Find something positive. Or die, probably.

Grit has been bubbling around in a stewpit of misery recently, but it is time to emerge from the swamp.

Did you see that? Did you see me emerge? I would like to think of myself slipping away as a beautiful and graceful phoenix creature, sliding into the sky with her shimmering ruby wings, emerging bright and vibrant against the blue overhead, while the chains that have bound her break away and fall as dust upon the fiery lake. But I am probably looking a little more weary and mud soaked and creature-from-the-black-lagoon-like, except without the gills.

So for today I will say that home education is a fantastic lifestyle for parent and child if you choose it, and worth every bitter salt tear, forced grimace, chewed down knuckle and itch to swing a lead pipe in the library.

The rewards are thousand fold. And you get to see a child's face light up with pleasure and understanding that they really do love geology, or drama, or reading, or the seven-times table, whatever floats their boat, because they can get right on and do it, just like that, without any problem or interference. They don't need to dress in black, be beaten up, humiliated, forced to eat their own knickers in the toilets or join the Bratz gang (only aged 6 and below need apply).

It is not that every school is awful. Some are not. Some are quite delightful. I taught in one. Before I taught in another and had all creativity smashed out of me by a sledgehammer.

It is just that I know some schools don't suit all children. Home education suits some children because it gives them more time and space to explore what it is they want to do, and the support and opportunity to help them work out how they want to achieve it.

And home education suits some families because some parents are as mad as a bag of badgers. I hope we fall into that category, me and Dig, and that would at least justify being routinely hounded and persecuted by the ignorant and stupid.

So for today's post, here are some pictures of my garden. I would calm myself down with pictures of puppies and kittens but I fucking hate pictures of puppies and kittens and they make me want to vomit.

She looks like I feel. One of the dollies.

Apparently she has been for a swim in a frog pond and needs to drip dry.

The magic mirror in the garden.
If I look in here I have the curves of Venus and the face of a virgin.
It works if I drink three bottles of vodka first.

Ah! Free as a bird we soar! Light, love and happiness is all ours!
We had a sparrowhawk in the garden last week.

Yes yes YES!
The old grape vine that has been completely neglected for ten years!
HOWZAT.

But this lady might have made me want to live again, more than anything.