grit's day

Doesn't make sense to me either

2012-01-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

Some moments, my eyes spill tears.

Not because my children carelessly wish me to be gone from their lives; neither because we have made messes of the last twelve years; nor because the future momentarily opens out, hopeless desolation and despair.

Nothing like that, although in living those states, I think I have earned myself some quiet weeping in a dark corner.

Today's tears (which really I should collect in an exquisite glass jar to place on the mantelpiece for my further emotional conjugation) is in response to a spectacle. An experience of light, sound, colour, and all forms of upended-downended-mind-mish-mashinins.

Maybe they were tears of relief. Because here is a place, as bizarre as the contents of my head, captured for me on stage.

That place in my head is a miserable, solitary place to be. Inside here, trees get up to walk off in an undignified huff, roses spit cruel blasphemies, and the sky sorrowfully collects its blue folds and sulks in a cave, refusing to come out.

Then maybe they were tears of recognition. I can't be the only freak who thinks that a giant claw can grow from a human body, how shells might blow and suck air as they run, how crisp, cut paper edges sway on dancing paper dolls, how an electric stick man can disassemble and reassemble its limbs, or how a human can walk, with fish head and fins.

Seeing my inside chaos come outside, taking external form more beautifully than I could ever muster, is all a little emotionally overwhelming. Worth a few tears.

But here's an educational point (there always is one, trust me). We educate for freedom of thinking. For art, I need to keep the early creativities of the children away from proscription and prescription.

I want to see Tiger draw, model, and stitch her own way through the days, follow her unique creative forms of autonomies, find her own mind, and explore her wilder impulses and streaks of bloody mindedness, so that she can make her own inside thoughts come outside.

I want her to have the wide and dangerous freedom that I hope grows her own recognition and enjoyment of her creative mind; not be placed, as I was, in a position where she must stop her line of exploration and deny her thoughts. I want her not to be set on a course where she can't have the confidence to change; I want her to have the strength and will to make and do, regardless of how wrong or bonkers everyone else might say she is. She needs to explore, until she is ready for structure and instruction, then you can bet I'm choosing that artist to help her with care.

Well, didn't make much sense to me either. Try WOW.

Geography

2012-01-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

A few kids in our local home ed group are following (in our case very loosely) the IGCSE curriculum for Geography.

I'm enjoying it. I have a special love for matters geographical: especially the physical bits requiring tramping through landscape.

It seems obvious to say it, but love didn't come from sitting in a classroom, studying black and white photographs in a prescribed curriculum text book.

It started when my mother pushed me outside and locked the door. Then, I thought it was a terrible injustice. Now, I know it was for my own protection.

But soon I was out and off, roaming willingly. Outside offered all kinds of new perils and opportunities. I expanded my unsupervised exploring range. From the back garden to the bank of earth that rose to cultivated fields and the crumbling outcrop of bunter sandstone. I took the skin off my hands, busted my knee, and acquired a whip graze on my cheek.

Then the long, tiny track, running alongside the fields to the iron gate that locked the private estate. Sunk to a ditch by a wall and hooded with brambles, I would hope, by creeping there, that I was breaking the law.

More than once, I came home muddied and bloodied. I can't recall my mother asking how. But I wouldn't have told her. Escape from a hideout where criminals with treasure defended themselves by bows and arrows was my triumph. She might spoil it all by assuming I was telling the truth then calling the police.

I never let on about slipping off to the quarry either. If she told me not to go back, for fear I would fall off the sandstone ridge, then I would never find Stig.

Family outings to beaches, hillsides, lakes and forests, all helped. I was tipped out the car and told to be back for tea or there'd be trouble. Mud didn't count in the charge sheet. Neither did prickle wounds from gorse bushes, leg bruises from sliding on seaweedy rock pools, and a wet bum from slipping down river banks.

It wasn't all neglect. To guide me, I had the injunction be careful. And my mother did sometimes keep an adult eye on proceedings. She stopped me going over that cliff edge in Devon. But it was never fair. She let my brother do it.

It has led me to a belief. Geography isn't a cold photograph in a text book. It's wind in the face, sore legs, split fingernails, a cut knee, and a smack in the cheek with a bramble bush.

Ma Shi Chau. Sand bar, coastal features, and Permian rocks. Or standing at the edge of the sea, waiting for the mountains to fold and the dinosaurs to arrive.

I have what you're looking for

2012-01-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

I have been round the Document of Accusation again, aka the Statcounter. This is an activity I engage in once a week to see how less popular I am than last week. (Plenty, so all is healthy.)

However, these features I note.

First, grit's day now enjoys a truly global audience. People flung apart - from USA, India, Brazil, Canada, Scotland, the UAE, Australia and Milton Keynes - join here daily, at this insignificant blog, in the hope of satisfaction.

Mostly for brains sucked out, text to write on a tombstone, hot aunties naked, bali men naked, hot bali men with sexy aunty naked, and outdoor survival in rural fenland.

Pigeon grit is no longer a search term. I think the 12 people who needed that information have now excluded me from their visits. Thank you.

For all the rest of you dear earth-wide readers who up my global count, I am pleased to accommodate you. You probably arrive in expectation and depart in disappointment.

The second feature I note is how grit's day remains a continuous source of inspiration, encouragement, discouragement and DO NOT DO IT advice, particularly for home education.

When someone is inquiring about home education from England, they mine this blog. Really, really explore it from all angles. They leave me blinking in the flashbulbs with my hands covering my doodah.

Quick guide to answer your three latest inquiries.

No, home educators do not have to mark a child's work.
Not unless you are high on worksheetery, or your child is enthused by red ink. If you choose to home educate, you do not have to show any inspector, LEA official, or any jobsworth that you mark work. No-one is required to ask you to keep a mark book of your child's work. They shouldn't be asking for test scores, grades, results, or evidence mark books, unless you are on some local provision or flexischool scheme where you have already agreed to supply this. In which case you'll know about it. For all normal home ed days, no marking of anything is required of you.

No, home educators do not have to be teachers, nor show any type of certification.
You do not have to have a degree in education, nor a PGCE, nor any certificate in child wrangling. Nor household management, food hygiene, or keeping yourself clean. It is sort of expected that if you choose to home ed you have thought about it, considered your own capabilities, tolerances, and interest levels. There are no grades you need to demonstrate of yourself to lead your children into life and the community. You do not need certificates to prove you can parent, either.

Yes, we socialise.
Home educators do not lock up their children in airless rooms. We do not avoid social contact with other people. We do not pump our kids foie gras style full of Evangelist Bible Studies. (Okay then, maybe one or two families do that, among 200,000, so probably below the indoctrination levels of your normal school-going population. Anyway, you can bet the situation will correct itself come aged 13 when the kids rebel and cross over the forbidden line into normality or Satan worship.)

I hope that is helpful. I should start a surgery, where I am open to home ed questions you have. (Only probably don't ask me anything that is actually useful to have answered.)

PS. Today, for the ongoing visitor delight of Hong Kong, was the dreaded Coastal Defences Museum. For myself, I managed to throw in the Law Uk Folk Museum and a tram trip. No marking was done, and no certificates required. Being out and about in society while Squirrel tries to extract a packet of biscuits from a Cantonese-speaking cafe owner you can count as social contact.

Frocking frenzy

2012-01-26T19:18:00.000-08:00

An education in cloth compositing from Fashion Visionaries at Sha Tin Heritage Museum, Hong Kong.

I'm not wearing any of them.

Although the leather lace bodice was pretty smart.

The plastic bones, not so much.

Neither the hat.

But this one by Isaac Yuen is all MINE MINE MINE. Looks classy and together, then on close inspection is composed of complex stitchery, weaving and gathering. Me, me, me. Clearly I am made for this garment, so if it's going free at the end of the show, put my name down.

Yours?

The questions every parent should ask of an education

2012-01-25T17:36:00.000-08:00

People on earth! I may be a late-comer - and the following wisdoms already discovered and exploited by the world's economic rulers, political leaders, and tele-evangelists - but I feel I must do this job.

Consider the Words of Our Lord John Taylor Gatto; he who brings knowledge on humanity and education for our humble planet via this video link.

I take from his talk (okay, I am only 23 minutes in) that those children set to rule Planet Earth will attain the following 14 wisdoms; endowed with these knowledges, they can grow society, pervert us all, or kick some ass (I bet he says that).

Note! If you send your child to school, Lord Gatto's wisdoms are far better questions to ask of your child's institution than whether the teaching staff meet any government's poxy list of attainment targets. Targets are a smokescreen to keep you fretting. This is the real knowledge your kid should have if you want them to enjoy a life of ruling, perverting, or ass-kicking.

Wave these questions, and demand, Will the school do this?

If you are home educating, then we need only join together in prayer.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. These questions are for you.

1. Can you learn what makes people tick?

To my children, I advise, continue observing and experimenting with the buttons on your sister. Some, you already know. Stop pressing NUCLEAR and DESTROY.

Press the other ones. Buttons which are activated by KINDNESS and which provide your sister with consolation and support.

From this knowledge, you will learn better how to empathise. You will learn how to help, or inspire. Even better, you will learn how to reach that place where your sister willingly offers you the last slice of double choc-chip cake, even though she wanted it for herself.

But do not consider these experiments as manipulation. Consider them lessons in human nature.

And attend to five subjects in particular. Without them, we are uneducated, and lost. History, philosophy, literature, theology, and law.

(Leave Mama in charge of law. She controls access to the biscuit tin.)

2. Can you learn how to write and speak?

Not bad spelling and mumbling! No! My children, make it your ambition to possess effective writing skills and good spoke-stuffing.

Think! With these techniques you might persuade your reluctant sister to give up her best clothes/best friend/rights to chocolate cake forever.

Learn how to persuade her with spoken eloquence and proper punctuation! You will reach this goal by:

a) observing the impact of what you say and write,
b) reflecting on your successes and failures,
c) presenting her ideas kindly, maybe in ways that encourage her, or the calm and logical set of practical steps she can follow, especially in giving up the cake.

Essentially, learn how to give back to her what she already said to you, only better. (If you follow that.)

3. Can you develop insights into how institutions work?

Can we discuss what factors drive the justice system, commercial business, political clubs, and military?

(In our case, yes; we need to, because we might yet be up before the Old Bill.)

Please note: Mama would prefer you did not learn the justice system from the wrong side of the dock in the magistrate's court, neither by your active involvement in prison. But if you cannot avoid it, then so be it. You won't be the first family member I visit in the clink.

4. Can you learn some bleedin' manners?

Remember. Graciousness, politeness and civility are the basis of your relationships, even close ones (although thank goodness we can take a few liberties there).

As Our Lord Gatto explains, civility is the means by which you gain access to 'places you might want to go'.

(Let's assume he means places like the Oxbridge Club, and not places like behind the bins on a Friday night.)

5. Can you learn how to work independently?

Have you the self-reliance and ability to be resourceful? To proceed without instruction? Have you the perception to use the work of others? To nick their stuff, then credit yourself with the glory? I think so. Ironically, academic life might beckon.

6. Can you enjoy the grace in your body?

Children, I have noticed that people who endure physical endeavour or who suffer physical misery also develop a confident body. Sports, exercise, climbing trees; they all teach you how to handle yourself.

(Our Lord Gatto also remarks how a commanding physique can translate into power and money. Hmm. As you can see, Mama has the body of a goddess but remains piss poor.)

7. Can you develop 'a complete theory of access to any workplace or person'?

Remember, nothing prevents you from looking to wangle a meeting with a person who can assist you. Never be cowed by title or place.

It may take planning, time, and work, and you may suffer some prejudice. And the result might be less than satisfactory when you achieve it, but it will have taught you something.

8. Can you take responsibility?

Not only take it, but deliver more than is asked for, because by this method you learn leadership.

9. Can you arrive at a personal code of standards?

Okay, don't follow me on this one. I am still working on the dodgy ethics, suspect behaviour and doubtful morals. And don't press me for a result by next Tuesday.

10. Can you become familiar with the arts?

OH YES. Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. We are slowly cracking this one, what with the literature, painting, dance, drama, sculpture.

'The arts transcend the animal materiality of our lives' indeed. (Until you get to Gilbert and George.)

11. Can you develop the power of accurate observation and recording?

Think of the instruction, 'draw what you see'. Drawing is a means of sharpening perception.

12. Can you deal with challenge?

As Our Lord Gatto explains, each person's challenge is different.

Shy, Tiger? Your challenge is public presentation! Loud and opinionated, Shark? Your challenge is to develop a razor-sharp, merciless edge, then use it only when necessary. On another planet, Squirrel? Enjoy it, because this earth-bound one is utterly over-rated.

13. Can you 'develop a habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions'?

I think Our Lord Gatto means, think out the debate from all sides and don't believe what anyone tells you.

(Ahem. Given our politicians in Britain, Lord Gatto, I think we might have reached this point some time ago.)

14. Can you continuously test your own judgement?

Were your intuitions well-founded? Were your assessments and predictions far off, or accurate? Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. You should reflect to better calibrate your ideas, fine-tune your judgements, and develop your capacity for good decision-making.

There. My work here is done. I must now study the remaining two hours of the Lord Gatto's video; and I must steel myself for any comments about how these are the very techniques by which we are better controlled from a ruling elite with their endless merciless mastery over our lives of miserable servile drudge.

After that, I can return to plotting how I might steal secret kisses from the perfectly tiny toy fox terrier that is not even mine, aka, The Dog of Loveliness.

Amen.

I fall in love (and there were fireworks)

2012-01-24T07:24:00.000-08:00

I know what I said. DON'T REMIND ME.

BECAUSE.

If you were invited, as was I, to that lovely apartment where you could meet those dainty paws and delicate legs and beguiling face and expressive eyes and know that adorable and happy disposition, you would fall in love too.

I want a tiny toy fox terrier and I want to live with her forever.

I can only leave the last words to Squirrel. This is humiliating. Get up off the floor. And stop kissing that dog.

PS. There was a view and fireworks over Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. It is Chinese New Year or something.

Oh God Not the Parade Again

2012-01-23T20:35:00.001-08:00

Frankly I dread this moment of obligation.

When all Hong Kong must fetch up at the Chanel end of Canton Road at exactly the same time BY LAW to attend the New Year's Parade.

Lonely Planet once stupidly suggested this event was great, an unnecessarily hyperbolic word which can only suggest the editor accepted a bung.

It is the most tedious horrible celebration of naked advertising that anyone could dream up. A plastics factory output of branded floats trundle by for what feels like decades. At the end of it your brain is saturated by Cathay Pacific and the Jockey Club.

In between the floats, trek the dance troupes, glamour girls and marching bands. To their credit, they endeavour to whip us into a frenzy of hoo-hah, I suppose to wrestle the whole charade into a carnival-type atmosphere, but it is a doomed attempt.

We know, and they know, that corporate sponsorship is far too important to mess with, so beneath the thin skim we can only see fake joy, organised celebration, oiled progress, and professional marketing.

But I enjoyed the event better this year. Mostly because half way through we escaped the crowd control police to find a rice burger and chips. I also amused the juvenile part of my brain by photographing a promotional chocolate milkshake and a pair of sex shoes.

Now, back to the parade with some dragons and a giant fish (the latter probably advertising a restaurant).

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

2012-01-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

No, not Enjoy your black hairy algae dinner! But, Happy New Year! from Hong Kong China.

Unfortunately, on this most important Chinese calendar evening, Dig made away with my useful camera. Worse, he used it to record the ongoing achievements of his left foot.

His inability to distinguish between record ON and record OFF, means you, lovely reader, cannot enjoy any temple attending, lion dancing, fire crackering, or much joyous kungheifatchoying from grit's day at all.

However, you can have the contents of my clapped out phone camera if you wish.

The deities of the heavens and the earth granted me my first wish almost immediately: cue a big hug from a passing creative (marred only slightly by the fact that it was a she not a he and also worse the wear from six vodka martinis).

But the gods also delivered a compensatory gift in the form of a sister-in-law. She arrived this evening. They have permitted me to tease her mercilessly for the next three weeks to see if I can provoke her normally becalmed disposition to the point where she commits acts of public outrage on the metro.

I will keep you informed as to my progress.

***

Edited to add Important! News! Youtube now has video. Thanks to some one who can tell the difference between ON and OFF. And we were really there! It is true! Tiger's terrified face emerging half-way is evidence. (You won't see me. I was hanging about behind the incinerator.)

The message we don't want to hear

2012-01-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

There I was, about to compose a post about politics, power, and the exercise of my legal duty under Section 7 ...but!

I saw I have fallen off one of the more important lists of bloggers in a mummy world. Then I wondered ...maybe I should try and worm myself back into the club with some cutting-edge celeb material! I could make my post essential reading for today's modern mama looking to escape the drudge of baby crap. And maybe - with my new breathless style and flog-blog-ability - I could power my return! I could wink at a few PRs with my constant name dropping. I could earn myself enough revenue from the nappy ad to buy a Starbucks biscuit!

And what better way to lever myself back into the mummy blog world? Than right here! My fantastic glamour lifestyle in Hong Kong, international city of cutting edge fashion!

Viva Vivienne Westwood!

Readers around the globe will be clawing their way here for today's hot topic! Which is... How many top nob fashion models do I see in Hong Kong wearing posh gear?

Ladies, the answer is, HEAPS.

Like, I saw that famous one with the forehead striding around the IFC shopping mall. (Oo la la CHLOÉ!) She was so tall she had to stoop. She had that modelly walk where you fix your pelvic girdle two metres ahead of you and bend your calves backward (I can totally do that, no problem). She looked like she was legging it from the paparazzi or something but I can tell you her dress sense was TERRIBLE. It was all shorts and trainers and some crappy shapeless jacket made of nylon. I don't know, say Juicy Couture.

The other bunch of models I saw recently were all in the Elements Halls in Kowloon. Maybe they don't count? At first I thought they were prostitutes. But then! I realised they were about their hard work biz while decked out in something like Christian Lacroix. But I can see the work in a catwalky show! The challenge is do the whole lot together: the modelly walk, pelvic hip thrust, push-out lips and frowny stare. All while perched on 10-inch Louboutin heels.

Those of us in the know can tell you this is to exude confident sexuality. It is not concentrate on staying upright (even if you are wearing the lie-down shoes).

And last night, there was a whole load of the modellys on the Star Ferry! Maybe with Marc Jacobs. He's big round here!

Now, about the Star Ferry. Everyone in the fashion world knows that it is NOT the whole point, if you are a visitor to Hong Kong, to see the breathtaking vista of the urban skyline from aboard one of the original wooden decked boats. That is so yesterday... seeing the giant thrust of a city ascending the mountain into the clouds, all the lights reflecting in the historic harbour, and everyone expecting you to feel that moment of awe; your commanding vision combined with your knowledge of insignificance among the surge of the choppy waters.

But this is not the point at all if you are a six-foot tall modelly type with a trendy hair-do wearing Versace! The point is to spend the journey not looking once out the windows, but occupying all the ferry seats in a large noisy gaggle, elbowing everyone out the way, shouting a lot, and pouting at cameras for 2,365 shots of you aboard the iconic Star Ferry!

Ladies! You need to escape from all the nappies and kid crap to enjoy the celeb! life! and style! You can surely now come to grit's day! and lever me back on the buy-now-mummy blog list, the one where they tell you how to make a load of money from your blog with the nappy ad while promoting the topics that we all want to read about! SEX, FROCKS, CELEBS, and how celebs are getting it WRONG with their BABIES.

Ha! When I am back there, I will do the covert, undercover job I was doing last time!

(Spreading the message that education is more important than shoes.)

Celts in Hong Kong

2012-01-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

The spelt flour breadmaking, torc crafting, and Roman thrashing on the Celtic day proceeded extremely well. Except travelling home on the underground. What with the outfits, I made the junior Celts sit a long way away from me.

Slowly I'm finding the virtue of ruthlessness

2012-01-19T00:16:00.000-08:00

I don't know what shifty excuses, underhand activities or downright lies you use for the type of problem I have today, but I call it Oh My God the Travelling Aunty is coming to visit.

For a long time I have been respectful of the kid stuff that collects in all the corners, in the drawers, against the walls, over the beds, under the sofa, and on every surface their fingers can reach, but doesn't there come a point?

Round here, the point is, Remember she is a social worker. If she claps eyes on this lot, she'll be calling Childline.

But we have been here before, have we not, dearest readers? You know how clearing up kid crap is handled Grit style.

In the beginning it was all, Aw, I cannot throw out the little pink bead with the threaded wire! It is Squirrel's fairy handbag and I must treasure it forever!

You see? I was so sensitive and respectful of each precious item! Of course Squirrel didn't care about my soft-hearted sensitivities; she had already poured her devotions into 300 miniature paper scrolls describing unicorn laws.

I had to keep them, too.

When the clutter came up to my eyebrows, the need for survival kicked in. The clear out operation became Dig! Pssst! Get the kids out of here for the day and I can do away with their stuff! Even then I boxed up the precious items. I should have been stronger and told myself the peelings of child play were never a substitute for the real thing.

After that, Michelle came round with bin bags. Thank goodness! She saved me from almost complete submergence under a sea of stuff. Under her direction, nearly everything went. Except for those items I snatched from her indifferent hand; cherished items I had already invested with excess love. Like a slice of painted timber, and a hand-made fabric bird adorned with dollops of glitter glue.

Now, in a rented house with a Travelling Aunty soon landing - and no Michelle-type strong woman to lead me to clarity - I must find within myself the gifts of sightlessness and memory loss.

I have to forget these are the paper rooms for the happy match people, this is the cat toy for the hungry leopard, and this is dolly's diary where she writes her angry thoughts.

I must not pick them up, nor handle them, nor recall the play. I must lay down the law of cleanliness and godliness, tell the offspring to preserve only their best and finest, then send any squeamish onlookers out the house on an errand to buy consolation chocolate.

Once the run is free, I can sweep up the remainders, bag them and bin them and, on the way, remember to take a photograph of the paper beads hand-crafted for the disappointing party night.

Oops.

Sshhh

2012-01-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

I see Adrian Mole is in the news this week.

That reminded me. Locked away at home in a place we never look is a sealed box. It contains diaries. They're stowed away, safe from prying eyes of partner and children.

Sadly, they're not even mine. The box was dropped off, late at night, by a travelling friend. I'm under strict instructions never to peek. I took an oath. And I won't break it, I promise.

