The first thought I have on seeing a copy of the Times article - how police are tracking home-school kids - is, Revenge.
The fact that Lords and Ladies are supporting this - a police action which has no statutory basis - shows how much of a toss they don't give about the law.
They're taking revenge. Last time, you see, we got away with it. We protected a fundamental principle of law. We protected the legal duty we all have, when we citizens hit parenthood. You, parent, get to choose what education fits your child.
Learning - it isn't about verbs and nouns, facts and figures. It's the type of world your child knows; the type of world they are shown as aspirational; the type of world which makes us proud. 'Learning' means who they interact with; how they use private and social space; who they feel accountable towards; who they see as authorities in their world. 'Learning' means all the unwritten rules, the codes of behaviours, the way we can challenge those codes; who can break them, who cannot.
All these intimate, intricate power relationships we stitch into our everyday, which we casually gloss under that word. Education.
But I can see how one law - declaring a parent's duty to educate their child - simply gets in the way. It gets in the way if more powerful people than me are trying to readjust a world of structures and hierarchies and obligations. In our new world, they need compliant citizens who don't ask too many questions; who don't criticize power too deeply; who don't ask that most dangerous of questions: Why?
In someone's vision of society you need to demonstrate all your activities in a public way. Imagine a society where your actions can be monitored, regulated, authorised. Perhaps governments and business work hand-in-hand to pass your identities and personalities between them: to better manage your compliance for other regulations, sanctions and, um, social improvements. Let us then sing our new hymns: Our society will improve! We become a better people! In our hearts is the sun!
In this utopia, some behaviours can be addressed as anti-social, fined and punished. Some behaviours are rewarded. Some behaviours modified. How is your e-behaviour credit balance doing? The score which combines your attitude to learning and your receptiveness to engagement? Welcome to our new age: Social Panopticon.
But are you failing to agree to certain rules? Did you fail to engage in the market this year? Did you fail to show us behavioural compliance with the consensus? Did you fail to demonstrate how you would like to be embraced by technological progress? Um, I think we're now on the territorial fringes of totalitarianism, aren't we?
We old dinosaurs stand in the way. We unhappy band of home educators. We who are not trying to replicate school at home. Clinging to old fashioned, quaint ideas, like The Law. My band, my tribe, those laws, we all get in the way of social improvement.
Me, I won't buy a fridge to help me make online purchases, I'll simply do without a fridge. I won't change my energy supplier, but I'll turn off the lights and lower the heating. I don't live by the consumer world. I can repair things. I can make things. I am resourceful. I am crafty.
What can I say to the Lords and Ladies who are now eagerly supporting illegal action?
Know the world my children know. They know to trust themselves and their own judgements. They know they can change the world. They know that they are valuable people who will touch the lives of others in many positive ways. They are independent-minded, strong, and determined. They are inspired by the powers, crafts, talents and ideals of ordinary people. Not with people who assume power over us.
They know that governments around the world are corrupt. They see how money doesn't reach ordinary people. They know that unbridled corporate power leads to division, greed, and makes a new type of slave-owner. They know that many who take it upon themselves to lead can be easily seduced by money and power.
They also know that home education is just one type of educational structure and in itself it's not a problem. The problem is with shit parenting. And some parents are shit whether they offload the kids to school or shut them in a cupboard at home. If you want the statistics on that, I bet I'm on safe ground to assert that more kids who go to school are abused, beaten up, made into terrorists and nut-jobs by their parents than kids living outside the mainstream schooling routine.
Your basic problem, Lords and Ladies, is this. Schools have become joyless, miserly, soul-stealing exam factories.
Schools who have one eye to their customer base are desperate to off-load kids who are not making them look good. The very kids who need social support. Schools are suggesting to parents they might like to 'home-school'. They're using home education as their cover. Schools, not home education, should be your proper focus. Unless you are particularly vengeful.
Look how governments have demolished and destroyed what children love to do - feel free, run outside, explore the world, engage in hours of child-led play, ask questions of adults who do not know the answer, find out things with people who want to explore as they do.
Governments have destroyed this childhood because these children will grow up to create an adult world which is out of their control. The adult world created by free-thinking people will be dangerous to the controlling, organising powers. We have adults who ask Why? and who feel powerful enough to organise and act. They can create a world of spontaneity, exploration, and radical challenging to traditional vested interests. If you were on the controlling side, wouldn't you want to stop this type of world, dead? And take revenge on those who try to keep it alive?
