 10 room place. So, for example, we’ve found that some people can’t understand that we’ve only one internet terminal when “hotels” always have three or four. Well, 50 bedroom hotels might well have three or four but since we’ve only 1/5th of that number of rooms we obviously have to scale other things down too. On the other hand, those coming to us via a B&B listing sometimes have the expectation of encountering a cute country cottage which we aren’t and don’t claim to be either.

However, perhaps the most peculiar expectation we encountered came from one couple who were looking for a “country retreat”. It took us a while to work out what they were looking for but apparently it came from an Australian listing that we have which is one of many created by asking us one set of questions and producing a listing that answers an entirely different set of questions. In this case one of their questions was “is there a nudist colony nearby” to which the answer is “yes”. However, on their site our answer means that we’re listed as being a “nudist retreat” which we’re definitely not. It seems that “country retreat” is one of those ways of referring to nudist retreats, hence the confusion from that particular couple!

Thanks to the way that listing sites group properties by “resort” (usually the nearest large town) it’s quite important to check just where your holiday property actually is. For instance, we’re generally listed as being attached to Perpignan yet we’re actually 25km outside it. That’s not a problem if you’re coming in a car as it’s only 20 minutes drive but clearly more of an issue if you’re relying on public transport to get around. There’s not really a lot that holiday properties can do about that on the whole as if listings sites simply listed only the properties within a town then it would be next to impossible to find accommodation outside a town. After all, would you know the name of all the little villages within 10 miles or so of your home town? Even if you did, would you have the patience to look up each one in turn in search of accommodation?

To avoid making assumptions that don’t fit with the reality it’s best to have a good read of the description of your holiday accommodation. Most owners spend a fair bit of time to get their description as accurate as they can as it’s obviously much better to have people coming who want to stay in the type of place you have. Despite that it sometimes seems that potential guests don’t even read the first line and go purely on price then complain that, for example, a place billed as being in the country isn’t in the city (yes, we’ve had that).