But I wondered, where would I squirrel away secret thoughts or confessions, away from the closest friends, or even from Planet Internet?

Friends have their limits of patience, and t'Internet is okay for shameful parenting and guilty late-night forums sneaking under the name Anonymous. But those are still rather practical places. People might try and help, and offer solutions. That's the last type of reaction I want.

A special book to capture a few of life's irresolvable dilemmas and a couple of enjoyable confessions would be ideal.

So I pretended I was aged fourteen again. I wanted a secret book. I hard-bound, stitched and glued a book in beige suede, and I didn't decorate it, not one bit.

I thought, I'll write some loves, lacks, desires and terrors, sealed inside the secret compartments, then I'll slip this unobtrusive volume quietly on the dustiest bookshelf back at home. It can sit, undisturbed by casually wandering fingers, between Sweet's Anglo Saxon Primer and An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics.

In years ahead, when my daughters are packing up their mother's books to donate them all to charity shops, and they discover this unmarked volume, then it would be worth my time, hanging around as a ghostly mist, just to watch the expressions on their faces.

Where would you keep your most secret thoughts? (I promise not to go looking.)

Get ready for the dragon

2012-01-17T02:55:00.000-08:00

Did you people in England just make it through the most depressing day of the year?

Pop round here. In Hong Kong China, they're gearing up for the party.

(I can see happiness: drink tea, chuck a few lions about, blow things up.)

We'll aim to be there.

I'm more optimistic than last year, when I wasn't looking forward to the rabbit. Strange, because life is more unstable now. But I think there may be fiery breath ahead.

Proud of the mish-mash

2012-01-16T00:05:00.000-08:00

Just to say, somedays I give myself a good pat on the back for my incoherent ragbag of opinions, bucketful of contradictions, random approach to life and frizzy mess of alien hair. I take it all as a brilliant metaphor for my half-formed fantastical life that never comes to anything.

But this pottage of mish-mash is how I've grown to like it.

People who have a consistency of life actions, choices, or decisions which they can pin precisely to an ideological line, who are able to compose clear rationales for what went before, then plan exactly what is to come, well, don't they scare you witless?

I start to worry about them. Maybe they disregard nuance, won't make compromising deals, and fail to tell themselves shifty self-excusing half-truths like the rest of us prevaricators, compromisers and sometime self-deceivers.

I mused on all this today. I happily set out to cut, pierce, and stitch red leather to make three notebooks.

Chain me. All this red dyed leather somehow quickly becomes strongly erotic and dangerous, doesn't it?

No messing. I stamped this one with studs and chains and a long soft tassel for the incongruity. On the inside you can chain the heart, or not. For the inside pages I cut up printed ephemera, the sort I couldn't show to my mother.

Cupid woz here. Red leather with a torn edge to the hide. It made me think me of skin ripped from muscle, so I stabbed it with a sharp golden dart and lashed it with a red leather thong. Satisfying. Blood red pages on the inside, stitched on the binding. When it stabs you, hope it hurts.

Spider Love. Small pocket size. You can't get inside unless you use your clumsy hands to unclasp the chain. Where you'll see I've beaded red thread, like spider eggs. And I found a delicate cobwebbed paper. No good for writing on, but I had to use it: one piece boasted a delightful squashed insect in its fabric, so that went in, top page, obviously.

So, yeah. Red fetishised leather moulded under a cruel and distant eye.

Perfect expression for a wussy, conflict-avoiding type of vacillating vegan who breaks the landspeed record at the sight of spiders, blood, and anything embarrassing, and who last laid down sex on a scrabble board. (I lost. It only made the minimum score.)

You did ask

2012-01-15T17:50:00.000-08:00

When that question comes, Why do you home educate? I usually look at them, and size them up.

Are you a person I'd like to make uncomfortable? Who would you be if I broke through your politeness? Should I inflict on you the full-steam-ahead two hour lecture?

But I'm usually feeling kind. I wave it away, and give a flippant response. I can lie in bed until 10am.

Maybe I kept my mouth shut one too many times this week. I'm feeling a discharge coming on.

I've seen the inside of a classroom.
Enough. I have too many urgencies.

I wanted the aspirations of my children to come first.
Enter any institution and a child's needs, wants and relationships must be a lower priority than the workings of the organisation.

Sure, the administrators say the child is being listened to, and that everything is happening in the child's best interests, but in the end, the situation is only ever progressing one way - one that suits the institution. The child has merely to be manipulated to reach a stage of agreement and compliance with the paperwork.

It sort of pissed me off, watching the techniques for how this happened. And I wanted to be straight when I dealt with my kids.

I wanted my kids to be individuals.
I hated to think of my children sucked into a mass conveyor belt system. One likes fish, one likes horses, and one I haven't yet figured out. They're different, dammit.

And I didn't want them feeling powerless, or being coerced to fit in to a system from the age of five - one that had sanctions, humiliations and punishments for not fitting in.

I want to have fun.
Okay, I know I am a grown woman, but I want to enjoy being alive. I want to get out of bed at 4am to hunt nightingales; I want to dig holes in the soil; I want to sit at a firepit toasting bread; I want to stand in a field after dark listening to an astronomer enthuse about Orion. Kids are a great excuse to release your inner 12-year old.

Open and closed arguments.
When a classroom teacher gives an answer, it often reduces to 'That is how it is'. I have given answers like that myself. Really, the answer should be, 'It depends.'

A teacher in a classroom has moments to respond to any issue arising, and they feel the pressure to provide an answer that closes the debate down, and moves the lesson forward. That leads to superficial answers and pat conclusions. If they want to open the debate, class time has to be scheduled. That's artificial; the moment of interest has passed; the debate is limited by the bell; and then you find the kid who originally asked the question is off sick.

I wanted a situation where, when a child asks a question, I can answer it honestly, with 'It depends.' Then we can spend two hours talking.

The language of teachers.
I'm told research shows how kids constantly ask questions at home ... but when they arrive at school, the child stops asking questions, and the adults ask questions instead. But get this - the adults ask questions to which they already know the answers. So what's the point of asking the question? Eventually kids learn to play this game.

But I wanted a real dialogue with kids, not a pretend one. I wanted a discussion where I didn't know all the answers, and where our dialogue was a genuine construction of shared ideas.

The language of kids.
Yes, I want to protect my brood. I want to shield them from other kids who stream out of school effing and blinding. I don't want mine to feel coerced into ways of speaking, acting, and dressing that I feel are inappropriate to the values and ideas that I want to promote in our tribe.

And sod off with any accusations of middle class over-protectiveness. I believe some aspects of language, behaviours, modesties and courtesies transcend class.

Social horizons.
I wanted my children to have a wide social experience. I wanted them to see and meet different people living many different types of life. I simply couldn't see how school could offer a wide social experience.

Contact with adults.
As much as possible, because kids aren't kids forever. I wanted my three to be brought up surrounded by the models, behaviours and norms of adults leading the way. I wanted my children to learn how to interact with adults who were not in authority over them, but who were grown up people with their own interesting histories, opinions, ideas and conversations.

Attention span.
Who honestly believes that kids have little attention span? In my experience, they can concentrate for hours on something they like. I wanted to give them the time and space to attend to whatever interested them. So long as it wasn't torturing the neighbour's Mr Tibbles, what could go wrong?

Acquiring skills, ideas, and ways of seeing.
People are amazing, right? There's a woodworker, electrician, linguist, product developer, designer, writer, dreamer, all living down someone's street. I have a belief that everyone can be a teacher to a child. Yes, that includes the eccentric and the idler. All have a view to impart. Why shut my child away from these people and supply them only with one teacher who has a narrower range of life experience?

The curriculum & the testing of the curriculum.
Some knowledge is to be acquired first? Other knowledge delivered later? Then a child can be tested according to their understanding of the knowledge delivered? Pah.

The freedom of reading.
The process of learning to read? Scared me witless. I messed up a lot. I only narrowly avoided a breakdown. But hey, they cracked it, aged between eight and nine. Now they can spend as long as they want reading whatever they choose from the library (if it still exists.)

Play.
I wanted my children to have the time to play with each other, or with friends; to sit in mud and sand with unicorns, climb trees to escape goblins, run across fields chasing rabbits, and dash through woods looking for treasure. I wanted my kids to move, not sit still. Which child would seriously choose a day sat indoors by preference when the sun is shining and the air sharp?

Creativity.
I watched art, music, dance, history - all the subjects that mattered to me - be sidelined in the race for literacy and numeracy targets. I wanted music by experience, art covered in paint, and dance round the kitchen table. I wanted my history with wet feet and pinked cold cheeks on a battlefield, and I wanted geography to mean crossing a river and falling off the stepping stones. Practical, active, experiential.

Uniform.
Our local primary school has a uniform from age five. I burn it with my laser eyes. I had to be physically stopped from spraying graffiti on the local school outfitting shop. Who doesn't want to enjoy the sight of their five-year old taking pleasure in dressing up?

Food.
I don't understand how parents can bring these contradictions together. On the one hand they are beaten up about feeding their offspring, on the other instructed to turn them over to the junk-food mongers of the school premises. It doesn't make sense to me.

I want the kids to eat well. I feed them myself. We eat together, at a table, food that I damn well thought about and cooked. And if they don't like it, there's grass outside.

I don't like imposing a model of childhood on kids.
Schools look at children as if they are already adults. They instruct them in sex, but keep them away from politics. Isn't that perverse?

Me, I do it the other way round. I watch the kids play; I see them in conflict for control and I see them face issues of power in their relationships. So I teach them politics. I don't teach them about sex, because they don't play sex. On sex, I wait till I'm asked 'What does that mean?' then I answer.

In a crisis, I want my kids to come to me.
I don't want to be separated from my children by any institution that tells them how difficult it is to talk to parents. No, matey, a child should feel they can go to their parent, that they are a trusted person to talk over issues. I want to be that person, thanks. I don't trust a message like that given by a school.

I am a bolshy mare.
So I have to ASK PERMISSION to take my kid to the excellent Iron Age museum in Andover? From a headteacher who wears his trousers too long?

I DON'T THINK SO. The relationship would have lasted days, blown up into confrontation, and ended, bitterly, when I keyed his Volvo.

I like power with my responsibility.
I want to encourage the values, attitudes, behaviours and ways of approaching life that I believe are positive. If I am my child's main adult contact, I can discuss those values that I hold dear, without being undermined.

You can say that I'm brainwashing if you like. I call it passing on my culture to my kids.

In some countries, that process isn't liked much either. When people are really determined to prevent the passing on of values, there's one solution used. Cut out the tongue of the mother.

I could go on. And on. You've probably suffered enough.

I can lie in bed until 10am.

And he has a shifty stare

2012-01-14T05:27:00.000-08:00

We have completed our final discussions about the UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

The outcome is, he has to go.

Have you ever worked with someone you couldn't figure out? When, say, they implement a new policy, and you think, Eh? What's going on there?

Then you reason, they either just committed an act of alarming stupidity, or there is a master plan, and I haven't seen what it is yet.

So you waste your time trying to work out whether they are inept, or whether their latest action is an inscrutable step in a hidden agenda. If only you could make the imaginative leap to get there and see what's ahead!

For some time I have had this feeling with Gove.

When he visited China and Hong Kong in 2010, then went home to Blighty, he wrote this:

'the Government has been responding to the economic and social crises we face with big and comprehensive programmes. And nowhere has that been more needed than in education, where I am happy to confess I’d like us to implement a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China.' (28.12.10)

My original reaction was, What an idiot! Doesn't he know what happened in the cultural revolution?

Now, I think his words were much more sinister and scary. It's a statement of intent. He was telling everyone exactly what he was going to do.

Yes, he's looking to effect a cultural change in the social status of teaching. He's going to label, ridicule, humiliate and bully teaching staff before throwing them to the loudest, most resentful voices of the parent population for the inking. He's determined to strip any final respect anyone can harbour for the profession. He's forcing schools to change, to become academies (whether they want to or not), as a means to destroy the present system. Once schools become a vehicle to divert public money into private hands, the role of every participant will be changed into a seller-buyer relationship. Yes, he's destroying state schooling. It is a cultural revolution. Mao already showed him the principle: destroy first and construction will look after itself. In Gove's reconstruction, that will be the market.

Thinking all this puts me in a problem. I believe schools need shaking up. They use a Victorian factory model that needs updating. I resent the simplistic worlds modelled for children via the curriculum, and I loathe the testing, the lack of flair, and the either/or/arts/sciences choices slapped over a child's ambitions like the cold hands of a corpse. School culture can be stultifying and deadening. Kids are locked away from the community. There's a lack of social mixing. Expectations drift to the mediocre. You can see the creativeness and inventiveness of new staff slowly ebb away. And I agree, there are some suspect and hopeless teachers, where it's difficult, even after years, to shift them.

Schools need to freshen their ideas, yes, but Gove's way?

So many, many more good people work hard in challenging situations with little room to develop professionally. They'll never see rewards in A grades, but are motivated to impact positively in a young person's life. Many parents want the fine responsibilities of education removed from them; they don't have the resources, time, or stomach, to put together an education alone. And many children want another place to go: for some unfortunates, the classroom is a sanctuary from a turbulent and destructive home life.

I don't want to see any of these people, who needs state schools, trafficked to corporates and privateers.

If Gove continues rearranging education, then yes, he'll be one of the most dramatic Education Secretaries we've had. But I don't consider that any glory. In the last few years, schools have been thrown about, driven by ideology, run by institutional mentalities, set up like businesses and been used as agents of social control. It's time they had someone who did less, allowed teachers more creative freedom, and listened to the ideas of scholars, educators, and children.

Letting go of those emotions

2012-01-13T00:29:00.000-08:00

A favourite person in all the universe (they run home ed sessions IN THEIR FRONT ROOM and invite my kids to SLEEPOVERS) just wrote something which really chimed in my brain.

To the effect of, Which is more satisfying? Aggravated assault or departing the family home?

I have now tried many approaches to this fundamental problem: being in the company of your own family all day long.

How do you get rid of the anger, deal with frustration, and free yourself from the relentless double binds which children impose on you? Thanks to years of being in company with my own, I can clearly see the many strategies available to the demented full-time mother caught up in the daily maelstrom of the argument with kids.

What best to do?

1. Hide in the cupboard under the stairs with a bottle of brandy.
A strategy with obvious disadvantages. The thudding on the stairs is amplified and you continue to hear the smash of hurled objects. The insults I hate you poopy brain get out of my life I never want to see you again etc etc., all echo in your chamber.

On the plus side, a dark cupboard does offer the safe regression to the womb and, in the brandy, the comfort of the amniotic fluid.

So, as a strategy for your emotional escape, doable. (Unless you have foolishly turned the space into a 'computer room' with an unturnoffable fluorescent light and no door.)

2. Kick the shit out of the kitchen bin.
As an emotional release, extremely satisfying. But only in the short term. Maybe for about two minutes. Say, until your big toe hurts, or you realise the kitchen bin you have irretrievably dented cost you two hundred quid and boasted a state-of-the-art Philippe Starck foot pedal. Then you don't feel so good.

(It may be why our kitchen bin is now a plastic bag hanging from a nail, but I'm admitting to nothing.)

3. Slam the crockery.
Class-related emotional therapy. You can smash an Ikea dinner plate into the pot sink, sure! When you chip it, crack it, or it explodes, you can buy two more for under a fiver, so not much loss. In fact a price worth paying rather than two years in prison.

I have found, however, that with Minton or Royal Doulton in my furious hands, the whole catharsis becomes much more problematic. At the final throwing moment my brain must tot up the damage.

Then again, the superior range of dinner plates can take a lot of bashing.

Hmm, if you are a crockery thrower, worth investing in the best, in my opinion, to ensure they last the emotional damage.

4. Adopt a serious face.
Completely rubbish strategy with no merit whatsoever. Your true emotions have no outlet. Denying your feelings and placing them under the added pressure to be an uber parent will guarantee your anger furiously boils up inside you like a volcano. When the crust on your face ruptures, you can be sure it is going to be bad.

5. Threaten stuff.
Grounding. No TV for ever. Bed without supper. Incineration of Mr Flopsy, etc. etc. As a strategy this serves your need to control rather than release your emotional tension.

I have also found the strategy requires a certain steely heart and a dedication to emotional cruelty. I have tried it, of course, on many occasions, but am fundamentally spineless therefore fail to see it through effectively. If I have confiscated Mr Flopsy I invariably return it five minutes later with a backsliding excuse to cover my weak resolve. After ten minutes I will issue a grovelling apology. Therefore, no release of emotional energy whatsoever. Only the addition of misery and guilt.

I cannot recommend this strategy. Well, only if you are a heartless bitch with a control agenda and a mind set on revenge.

6. Hit someone.
Have I hit my children? Of course I have. Shark once threw a shovel at my head. What do you expect me to do? Turn the other cheek so she can decapitate me with a mallet?

Parents lash out because they are people who probably have had enough, haven't slept for a week, and they're facing the horrible realisation that their marriage has ended. Cut them some slack you moral idiots and stop trying to make people feel more guilty than they already do.

Now that's out the way, I can say, as a considered strategy for emotional release, hitting is a simple non-starter. After they recover their senses from their moment of shock, the kids hit you back.

7. Shout.
Emotionally satisfying in the immediate experience, but eventually futile. It gains only a headache, sore throat, and bad feeling. Made even worse after the neighbours complain, indicating they heard every word.

8. Eat the kid chocolate stash in front of them.
This strategy can work well, especially if you are on medication which does not permit alcohol abuse yet you still require some emotional support.

The downsides are that the kids never notice; they are too engaged in thumping each other. And, if you are going through a bad patch, it guarantees your enormous arse in a mere two weeks.

9. Make grand moral statements.
This strategy is typical of many holier-than-thou parenting strategies, usually scattered about by people who never stared a determined five-year old in the face.

In my view, grand moral statements are not much good in an emergency: discussions on how to run a happy family using Aristotelian precepts are essentially intellectual, therefore do not release your emotional tension.

Anyway, the kids can't hear because they are yelling, and even to your ears you sound like a tosser. Save it till over dinner when everyone has calmed down and their mouths are full of pasta.

10. Go berserk.
Throw yourself from a window, hang yourself from the stairs, put your head in the gas oven, etc. etc.

A really bad strategy to deal with overwhelming emotions, and one I have not tried, obviously, although I have entertained it on more than one occasion.

The state of mind needed for self-annihilation is one where you totally fail to see any funny side of living. There is a funny side. Of course there is. There must be. If there wasn't, we'd all be dead.

However, in the middle of tense and emotional situations, when you are seeking escape or release, I know that humour is difficult to find ...which is why I endorse the only strategy for emotional escape that ever truly works.

11. Leave the house.
Slam the door behind you. Kick it. Call your children cruel and horrible names under your breath, then stomp about with a face like a slapped arse until people stare, or until you feel a bit foolish.

But remember, when you return in a fudge of self-justification, righteousness, and shame, it is humiliating to ring your own front door bell, then stand there five minutes, waiting until your eight-year old with a grudge over your failure to provide strawberry sauce decides whether they'll let you back into the house, or not.

So don't forget the door keys.

It only looks like play

2012-01-12T05:14:00.000-08:00

Join a bunch of kids in the park. We parents leave them to it. We observe from a safe distance, like David Attenborough behind the bushes. It's a bit like watching a primitive society form, based on fundamentals of tool handling, skill-sharing, trade in knowledge, consensus towards group work, experimental behaviour, creation of laws, and tribal decision-making regarding the usefulness of elderly keep-fit equipment.

Give them ten years and they might evolve to be engineers, architects, urban planners, social scientists, lawyers, policy makers, and, in the case of the one on the far left, designers of gym equipment for fish.

We nearly did it

2012-01-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

We nearly finished composing the Periodic Table.

Would have done too, if we had enough biscuits.

And then someone kicked off the eating frenzy by nibbling on Iridium.

We can lose ourselves

2012-01-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

It is true. This is one of our biggest delights.

Given constraints, such as the imperative to eat, wee, and go to sleep, we free-in-the-heads can go pretty much any place, to do anything.

Yes, this freedom is a liberating consequence of being human, but in home ed land, can you believe it has extra spice?

We are already living a life suspected by some and judged by others to be downright wrong. In this counter-culture, barbed and resentful comments can wound, fears can run deep, and quick, sideways glances from the disapproving can weigh down a spirit, but with an imagination and a place to put it, we can secretly say, sod them all, we're off.

Then we can put our freedoms into practice; which probably doesn't help our image, or lessen the jealousies of the desk-bound. In our limitless place of learning outside closed doors, corridors, rooms, and designated areas, we can go where we like, when we like, and we don't have to ask permission.

We can be up and off indeed, with extra quiet content - some would say smug self-righteousness - because, in the spirit of our duties - responsibilities, freedoms, rights, whatever you want to call them - we can take a child by the hand and not only lead them off the path of the National Curriculum, we can neither follow a timetable, nor work to hours, days or terms; not run the home like a school; use no lesson plans, nor set work, nor mark work, nor give formal lessons, neither present a blank face with a 'developmental objective', nor make anyone put a chair on a table so you can sweep the floor under the desk: we can simply do away with the desk.

Then yes, I can understand the lack of whatever looks like school combined with a free-range mind can suggest to the hour-tied onlooker a complete state of chaos and bewilderment. I guess they wonder what on earth home educators do, if they don't do a lot of what looks like what they are told to do, in school.

Well, as I said, we can pretty much do anything, anywhere.

To my way of thinking, when each morning opens, the possibilities are so ridiculously endless, the nuances so variable, and the permutations of any action so wonderfully limitless, there is sometimes only one place to pin ourselves down.

If Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are to experience as many states and futures as can be shoe-horned into one day, we must be at the library. Here they can let their minds wander, or they can go looking for an author who holds them long enough to extract their agreement to be held by ink on a page.

But I confess. Today, I have a secret urge.

I have found that I can slip away, even from the freedoms of the library. I can leave my three tender exploring minds for hours in the company of witch dolls, chalk horses, puppet people, and humans fashioned from melting stone - and I can take my own exploring soul down the bewitched back streets of Hong Kong Island.