I'm not engaging with the worlds of Soley and Deech. They represent a future that my children won't have. My children will go about this world, bright sparks, bright satellites, bright thinkers, who'll always ask, Why?
Sunday, 29 April 2018
Sunday, 15 April 2018
Who's into Art Deco?
Look, it's a free 1930s armchair, which looked great in our retro office with art deco mirrors and theatre studio lights.
For God's Sake, will someone please take it off my hands?! If I have to take it down the tip, I'm going to be distraught. It's FREE.
Don't suggest ebay, auction, trading site, freecycle, local noticeboard, a reupholstery specialist, the local art school or the local theatre props person.
If you want it, get in touch. This is the closest I've ever come to begging.
Saturday, 14 April 2018
Families who...
This family has moved into new territories.
But my emotional attachments to the landscapes through which we lived our lives, they are still strong.
Our ways of living were informed by our alternative educational choices. Those decision points, in turn, were informed by dozens of well-springs.
At first, we picked our way through practicalities, observations, and loves. We drew on our anti-authority dispositions, our arrogances and ignorances. We bluffed it out and marshalled our forces because, once we embarked, we knew our decision must be the right one for us.
Looking back, I don't regret a minute of our home education journey. Although there were days which felt like a life sentence. Some days felt like a hideous mistake. Plenty of days felt wonderfully, gloriously, free.
Now, in our new landscapes with fresh problems, I need to choose how to support the community that, in one sense, we are no longer part of. But ideologically, emotionally, we stay. Right there.
Changes to the law affect every parent, and every family who have children to educate, by school or otherwise.
What choices we can make, everyday, in this world.
But my emotional attachments to the landscapes through which we lived our lives, they are still strong.
Our ways of living were informed by our alternative educational choices. Those decision points, in turn, were informed by dozens of well-springs.
At first, we picked our way through practicalities, observations, and loves. We drew on our anti-authority dispositions, our arrogances and ignorances. We bluffed it out and marshalled our forces because, once we embarked, we knew our decision must be the right one for us.
Looking back, I don't regret a minute of our home education journey. Although there were days which felt like a life sentence. Some days felt like a hideous mistake. Plenty of days felt wonderfully, gloriously, free.
Now, in our new landscapes with fresh problems, I need to choose how to support the community that, in one sense, we are no longer part of. But ideologically, emotionally, we stay. Right there.
Changes to the law affect every parent, and every family who have children to educate, by school or otherwise.
What choices we can make, everyday, in this world.
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
I don't want time. I want timelessness.
Emin's phrase is all over the news, setting off my jumping bugs. I am told, this is a love letter. This time thing, it is a love thing.
But the thing about love, for me, is that it throws me into timelessness, not time.
I want that. I don't want time. Time is defined. It has a start and a stop. When I am in it, I am counting; clock watching. I am enclosed, bound from this hour to that hour. It will surely end. I was indifferent, or bored, or I wanted it to end.
That was my time with you.
But when I am in love, then I leap off time; this moment, it was a moment, but it breaks free of its ticking weight. It is timeless; it does not stop. This collision, a cherished moment, a coming together, we can last beyond clocks and the tick tock of their hands.
You can keep your time. Clocks, I can wind them up, pack them away, fold them down, because we do not stop. What survives of us, is love.
But the thing about love, for me, is that it throws me into timelessness, not time.
I want that. I don't want time. Time is defined. It has a start and a stop. When I am in it, I am counting; clock watching. I am enclosed, bound from this hour to that hour. It will surely end. I was indifferent, or bored, or I wanted it to end.
That was my time with you.
But when I am in love, then I leap off time; this moment, it was a moment, but it breaks free of its ticking weight. It is timeless; it does not stop. This collision, a cherished moment, a coming together, we can last beyond clocks and the tick tock of their hands.
You can keep your time. Clocks, I can wind them up, pack them away, fold them down, because we do not stop. What survives of us, is love.
Friday, 6 April 2018
Day 2 Chemo Cycle
Dig's lying-down day, cradling a plastic tube, and a bottle. The bottle, not artisan gin, but chemo-mix, delivered to Dig's arm via tube.
He must carry this apparatus around for 2 days. And nights.
