Headroom                                    Barrett

I had the most awful nightmare last night.  I was in such a state I woke up with a migraine.  I dreamt about the missing child, Madeleine, in the news at the moment.  She had run out of the apartment and was playing outside, running in and out of the bushes.  A man came, caught her, shouted at her for being naughty and took her back into her room.  He was putting her back to bed but slapped her and she fell sideways and cracked her head on the wall.  She fell and it was obvious she was dead.  The man wiped the blood off the wall and picked her up and ran out of the apartment as fast as he could down to the docks and threw her into the sea.  Then he turned to make his way back and I saw his face for the first time.  It was her father. 

It just goes to show that what you read during the day and grapple to make sense with in your mind, turns up to haunt you in the night. 

Thanks Mabeljane.  Actually, writing it down took the pressure off quite a bit.  It released the tension.   I don't believe the dream for a moment.  I think the parents are completely innocent - in fact I think she is still alive - but I've been reading the papers and online comments from people and many are quite convinced that there's more to the story than meets the eye, so I've obviously subconsciously taken this on board.  I still have high hopes of the Belgian sighting.  Although the DNA was that of a male from the milkshake, that doesn't mean she wasn't there does it?

It is very strange though and so much doesn't add up.  I wonder whether we'll ever know the truth?

News items about children always affect me greatly I'm afraid.  I love children and have an over-powerful maternal instinct.  (By that I mean it seems to encompass everybody else's children, not just mine.  )  I didn't read any of the papers during the coverage of Jamie Bulger - that would have finished me off!  I couldn't help but get to know bits of information from other people talking to each other and that was enough to throw me into a deep depression at the time. 

I just wish that this case would be solved quickly and put us all out of our misery - one way or the other.  The parents need to know as well.

Did you get upset about the children who killed Jamie Bulger as well, Milly?

Yes I did.  If you have abused children from an emotionally deprived background and show them violent, psychopathic videos, as I understand was the case with the perpetrators - you've potentially got yourself a bomb.  I'm sure they didn't set out in the morning with the intention of killing a baby.  Somehow things will have got out of hand in a way in which they felt there was no going back.  I'm only surmising because as I said - I avoided the newspapers for months and didn't watch the news.  I just can't handle it.

I believe we are all responsible for our children and although sometimes they can end up going wrong despite our best efforts - at least we should do our best to try to show them how to grow up in a decent mindset.  They all have basic human rights :- shelter, food, water, clothing, education - and our time.  If we aren't able to provide these things then we shouldn't be having them at all.  So many people churn out kids and then let them drag themselves up. Sad world sometimes isn't it?

I too avoided reading or hearing about Jamie Bulger and his killers at the time. It happened just days before my first child was born and I couldn't cope with it. Still find that CCTV image very upsetting.

It frightens me that some children where I teach have so little regard for the life of animals; they grow up so hardened in a cruel world it makes me wonder how violent the more aggressive kids could become. Two of my 6 year olds were recounting how they'd found a big frog in their garden but then told me quite matter of factly, "but some big kids killed it".

A couple of years ago, a little boy with a very troubled home life told me quite gleefully that his dad would burgle an office which had a guard dog because "he'd cut it with a knife". (We were on the swimming coach and we'd stopped by an office block which had an illustrated warning about guard dogs on it.)

Better go back to our dreams and hope someone posts an entertaining one soon to lift our spirits and change the mood here!

This would be Hove library - a nineteenth-century pile where the spirit of genteel Victorianism still waxes strong ...

I think that's why I've never been tempted by adverts for a "Dream Kitchen". Mine would have hidden bottomless pits to plunge into, mutilated corpses leaping back into life whenever I opened the fridge, oven gloves grabbing me by the throat from behind. And as for the state of the knife drawer.....