Leaving their eyes quietly fastened on the endless pages, I can leave the library to aim for a precise slice of Sheung Wan, filled with all the strange practices of the printing of papers; I can peer into the mechanics of print, boards, cardboards and cutters; I can watch the pressers, slammers, stitchers, and loose-leaf folders go about their day.

Printing was one of the biggest industries in Hong Kong, but the biggest book work has upped presses and moved north, leaving behind a business of pamphlet and card print with slam-thunk machinery that would not be out of place in your local museum, Victorian section.

Working these print presses, in the space of your broom cupboard and spilling straight to the street, are the skilled people who always loved handling inks and papers, bindings and glues.

Between them slips the infrastructure they need: stationery stores, paper suppliers, envelope sellers and, most traditional Chinese, chop street. In these tiny booths with knife, stone and wax, your business chops are crafted to grace your freshly-printed letter paper, handmade to your most precise requirements.

Tucked between them, between the paper cutters, any size, and the stationery store with the rolls of green wrapping smelling of ink, is my bone finder. She finds me bones - ask no questions, tell no lies - which she sells to me in pairs, two at a time. These desirable pieces, fashioned to look like yours, half the length of your forefinger, snap it off before your knuckle, I need. I stitch these bone likenesses into leather and wrap them with bleached, pressed paper, making my miniature books. Folded in my bone finder's shop, squeezed between the end-of-line beads and the sinuous twine, strange, which I swear was not there before, I could lose hours.

It is how we free-in-the-heads and learners out-of-doors can choose to spend our days.

By dark, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are still seated in the library, heads bent, engrossed, each with a pile of books, chosen ones to bring home. In my pocket are my bones.

Simple life

2012-01-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

We are staying on island, travelling only to the front street to buy noodles and avoid the fish skin, so expect no exciting tales of adventurous living it up in Hong Kong for a day or two.

I am saving all my energy for the Travelling Aunty, who will come upon us soon, putting down her suitcase and demanding dragon dancing and walled villages and all things Chinese.

In great anticipation of her arrival, I have looked at the calender and warned Shark to sweep under her bed. I don't want the sewer rat coming back and taking up residence the very night Travelling Aunty arrives. I already put her through enough rodent-related trauma with the mouse and the waste-paper basket. I want no repeat of that.

Otherwise, I have been involved in making more delightful notebooks. So I am not good company. My mind is utterly filled with that. You could say anything to me and I probably won't hear. Having acquired the indulgent red leather last week, I am now in the process of feeling it, and folding it, cutting it up and stitching paper into it.

I think there might be something a bit Freudian going on. I want some of this beautifully sensitive and textured red for my Damaged range; note books that do away with cuteness but explore this pleasurable red with broken glass, barbed wire, and knives. I am enjoying it hugely. I hope the process produces objects that are vaguely disturbing but which you want to get your hands on, nonetheless.

I won't be able to sell them to the Chinese, of course. They do not, as far as I know, associate red with sex, blood, and destruction, because red is the colour of happiness. (And officialdom and the Communist Party.)

Well, that's all I shall say on the subject, in case Anya Hindsherface is a-watching my blog.

For the educational week, the children are all being directed to the assignments, which are going fairly well. Those blogs (over here if you are desperate) allow me to start the day in a way that I can feel involved. Usually it only lasts an hour, then we can all gratefully push off to our various locations and pursue the things which matter to our souls.

I think that might be it for our Monday. I am not displeased with it. Howabout yours?

The achievement cup is overflowing

2012-01-08T03:20:00.000-08:00

1. We have taken down the Christmas tree. I say we. It was mostly me. Dig helped shove it into the box. It struggled, and finally entered reluctantly, with a knee in the middle, much as a toddler into a car seat. Now I can abandon it in the downstairs toilet and forget about it forever. (Tree. Not toddler.)

I assumed the children would be mortified at the loss of Christmas Joy, so I have been putting the end off, even risking the wrath of the Christmas Spirits of Superstition with the date. And I bought lard-chocolate to hide in their sad, limp stockings!

The idea is, when the children sadly pack away their stockings from the delightful decorative window ledge where they have lain discarded for two weeks, there is the final surprise delight! Befana's present!* The one everyone forgot! A bar of Cadbury's dog chocolate! Yum.

Well, no-one could give a toss. Not about the tree or the stockings. They just scoffed the chocolate, so obviously I'm kicking myself. I could have had the ruddy lot down and packed away by Boxing day. (Memo for next year.)

2. I wrote our week's assignments. This is a home ed blog! It is true! I do home education! (There is another myth busted for 2012.) Actually, we are into that child age where effective parenting is to piss off and leave them alone. They cracked the reading several years ago, so job done, really.

But I am keeping the assignment blogs going (sounds good, eh?) partly because I would like Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to think about bringing structured study into their days. (Look at my saintly halo, Dig should be v. proud of me.) Also, some busybody from the local council might collar me and demand pompously to know my provision of education.

If you don't know about the blissful life of home ed, then I should tell you that someone from the council can ask, and they have a legal right to do so.

I have a legal right to tell them nothing, although it probably would be foolish to do so, but if I want I can tell them anything. Not stupid things, obviously! (Although I would be minded, if pushed.)

We can tell the local council what we do in any form, say a written folder with pictures or examples of what the kidlets have done. Then, if they are provided with information, they should push off and leave us alone.

Well, because I can't remember what I'm doing one minute to the next, my choice of information is online; it is a demonstration that an education is being offered. (Whether it's picked up or not is another matter.)

But I doubt anyone will ask. We're not even in England for a start. I don't know why I bother. Don't get me thinking.

3. The children are all quiet today, reading books about ice and fire. Shark has been on her fishy friend forum. She is sploshing over with information on tanks, filters, thermometers, and stuff. I don't know, I tune out after five minutes. Where did she inherit this fish love? One of her ancestors ran a fish and chip shop. Must be that.

4. I have found a half-bottle of gin. The Travelling Aunty is coming back to see us soon, and I am fixing up a hectic schedule for her of museums and outings and more treks into the wilderness. (I will tell her we are heading off to the last woman-eating Tiger outpost of Hong Kong to see if she believes me.)

I could keep going with the achievements, but in light of the gin element of number 4, I won't.

Planet Earth should send me a medal, or something.

*I now think we are the only family in the country to do this. Until last year I thought everyone did it. It was when I discovered no-one knew who Befana was, or what I was talking about, did I begin to suspect we were odd.

Hidden talents

2012-01-07T03:31:00.001-08:00

I am forced to take it easy for a couple of days after yesterday's explosion of venomous angry froth. I need time to recover. And the weekends are when I invent my assignments. That way, I can give the children something to ignore all next week, apart from me.

Well, the chicken shed set me a challenge. Tell you seven things about myself.

SEVEN!

I interpret that to mean not all on the same day. (I can't think up seven things, just like that.)

Plus, I like to think I am a complex woman whose mysteries are disclosed slowly, over time, which is more loving, and sublime, than get it all out in the open. I mean, where is the magic?

My first revelation has to be a peek then, into the struggles of the soul that lies beneath.

Peek into the Grit soul, number 1.

I like writing messages on bananas.

See? I was WASTED at that crappy ad agency I worked for, maybe all of two months, before they found me out and sacked me.

I even write on the ones I eat.

I am as addictive as sniffing unwashed laundry, aren't I? I bet you can barely wait for revelation number 2.

Places to avoid: Macau

2012-01-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

I hear some people enthuse about Macau. It is a World Heritage Site! I see many comments praising the fine, ancient, colonial buildings. I have heard tell of the wonderful food, and the Portuguese flair that inspires this historic town.

I feel it is time to take your beer goggles off.

The team sent by the World Heritage Outfit to assess this rotting place may indeed have been a single blind man, desperate for intimacy. Pity him. He was probably cruelly taken advantage of by someone who just said they were an indecently-clad busty blond (38-29-36).

In reality they were a conniving resident called Paolo. The deep voice and hairy belly were not the result (as claimed), of emergency medical treatment, but because they were the front end of a part-owner of a Macau casino.

Pity Paolo. He probably has to pay protection money to the Triads, so understandably he is desperate to draw in more gullible punters to this blasted site. He must focus his mind on the sole purpose of removing the last cash from the pockets of people who probably can't afford to give any at all. If the creation, exploitation, and asset-stripping of their dreams can be assisted by a concocted veneer of attractive historic charm, then so be it.

I would like to tell you straight. There is no charm to Macau. None at all. Macau is the world's top gambling centre, outstripping the strip of Las Vegas, and it shows. It is the world's most soulless place, driven by the brutality of gambling, stinking of deceit, throwing up rotten displays of glitz to create dreams of wealth when in reality it is decay, abandon, and I had to suffer it for a full wretched eight hours, the final one of which could not come too soon.

But because I begin everyday with grit in my soul, we embarked on the lovely historic tour of the old town, the pride of which seems to be an old front of St Paul's Cathedral.

Obviously, a bit of old church wall confers history legitimacy on this miserable run-down town, and so it drew thousands of bussed in visitors in the 20 minutes I spent propped up against one of the iron-clad floodlights.

Each one of the visitors who were marched up the steps by sour-faced tour guides to click away on cameras in front of the thing bore an expression of forbearance and sufferance. One looked clinically depressed. I only saw one person smile in all the time I sat there. It was a young man following a blond woman. She looked ruthlessly addicted to old churches, and he looked ruthlessly addicted to the jiggle of her rear.

I would like to say things brightened considerably when Dig found us a place that could serve a vegetarian lunch, but I am sorry to say it was on the main tourist drag in Starbucks. (He could not extract a straightforward lunch from anyone unless it had dead animal or sea slime draped over the top.)

Well, you may say I got my deserves in this corporate chain, because I was abused with appalling service and a cold hot chocolate drink. I declined the cheese sandwich. It had clearly seized up from the strain of trying to look like a sandwich, and had reverted to its original form of two sawn up squares of peeling cardboard propped against a slice of yellow formica.

Then we visited the Museum.

Here the town shows how truly, madly, deeply, it already had given up its soul to absurdly betting on anything, from the Blackjack table to two water drips running down a window. Long before the Portuguese got here probably, and long before the greedy hand-rubbing property developers turned it into a lucrative playground for the gambling-obsessed and money-laundering needy.

Well, what else is there to bet on when you are sat round the bamboo hut, having eaten all the pandas, but crickets, fighting?

I leave only vitriol and take only photos. Of the merciless contest arena for the crickets, the tickling sticks (which drive them to fury, apparently), and the coffin for the loser.

If that alone is not bizarre enough to lure you to squander your meagre income, remember that this place is run by people who think it's a good idea to turn the streets into a race track every November. It makes sense if you consider this is an opportunity to gamble whether you are going to be knocked over and killed by a Formula motor sports team, or not.

I think I should speak bluntly now.

I hated Macau and I never want to step foot in this charmless place ever again. If I must, it will be for the same reason I did this time. The visa run.

Finally - but please do not consider this an addendum - I apologise to all the lovely people who live here, who are perhaps as happy, sad, joy-filled or miserable in life as anywhere else on Planet Earth.

Wiki tells me your literacy rate is 93.5%! Don't let the British government know that. Michael Gove will visit you and before we can say Jack Robinson, he will think it a good idea to make Britain worse than it already is. Poker cards will be delivered along with milk for the children.

And I probably did not do your old colonial buildings justice, this is true. I am sure many are there, valued by the residents, enjoyed and preserved as best as can be. I can detect the mix, elegantly arched, delightfully peeling, and cherished with new paint.

I fear for those that are evocatively non-restored, waiting for death. Or conversion into a new themed casino. It amounts to the same thing.

Sounds like the makings of a business plan

2012-01-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

I have a thought.

It is to magically transport myself to Sham Shui Po whenever I want where I will hunt down beautiful and amazing haberdashery items like acorn-shaped buttons

and I will tenderly stitch these lovely worshipful items onto my own, original design, hand-made leather notebooks, which I think are fast becoming the desirable must-have items on Etsy

even though I don't have an Etsy shop, never mind about that, but then, someone who is a real celebrity, alright I don't actually know anyone, just someone, howabout Vivienne Westwood? is she dead yet? well, she is photographed adoring an original Grit-stitched Note Me Note Book, and then no dastardly evil person will steal my ideas, like I'm pretty convinced about that Anya Hindswhatsherface, what with my cloth shopping bag that I wrote all over, and WTF! along comes her design!? and we're all calling that a coincidence?? but anyway I'm not holding grudges, because the personalised, character-filled, Grit-stitched Note Me Note Book is now all the rage and becomes

a fashion icon overnight!

and there is the most amazing storm in all the fash hag mags - Vogue, what about them? where the photographer must simply have moi in the publicity pictures where I look alarmed! but also cute, not scary, say I can be girl-next-door Ralph Lauren model, maybe twenty years younger, and not digitally retouched to make me look thin or anything, I am simply beautiful when I hold my Note Me Note Book in a coquettish and pouty but totally natural way

and then Hermès comes along! and pays a million pounds! or maybe more! I don't know, enough to mend the garage roof and buy a Prada handbag, they come along and buy my Secret Jotter of Brilliant Ideas, the one I keep hidden in my bra-and-knicker drawer (and obviously where I jot my totally fantastic and original ideas about notebooks), and then the fame brand of Note Me Note Book is so successful as a global enterprise that yes!

I accept the Legion d'honneur!

and this involves me being able to start the enterprise all over again aged 22, only this time with a permanently naked available man and no liver damage.

Fairy Godmother Note Me Note Book
(currently out of stock)

Sounds like a totally brilliant plan and I should be able to do it all, say, by next Wednesday.

Note Me Note Books coming soon to Etsy!

(When I said soon, I probably meant later.)

Maths, again

2012-01-04T06:03:00.000-08:00

I finally got round to dealing with some maths for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

Flippin' Nora, that took hours. With maths, I have a lot of issues.

But communicating personal issues to kids is sort of inevitable, isn't it? I mean, you can have a phobic reaction to spiders, and you can assure your kids you DO NOT have that phobic reaction while you calmly climb into your hazard suit and strap a broom to a six foot pole to sweep that tiny spidery little fella out the house, if you like.

Then you can say to yourself, isn't it strange how the kids will pick up your radar of fear, no matter how well you disguise it! How on earth do they do that?

So I'm honest with Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I tell them, I hated maths at school. It reduced me to tears. At some part of each week I'd be a quivering nervous wreck, dreading what Mrs D. could do to me.

Not surprisingly, I am seriously disadvantaged at maths today. I sweat, shake and my palms itch if you show me a page of numbers.

Of course I tried to make the scary numbery things all Dig's job, but he does fuck all, so I feel it's kind of onerous on me, I don't know why.

Maths would be easy to ignore, but then I fear the kids would be at some strange disadvantage in some indistinct future scenario, possibly regarding a mortgage or summat (like they won't be anyway!).

So, I launched my shaky soul over the hurdle again, and I tried to make maths positive. Even though my kids now look at numbers sideways with suspicion, and they know that I know they are not going to be the world's next maths geniuses. Upshot: we all look at each other and think, we should do something.

Well, I was overjoyed to get this link from Ditta, and we all enjoyed maths Vi's way.

Then, in response to me reading a lot of poo-poohing to her approach, I got cross and sat down and wrote this over there, right all over my kids new maths page.

Now I'm all exhausted. So I'm not writing anything else here.*

*I know this actually looks like writing, but it isn't. It's a brain dump. Some peelings... Grrlscientist & Fibonacci flim-flam.

Starting home ed?

2012-01-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

Oh wow, the Spring school term is starting. There's acute anxiety somewhere out there regarding this momentous day. How can education proceed if not in class 3G with Mrs Binns and Crusher? Visitors are arriving at grit's day to find out in a steady flow. (Okay, dribble.)

Have a few ideas, off the top of my head.

Home ed is a big, scary, responsibility
Yes, the buck (whatever that is), stops right there, under your backside. If Tinkertop is not reading by age 12, you cannot point your finger at school. If she finds serial killing or house breaking an attractive career from age 21, you cannot blame it on her being bullied in class 4F.

Seriously, it's the same worry for us all. The knowledge of my responsibility terrifies me. What if Shark, Squirrel and Tiger reach age 18 with no inclination to study or earn their own living? I'm stuffed. Let's hope it's unlikely.

Um. Today Tiger spent four hours sewing a long-eared bat. And I have to count this as a productive day of education towards employment.

Home education is the most thrilling freedom
You can shape your life, the life of your family, and create a truly adventuresome way of living. You do not need to ask permission from the council, headteacher, or PTA. You do not have to enter into stupid and pointless school gate competitions with other parents about spelling tests and reading books. Personally, I have found this exhilarating.

People will hate you
Okay, hate is a bit strong. But doing your own thing can cause resentments and raise hackles, surprisingly. I think it could be threatening (or maybe that's just me). I have had suspicious glances, covert expressions of who do you think you are? and been cold shouldered from circles of school group mummies.

Maybe I come across as self-centred and arrogant. (Who could think that of me?!) But I can only thank everyone involved for hardening my brass neck and sealing my armour.

Nobody, nothing, and nowhere is normal
It is easy for voices in the mainstream to position home educators as overprotective and overbearing; as controlling parents, withdrawing children from society, and denying their kids normal contact with any other human being.

You can only deal with that in your own way as you live each day. Unfortunately, it has resolved me to shove my children into the maelstrom of the wild world, with all the weirdos and wackos. (It might not help their social adjustment at all, but they are probably growing up to be quite broad minded.)

Sod the maths, just look at the floor
You have to learn to live with mess. And for those of us with control issues, a cluttered house is a bigger psychological frontier to explore than whether the education we provide is actually any good.

Round here, a clear spread of carpet quickly became the stuff of legend, matched only by the mythological strength I needed to keep anything clean. The only way I have found to cope with the crap is simply not to look at it.

Children are with you all the time
Big issue. Their continual presence place restrictions on your life, yes. Me, I have tried dumping them in various worldwide locations, frisking them for breadcrumbs, but nothing works. They follow me right back home. Thanks to their continuous presence, I have failed to satisfactorily buy shoes for a decade or conduct an illicit affair.

You explore personal limits
Many home ed blogs do not cover the yelling part of parenting, choosing instead the Hama beading, pancakes, and smiling. I applaud their endurance.

Me, I am driven to call a spade a bloody shovel, so I tell you in all misery how there will be truly abysmal days when the kids are vile horrible monsters; when brandy over your cornflakes will seem like a suitable fortifying start to the day.

Without overburdening you with grisly personal details, I do believe you should know truths of the home ed experience. In our history here, my kids have failed to worship the educational value of my worksheets or adore my lovely craft activities; they have undermined my goals, destroyed my ambitions, been revoltingly insolent and, in a final punctuation mark to my carefully planned spelling endeavours, punched each other. And I have shouted. Lots. Aware that I have no authority, I have threatened school, bribed compliance, attempted emotional blackmail, and taken revenge by eating their chocolate stash.

However! I maintain the emotional limits you are thrown towards at high speed only provides a brilliant opportunity to explore your parent/child relationships, and to articulate what you experience as a family. I believe it works positively.

(The alternative at some points has been to throw myself under a train, so I have to think that.)

Your home education will change
Over the years we have done free-range, school-at-home, do-what-the-fuck-you-like-I'm-hiding, please-please-please-look-at-this-worksheet, and organised lessons at fantastic cost.

Our home ed is re-shaping again. The point is, what I do now, I am unlikely to be doing in two years; the inspiration I seek now will not be the inspiration I seek next year. I consider this all good. I like to imagine it's in touch with my kids and what they need.

You will live on tenterhooks regarding the press
When a parent goes berserk and commits hideous damage to their own children, a tiny part of my horrible selfish brain snaps Please God do not let them be home educated. Home educators are at the mercy of the press; will a journalist exploit an angle to the story and do us the most enormous and permanent damage?

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have now grown up with me yakking to them about how they are ambassadors for home ed. That's not been a fair pressure to apply to them, but unfortunately, I've felt it necessary.

So, there are some ideas. I have had time to write them today, thanks to the bat study, which is taking place unprompted by me and continuing in a free-range autonomous sort of way. It involves bat-sewing, strapping bats to the windows, making a charity shop front for bats, generally adding to the landfill aka the floor, and going aaahhhh at internet pictures of baby bats. (I defy you not to adore them.)

Just imagine! You could look forward to all this next Monday, if you wanted.

It's been emotional

2012-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

I have this problem. Or rather, one of my triplets has this problem.

I'm defining it entirely as a triplet problem, but it may be a sibling problem. I certainly cannot identify it as a home education problem; if I did, I would open the access for all the nay sayers to say HAH we were right all along! Children cannot socialise if they are prevented from going to school!

I must nip that line in the bud. Tiger, my lovely sensitive child, is extraordinarily socially tuned. She assesses social situations with finer radar than many adults. Adults tend to deny things, anyway, because they think they are being polite. That tactic blows her mind. Tiger watches their denials and hand wavings and oh it's nothings, and it fuses the connections between her eye and brain. Some time later she'll tell me what's really happened, in faltering language but with brutally honest assessment and crippling acumen, so if I was at all involved in the pretence, I sort of want to crawl away and hide.

Social perception then, that's not her problem (or it will be unless she learns to lie like the rest of us). Taking part in social situations is a little of her problem, because she is shy. Sometimes she is so shy I have a powerful instinct to clip her round the ear and shove her in the back, to push her towards a group of playing eleven-year olds. I would do that too, if I thought she would happily join in, rather than burst into tears with the shock.

I don't know where her reticence comes from, since papa is the public speaker and I'm the public nuisance, but it sets in motion these emotional tsunamis which are truly hard to deal with.

Her relationship with Shark, for starters. Shark is easy going, affable, and confident, if she can talk on her terms and you don't try and interrupt. Her breezy, outgoing nature means she's easy to connect with, and (so long as you like fish), easy to befriend.

Tiger - sibling sister who looks alike - must seem a bit like hard friendship work when there's not much time and there's a lot of playground to enjoy. Not surprisingly the tendency is for her to be brushed aside as the quiet one. Which knocks at Tiger's self-esteem and sets the jealousy wave in motion.

I haven't a solution for any of this friendship rivalry, except we spent two hours last night, after the exploding ocean of tears, talking the rain down. What it is to want friends, what it is to feel you're in competition for your friends, what responsibilities we have to family members and to ourselves, where friendship begins, and how it can end.