Days, it's easy. The bottle slips into a pocket. Nights. Um. We thought, What? What do we do with the bottle? Where does it go? At first, I was terrified of my sleeptime. I would find myself holding onto the tube, now sleep-morphed into a train carriage strap. Then, grabbing hold of the bottle, slumbered into ticking timebomb, I would throw the lot out the train carriage window. The screaming would wake me up.
Thankfully! (You have no idea how much!) The dreams never happened like that (maybe Liam Neeson came to save the day, just in time). Dig secured the bottle into the crook of his arm, and slept, on and off, slowly growing used to the procedure of holding bottle before 360-degree turning.
But we are not only reminded of chemo by means of tubes and bottles. Dig feels its effects in other ways. Room temperature drinks are best, because with extreme reaction to cold, fridges are human skin meeting polar ice cap. Loss of sensitivity in fingers and toes mean Dig stares at his hands, wondering what happened. And, with extreme dry skin - think heat-grizzled river bed - Pliazon has become our new best friend. Pliazon calls itself a 'regenerating, moisturising and normalising cream'. But that is underselling itself. It is soft relief, a gentle freshness, and a reason to smooth hands over the skin of a loved one.
He must carry this apparatus around for 2 days. And nights.
Days, it's easy. The bottle slips into a pocket. Nights. Um. We thought, What? What do we do with the bottle? Where does it go? At first, I was terrified of my sleeptime. I would find myself holding onto the tube, now sleep-morphed into a train carriage strap. Then, grabbing hold of the bottle, slumbered into ticking timebomb, I would throw the lot out the train carriage window. The screaming would wake me up.
Thankfully! (You have no idea how much!) The dreams never happened like that (maybe Liam Neeson came to save the day, just in time). Dig secured the bottle into the crook of his arm, and slept, on and off, slowly growing used to the procedure of holding bottle before 360-degree turning.
But we are not only reminded of chemo by means of tubes and bottles. Dig feels its effects in other ways. Room temperature drinks are best, because with extreme reaction to cold, fridges are human skin meeting polar ice cap. Loss of sensitivity in fingers and toes mean Dig stares at his hands, wondering what happened. And, with extreme dry skin - think heat-grizzled river bed - Pliazon has become our new best friend. Pliazon calls itself a 'regenerating, moisturising and normalising cream'. But that is underselling itself. It is soft relief, a gentle freshness, and a reason to smooth hands over the skin of a loved one.
Thursday, 5 April 2018
Day 1 Chemo Cycle
Dig spends the day in the Oncology ward. He is keen to get down there before 10am, because all the best locations are by the wall sockets. Then he can power up various devices with which to pass the time.
I take him down, but I won't come in until late afternoon and pick-up time. Perhaps that is mean of me, I don't know. Instead of coming in and staring at the patients, the floor, the drips, the fluorescent lights throwing a bleak, bland light across us all, there is only the endless television, washing the walls with daytime programmes about car crashes on motorways and how to plan your dream home. I leave to use the time instead in all my practical ways - stitching books, ferrying children, stocking up foodstuffs, visiting the garage, making plans for this summer's garden.
And I tell myself that a chemo ward is not really the place for visitors. I feel in the way, taking up valuable space with my clutter of bags and flasks and books and coats. The floor in the centre of the room is kept purposefully clear. People are lined along the walls, where nurses can access arms quickly, respond to bleeps, position drips and wheel trolleys in a trice. Occasionally there is a great flurry. Modesty curtains are flung across rattling rails; there is the sound of retching, quiet talking, bitter laughter.
There is a leaden quietness about the methodical processes here: it reminds me of an industrial setting, a closed warehouse with set procedures and conveyor-belt timing. Nurses tick sheets, check charts, move patients, raise arms on pillows, balance bottles and drips, concentrate on injections. I feel my feeble attempts to be jolly are misplaced; forced, not spontaneous. I am adding to pressures and obligations. My few jokes are soon exhausted. Without me, Dig can relax and doze. He will have been given a strong antihistamine before the chemo drip is begun, to make sure his body does not react in shock to the poison. This will make him drowsy. Chemo drips take hours, and hours.
