Dwelling on thoughts is usually a bad idea

Because I'm not giving in, and writing about my feeling today, as I march the gritlets along the street to Bedford Museum for a workshop on the siege of Bedford.

That feeling, like everyone's read those newspaper stories now. So the woman who passes me? When her eyes glance for a fraction of a moment as her brain checks out a mum and three kids trailing behind, and what comes tumbling next into her head to spread that shadow over her face and cause that flickering frown?

Huh. Another parent condoning truancy. A parent who's kept their kids from school, one of those pretending about home education. Religious nut. Warped person. Someone not like us, like normal people. How can their kids ever be normal? Look, no friends. Isolated. Locked away. It's a disgrace. Something should be done.

Wondering what other people think is probably a bad idea, because it won't make much difference to how we live, and what our values are. I'll carry on doing what we do, everyday, because I believe for me and mine, it is right. But it all just got harder to get over our ideas, free from prejudice, free from those thoughts, and those press insinuations.

We meet a group of home educators of all types up on the windy Castle hill. Some are outraged by the Badman report, angry at the attack on privacy and choice. Some shrug their shoulders and say, with resignation, it's what this society is moving to, what can we expect? Others say home educators should accept visits, should enjoy them. Another says they're leaving the country. They've had enough. A last, optimistic, says look on the bright side, says something good will come.

The education officer doesn't seem to expect anything, so we oblige. She gaily suggests the kids reenact the siege of Bedford, then hands out costumes, wooden props, and a crossbow, which she says, to everyone's disappointment, doesn't really shoot bolts, so don't try. Chuck some plasticine about instead.

We don't learn much we didn't already know. We'll come back home and read it from Wikipedia.

But it's a chance for the kids to all meet up, have fun, run about, dress up as archbishops, gate keepers, soldiers, cooks, scribes, lords and ladies. They whoop and shout, play at making grass medicine for the wounded, and send secret messages from castle walls that don't exist. The parents chat, and everything is so very ordinary, and so very normal.