Tiger nearly brought me up to her level by the time exhaustion took over, and I'm made a more thoughtful person thanks to her.

But still, can't help dreading the day the boyfriend arrives.

The year might improve from here

2012-01-01T01:23:00.000-08:00

A forgettable first day.

I am moved to record what might pass as achievements, quickly, before they start taking the shape of disappointments.

1. I was a good household companion and helped assemble two Ikea shelves. These we found remaindered at the sad cat charity shop. Worth a tenner, so we could see a patch of office floor. The shelves are in a poor state of disrepair, like they've been stored outside, which is where most people on this island pile their furniture. Astonishingly to me, with my cautious English ways, stuff does not seem to be nicked. Yes, the island had a murder last spring, but no-one seems to steal shoes, clothes, cooking pots, strollers, sofas, tables, chairs, stone lions or Ikea shelving.

2. Tiger sat all day at the computer to conjure with the dark arts of a page layout system. She put together some posters advertising bats available for adoption. Yes, she intended bats, not cats, although I agree, her spelling is dreadful. I shall renew the resolution of encouraging her to a state of spelling order for her 12th year, and thus try to stay a step ahead of a School Attendance Order.

3. I ate peanuts. Not much of anything else all day long. This was becoming pathological by 5pm but I couldn't help myself. I tried everything. I told myself horror stories, that toxic peanut-mould would kill me by dawn, but it did no good. I merely hunted down the peanuts. I had locked them in a Tupperware box and shoved them to the back of the cupboard where they could be reached only by means of a chair and a screwdriver. The plan was bound to fail because of course I knew where they were. Eventually I decided that eating all the evidence of this shameful consumption of 2lbs of peanuts was the only way out.

4. I wondered what 2012 resolutions I should make. So far I have only come up 'imagine more men, naked'. That does not seem a very morally improving resolution, I know, but I am aged over fifty and can do what I like.

5. Squirrel took to her bed after being sick. Probably late-night partying. Okay, that is not the achievement. It is that I made her submit to my healing hand upon her brow, which she was very reluctant to do, but after cautioning her about helicopters being the only way off the island after midnight, she let me check her temperature. It seemed okay to me, so I left her alone and went off to find the peanuts.

6. Shark joined some Fun with Fish discussion forum. We checked it out to ensure fishy fun wouldn't catch everyone out, like watersports. No nude fish keeping involved, and nothing dodgy with fins. It seemed alright. A few lonely people eulogising about Neon Tetras. I trust her, anyhow. She spends several hours researching fish tank capacity before declaring on water temperature and acid levels. Did I say, in a particularly vulnerable moment, yes Shark, you can have a fish tank? I may have done. Don't push me. We all know I steadfastly maintain a No Pets Rule.

I think that might be it. I will tell you if I achieved something else, and just forgot about it. Like, went free diving, wrote a novel, cooked Baked Alaska or collected the laundry.

One way to finish off the year

2011-12-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

Well, yes, I suppose technically me and my three kids are illegal immigrants. If you actually insist on that permit-to-stay thing.

That thing in the passport. The date-stampy thing I completely misread as 1 December 2012 when actually it reads 1 December 2011.

Consequence of which, over-staying visa, we spend three hours in queues down the Hong Kong immigration department.

Imagine offices as you would expect in a run-down UK local tax office, last decorated in 1979, and here you are. It is not the most exciting of places to pass a New Year's Eve morning, but Dig says if I implement Plan A - make a run for it via Macau to obtain a reentry visitor visa - then I will be arrested and deported. Better do grown up grovelling instead.

Words like extremely sorry are used with horrendous frequency. Honestly, I wouldn't apologise so much if I'd had an affair and nicked ten thousand quid.

And I did my humble look.

There was no need for the immigration officer to stare, horrid fascination, like at a car crash. It was meant to be my special meek and pleading face. Admittedly I do not use it very often, but still, I should be given credit for trying.

It was either my face or my other calculating strategy. Shove Tiger at an officer in a uniform. Tiger usually can be relied upon to look terrified at anyone in a uniform. I thought maybe seeing a distraught child would help bring out the soft and cuddly side of a Chinese Immigration Official. Children have to come in useful for something, and weeping and snivelling to get their mama off the hook could be it.

And don't ask me why Tiger looks traumatised by uniforms; maybe it was that time she was made to sit in the back of a riot van while I was cautioned, I don't know. Perhaps she thinks they're going to cart her off to prison.

But my plan would never have worked today. She is 110% pissed off at being prodded out of bed at 6.30am to arrive at miserable peeling tax offices before they open, and she's showing it with her enormous scowl, bigger than all Europe, and by growling at anyone who comes near her, uniformed or not.

In the end neither she nor my sad face plan works. I just use the words sorry sorry sorry. We have to write a letter on the spot as demanded with more grovelling apology and, proper Hong Kong problem-solving method, pay a wodge of cash to an officer with a till.

Thankfully, when they have extracted the letter and the cash, I can go relax in Starbucks, rather than in cells round the back. We have two weeks not to forget about it, otherwise I'm in Big Trouble.

But I haven't any defence. I simply have a chronic problem with understanding time.

2010? 2011? 2012? The way I live my life, it's all the same to me.

That's the way things go

2011-12-30T03:33:00.000-08:00

No post of whine, complaint or misery today, on account of being visited on our at home afternoon, by The Pitcher and Ditta.

Their visit brings about my excellent spirits. The Pitcher and Shark push off with bikes; Tiger and Squirrel loaf about with books.

Occupied children mean that we two ladies of leisure can enjoy serious-minded discussions about politics, sex, education, and meaty mousse.

Our discussion is so enjoyable indeed, that even when Dig accidentally discovers how me, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are now living illegally in Hong Kong - having busted the terms of our visa conditions for which penalties are to be arrested, imprisoned, fined and deported at a moment's notice - it dents me not one jot.

I open the biscuits and pour another coffee.

Making decisions?

2011-12-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

Here I am. Skulking behind a rock, and suddenly! Up pops a crowd of you, poking me with flashlights.

In other words, grit's day is receiving an upswing in callers.

But I know what this is! It happens three times a year. The days before a new term starts.

Well, in grit's day you will find wisdom on home ed pain, trauma, comforting communities, delirious joys, face-ache from sobbing, ear-ache from slamming bathroom doors, no time (or money) to go and buy shoes, crippling doubts, occasional dementia, educational over-thinking with a bottle of red wine, and the odd cracked-pot idea about what you can get up to with kids in a field, wood, museum, art gallery, craft shop, shopping centre, or National Trust property. Take consolation and search the blog.

Today, if you are researching home ed, you already know it's a big decision. Be reassured! The people who chose it know what you feel, and what a big decision it is. They will help.

And have a virtual hug. You need not choose this course of action purely for negative reasons, i.e. because your heart will break on January 3rd, at the sound of Tinkertop bawling her eyes out when she imagines returning to school, where no sanctuary is to be found from the little kid who has effectively modelled his playground career on Charles Manson.

You can choose home ed for positive reasons! (I know at the outset it will seem unlikely.) Consider these as you weigh the consequences of that deregistration letter.

1. You can loaf around in bed.
It's important! At 8am you can ear-wig on the street noises of other mummies screaming at kids on the school run. Ha! Ask Tinkertop to bring her books and sit with you while you both curl up with toast and chocolate. Call it your reading lesson.

2. You can do what you want, for as long as you want.
Activities last as long as Tinkertop likes. Two minutes, two hours, three days. You do not have to bash her over the head with timetables or tell her to stop the moment Gillian the giraffe becomes interesting.

3. You can follow Tinkertop's interests.
Flowers? Fish? Soil? Why not? You do not have to teach the National Curriculum. (Not unless you're slotting her back in school in February.) Seriously, at primary level, the NC is pants. Tinkertop will absorb the knowledge she needs as you live a normal home ed life, be confident about that.

4. Tinkertop can be her own person.
Yes! You have put years into raising an individual. Home ed lets Tinkertop find out about that in her own way. She can do a task simply because she wants to, and not because 30 kids down the road are doing it. She can form ideas and opinions about the world without fear of Crusher threatening her or Mrs Binns humiliating her.

5. Everyone can join in.
Home ed is not simply about transmitting knowledge to a kid's head. It is about living a shared experience. An entire family can be involved. You can each learn new skills, work out different ways of doing ordinary activities, find beautiful moments, and enjoy how time passes. Of course you'll argue how to do it. You would if Tinkertop went to school.

6. Tinkertop will make new friends.
In this brilliant community, you will meet the people who blast apart your ideas about normal. And of course you will meet the wackos. It is a privilege to meet them all. They are what makes this society sparkle.

7. You can develop skills you didn't know you had.
Abilities to sweet-talk your way to education officers, negotiate cut-price entrance fees, organise group tours, find workshops, barter for lessons, face the truancy patrol, learn the law, write philosophies of education. (To my way of thinking, all more rewarding than being bullied by the PTA.)

8. The world becomes exciting!
Once you break away from routines that are considered conventional, then everything is up for grabs. You'll hear, time and again, The world is our classroom. That phrase didn't become common because people couldn't recognise its truth.

9. You're special.
Turn up Monday to Friday 9-3 at a museum, cinema, ice rink, gallery, sports centre, discovery centre, swimming pool, and you have that space to yourselves. At most, your home crowd, come for a workshop, just for your group. Within days you will expect immediate access and reduced rates. Come the Easter holidays, you'll be pulling pouty faces and making outraged Who's in charge here? noises, simply because you clapped eyes on a queue.

10. School pressure is off.
You don't have to do what teacher says. You don't have to maintain uniforms. You don't have to smuggle a Jaffa Cake past the lunchbox police. And you don't have to become a teacher. You don't have to set work, mark it, or match any arbitrary standards that someone else is crowing about their child achieving. You just have to help your own child explore and discover the world.

(If Tinkertop is aged 14, obviously some of the above does not apply. Just join the Home Ed Exams list if she wants GCSEs, A levels, or OU courses, then leave her alone to paint her room black.)

Now if you want legal advice on home ed, go elsewhere. Sober counsel on Education Law is not my strength.

If you want tales of home ed glory and Hama beading, go elsewhere. Personally, I find perfection sometimes encouraging; sometimes it just makes me feel like a pissed off failure.

If you want to find contact lists for your local home ed groups, go elsewhere. (We have excellent connections.)

But please lower the flashlight because Tiger is trying to get to sleep. She has had a long hard day loafing on the sofa, reading a book. (And I call that an education.)

Gentle progress

2011-12-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Hmm. I am musing about resolutions. I like this process, so shut up about it being a disaster from the word go.

I am thinking 2012 should be my year of dressing adventurously. I have improved a little from 2010, which ended on a disappointing note of a black winding sheet two sizes too large, held on by a safety pin.

But I cannot decide whether to go for the bizarre-adventurous or the conservative-classy.

At the moment I am erring on the former; this morning I discover grey socks and pink plastic flip flops is a stylish combo, probably worn by all the top models.

For the true fashion brigade I know the idea needs development. The socks match, for a start.

After a self-indulgent hour considering my options, I take to Hong Kong Island with Shark. We trawl Sheung Wan to SoHo, looking for Morn Creations.

I cannot remember where the flagship store is, forgot to research the address before we left home, and anyway, didn't bring a map.

Maybe to lose myself was a secret intent. It is no hardship to wander these streets, and I recommend them to all visitors: backstreets are left-over places for single-room printers, machinists, boot stitchers, junk shops. Older buildings are filling with one-off artisans, designers, galleries. Bistro-style cafes, street foodsellers with noodles and market stalls congregate in alleys where the road traffic does not go.

We find the shop, perhaps a bit too soon, and Daughter Number One decides which backpack she'd like, Shark or Blue Whale.

After some deliberation, she chose Blue Whale.

The evening is similarly gentle: I lay my healing hands on a wooden jigsaw puzzle of the skeleton. I imagine this will be a simple way of passing the time. I enthusiastically set about it, hopefully discovering how many vertebrae we need to stand upright.

After two hours I proudly show my results to Tiger, Queen of Jigsaws. She observes the leaning Mrs Bones whose legs keep dropping off and whose ribs I cannot make stay put. (I also cannot figure out where some of her bones fit, so have hidden them discreetly under a table mat.)

After brief consideration, Tiger curls one lip, lifts up the sellotape I have used to stick on the clavicle, and contemptuously declares it a mess. She takes over and completes the job, so there is triumph of a child's learning plucked from the jaws of the mother disaster.

But I remain proud of my evening's work, and take a picture of my accomplishment.

On closer inspection, I seem to have managed a photograph where Mrs Bones actually looks in pain.

Still, not a bad day.

Party time

2011-12-27T17:47:00.001-08:00

At which event la famille Grit is fed, more generously and handsomely than has happened to me in years, with the sort of delicacies I haven't tasted in what feels like eternity.

Gracious living and fine dining rubs off on me, clearly. The sparkling wine is an excellent aperitif. From which point I linger over the mushroom pie, begin to lick my fingers with the blue cheese, make a pig of myself with the white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake, knock back another glass of the pink fizz, then experiment to see if wine glasses bounce on wooden floors.

Sadly, I must return to my normal life all too soon.

Inexplicably, that means carrying home a handbag stuffed with fried noodles and a pair of chopsticks.

Do what you want

2011-12-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

Spent the day gently, thinking about four different people. That required dressing up paper off-cuts with stitching, stick-on jewels and, in the case of one thick wodge of curvy-cut cream hand-woven dream, a leather binding with the sun and some chains.

I messed up the inside stitching, and I'm only part-way with the ideas about the chains, but it was all highly satisfying.

Hope I don't mix up the handover of the four little notebooks at the last moment, pass Sun Woman to The Musician and give Blue Mood to Lilly in the Pink.

Well, it's a selfish pleasure, even though I'm not very accomplished. It keeps me out of harm's way (unless you count the mishaps with the pokey tool). Handling paper, fabric, leather, binding, art and craft materials; all makes for a quiet day and applies salve to the soul.

I probably couldn't have made a living from it anyway. Shop window design was my first job aspiration. Age four! Soon followed by potter, photographer, theatre set designer, model maker, sculptor, illustrator, artist.

I didn't do any of those as a career. Obviously.

To my credit, I did try. I was tenacious enough to withstand the two-year attack by the school art teacher. (I do her justice by forgetting her name entirely.) So I kept up my fantasies to age 16.

But I wasn't tenacious enough to face out Mr Bates who, deadly serious - as if my life depended on it - fastened his biro on the form and said, Choose three A levels. Suitable for university. Art is not one of them.

I still took my Art A level. Later. By then I was sure the occupation was illegal, to be conducted in secret under cover of darkness in evening classes.

From which point life was taking over anyway. I wound a slow, drawn-out route, fashioning a university graphics course, into what I imagined could begin to lay the basics of an art degree.

Finally, three kids popped up, sprouting thirty toes, six eyes, and one huge roar. Something properly to worry about.

Now with the art, I just tinker! No formal training. No organised structure. No actual taught skills. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing! I follow half-baked wonder if ideas and puncture my finger ends with the pokey tool. Working with pre-printed paper is more satisfying; scavenged materials, found objects, scraps that you throw away. It seems fitting.

And I'm not sure what the Eng. Lit. degree turned out for. The route that several adults, who all knew better than me, encouraged me to follow. I'm not employed by it, have kept myself barely independently alive from it, and I haven't managed to finish reading a book in years.

Maybe it did one thing. Gave me an insight into how schools don't always work in a person's best interests. In fact they aim deliberately to give you options. The sort of options you get if you narrow down life's choices to a binary set of alternatives that you don't want and wouldn't have chosen.

To which junction - since I'm mining a seam of sudden resentment - add: knocking you off course, making you fit where you don't want to be, putting obstacles in the way of ambition, and generally forcing you to do stuff you don't want to do, while telling you it's good for you because it hurts.

Then you look round and think bugger, it's all too late.

Sod it. Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. There's only one real message.

Do what you want. I didn't.

Only one way out from here

2011-12-25T00:27:00.000-08:00

Yes, we are lost, floating on our island in the South China Seas, but are we forgotten by the magic that is Christmas?

No!

For here is Santa, come to see us!

There! Can you not see him? Covered in what looks like brick dust, and strapped to a tree?

Forgive him. He has no face, so cannot see where he is going. And we have no chimneys on the island. Unless you count the incinerators round the grave sites. He must hang on somewhere. Brave and noble Santa! How dedicated he is to our happiness. Let us follow his trail of tinsel to find what presents he has brought!

For he will not forget us. He has been lured here by the warm and inviting lights of our town. Here they are. The yellow rope of festive sparkle, twisted round the bent metal pole, holding up the fence which separates the concrete wall from the builder's dump. See how brilliantly our lights shine! Santa was led by them to our tiny haven of happiness!

But we know that Santa must sorely miss his frozen lands of the north. We are tender hearted. The local chiller shop has sought to bring him comfort and cheer. To herald his arrival, and remind him of the frozen lands in which he dwells, they have hung a decorative bauble on their fridge. The one containing the fish skins and margarine.

But wait! What is this? It is the end of Santa's tinselled trail. See how gaily it is combined to lead we hunters of gifts to our joyous end. Follow this lustrous rope and see what comfort Santa brings.

Ah, Santa! You bring warmth and comfort to all at this time of year. Let us now wave you a cheery good bye. From behind the town recycling collection dump.

Fare well, Santa! Until next year!

Ahead and behind

2011-12-24T02:41:00.000-08:00

Well, people of England, we have a time difference here, which puts la famille Grit eight hours ahead of you.

Rest assured then, that by 10am your English morning, I have hit the evening dry sherry and opened Squirrel's bag of cheesy wotsits. They serve as as a delightful hors d'oeuvre to my supper feast of noodles and tomato sauce.

By the time you are considering your afternoon cuppa I will be several glasses of red gone to bed, hopefully remembering to do my Mrs Santa duty. Of course I shall not forget. Midnight Christmas Eve is a traditional time to start turning the house upside down in the hunt for a pair of scissors.

The children have been tracking this time difference all day long, and now have set about tracking Santa on Google Earth, thanks to Norad and Dig, who made the plugin work.

I wonder in passing if British English might not be the first language of Norad's programmer, what with the Elf Toss. If it is, they need to acquire an urban dictionary, and quickly, before the letters on behalf of outraged family values begin to pour in.

Also incidentally, Dig has been in strangely jovial mood all day, encouraging the children with this Santa bothering business. He might have got me some divorce papers for Christmas, which would be fair, because I've got him sod all.

Thus I am signing off another Christmas Eve, this year without the annual happy party at the Hat's, but in fond recollection, and probably a quiet teary self-pitying sob, or two. I have found that wishes never come true.

But hope yours does, unless it is for my untimely end, or for your liver to be eaten by wolves or something equally odd.

Happy Christmas.

Stitch, stitch, sew

2011-12-23T02:02:00.000-08:00

Anticipation is rising round here. (We'll soon sort that out, come Sunday morning.)

In deep concentration, creating a silence suitable for cathedral or mortuary, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger spend all the hours of daylight sewing their stockings.

This is a grand feat of needlework they accomplish every Christmas, for which, I proudly take my hat off to myself, smug home educating bastard that I am. For years I have required the children to create their own cards and novelty gift items. (I am falling short of knitting with my own hair, but only just.)

They might, of course, do this not in pursuit of mastering craft skills, but because they intuitively know a stocking's not coming from anywhere else, so they may as well get on with it.

Tiger

Shark

Squirrel's stocking is missing. I am not allowed to photograph it because it is not finished.
The possibility that it will ever be finished is remote, so I have put in a picture of my favourite garment, ever.
It is a tongue costume. I bet I would look irresistibly sexy in this little number.
It has the bumps and white bits for when you are diseased and malnourished and everything.

We did nothing else as a consequence of hours of silent stitchery, so nothing to detain you, except maybe the moment I brought home from my exhausting shopping trip three lemons and six eggs.

Squirrel's eyes lit up at the idea of some lemony curdy tarty treat in store. Until I told her that the lemons were for my tonic and the eggs were for balancing on my nose to show how amazingly clever I could be after half a bottle of gin.

Dragging something from nothing

2011-12-22T23:21:00.000-08:00

I am determined to enjoy the lovely festive season.

First stop, I take the kids ice skating in the Elements Shopping Mall.

Shut up about how ice is kept sub-zero in the sublime retail experience of the air-con sub-tropics.

Remember, now is that special time, when we ignore the bleeding obvious, perform acts of self-defeating stupidity, commit ourselves to wilful blindness, and basically lie while paying for the privilege of doing so. I have to find a happy Christmas somewhere.

And of course I'm not ice-skating, so don't ask whether my Christmas joy extends there. It does not. I haven't grown to my wise old age of fifty-plus by thinking it a good idea to strap metal blades under my feet and try walking on frozen water.

I push off to Starbucks with the rest of the expat home ed mummies, where we grumble about Christmas in Hong Kong, plus the fact that we'd go home, except you English people are inconsiderate enough to have an economic crisis and are only offering work that doesn't pay enough for ice skating down at the Elements Mall.

Apart from paying through the nose to trash the environment, give the kids something else to complain about, and find a therapeutic outlet for my misery guts, I decide to extend my complete enjoyment of the festive season by walking the children across Kowloon in a spirit of happy trial, from east to west.

Yes, I know you said it was a stupid idea and that my sense of direction is so bad I seriously have trouble finding my way out the bathroom. Shut up.

Alright, I ended up two hours later hopelessly lost before realising I was in Mong Kok, having negotiated a flyover and a building site, but I blame the map, which had a ruddy great hole thanks to Squirrel leaving a chewy sweet on it.

If only we'd brought the jumbo, we could have got out of here

Despite that minor three-hour setback, it remains a celebratory day suitable for a Christmassy outing. I did not weep and the children did not fall to fighting (well, only once).

Indeed, there are many successes. We saw a tortoise walking down the street (I was not hallucinating); I found a cook's shop on Shanghai Road selling spoons with long handles (needed round here); we met Daddy Dig for the exhibition on imperial examinations; ate at our preferred down-market, formica-table Indian restaurant; and finally went shopping in Temple Street Night Market, where I threatened Dig with a Chinese burn unless he bought me a medallion of Alice in Wonderland to use for my book art.

There. A day of profound success. I am counting it all joy. Maybe I can now feel the Christmas spirit begin to overwhelm me as I type.