I can see the nurses do what they can. They've arranged four seats round a circular table with Homes and Gardens. They've put LED lights round a hand bell, which promises bright sparkling jubilation when someone completes their chemo course. It is a promise that this will end. Cards and notes are pinned to the wall: thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I bring him home, I feel like skipping in the bright sunshine of today. We have escaped, released, demob happy. But not yet. Not yet. Along Dig's arm runs a tube feeding into his body a poison mix held in a small plastic bottle. He tucks the bottle into his pocket for safety and I can disappear the sight of it. For moments, the shortest of times, I can forget, and say, Today I cleared the seat in the garden. I bought potatoes. I paid the electricity bill. I picked up Squirrel at the library. What chatter can be made of an ordinary day.
I take him down, but I won't come in until late afternoon and pick-up time. Perhaps that is mean of me, I don't know. Instead of coming in and staring at the patients, the floor, the drips, the fluorescent lights throwing a bleak, bland light across us all, there is only the endless television, washing the walls with daytime programmes about car crashes on motorways and how to plan your dream home. I leave to use the time instead in all my practical ways - stitching books, ferrying children, stocking up foodstuffs, visiting the garage, making plans for this summer's garden.
And I tell myself that a chemo ward is not really the place for visitors. I feel in the way, taking up valuable space with my clutter of bags and flasks and books and coats. The floor in the centre of the room is kept purposefully clear. People are lined along the walls, where nurses can access arms quickly, respond to bleeps, position drips and wheel trolleys in a trice. Occasionally there is a great flurry. Modesty curtains are flung across rattling rails; there is the sound of retching, quiet talking, bitter laughter.
There is a leaden quietness about the methodical processes here: it reminds me of an industrial setting, a closed warehouse with set procedures and conveyor-belt timing. Nurses tick sheets, check charts, move patients, raise arms on pillows, balance bottles and drips, concentrate on injections. I feel my feeble attempts to be jolly are misplaced; forced, not spontaneous. I am adding to pressures and obligations. My few jokes are soon exhausted. Without me, Dig can relax and doze. He will have been given a strong antihistamine before the chemo drip is begun, to make sure his body does not react in shock to the poison. This will make him drowsy. Chemo drips take hours, and hours.
I can see the nurses do what they can. They've arranged four seats round a circular table with Homes and Gardens. They've put LED lights round a hand bell, which promises bright sparkling jubilation when someone completes their chemo course. It is a promise that this will end. Cards and notes are pinned to the wall: thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I bring him home, I feel like skipping in the bright sunshine of today. We have escaped, released, demob happy. But not yet. Not yet. Along Dig's arm runs a tube feeding into his body a poison mix held in a small plastic bottle. He tucks the bottle into his pocket for safety and I can disappear the sight of it. For moments, the shortest of times, I can forget, and say, Today I cleared the seat in the garden. I bought potatoes. I paid the electricity bill. I picked up Squirrel at the library. What chatter can be made of an ordinary day.
Wednesday, 4 April 2018
48-24 hours before it begins again
This is what happens in the 48-24 hours before Dig's chemotherapy cycle.
We start with him already frustrated, fed up, disconnected (having spent several days unwell in bed), and unhappy. He's also suffering hiccups again, intermittently, which are not hilarious, as they should be. They cause reflux and abdominal pain while preventing talking, eating and breathing like a normal human being. Cue bleak mood and expression of weary forbearance.
But! On the bright side! Beautiful Husband Dig character-shares with Luverly Wif Grit, the following unquenchable strengths: a strong streak of bloody mindedness, severe independence, quiet obstinacy, and visions of how things might be, if only we could get there.
Shared motto: We have to be imaginative enough to think of it, then brave enough to do it.*
Step 1. Go to hospital for blood tests. I don't go with him, because the test usually takes only a few minutes, and involves the drawing of blood (I have to avert my eyes, or risk passing out).
Today the process takes two hours 'on account of an Easter backlog'. (He probably just fibbed about that, and crept off to scoff a burger from behind the tyre shop, even though he has been banned from doing this by the hygiene certification rule.)
The blood test, as explained to us, is checking he's fit enough to begin the poison cycle. It might involve a neutrophil check, which is his white blood cell count. Under 1? He's in hospital. A bouncy 3.2? Soon he'll be at the starting line in the oncology ward. White blood cells fight the infections that he's almost certainly about to contract.
