Another day of failure and misery

Especially for Mrs Gradgrind, here is more proof of the solitude, oppression, restricted life, emotionally insecure parenting, and general intellectual torture that passes for another ordinary day in the land of home education.

For today, without the clear guidance and direction of experts like Balls and Badman, I am left alone without an educational plan to wonder how we should squander the hours, and I alight on the Museum at St Albans, and their Tudor experience day.

Here we are deprived by being invited to take part in a workshop of Tudor music and dance. We're able to listen, handle, use and talk about a range of faithfully reproduced Medieval and Tudor instruments. I am sure every school music department keeps those in the stock cupboard, so of course there is no advantage to us to be here today.


But as the final evidence of the bleak educational desolation and sheer horror of our lives, simply look at the faces on the little grits, forced by Tudor Richard to join in!




What more can I say?

I could say, go book Richard York now for his excellent, sustained introduction to music of the Medieval and Tudor periods, and thanks to Dame Currant for her teaching us about cookery of the 1500s and the local history of real people who lived and died in St Albans. And, especially I could say a huge thank you to the Museum of St Albans. Your Education Officer deserves a pay rise.

But happiness, achievement, and success don't make a good story.