And dress in purple, green, yellow and diamonds

I managed to watch the committee meeting late last night on Parliament TV. Standing in the tiny, cold upstairs kitchen without a working light bulb, I peered into a laptop.

I am grateful. It's not like I had to lean backwards from the skylight with a television aerial gripped between my teeth.

The home education people giving evidence to the committee were strong, mostly. Chloe is astonishing. How old is she? Seventeen? I hope Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are as confident, articulate, commanding. She is the type of wonderful creature that shows you what it is to have an open thinking education. Unafraid to express her rights, know her freedoms; she is confidence without arrogance, expression without fear.

Fiona made her point: she said that there are families who aren't sleeping, aren't eating. For a whole year! Can you imagine that? There are ghosts among us; they walk abroad at night, hollow eyed. It's dramatic, that.

But I know what she means.

Our family has lived with this political process for one year. It is draining, and it has changed us. Made me stronger. More determined. Grittier.

In this last year, home educators have argued against negative press reports, signed petitions, coordinated information requests, written documents, collated responses, researched statistics, made videos, written blogs, letters, scripts, passed around news, run behind the scenes, coordinated picnics, protests, other people.

Telling you all, telling you all, home education is not the end. It's not what they say it is. It's the beginning. It's filled with opportunity, it's a community, a lifestyle, outdoors, indoors; it's anything you want it to be for your children. And it's strong.

But I know what Fiona means.

The last year has affected us in oh so tiny ways. Ways you wouldn't see or know, unless you are the type of person who knows themselves so closely - habits, preferences, the way you might turn this way or that - that you can detect differences in yourself, at the moment why you made this choice, not that.

When I have twenty minutes from lunch to the moment I bundle the kids into the car, I might once have quickly checked the events of a museum, called up the website to West Stow, planned in my head a day trip, imagined family, grabbed a phone number. But now, I don't do those things, unless I make time. Now, in twenty minutes, I check the parliament site. I find the message about the Lords. I make a note about the government position statement. I jot a name from the local authority. That is a difference this year has made to me. It is tiny, and it is huge.

And there is another way that life has changed. Once, I would stride along the street midday Monday behind three dancing gritlets making noise enough to rouse ten skeletons. I would have considered this a duty. By our very being, telling everyone that school is not the only option. That childhood can be better sometimes in the open air.

But now I reflect on the experience of the police and the truancy patrol and the threats and the negative media reports, and I fear glances of people in the street who know that only people like me do these things, and terrible things; how we fail children, everybody knows, people say. It must be true, otherwise the government wouldn't want to know, would they, unless there was something to know.

Some days I have thought we will wait till late afternoon before we go out the house. Then I can minimise the fear that I will be stopped in the street, made to account for myself, forced to fill in forms, expose my children to the argument, feel humiliated, because I chose something other than a classroom. It's safer to stay inside.

These are ways this year has changed us.

Of course I could ignore all the politics. Stop it reaching down into my family, and our lives. I could do nothing. I could carry on checking museum dates, diaries, imagining our visit over there, to the sea. I could do that. But I know that would be dishonest to what I feel. So indifference is not a good idea. Flowers would wilt. Cats would die. The day would rain, hard. Guilty, I would blame me.

Which leaves only one option. Go out at ten in the morning. Run the High Street from top to bottom. Bash dustbin lids. Clap hands. Be obvious. Be wild women tall and small. Be noisy, dangerous, free spirited. Laugh, loudly.

I know it is still our best defence.