And shut up about the Merlot as well.

Not a must-read for the joy-filled

2011-12-21T19:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a great strain. I think it is made worse, being in Hong Kong.

In England, I can see the point. The lights and the tinsel are needed, because a December mid-winter is damn dark and cold. We have to bring sparkle into the bleak somehow.

Straight off, don't tell me to do it with the Christian. I am a gal of human blood, gristle and bone; earth, light and dark. This winter festival comes from feeding need. But I don't mind the religious believers overlaying my primitive with fine spiritual sentiments and the loveliest language, of course not. I'll get in on the act myself if it means I can take a time to join them, and listen to the music inspired by their devotions.

I believe it's basic fire and warmth which keep the cold from taking the hardest toll. And we can hope a bit of glam might bring anticipation; perhaps we could have rewards after all, even though in reality most of life outside looks dead and done for.

Show a few pin pricks of light, and we might also enjoy our imaginations. We can grow stories from dark places in long nights. For that, bring company, and add some over-eating to remind our bodies of human satisfaction.

Full stomachs, warm toes, shared minds, all safeguards in the moment against the lean months ahead, and yes, I can see the point of Christmas in dark, cold England.

But I am out here, and denied my December England. I don't have the props. No dark and starry nights, foot-stomping in frost, or winter breath showing me undeniable evidence before my very eyes. The weather in sub-tropics Hong Kong is lukewarm sunny, like an early English summer. The people stroll by in shorts, no-one looks to their own breath, and there are no hearths.

I can't give myself up to any widespread self-deception, either, as I can do in England. Few of the traders around us share this festival, so there's no cultural conspiracy which I can look to, to sweep me along. The shops will stay open throughout, the Christian families take their observations seriously, and the retail experience is just that. Christmas comes fast in the sales opportunity calender of round-the-world retail festivals, just after the Golden month, Hallowe'en and before the New Year.

I am left then, with a denuded Christmas of one plastic tree, 24 dented baubles and three strings of lurid tinsel.

But because I have an imagination and a bottle of sherry, I'm thinking up means to make one or two days more special than the rest. I will enjoy watching the children be delighted by chocolate and puzzles.

And I know, on peering into her stocking, Tiger won't ask, like me, What is the point? Well, I'm opening the sherry because we all made it through another year. And look, even though I am not in England, I'm still alive! That has got to be worth a moment of reflection. Please don't blow it to tell me otherwise.

Michael Gove; infant with train set

2011-12-20T03:19:00.000-08:00

Not surprising.

Since Global Gove left China his eyes have been all wide-eyed and starry; his brain ticking away like an infant planning playtime.

What knocked him out in China, apparently, was an ordinary book of homework. He was told it was merely research papers - look, nothing special! Simply written by ordinary students.

There was probably a moment of silence as the awe-struck Michael took this document in his trembling hand, the jealousy rising, for what the Asian education system produces, while his brain tells him these papers by 13-year olds are surely to be compared to the professional academic, peer-reviewed journal articles in the miserable, fallen-behind, lost-the-global-educational-race, failed UK.

So, like infant Joe, he's determined to change your education system. He's bringing it up to date for a twenty-first century world. He has a train set. You are the dinosaurs.

Now what steps could Michael plan, to turn your kids into proper world scholars, whipping the behinds of the Mini Changs? With his eyes starred from the successes of the east, but with his Tory heart beating, here's playtime.

1. Raise your parental anxiety level.
Essential to all ideologically-driven change, the parent-dinosaurs must first be softened up, and made to feel like shit.

We ask, What is wrong with your kid? Tinkertop is failing. She is falling behind! Look! She wants to stuff worms in her pockets and she's aged six! Why is she not reading like her Asian competitors? Do you stupid parents not know Mini Chang has already read the Asian classics and she is aged five.

Huh. Tinkertop is doomed. Unless you access the right nursery from age two and pump her brain with a standardised Phonics Reading Course from a reputable education supplier to be conducted at home on weekends.

2. Undermine the professional authority of state-trained teachers.
Here's my next train coming! Toot toot!

PGCEs waste time, don't they? Dossy, scrounging students, loafing for a year? And look at the result! Failing schools. You dinosaurs are right not to value Tinkertop's poxy teacher!

What the UK train should do is make teachers better. Beat them. Make training courses shorter, 100% classroom-based, and no pedagogy nonsense.

Then howabout taking courses away from universities altogether? Encourage private business to take over training!

We could assign school functions to lower-class, state-trained ancillaries, on hire-em/fire-em contracts, and schools could buy in services of privately-trained, classroom-experienced Deliverers of Curriculum.

Schools could ignore the local authority, and buy services from agencies who supply specialist staff, for a fee. With only a small contribution from you - which you are sure to make to improve Tinkertop's chances of success - the government provides the service you want and saves money!

3. Set up UK Education on business franchise principles.
Put the dinosaur parents on the train! Then, even though I am in charge of the track, it looks like they are driving the train!

Tell the dinosaurs they have total control to buy Tinkertop's educational services. You want your school to be academies, don't you? Academies want to be run like businesses! What's more, they're an excellent means by which to cream off public money and put it in private hands.

Think of the possibilities, dinosaurs. You could buy in everything. Private companies could offer curriculum packages, school administration services, security, homework marking - anything!

You name it, everything educational could be outsourced! Tinkertop's entire educational career from birth could be supplied at competitive cost by private enterprise!

All led by Michael's mates, come round for playtime.

Nonsense. We are only playing.

We've been top to bottom, right to left

2011-12-19T00:38:00.000-08:00

By now, it should be obvious to anyone curious about home education.

One reason we declined school and chose other, is that we wanted to give our kids some social advantage.

I'm not joking. It is true. The problem with school is that a young person is locked for up to fifteen years within an institution that contains, more or less, people just like them; all treated pretty much the same.

It does not give a young person the widest view of society.

You school-choosing parents I have encountered who wanted to rectify that - to pack into a child's 'free' time of evenings, weekends and holidays a greater range of peoples, with a full variety of experiences - have had to show similar determination and guts to the parents I usually meet in the home ed world.

Hats off to you, because at some point you inevitably end up sword-waving at some little Hitler in post of headteacher who threatens that your day off for an outing with Weird Aunty Laura is be defined as 'truancy' and thus will count towards your prosecution.

But I could never be bothered to go down that fighting route - nor roll out of bed, dress, make egg sandwiches, or play poxy school-gate politics - so we chose the conflict-avoidance path of other, and considered the wide range of social worlds home ed could lead us to.

And it has. Even though we've had plenty of family punch-ups on the way.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have been pushed into many social worlds and met people beyond their normal boundaries of class, wealth, cultural values, and social attitudes. Some they've liked, some they've feared, some were frankly bizarre, and some they couldn't understand.

It's all our great experiment, you can put it down to that, if you like. To introduce children to a great many people and circumstance (i.e. the real world) in the idea that kids come out the other end as adults with a wider understanding of people and society, i.e. having social advantage.

Well this is how it works in practice. Yesterday Shark, Squirrel and Tiger considered the life of necessity and hardship led by Shoeless Farmer Chang.

Today (thanks to Sophia leading me astray), they've enjoyed the life of frivolous extravagance, taking tea at The Peninsula where, if you're one of us, no explanation is needed.

On the market stall

2011-12-18T22:14:00.000-08:00

I set up a beach mat on a concrete step. Then I make the children sit by the roadside for five hours selling hand-made leather notebooks.

I call it an Education.

The Local Authority probably calls it Child Exploitation, but they can shut up.

I'm teaching my kids about the horrors of the business world and, because it's a Sunday, how hard it is to practice the seven virtues.

Restraint.
Great self control required to abstain from yelling at the passers by WHAT'S THE SODDING MATTER WITH YOU? WHY AREN'T YOU BUYING THE DAMN NOTEBOOKS? HEY! YOU'RE NOT EVEN LOOKING!

Persistence.
You bet. The Grit and the Gritlets are born to this virtue. None of us is giving up. After an hour I set the mini grits the challenge: make people STOP.

Shark suggests trip wire strung between our stall and the banana tree opposite. Yes, this would do the trick. I would try it, only I haven't wire long enough.

After some buyer enticement strategy thinking I decide to employ my endless capacity for charm, added to a little light nudity and some come-hither eyeball rolling. Shark made me stop. She became extremely agitated, shouting, Not the hand gestures, mummy please no no no.

That actually brought someone over and I sold The Dancer! Success! And only two hours in!

Shark wouldn't say it again so we had to wait another hour.

Chastity.
Not applicable. I am sitting on the road that leads to the beach. And ladies, round here it is the temperature of a warm summer's day in England. Of course I'm not going to stop my eyes wandering appreciatively to manly bodies and well-turned buttocks.

Patience.
Problem virtue. I am not patient and neither are the mini grits. We want stuff now; preferably without mercy.

In fact, I consider sitting at the roadside for five hours being peaceably nice to people is a challenge in itself. Especially when I am not allowed to trip them up, knock them down, verbally berate them, nor show even the merest glimmer of hostility. This is a tough one.

But I am learning. I managed to sublimate some of my aggressions into a scornful commentary whispered under my breath at their departing rears, Of course he will not buy you Little Button because he doesn't love you enough and he thinks your arse is too big.*

Charity.
Aha! I sell two notebooks in one go! Lady Musician and Shy Romantic. To a woman who is clearly a discerning person, appreciating the fine accomplishments of hand-stitched notebook making.

And as for the charity, not bloody likely. I'm here to sell the ruddy books, not give them away for the improvement of my soul.

My next customer, requiring only a small amount of marketing manhandling, is very soon desperate to possess Flowers (the one where I may have filled the inside pages with pictures of semi-naked men). However, she persists in haggling Hong Kong style. I feel sure she is putting off the millions of other customers who are surely desperate for my lovely notebooks. In the end I take two dollars off the price just to get rid of her.

I think that could count as charity.

Kindness.
I'm sorry? I'm here to SELL stuff. As far as I remember, kindness did not figure big in the selling world. I consider that making the damn things in the first place was an act of selfless love for which I am now seeking enough reward to buy more leather and make some more.

Humility.
Well it is a humbling experience, sitting at the side of the road for five hours, growing colder and more desperate with overtones of hysteria.

At the end of the afternoon, the old farmer passes us, tugging his lettuces behind him on a trolley. He is thin enough to hide behind a broom handle, has no shoes, wears rags in winter, and what he doesn't sell, he eats.

I make Shark, Squirrel and Tiger consider how he has to work all day, everyday, in all weathers for a product that can be obtained free of charge by slugs. Today he'll probably make less money than me, and he won't while away the time by consuming the profit in biscuits.

Humbling, indeed.

By the end of the day, my arse was numb, my knee joints frozen up, and I felt obliged to give the mini grits some of the proceeds in ice cream, plus their desired notebook each.

But we sold five notebooks (and one book box), considered humanity, earned enough money for six more offcuts of leather in Sham Shui Po, and delivered an education suitable for a Sunday. On balance, sore bum excepted, a day well spent.

*Throughout the ordeal I felt increasingly like Bernard.

After my brain was sucked out by aliens...

2011-12-17T16:40:00.000-08:00

...I was left with no understanding at all.

Why are three children following me? Who expects me to feed them? And who is that strange man? The one trying to pull himself up by his hair, while he stares wild-eyed at the heap of leather, sparkle, and paper offcut piled around me on all floors, surfaces and, inexplicably, hanging from the door.

Ignore these people. I find they go away in time.

Instead, look at my lovely notebooks!

The Cream Collection includes...

Ice Cream Swirl
Lickable.
What would it be like to everyday taste
strawberries and vanilla?

Nature Lover
Beguiles and frustrates in equal measure.
Slip your fingers in here and they'll only catch on the twists and tangles
of thread that stitch it all together.

Should it be Love?
Fireworks, sparkle, party time.
You never know which way it could go.
Shall we keep it light and simple?

Big Button
There's no denying it. One big, big,
button.

Little Button
For the love of tiny, shiny, cream-coloured buttons.
Have to put them somewhere, Squirrel.
Can't hold the inventory system in your pockets everyday.

The Brown Collection includes...

The Sophisticate

You are one classy lady!
But I promise not to take delight when I witness you fall in the gutter.
In fact I'll help you out. I seem to be down here already.

Bound 'n' bead
A girl after my own heart.
You cannot leave those beads alone.
Is there anywhere you won't put them?

All the W's
Wistful, Wondering, Waiting, When will it be Wednesday?
Wonderful notebook for the Woman with the copy of Woolf, the Walnut desk,
the Whimsical gaze, and the Floral-patterned tea dress.
(Okay, there's an F. Obviously it doesn't all have to be W.)

Ahh, flowers!

And such a pretty cover!
Now who's to say the paper inside isn't bursting with delightful pictures of naked men?

(I'm only told you can get away with porn that way.)

The Red Collection...

Little Red Book
Chew on that, Chairman Mao.

Sshh!
You cannot betray the secrets of the boudoir!

(My secret is, there is no boudoir.)

The Black Collection...

Little Black Book
Strictly NO PEEPING.

Black and Silver
For the lady with the Halston spaghetti strap evening dress.
It's not true that I'm out to punch you in the face.
I just tell myself that when I'm jealous you actually have somewhere to go to wear it.

Some of these I must package and send to you, thank you for being here.

But for the others, I have a fantastic get-rich-quick scheme! I shall sit by the road selling hand-made notebooks! What could possibly go wrong on that one?

Notebook heaven

2011-12-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

NOTICE

Suspension of household services.

No laundry. No cooking. No cleaning. No nice, soothing, consoling words.

No bleedin' nothing.

Mama is BUSY.*

*Making notebooks.

Not any old notebooks. These are notebooks made for characters.
Totally unique.

(And I think only of you when I make them.)

Shy Romantic
Leather so soft you can't tell where your fingertip ends and the notebook begins. Bound with a pink ribbon, velvet on one side, cord on the other. A design that cannot reveal itself ...until you gently unbutton the cover.

Once inside, turn the pages and they'll blush pink and cream. And ohh! Pictures to surprise and delight you! But I couldn't photograph those. Leave this delicate little book with some modesty, please.

Film Lover
It's obvious. You want to get your hands on this little tightly-bound suede number as soon as the cinema lights dim, when you can unhook that satin ribbon and unlace that embroidery cord.

I know you say it's to record the perfect elements of film noir. But here's the truth. You only want to get your fingers into this beautiful pocket-sized notebook, to make your mark on those beautiful clean white pages, and linger over those images of film memorabilia.

Save it till the lights come up, when you can open to unfurl...

the Buster Keaton umbrella! Sprinkled with silver sparkle!

To the Woman who Wants to Write Letters
Let's end our whiny envelope excuses and feeble letter laments! Let us take one of these notebooks each! With yours in hand, you can write me that message! And actually post it!

Here, see my answer in this cream leather notebook, bound by cord, clipped by peg, and wrapped about with beads to count the days before the letters arrive.

Let us unfold those pages together to display our note papers & pockets; essential to file stamps, stickers & paperclips.

Now I cannot take you by the hand and walk you to the post office, but would it help if I gave you the damn notebook?

Lady Musician
I know this. Life is hard when passion is your only guide. I know too, your suffering; you, driven attic-wise, moulded by creative forces beyond your control, your soul eased only on a Sunday morning when you get your fingers round the old joanna.

Then for you, this. A notebook of sound, to soothe you in your restless sleep.

It has a bell on.

And it tinkles.

Wild wire
Where is this character going next? What? They didn't die? Well, who gives a damn! It's too much fun to watch!

Life, held together (only just) with flexible gold wire. Fastens precariously with a clasp. Sometimes not at all! Totally impractical, unsustainable and unsuitable for all normal activities. Can't be held in anyone's pocket, bag, or briefcase. Needs a space all of its own.

The Dancer
Soooo cooool, this modern interpretive dance. Eggs and Lycra! And here's me, still trying to recover from the peacock and hoop!

It is true. I am a dance ingenue. But I make a mean gold-covered leather book with soft cream handmade paper pages which leap from the interior. A little like the dancers on the front, leaping to get off.

(I'm sorry one of them lost an arm in the attempt.)

Mine. Mine, mine, all mine.
Soft brown leather (like my eyes); single bead (like my tear); floppy tassel (like my beard).

More tomorrow.

At last I discover...

2011-12-15T05:27:00.000-08:00

...what I want to do with my life. It is to come and live here, in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.

I shall stay here forever, and spend my days making fine hand-sewn leather notebooks with unique decorations, fastenings, and creative embellishments.

Because Sham Shui Po is the only place a crafter can ever be.

It is a Hong Kong front end for the clothing, design and accessories manufacture in mainland China. Which means it is stuffed floor to ceiling, street to street, nose to tail, back to front, inside to outside, alpha to omega, with buttons, ribbons, threads, sparkly things, lace, fabrics, embroidery, leather, sequins, clasps, buckles, decorative metals, beads, chains, pom poms, crafty things and more crafty things at prices that mean they can have all my money for ever and ever amen.

By the third shop on the second street my heart had stopped working and my eyeballs dropped out.

It was only by Squirrel's support that I made it beyond the stone bead shop where I had begun to hyperventilate.

Sham Shui Po is nirvana, plain and simple. When you arrive here, you will find me where I left my body, propped up against the decorative metal pieces for attachment by thread, right there, between the cherubs and the antique fashioned love hearts.

International just ain't English

2011-12-14T03:43:00.000-08:00

Today, we home educating group of pan-global mamas and papas use Christmas as an excuse, and go out together for Christmas dinner.

There wasn't much I recognised of Christmas dinner in a vegetarian Indian meal made by Hindus in a Chinese district of Hong Kong. But I guess it was the route of least offence in bringing together a large mixed crowd of expat home educators, drawn from a range of nations, round the same table under the one banner of Christmas.

Then, for a moment, even though the company was very warm and lovely, I admit, I felt a teeny bit homesick.

Because from here, in the slide down to the big day, I know I will miss my local time-of-the-year ways of England. I have no neighbour with whom to compare shovel action; no Doreen at the Co-op with her Christmas tree earrings; no menacing threat of visitations made by extended family; no anguished considerations about whether to tip the paper boy; no ambush by tinselled charity muggers; no real opportunity to compete on points of mince pie snobbery; no enforced reindeer-antler wearing; and no repressed evening gathering where giggly and risque behaviour appalls everyone, if only they could remember it. (I certainly hope no-one can.)

I will miss all that. For the second year running.

I worry that the children too are far gone from England.

Here I am, teaching Shark, Tiger and Squirrel the multi-national, cross-cultural behaviour suitable for a global scale round the dining table, but are they in danger of being a little culturally lost, and even failing to pick up important local identities?

Like tonight. I fear that my children simply do not know how to behave properly, like English people should.

They refuse to join in the table running, cannot join the rowdy game of throw-balloons-about, and even fail to be drawn by the lure of Santa hats.

After an hour, I observe how my mini grits depressingly begin to resemble the middle management team at the office Christmas party. The tee-total ones. Despite the fact that everyone else's nationhood of kids is running around the tables and playing throw-balloons-about.

It tells me one thing. I must, for the sake of my children, forget I am international in Hong Kong, and get into the proper spirit of Christmas. Then I can teach my gritlets our fine English Christmas customs.

I will tell myself, it is all very well being a global citizen, but some local customs can never be bettered.

We will start gently with whiny complaints about trees, baubles, tinsel, the weather and the cost of everything. Then we will move on to complaining while over-indulging in mince pies. Next we will try social etiquette, where we alternate between being over-polite and downright offensive, before we try advanced skills: making cruel and acerbic judgements on someone else's Christmas decorations while pretending not to.

Finally, I will ensure everyone understands how your mother has a god-given right to get a bit tipsy and launch herself face first over the sofa because it is Christmas.

I think the lessons should begin tonight, ladies, with my large glass of port.

Spontaneous

2011-12-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

What I have found is, when it comes to sleepover culture, I am a total amateur. The real professionals of this genre are ten-year old children.

Like Flizz. She jumps up in the middle of a Chinese park and shouts I've got a good idea! Let's swap sisters! One of yours can come to us and I can come home with you!

I am out of my league. If I put up any opposition it boils down to a half-open mouth and look of dementia.

Because I am from an old folk's perspective, where sleepovers cannot be spontaneous! Surely they have to be organised, parental signatures obtained, release forms issued, a timetable drawn out, somehow with monthly planning, and maybe a meeting or two arranged with spreadsheets and power point demonstrations.

Give me a week or two and I can think of reasoning in detail why no sleepover can be accomplished for the next three Saturdays in a row, and probably all of next year.

I am motivated by fear, of course. I am almost frozen with the terror of imagining the freak accident that causes damage to someone else's child. Maybe I will inadvertently push them off the balcony or bury them under a tree. What then?

Or they will have a wretched and miserable time of it, go home and exclaim Thank God I'm home! Mother you will never know the state of their floors!

If I had been honest and said those things in the Chinese park, I know it would have been pointless. Flizz would have pooh poohed them. She is a home ed child, which means she has already experimented with throwing herself off the balcony and who gives a damn about the floor?

But I am still of the old guard, edgy and uncertain. Flizz's ten-year old confidence makes it a little better: the new wave of sleepover cadets are clearly capable enough to arrange solutions for themselves without the unnecessary complications dreamed up by elderly doddering parents.

So that's what we do. Squirrel gaily scampers off with Flizz's mum, and Flizz jumps on a bus and comes home with us. It doesn't matter, she says, that she has no jimmy jams because we are sure to have a spare pair (gulp, the two available pairs are probably cut up for dolly dresses). The toothbrush doesn't matter either, she says, because you can buy those anywhere. And so what if she's wearing the same clothes again tomorrow? She looks indifferent at me as I raise this last weed of a thought before loudly asking me Is there something wrong with you?

So there, I was taught a lesson. We had a sleepover and it all went well. I did not accidentally assault, poison, or damage someone else's child. She didn't give a damn about the floors. There was only a slight ruckus between me and Shark which probably sent Flizz home saying God, that woman ought to chill.

And I never want to hear again, thanks, how home ed children are socially isolated, how they never see friends, how they never do ordinary kid fun stuff. We deal with certainties in our world. Where, clearly, friendship does not wait on parental organisation, scheduling, or the next free Saturday in the upcoming month.