Step 2. Start taking steroids. These are teensy-tiny tablets. Swallowing these results in a clear-up of all the things you've ever been suffering from. On the other hand, prolonged use of steroids will turn you into a flobby colander before killing you, so thank goodness these are just a quick chemo blast.
Dig's state of mind at this stage swings between weary chemo-worn routines of I don't want anything, to moments of optimistic outgoingness, the sort of energy that expresses itself in: I could just eat a burger from the van behind the tyre shop.
For my part, the experience is not so much procedural needles-and-pills. Instead, it is all emotional complex stuff. I have already done the change of status from Wife to Partner to Person who stands over there-and I cannot remember her Name; back to Wife and Partner and so on. Now I must add another character type to my portfolio and it is Carer.
Shifting persona into Carer can be hard work, especially for a person who learned from her mother (like many other women, I suspect) bon mots such as: Stop whining and pull yourself together. No-one's going to do it for you. No-one's interested in how you're feeling, you just have to get on with it.**
Being a caring-type person who should use none of the above phrases is an adjustment I make. Some days Dig makes that adjustment easy. Probably because to look at his sorrows reminds me of his needs, his vulnerabilities, and the horrible process he goes through daily. Then time and attention is my day.
But this is how things stand as we edge towards Day 1. For me, a sense of powerlessness, and a great deal of fear. To Dig I give the better part of me. Care and love.
* I recognise this motto could be equally used by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but ours is meant in a good non-killing-kings way.
**I don't want to pass these attitudes onto my daughters, but I probably do. Girls, I'm sorry. I blame my mother.
We start with him already frustrated, fed up, disconnected (having spent several days unwell in bed), and unhappy. He's also suffering hiccups again, intermittently, which are not hilarious, as they should be. They cause reflux and abdominal pain while preventing talking, eating and breathing like a normal human being. Cue bleak mood and expression of weary forbearance.
But! On the bright side! Beautiful Husband Dig character-shares with Luverly Wif Grit, the following unquenchable strengths: a strong streak of bloody mindedness, severe independence, quiet obstinacy, and visions of how things might be, if only we could get there.
Shared motto: We have to be imaginative enough to think of it, then brave enough to do it.*
Step 1. Go to hospital for blood tests. I don't go with him, because the test usually takes only a few minutes, and involves the drawing of blood (I have to avert my eyes, or risk passing out).
Today the process takes two hours 'on account of an Easter backlog'. (He probably just fibbed about that, and crept off to scoff a burger from behind the tyre shop, even though he has been banned from doing this by the hygiene certification rule.)
The blood test, as explained to us, is checking he's fit enough to begin the poison cycle. It might involve a neutrophil check, which is his white blood cell count. Under 1? He's in hospital. A bouncy 3.2? Soon he'll be at the starting line in the oncology ward. White blood cells fight the infections that he's almost certainly about to contract.
Step 2. Start taking steroids. These are teensy-tiny tablets. Swallowing these results in a clear-up of all the things you've ever been suffering from. On the other hand, prolonged use of steroids will turn you into a flobby colander before killing you, so thank goodness these are just a quick chemo blast.
Dig's state of mind at this stage swings between weary chemo-worn routines of I don't want anything, to moments of optimistic outgoingness, the sort of energy that expresses itself in: I could just eat a burger from the van behind the tyre shop.
For my part, the experience is not so much procedural needles-and-pills. Instead, it is all emotional complex stuff. I have already done the change of status from Wife to Partner to Person who stands over there-and I cannot remember her Name; back to Wife and Partner and so on. Now I must add another character type to my portfolio and it is Carer.
Shifting persona into Carer can be hard work, especially for a person who learned from her mother (like many other women, I suspect) bon mots such as: Stop whining and pull yourself together. No-one's going to do it for you. No-one's interested in how you're feeling, you just have to get on with it.**
Being a caring-type person who should use none of the above phrases is an adjustment I make. Some days Dig makes that adjustment easy. Probably because to look at his sorrows reminds me of his needs, his vulnerabilities, and the horrible process he goes through daily. Then time and attention is my day.
But this is how things stand as we edge towards Day 1. For me, a sense of powerlessness, and a great deal of fear. To Dig I give the better part of me. Care and love.
* I recognise this motto could be equally used by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but ours is meant in a good non-killing-kings way.
**I don't want to pass these attitudes onto my daughters, but I probably do. Girls, I'm sorry. I blame my mother.
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