The rat

2011-12-12T23:24:00.000-08:00

I should have remembered to tell you about the rat.

This is my reward for choosing to live on an island with snakes and frogs and things that live. The creeping jumping slithering scurrying things lived here first.

The experience was all horrible. I may have forgot because there are things I don't want to remember.

About 2am, rat scrabbled a way into my bedroom and that was THAT. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa in terror, fully dressed and sitting mostly bolt upright, clutching a plank of wood. Apart from the two hours I lost when my eyes closed down, I was ready. Me or rat. No way was it going to gnaw through me without a fight.

When morning came, I never had seen rat. Not tail, whisker, nor brown shape slipping between table and door. But I was no better in my mind. The problem was, I never saw rat leave. By daylight, I hunted all over, and there was no rat to be found. Only a small broken grill on the laundry room floor. Nevertheless, the following night I tried again to stay awake with all the lights ablaze, stationed on RAT GUARD DUTY.

The rat has not come back. Apart from the horror left marked on my soul, its only lingering impact is on Dig, like he has the final laugh, because when I grip someone by the arm and, a little hysterical and wild-eyed, tell them This story is true! Once I slept with a RAT! he smiles, and looks rather pleased.

Can you trust the children?

2011-12-11T23:32:00.000-08:00

Term end approaching!

It is inevitable, isn't it? The piteous infant mewling. The forlorn cries expressed from some of the miniature offspring, their wails now only of exhaustion, relief, and gratitude, so glad school is over.

Come return in January, so despairing will be the sighs from some of them, they will cause a minor typhoon in the tropics.

Inevitable then, how you flirt with the idea of making school stop for a time in 2012. Who wouldn't? But because the school closes its doors to your fantastic idea of flexi-schooling (more fool them) you might wonder about the fearful route of home education.

But I am here to help! Even if this post is only for the two of you. One day I shall change the idea of primary education in England for a generation. I will have children led by artists, geologists, scientists, archaeologists, musicians, foresters, old lady lace makers, philosophers, librarians, poets and dancers. All kids will be equipped with fields, woods, all outdoors, and I will have them playing, creating, making stories, music, art, staring at the sky, and bloody well being left alone to climb trees and build their own social system.

That caters for the up to age 7s nicely. And I will ban anyone with a clipboard within 200 miles of them. Yes, that too. I have a magic wand somewhere. When I find it, I will use it.

Until then, bad luck. If you really do choose home ed in 2012, then alongside your must-have character list of bloody-mindedness, teeth-grinding determination, and the hahaha of false confidence, you will need strategies to deal with insecurities, fears and the neighbours.

Join the club. If you have any words of wisdom about my favourite fears in the land of home education, then let's have them. We have a lot of fear swilling about and we could do with some suggestions:

1. Fear what we're told will happen to Tinkertop if she is removed from school will all come true.
2. Fear that Tinkertop will end her days sleeping on a park bench. Illiterate, unemployed, alcoholic, pregnant, on drugs, crazy. All by next Thursday and it is YOUR FAULT.
3. Fear of social exclusion. Whatever that is.
4. Fear that your family, relatives and friends will never speak to you again, never help you, and never lend you money. Ever again.
5. Fear of not being able to do it. And when you do it, that it is the wrong it.
6. Fear of being with your own kids. Locked in the house. All day long. And they have scissors.
7. More fear, of generally disabling variety, about life. Things like never being able to buy shoes or have sex ever again. (True. At least round here.)
8. Fear of the weird people in home ed. You know, the ones who knit their own hair because they don't believe in commercially grown cotton.
9. Fear of the Ed Psych, Social Services, EWO, the LA, the PCSO, truancy patrol, all schools, forced adoption services, family law courts, the headteacher you don't even fancy, in fact everyone in any remote position of authority, including the parking attendant who works at Netto and Miss Timms the ballet teacher you have previously despised.
10. Fear of missing out, but not sure what constitutes out.
11. Fear that after one week Tinkertop will come to the crushing conclusion that any school is better than your attempt at reading a book aloud with all the voices.
12. Fear that you won't like the person you have to become to do it. And Tinkertop won't either.

So I can address all of those issues.

Just not today, that's all. Because today I am busy. A large group of us home ed mummies and daddies must get together in a dark room to watch a panto.

This panto is put on by our kids, aged 6-15. They found a script on the Internet, then sorted the whole drama themselves; beginning to end, costumes, props, learning the lines, rehearsals, direction, dramatic action, who controls the light switch and what to do about yeaughh! - the kiss - when NO WAY are you kissing him, no matter how good looking he is.

Thus we have Beauty is a Beast. A total and complete cross-cultural, mixed-age, mixed-sex group, call-it-education SUCCESS. Not one parent did DIDDLYSQUAT for this over the last three months, except one who booked a rehearsal room on a weekly basis, made tea for the parents of the panto stars, and sat in on rehearsals for 30 minutes in case two siblings punched each other. (NOT MINE.)

Well, we proud parents photographed each other,
waiting for the final show. We did that.

So yes, I can address all those fears you might have if you are considering home ed in 2012. But as you can see, the children can do it so much better.

All you got to do, is trust them.

Lunar eclipse

2011-12-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

Wake up in strange mood, then realise what it is. The lunar influence!

That explains it. A burstingly ripe, round moon, waiting to be combined with the soft embrace of the deep shadows of the earth! What intimacy of life's rhythm is to be shared with we women keepers of eternity, this very night!

I look down at my helpless arrangement of limbs and torso that last enjoyed action in 1876. If only the pull of the moon were true! If only I could be all plumped up with voluptuousness once more, lose twenty years, and have anyone give a damn!

Then the moon at its most full and beguiling would be worth something! I would steal it and keep it, along with its life force, in the cupboard, then never again would it seem I have taken the crumpled body of the peat bog man to wear for my own.

But I cannot go about stealing moons. Someone would notice. Anyway, it wouldn't work. The moon cannot make something from nothing. I couldn't even get propositioned yesterday in Wan Chai! Maybe the rates are too high. I mean, a thousand dollars? Is that too much?

Whatever. When darkness came, we crowded together on the roof, nursing hot chocolate, cameras, and a grudge about the torch.

We watched in awe. The soft embrace of the earth was beautiful to see. It made the moon blush red.

Have people no modesty? Some of them even filmed the encounter.

Santa will be very happy with me

2011-12-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

I negotiate with Dig to triplet-mind Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, while I travel to Hong Kong island to do the Christmas shopping.

Success!

That may have been the success of the day, it is true.

But I am never downhearted! My achievements can be yet dragged - kicking and screaming - from what merely appears to be abject misery and failure.

Here then are my achievements on the Christmas shopping front. I am in celebratory mood.

1. I attempt the ordeal in Wan Chai, hot-spot for prostitution and plumbing. I am trying to think of something like an achievement for that. Maybe it is that I was never mistaken for either a prostitute or a plumber in the entire afternoon.

2. I pass a lot of shops selling taps. I realise that you can get anything you want, tap-wise, in Hong Kong. Gold dolphins arising from shells? No problem. I become an expert on taps. (Not on prostitution.)

3. I recover my bearings after becoming hopelessly lost and wandering aimlessly in the wrong direction because I cannot read a map. It only takes an hour!

4. I never bumped into anyone (not counting the handbag incident), and I never had to walk with my fist stretched out in front of me aimed at face-height, like I do in Mong Kok.

5. I found the art supplies shop despite having scribbled over the address, and I was brave enough to enter the little door at street level, where the concierge ignored me.

6. I managed to get a lift going in the right direction. Better still, this time I did not end up on floor 35 for the karaoke bar, where I did not need to frantically press buttons in the manner of a total imbecile who cannot use a lift. At floor 15, a crowd of Chinese people did not get in, cramming in a space for 10, and forcing the lift back up to floor 35 before trying to take me hostage to sing Cantonese love-pop songs. (It is taking me some time to recover from that afternoon, actually.)

7. The art supplies shop was open.

8. I did not spend Dig's monthly wage on paper, paint, sparkly things, and glue.

9. I have acquired a lot of Chinglish schedulers (pointless but irresistible), and an assortment of pretty craft items that will prompt the children to fantastic craft (pointless but hopeful.)

10. I never told Dig that I found the exact same items $44,256 dollars cheaper and three shops down the road from the ferry pier. Neither did I mention that if I had just bought the stuff there I would have saved five hours of his child-minding time while I wandered blindly about Wan Chai becoming a tap expert and wondering if at any point I might be mistaken for a plumber or a hooker.

Success. I can barely wait for Christmas Day.

Carbon Chemistry for kids

2011-12-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

It isn't often I recommend any paid-for course or curriculum, is it? Mostly because, until now, we haven't followed any.

Well, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have now followed one - just a weeny one - and I want to recommend it.

Hmm. I feel strangely guarded about recommending any 'learning product' to the home ed community.

I'm not sure why. Maybe because the community is so diverse, any recommendation is likely to be pointless. Or perhaps I just don't want to cause any fuss.

I know it seems a modest enough thing to do - recommend a course - but in my experience the home ed world is filled with individuals who have very strong opinions about hearing things like this. Usually they are more than willing to share those opinions. Vigorously. It's what I sometimes love and hate about this community, you wonderfully irritating people.

I mean, if I chose to recommend a paid-for curriculum on a discussion list for example, and I picked the wrong list, the reactions I might get are various.

Contempt might be one of them. Someone will tut here is an example of trying to turn an income from need. Education is already free, and people are always trying to make money from it.

Someone else will caution how any course is all very well but you have to watch the American ones. They seem normal, yes. Really the author has an underlying political goal to promote a Christian right-wing agenda.

The woman who is bonkers might pop up at that point to say the author is actually a follower of Satan. Evidence, right there in Chapter 3. What's more, you can find videos on YouTube to prove it. (Someone usually suggests psychiatric help.)

Another voice will pip up then that if you're following a structured curriculum, why don't you go live in the offices of the Local Authority? And didn't you know it would all be for nothing, because all exams are pointless?

That suggestion might be added to by someone hinting darkly that if you follow a structured, paid-for, local authority sanctioned curriculum today, then the government will make it law for everyone tomorrow.

Finally, someone will brightly add their autonomously educated son has 15 A Levels and an offer at Cambridge.

At that point everyone agrees it's a totally individual choice and a wonderful way to conduct an education.

All of which is a long way of saying, I'm not recommending this weeny course on any home ed discussion list. Fortunately, I have a blog.

I can say Boo. Our Carbon Chemistry Co-op is finished. The final workshop was held today. I am forlorn without the Carbon Chemistry Co-op. It has been brilliant. Big smackeroos to our weekly host Kriss, and to author Ellen McHenry.

I thoroughly recommend it.

The course, the experiments, and especially the coming together of a dozen kids once a week to follow the structure and create a chemical chaos. It stood up well to their assaults.

Not so cruel

2011-12-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

I think a lot about Britain.

I hear the old place is set for trauma on a new scale, as this week it is to be destroyed by weather. Not enough then, to be squeezed in the grip of the Heartless Tories, froze to death in the winter dark, and generally forced to suffer under the iron fist of Christmas Shopping.

Because we are bathed in a warm golden sunshine here in Hong Kong, and I have a bedroom view of green woolly mountains, I sometimes feel it is incumbent upon me to do that expat thing I see done in the comments following British national misery news. Where someone with a name like Imaluckybleeder cheerily pops up under the latest crisis to gloat that the sun is shining where they live, they have a cold beer, and they couldn't give a toss because they hated Britain anyway.

It is unnecessary, isn't it? My heart and my sympathies lie really in England, even though the sun is very warm and the mountains very beautiful. So I would like to reassure the people of Britain that a temporary expat life is often not as wonderful as Imaluckybleeder suggests. Crap local beer aside, here is the misery from this particular exile. Let this hand hold with yours.

1. La famille Grit is soon to be living in Hong Kong without income. This is a remarkable feat of financial management and household planning. I would like everyone to think of us as smart-arsed tax evaders as we swank it up in one of the world's most expensive cities. In actual fact we are mostly incompetent, and will probably be living from now until March on Pot Noodle.

2. My stomach ache is worse. Next week, thanks to a contract ending, Dig loses his comfortable access to medical services. This means, until we return to Blighty in March, we will officially be in Hong Kong as tourists. Since I might be heading for full-scale Ebola by the weekend, I have clearly timed my need for expensive medical treatment, perfectly.

3. The phone camera is bust. The damn thing won't switch on. I have done the usual: left it alone to consider its options, prodded it, shouted at it, bashed it on the table, and threatened it with fire. It ignores me and mocks me with its little blank screen. Obviously it wants to die. Whatever, let the little bastard suffer, see if I care. It has pictures of Squirrel from today's home education outing. Cycling with a group of kids at Kowloon City Park.

4. We are at the brink of war with the neighbours. Give it a couple more days and we shall actually be at war; I shall be pouring bleach into their balcony plant pots and they will be shovelling dead geckos through the letterbox.

War is happening because when Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play, the neighbours complain. At first I was sympathetic - they have A BABY - but then I wondered if they were ringing the doorbell right at the off because they simply don't like the sound of kids playing and want to shut them up. Maybe they want to complain because they feel like it. Maybe the baby won't play with Mr Froggy so it must be our fault. Even Dig, who does not usually take my side over anything, is beginning to be a little fed up with them.

5. I have done nothing for Christmas. NOTHING. Apart from procuring two moose heads in a wreath. It will all be as last minute as last year. The only gift items I can think of for the dear daughters is an envelope full of cash apiece. But given the circumstances we are soon to find ourselves in, I'll be asking for a loan come January.

Let's not scare the middle-class readers

2011-12-06T17:42:00.000-08:00

The best place today is over here.

Enough material to keep this blog going for months.

I tutted and eyeball-rolled, of course, about the general tone and direction of the article. But I'm kind. It's the Guardian. And I'm giving the writer the benefit of the doubt; Jeevan probably wrote this piece for the paper's tender and delicate middle-class audience. Surely he knows what education is really out here. He only assumed the voice character type naive!

I say, everyone! Isn't it astonishing what some parents will do?!

Maybe it's right to keep the Guardian readers dipping their toes into the shallow end, Jeevan. Don't let them over the boundary, or near the deep end, thick with the radical unschooled working classes! These people will blow your mind!

It was a bit irritating, the oooh-aren't-we-daring, middle classness; the lurking fears on 'losing out', 'missing out' and blahblah how 'families will have to work hard to ensure they're up to speed with the curriculum in later years'.

There, you let it out. The National Curriculum is the middle-class code book of Acceptable Knowledge. Go beyond the boundary at your peril.

But I was grateful too for the article, because it brought out this fantastic comment, which I totally adored. I'm almost tempted to hunt down SwissedCottage and give them a big smackeroo.

Sounds like the newest craze for upper-middle class yummy mummies - perhaps something to fill the day for the ladies-who-lunch crowd? Their Tarquins and Saskias will be learning about artisanal cheeses and mid-20th century interpretive dance, whilst the Shanes and Jodis on the estates learn about whatever is on Sky TV...

It perfectly picked up the tone of the article, yet missed the point of learning outside school completely.

But say they're a little bit right! Because when a family takes a child out of school, their approach will probably promote that family's values and culture. So yes, you could say a middle-class family will seek to raise a middle-class child, like a Jewish family will raise a Jewish child. What? Did anyone know that?

But I'm not so sure you can say the same about ideas.

Once you come out of school, out here in the real world, what we learn comes from people in society. Guess what! There are different social groups out here!

Learning out of school is the most astonishingly egalitarian experience. You meet all sorts. Everyone is a teacher for your child. And, unlike school, you can't control the ideas people come with; you can't say what your child will learn or not; you can't predict or measure what your child will take away from any experience or interaction in the real world.

In my experience, learning outside the boundaries has been far more socially broadening than at school, where the intake can be narrowly focused. Out here you can rub shoulders with the family who live in the rough side of town, and the family who live at t'Hall, and both of you have got to help each other's kid build that space rocket.

See? Ideas are even stronger than class. Ideas that bring people together, regardless of whether we wear clogs or Manolos. Ideas about education, freedom, about learning, of choice, and autonomy.

With those ideas, people can tear up the middle-class code book. Yes, I know! We can even think dangerous ideas.

Now I've let out one of the secrets about knowledge! But shhh. We don't want to give anyone the vapours. Better not tell the Guardian readers.

Nearly a perfect fantasy day

2011-12-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

It isn't often I can do exactly as I like.

Wait. Stop there. I would like to claim 'exactly as I like' means indulging in thrilling conduct. Dangerous, dirty, and unbecoming. If memory serves me right, that behaviour might have implicated silk, heels, and two-seater sports cars.

Regretfully, I think that ended. I didn't give permission. When kids arrived, those days left.

Parental life now diverts me, i.e. I do grocery shopping, laundry, and self-piteous whining, alternating with heavy-duty staggering across deep and sinking badlands of responsibility. I am wearing old shoes and odd socks. I may have grown a beard.

My fantasies out of this mire - into the lightness of leisure and pleasure zones - sadly reveal how limited my expectations and ambitions have become.

Fantasy, to do exactly as I like, is now the impossibility of enjoying a few hours without continuous interruption, in solitary peaceandquiet. Maybe loafing about the house with no imperative to deliver food into anyone's mouth except my own. Better still, no-one to disrupt my cupofcoffee + packetofbiscuits.

Tiptop fantasy number one also adds the indulgence of reading what I'd like, writing when I'd like, listening to music without needing earphones, and being able to stare at pictures going past my eyes on the iplayer without niggle of guilt that I should be doing something with someone else that is educational.

Well, surprisingly, I do enjoy some of my fantasies today. Mostly thanks to a stomach ache and feeling of nausea, but still. Enough to hole me up on the island, provide me with a Get Out of Jail Free card, a perfect excuse not to have to face three million Chinese coming at me with high heels in Wan Chai, and another reason to evade the responsibility of Christmas shopping in the art supplies shop, at least for a while longer.

I spend my feeling-a-bit-off-day loafing about the house, wearing an old tunic with a coffee stain down the front, and ignoring the children in a professional manner by saying I am not feeling well, go and ask your father.

Thus I get to listen to some early music, watch an episode of The Killing, and read from Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French (funny) to Leslie Chang's Factory Girls (not funny).

Of course I do not manage all my fantasy intact. (It possibly also shows why I never achieve anything of substance and would be foolish to set my ambitions higher than a daily blog post.)

In the writing of these few miserly words, I have been interrupted 17 times; eight of which were demands for food, mugs, laundry, and scraps of paper. Two of the more irritating interruptions included my apparently necessary involvement in a fight over who is the more horrible sister (Shark or Tiger?) and the impact a husband can have, when he comes into the room, announces 'it is too bright in here' and proceeds to switch all the lights off.

The start of another expensive new hobby

2011-12-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

Do you girls know how many pairs of shoes I could have bought? Do you?

French, typically

2011-12-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

I should have known.

I should have known that the French Animation Film Festival would not involve cute, tongue-in-cheek plasticine, à la Wallace and Gromit. It would automatically require animated scenes of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.

But it is French. Meh. I shrug, Gallic style. What elze can one draw in ze cartoon?

Thanks, La Femme à Cordes. I sit squirming while Tiger sensibly covers her eyes. This is acutely annoying, mostly because her continued interest in animation is a prime reason why we are here.

Naively, I see Animation listed in the French film festival catalogue and buy the tickets there and then. I assume we'll be safe; cartoons never deal convincingly with sex or death. Duh. No-one told the French that rule, obviously.

Incidentally, to guard myself against accusations of prudishness (which I probably am; it's my age), I would have hated La Femme à Cordes, even if I carried only the burden of my own adult consciousness into the cinema. It seemed to be a narrative of schlock disturbing images making not much point beyond demonstration of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.

Anyway, enough of that one.

The star of the show, and what captured my eye, was Georges Méliès Le voyage dans la lune (1902), restored as a hand-tinted colour version.

That is one splendid film, and our first science fiction movie, so chew on that, Avatar. It is so gloriously and endlessly worthy of study - not least for the pointy wizard hats and dolly birds gaily waving off the space rocket. And the exploding aliens are simply brilliant. Judge for yourself in black and white.

Now if you have nothing else to do of an afternoon but update your French animation, then try Chienne d'histoire, a story created beautifully with watercolour, illustration and collage - even if it does deal with dog slaughter - and the gorgeous and tender Le silence sous l'écorce. Happiness. Death. Snow. It'll make you cry.

Damn Frenchies.

How to colour hair the easy way!

2011-12-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

1. Come to the ill-founded conviction that a crumpled face will surely be rejuvenated ten years by colouring the grey hair sprouting from the top.

2. Read all hair-related horror stories, avidly, for months. Absorb the terror of each one, slowly.

I coloured my hair and died. My mother coloured her hair and she died. Hair colouring ate my face. Superhaircolour says they are sorry after face-death misery left children motherless.

3. Peer nervously into all retail outlets selling hair colour. Think, When I am desperate and going slightly mental, so maybe death will no longer matter, I will buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

4. Stare enviously at other women. But they have coloured their hair! They are STILL ALIVE.

5. Reach a point on a Monday morning when life or death doesn't matter. Impulsively run out to buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

6. Stare at box fearfully. It is a box of certain death. 200 sleeping tablets and a bottle of Whisky would be easier.

7. After six weeks, tentatively open box. Learn instructions by rote.

8. Ignore box for another two weeks. Plenty of time to prevaricate! Pray grey hair turns brown without assistance, and that crumpled face magically becomes age 20 again! Try and delude self with, I am so busy! I haven't had a moment!

9. Pluck up courage for skin allergy test. Dab fluid, awkwardly, on inside of elbow. (Rats, now I have to wear long sleeves because otherwise it looks like one of the children thumped me.)

10. Stare in horror as chemical foams on skin. Expect to die now in a severe allergic reaction. Grab children in terror. Scare them by whispering, slightly hysterically, Mummy loves you. You know, don't you? Feel the urge to confess. And it was me who ate the stash of chocolate Squirrel hid behind the bread bin.

11. Within 24 hours, forget about the patch test and wash arm. It is a shower! Who can wash with one arm sticking out the door?

12. Try the patch test again. This time, wash with one arm sticking out the door.

13. Decide it is impossible to prevent water dribbling between armpit and elbow. Stop to plan and think logically:

i. Colour hair when hairdressers are open. Thus, when severe allergic reaction kicks in, there is time to run screaming to them for an antidote.
ii. Colour hair not at rush hour, when A&E is accessible.
iii. Colour hair when another responsible adult is at home to call ambulance, lift body out of shower, assist medical staff in lowering corpse from window, console children, etc.

14. Decide on a day.

15. The day arrives. Drink a large glass of wine. It no longer matters that it is 9am.

16. Don plastic gloves and feel this course of action is as foolhardy as surgically removing your own liver.

17. Follow instructions sheet to the letter. Panic each time fluid touches scalp. Wait continuously for severe allergic reaction.

18. While waiting the 20 minutes development time, write Last Will and Testament. Sob a little in self-pity that life has come to this. A bottle of foaming fluid in a bathroom.

19. Emerge three hours later, having obsessively examined scalp from every angle, tugged at hair to feel if it is coming out, scrutinised arm for signs of severe allergic reaction.

20. Announce presence to dear husband and ask, How is my hair? Am I 20 years younger? Husband scrutinises head, as if looking for fleas, then says, Look round the back. You have missed a clump.

How we do it

2011-12-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

I never know how best to answer that question, How do you do home education?

Tut. It's like asking, How do you live? Or How do you interact with your children?

But I guess they're asking when they have a gut feeling that not all is right with their school option, and not just because they're a nosy parker. Maybe they're considering choices ahead, and wondering what their experiences might be.

In which case, I try and help. Maybe with this?

5% sitting at the table doing anything alongside me which an onlooker could say looks like school. (Usually over breakfast.)

25% kids away doing their own thing. (Squirrel on roof, doing stuff, better not to ask. Shark reading fish book. Tiger creating horse animation.)

25% out with friends, groups, meet ups, workshops, events.

45% family, reading, cooking, talking, visiting, play, swinging punches, sulking.

Or maybe a narrative of events would help? Today's home ed diary reads:

'Chemistry workshops are going well. Our Leader is totally brilliant at galvanising kids. (Not literally, obviously. That would involve dipping them in zinc. I mean metaphorically.)

I bet I could run these weekly workshops back home. Looks simple. Involve a dozen chemical-minded kids to chant chemicals, run about, sing, do drama, experiment on a super-strength dining table, and now, watch TV. (One of the kids has to work out how to turn the thing ON and play stuff. Same as at home.)

But good result. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger can now make some sort of account for carbon.'

Or maybe I could photo record the most eye-catching and extraordinary moment of the day.

See? Home ed is easy. It's just living normal life, but with lots of friends and family. Does that help?

It's not that far to Pluto

2011-11-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

I want to reassure anyone about to plunge into the murky, conspiratorial world of home education.

Do not worry. You are not alone.

You'll find another one here already. Following the same home educating routine as you. Go on, physically locate yourself anywhere on this planet.

I guarantee, you will meet other thinkers and doers just like you.

You're sure to meet your co-twin - maybe hiding in the cafe at the steam train museum, under the table in the bead workshop, wet in a field peering at a moth, or trying not to look at buckets of crap at the poop-cleaning farm - and you'll go, Wow! Meeting you is spooky!

Because when you hear their story - how they started home educating Tinkertop - you'll be shocked how similar it is to your own.

Your co-twin will have observed the things you did. They have thought the thoughts you have. They have struggled with the arguments you did. They have drawn the same conclusions.

You look at each other, then know truly, you are thought-twins beamed from a parallel universe. This could have been used as a plotline in the Twilight Zone!

But this is no accident.

I have met with co-twins now so many times, I have come to understand this is why I was abducted in the first place, taken to Zelta Minor, implanted with a three-headed being, and sent back to Planet Earth.

It is our mission to CONVERT ALL THE UNBELIEVERS. It is obvious to us that home educators are a master race of aliens put here to infiltrate ordinary normals.

Soon SOON we will take over the mind of Ed Balls. Yes, him, and ex-education ministers everywhere!

SSSSShhhh! Don't tell anyone! Let's keep it secret until the time is right!

Ha! But our plan is working!

Here is a local group of home educated kids, looking innocent enough, meeting at Tai Po Waterfront Park, chosen especially because of its super-long avenue.

This is our covert job. To explore the universe, home ed style. Meaning: glue peppercorns, seed heads and hazelnuts on bits of paper to better represent scaled models of planets in our solar system.

Then, line up planets in order, separate out the billions of light years between them into distances we can comprehend, and walk the waterfront, measuring* and laying out the planets as we go.

See? To the unbelieving world, it simply looks like we small group of home educators are doing smart-arsed planet talk and astro-maths, or putting learning into practice, right in the middle of the community.

Not at all. We are plotting the co-ordinates that will take us back to the mothership for when our work here is done!

* This is a photograph of Our Lord John Holt's measuring wheel. It is TRUE. I have seen documentary evidence.

Dig says he thought John Holt did not believe in measuring anything. Pft! Blasphemer. Of course John Holt needed a measuring wheel. How else is he going to communicate with us the distance we need to calculate for our safe return to Zelta Minor?

In anticipation

2011-11-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

We went to the coastal defences museum. Really, the defences museum? Again?

I'd rather be elsewhere. We came here before. And I still have difficulty being a fan of military museums. You can probably tell from the things I choose to photograph. See these shapes? They're interesting, don't you think?

I'm finding this very frustrating, returning here rather than taking advantage of what's over there.

Because it is hiking season in Hong Kong. For that, read, the weather is now cool enough to walk the mountain trails.

But am I walking them? I am not.

I am 100% irritated by what I am about to say - I can feel the irritable bowel syndrome squeezing my insides right now - but I cannot walk those remote trails without assistance. More specifically, the assistance of someone who has a sense of direction.

Now everyone should understand why I stay married to Dig. Only he can find the way out of the paper bag.

It is difficult for people to believe - especially if they attempt to cross Nathan Road, ride the trams, or get off the underground at Mong Kok - but not every inch of Hong Kong has seven million people standing on it.

Hong Kong has beautiful remote mountain areas where there are no people, no sodium lights, no street signs, and - horror of horrors to the directionally challenged Grit - choice of more than one route.

Now I dare not embark on those trails offering me more than one route if there are only kids alongside me. Twenty minutes in, and Shark will say, with her usual hint of contempt, Mummy, do you know where you're going?

I will begin to doubt. Tiger's radar will pick up my fake laugh. She will ask in a trembling voice, Where are we going? Mummy? Is this the right way?

I will answer brightly, Yes, of course it's the right way! But a little creeping doubt will niggle in my mind. What if she has an intuition I do not? Back there? We took a left, and we had the choice of a right.

Think about it. She has inherited Dig's sense of direction. I had to rely on her to lead me out the Elements Shopping Mall. I was in there an hour trying to find the exit before she took control.

The silence will be broken with, Are you sure? Mummy? MUMMY? MUMMMYYYYY? WE ARE LOST! LOST! LOST!

In an instant, panic will spread amongst the masses. Squirrel will photograph every tree as a desperate means of finding her way out again, Shark will stomp off in a huff saying IT IS THIS WAY, Tiger will fall to the ground in tears. Then ten hours later, alone on the mountainside, in the dark, we will all die. The End.

I know it will go like that because it has damn near happened before.

So even though I so dearly want to head up the mountains and across those trails, and even though I am so totally pissed off by my own inadequacies in this department, I know it is wise to wait a little longer for a responsible adult to pass this way, take me by the hand, and lead me and the mini grits safely over the mountain trails. (And if it all goes bellyup, I can blame them.)

If only Tintin had been filmed by Sergei Eisenstein!

2011-11-28T01:14:00.000-08:00

So I blatantly defied the instruction from my betters on this review.*

I took the kids to see Tintin the FILM.

HEY. Look at me. I AM IN OPEN REBELLION!

If the act of attending 'Spielberg's "execrable" film adaptation' is not enough of a demonstration of my insubordination to those who discern better than me the essential emptiness of all art, let me also yell bold in caps,

I LOVED THIS FILM.

But I feel I should declare another motive, up front.

I had to go see Tintin. It was Tintin, not me, who taught Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger to read.

Before they could read for themselves, they got hold of the Tintin books in their snotty-chocolaty fists and loved (and still do), all the Hergé illustrations.

Tintin's hair! The moustaches! Snowy! The mountains! The wild-fisted Captain Haddock!

But they couldn't read the captions. I had to read aloud all the words with all the voices. (Prof. Calculus was difficult. Foolishly I made him squeaky.) After that, they pored over the books, only looking up to delightedly yell Blistering barnacles! Iconoclast!

Despite that background, I still fail in Tom McCarthy's world. For me, the experience of a triplet family weaned on Tintin only made the film more fun.

I loved the performance-capture animation. It was a perfect technique to merge the real with the fiction. My eyeballs - connected to my humour synapses that obviously never matured beyond a ten-year old - could follow people bounce from lamp posts, climb onto aeroplanes, and crash land in the desert, while all the time my brain explained those impossibilities by it's a cartoon, dummy.

And I loved the script. The plot. The sub-plot! And the way the characters from different cartoons were brought in and mixed into one roller-coaster Spielberg film-ride. With hidden treasure! And pirate ships!

So it pains me to come away from Tintin the FILM and compare it to Tintin the CARTOON. They are different works, right?

I wanted Captain Haddock of the cartoon to be Captain Haddock of the film. In the film, he's wild, but he's not dangerous. In the cartoon (or in my head), he's much more a perfect role model, teetering on the edge of the unacceptable, veering unstably into the dangerous and uncontrollable, pulling back enough not to be totally, pointlessly, destructive.

But like I said, they are different works, the cartoons and the film, and I can't judge one through the other.

I'm just left having enjoyed the cartoons with all the voices, and thrilled to watch a fantastic adventure film. With pirates!

So ignore Tom McCarthy's instructions. He's just out to impress his mates with his I'm Important Pen. I've seen that plenty of times before.

Now follow Grit's advice! Take your kids to see Tintin the FILM!**

*Empire-building author alert.

** Of course my kids didn't like it. They just kept complaining about how the film was a Žižekian example of a dominant ideology's capacity to recuperate its own negation, or something.

The perfect home educating body

2011-11-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

Many times in our home educating journey have I had cause to look inwards, measuring my heavy responsibilities against the insufficiency of my inner resources.

But I have also looked down, and seen the physical impact this great learning journey has wrought upon a woman's frail and feeble body.

Here is the evidence of a home educating experience. Battered ribs, stringy thighs, and wretched knees of despair. Ankles of doom, pounded feet, and wiry hands, scarred from a thousand face-clawing, vein-popping struggles.

Yet, as I look south, beyond these sad and torn remnants, I am happy, for I have learned what wisdoms to impart.

Collecting my battle wounds and dismembered limbs, I can now give you, youthful person considering home education, the gift of my experience.

If you really, really, REALLY are intent on spending several years teaching your own, then with these essential items, you must now prepare your body.*

1. Brass neck.
Every home educating mother must acquire one of these. A solid brass neck to navigate the High Street at 11am on a Monday morning.

More than moral righteousness is cast in the brass. It disables any ability to turn head-wise to the whisperings following the 'school-age child' straggling at your side. The particularly scruffy child, clad in grubby tee-shirt, torn jeans, an assortment of dreadlocks, chocolate over one eye, and a left shoe only (a fact you are bound not to notice until you reach the Co op on account of not being able to turn the neck).

2. A tongue you already bit off.
My advice is DON'T SAY IT. I have struggled with this, and still do, because oh yes there are so many responses to the in-law who, horror-struck, whispers Home education? Is that wise? or the neighbour who asks 'Are you allowed to do that?

STOP. Your response will not only be taken as evidence in court, it must be totally positive PR for what you are about to do, and simultaneously support all the struggling world of home ed. DON'T SAY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. JUST SMILE.

3. Face of steel.
As you sit around the kitchen table, determined to enjoy yet another happy learning moment with Urban Environments or What shall we watch on the telly, the peace will shatter between Arch Enemies, Sibling Rivals 1,2, and 3. Number 1 destroys the moment of educational perfection with I hate you; number 2 screams Get out of my life, and number 3 chimes in with the chorus, It would be better off if you were dead.

Then, with the learning day of happiness in ruins, you will need a face of steel. Any ordinary plasticine face, betraying motherly tenderness brutalised by shock, disbelief, and horror, inevitably adds emotion to the moment; it allows the offspring a terrible opportunity to observe the maternal pain, then show how much they care by finishing the kill.

4. No ears.
With kids around all day everyday, simply plug the ears up. Shove them under a duvet. Better still, take them off. Hide them in a padded box and stash them in the linen cupboard where they can't transmit any sound at all.

5. Wired up teeth.
Yes, wire the buggers up, top to bottom, and quick about it. If you are home educating any primary-age child, with or without siblings, you very quickly realise that your entire education is composed of cake.

Cake is chemical reaction! (Obviously.) It's maths! (There are four in the family to eat one cake and the mother must be fed six slices.) Cake is geography! (Punch a hole in one side and turn it into a river valley with a bucket of cream.) French! (Oui, nous voulons faire un bon gâteau.) Business studies! (Grandma, your slice costs $200, hand it over, cash.) And English Literature! (While their mouths are full, reverentially lay your copy of Robinson Crusoe upon the table.)

If you fail to wire your teeth together, you will come to know the consequences. That cake is 5,890 calories every day. And only Millets can cater for size 36.

6. Hands, hands, and more hands.
Three pairs of hands per child, minimum, are required for all daily interactions of education and child management.

One pair to lay out the happy learning craft resources. A second pair to put the kid with the scissors in lock down. The third to pour a stiff gin and tonic. Three kids = Nine pairs of hands. Stitch your extra hands onto a belt and hang them round your middle.

7. Legs.
Acquire a pair of stout and sturdy tree trunks to attach when the original human pair buckle, as they are sure to do. (Mine went in a stable yard under three kids, a pissed off horse-keeper and a disabled mongrel called Lucy.**)

Keep two additional leg pairs, both waterproof, suitable for nature studies and small children peeing on you. Use one pair for climbing out of ditches because no-one else will fetch the ball, and use the second pair for plodding across woods, fields and hills in the drizzle while you look in despair and rising panic for prehistoric art, moths, or rocks.

(Keep a decent trolly-dolly pair in the cupboard 'for best'. You can always hope to have a night out in 2016.)

8. No hair.
Shave it off or hope it falls out. Only this way can you be relieved of washing, styling, cutting and thinking about the irritating, increasingly grey chore sprouting from your head.

When you home educate kids, consider this. You may have them 24/7. Spending two hours alone in the hairdressers is as likely as flying to the moon.

If you do get to Curl up and Dye, you will inevitably sit next to the lucky cow who whines on and on about how her life is shit because she has to be home in five hours to 'pick the kids up from school'. Then you will never want to go there again.

9. Armour.
In your home educating journey, there will be weapons. Feet, fists, words dipped in poison, lethal pauses, and fatal punctuation marks. Your body without armour will be dented, scratched, bruised, bitten, torn, and trampled upon. Medieval armour c. 1485 is recommended.

10. Nerves of steel.
You are going to need these. You are going to chew down your knuckles with anxiety for Tinkertop's total FAIL if your mother measures her against the common ideas in her knitting circle about reading, writing and 'rithmeticing. When your teeth hit the bones, the nerves of steel will be the only things holding the entire arm together.

11. Large empty space in head.
Yes, when you start home educating, the world will open up, and with it, your mind.

Your brain will no longer be crammed full of pointless crap about lunch boxes, the PTA, holiday forms, or whether Tinkertop's uniform meets the regulation grey.

But do not be scared of the space. Enjoy it. Your mind will be called upon at all hours to help explore the Arctic, explain why polar bears have feet, or expound upon DNA. Keep the space as wide and as far-ranging as possible, then exercise it often. It must be fit for sudden demands to answer questions What holds the sky up? and then to elaborate upon Stephen Hawkin's conception of the universe.

Yet always it must be prepared to try out a new recipe for cake. This time cooked with nettle leaves.

12. Heart.
This must be enormous, bigger than your whole body, with a capacity far greater than all the oceans of the world.

What you are about to do will challenge yourself, your in-laws, show the neighbours a thing or two, take on the educational thought police, put you on the defensive against people you meet, lose friends, make enemies, and cause a tail-back on the M1 southbound from Junction 14. Yes, you will probably take the blame for that too, from the likes of Ed Balls, the NUT and the TES.

In the face of this onslaught you will at times be plunged into severe and crippling doubt. Then you will need a strong heart.

When you are fighting the universe and the children are foul; when the heart wants only to sit sobbing and defeated in a corner; when you are overwhelmed, in despair; when Tinkertop says, after all your effort and stinging hands, that maths with nettle cake is crap, then you must call upon the heart's limitless capacity for forgiving.

Apply it to everyone and, most importantly, to yourself.

* True, I am only talking woman body. This is based on the undeniable, observable fact that most people who turn up at the home ed meet up group - and who we can assume are in the bloody daily front line of the home ed decision - are women.

**Disabled mongrel.

Edited because my French is so bad. That shows you what an A grade is worth.

Hong Kong tourism!

2011-11-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

Visit Lamma Island!

Fancy a natural haven with no roads and no cars? Where you can hike between ancient fishing villages, over green mountains, through lush groves of banana trees, to reach quiet swimming coves and golden beaches?

Place your footsteps in Lamma Island - a South China idyll - and you could truly believe here is one sanctuary of Hong Kong uniquely dedicated to conservation of our natural and beautiful habitat.

We're soon to change all that!

In only a few short years, as one of the privileged few, you can visit our new Hong Kong tourist attraction - the BAROQUE!

Reserved for the seriously wealthy - the BAROQUE development on Lamma will boast 500-berth marina to moor your yacht, superior concrete harbour facilities, state-of-the-art shopping mall, exclusive hotel, yet more upmarket seafood restaurants, and loads, loads more concrete.

This superior development project will go beyond any point of logic you've ever known before!

Designed to position Lamma Island as a rich man's paradise, you'll be able to use our seriously smart facilities to demonstrate how you have cash to burn.

Imagine, at what ridiculous expense, you could be that exceptional person able to take advantage of our planned redesignation of the island's Site of Special Scientific Interest into Only-for-the-Rich Concrete Deployment Zone.

Consider the possibilities! On this tiny getaway island with no roads, we have plans to build a modern, fully-functioning, and superbly designed car park.

Helicopter in your Porsche, and proudly park it in the space we'll reserve for only 135 private cars. Remember, you won't be able to drive anywhere! This unique and protected island has no roads!

See how you can boast to the world what Hong Kong can do!

Yet not only are we dedicated to development which is wasteful, destructive, and bizarre, you can trust us to truly fulfil the yearnings of your romantic soul.

You can find your satisfaction here, on Sham Wan Beach.

You know that lady of your dreams? The special someone who wears those shoes made for lying down about the town?

Dream yourself, showing her your gift of a lifetime - the pleasure of lying flat with her shoes on the exclusive Sham Wan Beach - a site the World Wildlife Fund for Nature once identified as a special world breeding ground for the endangered green turtle.

Imagine how these rare and beautiful creatures once paddled thousands of miles here, to this spot, and sought to nest.

Rest here to listen as the waters lap against the concrete harbour, and recall how sweet, fresh, and delicious they were cooked to your taste.

Come experience the world of the future. The BAROQUE on Lamma Island.

Showing completely how truly Hong Kong is dedicated to economic gain for a privileged few, combined with the best in environmental destruction.

Living Lamma.
WWF.
Photos show demonstration in Central.
Strangely apt.
Popular opinion says NO to the Baroque.
The petition.

Maybe I'm equipping them for another kind of normal

2011-11-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, I give in. We home educated types. We're not living a normal life.

I suspected it.

You can find out too, whether your kids live a normal life, with this report, commissioned by The Children's Society.

Missing out: A child centred analysis of material deprivation and subjective well-being.

This is what the researchers write: 'We wanted to know what material items and experiences children themselves think are necessary for a 'normal kind of life', whether lacking these items and experiences is related to their self-reported well-being and if so, which items or types of items seem to be the most important.'

Took less than a second to find out my kids aren't normal, as Shark, Squirrel and Tiger dumped the most wanted items in 'normal life' - clothes, branded trainers, and cable TV - right at the very bottom of their lists. Worse, my kids don't even want them, which is an indicator of something (bloody mindedness, probably).

'Clothes? I'm not wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt with Hello Kitty on it. Why would you want to fit in with that?' (Expression of ghastly horror from Squirrel)

'I don't care if my clothes fit in with other people. I care if something goes with the other elements of clothing I'm wearing.' (Tiger, clearly not destined for either Top Shop or Vivienne Westwood)

'Does it give me the option of a diving suit?' (Shark, who has a very particular water-based definition of normal)

On the issue of cable TV the kids were even more flummoxed. We don't have a TV. (DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL.) The kids have laptops and we taught them to access the iplayer. (Does that count?)

Incidentally, the three number one items for my kids were garden (Tiger) family days out (Shark) and family holidays (Squirrel).

Then I showed them the original list of 20 material items. (If you gave these* to your child, which 10 would they strike out?)

Everything went bellyup then, not what researchers want at all, because top of the list here went pet as in HORSE (Tiger), books (Shark), and more books, preferably with dragons (Squirrel).

I blame the mother. Leading the innocents away from the one type of high-street, mass shopping, mass consumption, TV-watching life we are all invited to consider normal.

I led us into another type of normal. People who value books, gardens, outings with the family, and horses (that one, definitely not my doing).

Hmm. I suppose it is not particularly surprising, given the educational and cultural experiences of these young ladies (and the state of the mother's hair).

It puts me in mind of an incident that happened a while back at a workshop. Our home ed group sat side-by-side with a school group. The leader asked, Who's your hero? The school kids answered Eminem, Lady Gaga, P. Diddy. One of the home ed kids looked surprised, then pipped up with My brother.

*What ten items does a child value most for 'normal life'?

The original list of 20 items :
1. Some pocket money each week to spend on yourself
2. Some money that you can save each month, either in a bank or at home
3. A pair of designer or brand name trainers (like Nike or Vans)
4. Treats and snacks like sweets, chocolate, chips or pizza once a week
5. Being part of a club where you play sports or do a hobby like drama, art or music
6. An iPod or other personal music player
7. Your own mobile phone
8. A computer at home that is connected to the internet that you can use for school work and in your free time
9. A games console, like an Xbox, PS3 or Wii, and at least one game for it
10. Cable or satellite TV at home
11. A pet at home
12. A garden at home, or somewhere nearby like a park where you can safely spend time with your friends
13. A bedroom of your own (not shared)
14. Presents on special occasions like birthdays and Christmas
15. A family car for transport when you need it
16. Access to public transport like the train or the bus when you need it
17. The right kind of clothes to fit in with other people your age
18. Books of your own (suitable to their age) at home
19. At least one family holiday away from home each year
20. Family trips or days out at least once a month

It does not mean I can launder knickers

2011-11-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

So yeah, of course I read that. Home education is all about the parents.

TOO RIGHT IT IS.

Because maybe it escaped someone's thinking, but here's our Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 where we are clearly told it's our job:

7: Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
a: to his age, ability and aptitude, and
b: to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

That is sensible. Who would give over the decision-making to a five-year old? If you let them decide things, they will have you living in a tent with a pet lion. Next they will want to openly thieve packets of chocolate digestives from Tesco, and they will insist grandma eats her mud pies.

Of course parents should make the decisions. What else do you want?

Some days it pisses me off that I have this duty, true. It is hard enough being a responsible adult for myself, let alone the minds of three children, the contents of the fridge, and a clean pair of knickers.

But it's a duty I have, and it's up to me to work out how to discharge it. Should I plunge my hands up to the armpits in the bucket called responsibility? Or try and shovel the whole load off to a school down the road?

Being a bit of a masochist, I chose the former. Anyway, I looked round at the educational options, and reasoned that if I were to do it myself, then life might be tough, but in some ways it might be easier.

I could take the kids to a museum on a Tuesday and to the woods on a Thursday without having to account for myself to any institution. And I wouldn't have Mrs Ming standing between me and my child at 8am, telling me what lunch to pack, what clothes to wear, and what book to read evenings, weekends and holidays.

Easier, and I consider these areas my other responsibilities. I make the decisions. So Yes. It's all about me.

Well, from the moment you take the decision, I guess it's up to each of us. How it happens on the ground - the real, practical, working out and implementing of your decision, day-by-day.

Round here, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have had quite a few days of their primary education choosing exactly what to do and how to do it. On different days I've either borne the scars, or worn the laurels.

When Tiger chose to trash my entire house, Squirrel painted my Buddha fluorescent orange, and Shark threw a spanner at my head, of course that was a bad day. I had scars. Literally.

But on another day, when Tiger cutely asked 'Can we see a lion?' I've had three kids happily sitting in a bright cold autumn morning, drawing snoozing lions within inches of our noses. Then I could wear my laurels.

These good and bad, swings and roundabouts, failures and successes, they are all part of the practicalities and consequences of decision making; bad days on their own are not the reason why I should expect my duty to be rescinded, nor the sole reason I'd give why I would think my decision good or bad. I'd have so many other factors to think about.

I expect your decision making follows much the same lines. Throughout it all, whether you give your kids a great deal of freedom and choice, or whether you give them not much choice at all, well, that's up to you. But isn't that called parenting? (See? It's still all about us.)

We can ignore the minor inconveniences, trashed front rooms, and the occasional head wound, because those come with the territory of children, regardless of educational model.

But the final responsibility for the overall decision-making on the education, employment, economy, and running of the family? Ours.

Because we are the grown ups.

Chemistry. I decided my children would know about that, too.

Choosing how to do it is only follows the decision.

It has been by very traditional means.

Kitchen cupboards, cooking, experimenting, observing...

...talking, sharing, that sort of thing.

Did anyone seriously think it would automatically mean
taking on my views about petrol bombs and yeast?

Party time

2011-11-23T03:52:00.000-08:00

A bunch of girls take over the function rooms of a large apartment building and start whooping it up with two dozen balloons.

For a moment there the balloons could have been the heads of traitors and betrayers, so here's my advice to the wise. Treat this bunch of girls with a bit of care and a lot of respect.

Why Squirrel is going to be a lawyer

2011-11-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

Good morning, my lovely Shark, Tiger and Squirrel!

Yesterday's chemistry was good, wasn't it? Would you like to make a return visit to the Science Museum today? For Have You Eaten Rice Yet? A lecture by Doc Stevenson!

Shark: (No response. Staring fixedly at computer screen, clicking mouse.)
Tiger: I want to read my book.
Squirrel: No. I want to stay here and make my dolly house.

Grit: (Thinks, Rats. This is not the required response at all. I will have to implement my Home Educating Parent Strategies. I will get these children to do exactly as I want, and simultaneously trick them into believing they thought of it.)

Strategy 1. Show enthusiasm.
It will be fun! And brilliant! Grrrrr-ea--t!

(silence)

RICE! HAVE YOU EATEN RICE YET! What a BRILLIANT title. I CAN'T WAIT.

Strategy 2. Offer a reward in advance.
Hey everyone! I will buy you ice cream!

(silence)

I will buy you ice cream and - if I am feeling in a good mood - I will stop at Starbucks. They have lovely cakes.

Strategy 3. Lie.
You have to study chemistry. It is The Law. It says all children must be educated by school or otherwise. Then it says in Chemistry, Maths, English, a foreign language and some other things I can't remember.

(silence)

Strategy 4. Make threats.
Well, that's fine. It's your choice. You can DO IT MY WAY or YOU CAN GO TO SCHOOL and DO IT THEIR WAY.

Strategy 5. Intimidate.
Sure. Go to school. If that's what you want. Study Chemistry there. You will discover how cruel Chemistry teachers can be. If you make one tiny mistake in your five hours of gruelling homework, they'll shove your head down the toilet.

(silence)

Our Chemistry teacher carried an axe.

And napalm.

Strategy 6. Use emotional blackmail.
I WORK SO HARD FOR YOU. SEE how mama - poor mama - has GIVEN UP EVERYTHING FOR YOU. I could have had a well-paid job! I could have been RESPECTED (stab chest dramatically). I would have had NICE SHOES (point to feet dramatically).

(silence)

(Tear at hair feebly and look a bit Virgin Mary.)

Strategy 7. Induce guilt.
Of course I'm disappointed. But what else could I expect? You will let everyone down, you know that, don't you? Of course your friends will be disappointed that you never showed up. That's okay. If you can live with it.

(silence)

Strategy 8. Try humiliation.
I shall have no choice but to tell all your friends that you thought making a dolly house was more important than seeing them, having fun at the Chemistry lecture, and going out for ice cream afterwards.

(silence)

Strategy 9. Plead.
Okay, please come to chemistry. Please, please, PLEASE. Pretty please?

(silence)

I will be your slave all day tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.

Strategy 10. Go AWOL.
OH MY GOD I THINK I MIGHT BE HAVING A BREAKDOWN. ONLY YOU CAN STOP ME NOW. ONLY YOU CAN SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!

(silence)

LOOK! I'M HEADING TOWARDS THE KITCHEN BIN AND I'M OUT OF CONTROL. SAY YOU'LL COME TO CHEMISTRY AND EVERYTHING WILL BE NORMAL AGAIN.

(Five minute pause)

Squirrel: Cake on the way to the lecture. Starbucks when it is over. A lie-in on Friday morning. A trip to the art supply shop on Saturday. Ice cream on the way to the ferry. And pasta for dinner. Two nights running.

Grit: God, Squirrel. You drive a hard bargain.

It's a deal.

Tiger: (looking up from book) What did you say?
Shark: (staring at computer screen) Mummy, I've found this lecture on rice. It looks really good. Can we go?

Chemistry brings it together

2011-11-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

Aha! We secured seats in the Hong Kong Science Museum lecture hall! For Prof Pulman and Dr Henderson's magic travelling chemistry show, all the way from the University of Edinburgh!

Only a minor tiff before and after. Nothing serious. Outside I had to beard a Chinese woman with one of those coily wires sprouting from her ear, but I won by dint of shouting louder than she could.

Otherwise, no major hazards. We were not pipped at the post by a couple of Danes after Squirrel needed the toilet. I engaged in no fist fighting. The family's Health and Safety Inspector, Tiger, did not pass out from shock at seeing a naked flame and hearing a big bang (although it was close).

Better still, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger said they learned something! Success all round! Except that I seem to now bear the added burden of explaining hydrogen cars and Bombardier beetles.

Maybe it all went so well thanks to Shark's soothing words on the escalator (Mummy, please do not punch anyone). Or maybe it was the fact that prior to the lecture we spent an hour in our favourite Hong Kong stationery shop buying three sheets of wrapping paper.

But it shows to me - at least in terms of knowing stuff - that home ed works.

The event brought together the experiments the kids have been doing autonomously and unselfconsciously for years in what they've called play (even pouring oil into the toilet I suppose taught them something).

Their reaction to the content of the lecture proved that the kids are right in line with the 'body of knowledge' that Chemistry as a discipline assumes, thanks to our interest-based inquiries, previous projects, and prepared syllabus (thanks, Ellen McHenry!).

And all my kids said this lecture was stuff they knew, mixed with stuff they didn't, and Yes! Let's find out more!

That is best of all for me. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger all agreed that of course Chemistry is interesting and exciting.

None, I note, are turned off the subject so effectively as I was at school, where it meant nothing more than staring out the window at the staff car park counting the seconds until the bell rang.

None of my kids presently say they want to take Chemistry to high level. But each of them, I suspect, will look at this branch of science with interest and engagement throughout their lives. When new developments come along, or when some oily politician seeks to subvert or use the science for their own agenda, I trust my kids will have the wherewithal to investigate further on their own terms, be able to build an informed view, and not be afraid to independently voice their opinions.

So if I was looking to create a stimulating educational environment to develop people who'll take an active life-long interest in Chemistry and its applications, then yes, home ed has been an excellent way to do it.

Yah boo sucks to the nay sayers.

Sunday acts of mindless criminality

2011-11-20T05:43:00.000-08:00

Sunday. We haven't got a television set. The iplayer won't play. And I can no longer read the Independent thanks to their annoying error 400 meditating guru squatting on my wires.

I am at a loose end.

I could explore my infinite ability to irritate people and make them feel vaguely uncomfortable without knowing why.

So I would like to announce that I have cruelly and maliciously and with intent, upset the children again, mostly by breathing in that confrontational way I have. By regarding their reaction I have thus derived much satisfaction and amusement.

I also discover I can now annoy the neighbours deliberately, by walking across the front room wearing heavy wellington boots. Each footstep is clearly an act of naked aggression. Especially since I am not wearing any clothes, and becoming more sure by the moment that the neighbours are now peering in shock and revulsion through the windows.

And yes! Dig and I have had a proper set-to with weapons. We had a fantastic yell and brutally went at each other with pickled onion stabbers and a packet of dried yeast. We locked the children out the house first, where everyone could hear them weeping.

Ha! Now I can scandalise the entire Cantonese population of Hong Kong by broadcasting that I am making free with their temple candles. Not only is it birthday cake that benefits from their delightful candles manufactured for ancestral worship, I also disrespectfully melt whole packets of them so I can save ten dollars and make fake sealing wax for kiddy craft activities based on the Magna Carta.

It is a very slow Sunday.

And I am given to provocation.

None of the above is true. Well, not for today, anyway. Sunday is a generally goody-two-shoes sort of day, is it not, with its peace and quiet and let's stay in the house and not go anywhere or do anything.

Thanks to Sunday's pervasive atmosphere of domestic calm, I have demonstrated my girly swot side, and succeeded only in annoying myself.

I have studiously completed the weekly assignments for the kids, been serious and mindful all day long, failed to drink more than one measly can of Blue Girl lager, and displayed my housewife credentials for all the community to see by doing the shopping and taking the laundry to Mrs Chang's. I picked up the towels at 7.30 ready for the children to shower, then I cooked dinner, listened to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and went to bed.

I must do better on the provoking front.

I am rather taken by the idea of naked wellington boot dancing. Next Sunday I might try that for real.

Larging it

2011-11-19T17:05:00.001-08:00

I would tell you about Saturday but it was taken over by some music celebration held halfway down a hill.

The event involved listening to middle-aged men playing guitars in someone's back garden. They have normal jobs like office professionals and admin supervisors and logistics experts but come the weekends they all rip the sleeves off their shirts, wrap guitars about themselves, and bash out Pink Floyd anthems. It's like watching some universal law of nature.

Anyway, the afternoon proceeded very rock n roll with packets of digestive biscuits, rugs for the mothers to sit on, and children wandering about. Mine pushed off to hang about with the other offspring who are at an age where they feel humiliated by all parental behaviour, including shopping in the Co-op, so watching anyone's father breathlessly cavort about the shrubbery with a bass guitar is pain 11 on a rating scale of 1-10.

The evening descended much as you'd expect in a wild and busted scenario of the over-50s with a takeaway pizza and a nice cup of cocoa when everyone got home.

Godblessem.

Idiots

2011-11-18T06:56:00.000-08:00

People who claim that home educators don't leave the house? They are idiots.

Tell it like it is, Grit.

Several times this week, across forums and lists, I've run into this bizarre idea: that people who don't choose school must ipso facto stay at home.

Maybe people think home educators bolt and lock their own front doors, imprisoning themselves with their kids on the inside?

I can only sit here puzzled. What? Not leaving the house? All day, every day? Who would do that? Not, in my experience, your bog standard home educator.

Even those home educators who are a little far out, well they eschew anything that remotely looks like your conventional 2up 2down house.

They'll be off teaching the kids how to construct a yurt, or knitting straw bales, or making the offspring live in holes in the ground, probably to experiment with life as a beetle or something. But bolt the door on a suburban semi? Just them and the kids inside? Never.

Because there are two simple disadvantages to locking yourselves up with kids. Some folks obviously haven't thought them through. Here they are.

1. The kids.

2. The crap that kids produce. (E.g. tip out all your cupboards, strew trash all over your house, and build a train track on top of it.)

I'll explain that second point. Because, faced with the request to leave the crap in situ, maybe to admire until next January, many home educators will say alright. Who notices, anyhow? It can join the production of art and craft in every room, draped all over the walls, on every surface, and in every doorway.

Remember, you're in a home educating house now. By the windows are the 2-year old plant experiments, the rocks for the geology will be half way up the stairs, on the table you'll find the stains of the volcano experiment, and in the kitchen you'll find the odd pot of borax, citric acid or iodine between the paintbrushes and the cream crackers.

Why do we do this? Because education our way means valuing all a person's emotions, ambitions, motivations and likes and dislikes. Those human states we nurture, via the crap they produce.

But you can imagine, as the entire domestic interior sinks under piles of trash, paper, toys, plastic droppings, craft peelings and cut up pairs of old trousers, after a couple of days most home educators have had enough.

Watch them then, battering a way out their own front door, desperately seeking a clear bit of floor or a scrap of carpet tile to stare at in envy down at the local museum, the village hall, discovery centre, library, gallery or sports hall.

Going out now is the only way to stop her.

So think about it, you people, before you happily claim home educators never go out. Of course we do not stay at home all the time! Seriously, who would?

But look! I always like to undermine my own points. Here's a clear front room!

And it belongs to a home educator!

Well, the room is clear if you discount the dozen kids running about in it.

Playing a game to turn monosaccharides into polysaccharides, probably.

You start off single and join up chains, obviously.

I think this is just before I got kicked in the face.

It's a stupid angle to photograph kids from anyway,
so don't give me any sympathy.

By the bye, I hope those photos confront two other myths:
that home educators never socialise, and we can't teach chemistry.

Is there something in the water?

2011-11-17T01:21:00.000-08:00

Must be. This is the third day I am surrounded by The Squabblings.

I sit on the ferry into Hong Kong Island and I hear an argument start behind me. It's conducted between a very loud spoken American man and a quietly spoken English woman. It starts over a basic disagreement - maybe that notorious controversy in cultural politics that gets everyone going - can you feed worms to fish?

After listening to the basic premise - him yelling how people are plain stupid if they say that nothing from the land can ever go into the sea and how even a second grader knows that fish eat worms! and she answering how it's all so wrong how stuff from the land is dumped into the sea and fish eat crap! - things really take a bad direction.

They start verbally laying into each other for about ten minutes on the subjects of worms and fish and crap and sea, then she begins, provocatively, on the meta level of discussion with, I feel threatened by how you're yelling.

To which his response is to yell very loud indeed, with something that goes like this:

'You feel threatened by ME? What? Like PHYSICALLY THREATENED? JEEZ. Do you think I'm going to ATTACK YOU? If you think I'm going to lay one finger on you then you must be PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTURBED. Hey, you must have had a REALLY BAD THING HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE that you think I'm OUT TO ATTACK YOU. You should just STOP ATTACKING OTHER PEOPLE FOR THEIR OPINIONS.'

At this point I was sorely tempted to join in and have a yell myself. Like how he was demonstrating his credentials to be a TOTAL ASSHOLE. I believe that is the American phrase for such matters.

Of course I did not. I am English. I don't use such language. I behaved in a thoroughly English way. Pretend nothing is happening. I have learned that you should never involve yourself in other people's arguments. And if any weapons come out, you run like a rat into a sewer.

Anyway, judging from my experience of the last few days, I can see there is a current fashion for interpersonal relationships to take on more overt argumentative behaviours.

I could believe, if I had involved myself, she would have turned to face me with a look of profound outrage, then gasped, How dare you speak to my husband like that?

No punches were thrown. Only handbags were used

2011-11-16T23:12:00.000-08:00

Do you know, some days in the domestic conflict management cycle leave me feeling distinctly antagonistic towards my own mini rottweilers, aka my darling children.

But where is the parent who, at some point, would not happily pitch their annoying offspring into a lake, then dance about in celebration, singing Hallelujah?

Like today. We visit the Hong Kong Wetland Centre.

The outing starts as normal - the usual muttered grudges and resentments - but not serious enough to deflect the indulgent mama from offering ice cream on condition she is allowed to maintain her fantasy that we are all having a super high-intensity educational outing.

Hip hip hooray! En route to the Wetland Centre! Top of bus 967.

But when la famille Grit arrive at the first pond, the agreeable humour and cooperative family dynamic immediately depart.

I don't know why, but the Hong Kong Wetland Centre never fails to bring out someone's aggressive side. Last time, it began over the fake otter poo. This time, the mudskippers.

The site of mudskipper mayhem.

Yet I discover, edging my perilous way like a UN ambassador in a corpse-strewn tribal region, that the mudskippers are not the underlying cause. They are merely the icing on the cake.

The fisticuffs du jour fanning out across the wetlands, now between Tiger and Shark, careless of the happy home ed group we are here to meet, are really because these children - with their inherited control issues interwoven with their triplet sibling rivalries - have foolishly, on departing the house, and unknown to me, agreed to share a sketch book.

'My turn first. Then yours.'

Uh-ho. If I had known about this I would have nipped it in the bud. Anyone who has more than one child will know how dangerously explosive has been their experience of share nicely.

A bit like putting a lighted match to a bucket of nitroglycerin.

Over the years, along with the healing scars, I have soothed myself with positive thinking. I have told myself that share nicely has been the perfect training ground for your average workplace. There, each person will be placed under a time pressure to compete with colleagues over finite resources. The winning employee will merely demonstrate superior tactics of office weaponry, water cooler manoeuvring, and desk-top backstabbing. These are the strategies learned in the battlefields of share nicely.

But the War of the Sketchbook has now begun. Gentle enough, if you imagine an opening parley of glowering, elbowing, and quite a lot of passive/aggressive from Shark. (So you want me to rip out my mudskippers do you? Fine! I'll rip them out from YOUR SKETCHBOOK.)

From here it escalates to light shoving, stomping off, and a handbagging.

I unwittingly photographed the
seconds following the handbagging.

Then mama hisses you are never to share a sketchbook again, and if there was an old Chinese woman canny enough to sell me sketchbooks right now at $5,000 a pop she'd go home happy, but WAIT. Inside I am boiling with the stupidity of the argument, how I have become a negotiator for a piece of paper, and how wretchedly desirous I feel it would be, given a moment of liberation, to see both of my children FACE DOWN IN A LAKE. Then don't tell me the Hallelujah Chorus is not one of the finest works in the history of parenting.

But so we go on. Finally, after another two hours, the battle culminates; Tiger is in tears and Shark is shiftily edging her feet about with a guilty expression, caught with her moral righteousness and the quicksand on which she is basing her position.

Cue the moment we have all been waiting for. The Peace Treaty. (Triplet method: sidle up to each other, shove each other about a bit, show no offence is taken.)

Peace Treaty of the Wetlands declared at this site.

Well, for today, I have no conclusion, except maybe to blame this undercurrent of aggression and general atmos of vengeance on the Hong Kong weather. Or the high humidity. Or all the fault of the neighbours for yesterday introducing that theme of conflict into our lives when we were all getting along so happily. Bar the routine insults and daily threats.

Now here are more pictures. Looking at them, I can see I could have told quite a different story.

Happy home educated children looking for birds, mudskippers, fiddler crabs and water snakes.
And of course we had ice cream when we got off the bus at Central. It was an excellent educational day.

Rule One

2011-11-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

I am noticing something. People around me have become very confrontational.

Not Sad Grit v Kid Cartel Ltd, obviously. We are now expert in negotiation management and conflict of laws. For example, Shark drags the tinsel out the cupboard. I say, Put the tinsel away. She has a quiet word. I see her point of view. Everyone's happy.

No, it's other people I'm seeing get antsy, and nothing to do with me.

Take this evening. Me and Dig have a date. A date!

Well, I'm dressing that up a lot. Dig has two Standard Chartered $20 notes in his pocket. He can exchange those for cheap drinks at the local expat bar. Driven by this idea of mutual benefit, we agree to down artillery fire and cooperate enough to get ourselves out to enjoy cheap booze. Even if it does taste like industrial runoff.

Saying that we will return home at 10pm, we depart the house about 8.15 for our lovely drink. Let's call it romance.

How we two love birds can imagine ourselves enjoying this balmy Hong Kong night! Canoodling with the local beer, we can drink in the drain smell from the comfort of the town's sitting out area, and relax between the bins and the public toilets, under the town temperature gauge that looks like a left-over chunk of reinforced concrete with a digital measure bolted on top. Who can imagine a more lovely place for us both to sit and place bets on which love bird hopes the other will die first?

But about 9.40, Dig's phone rings. It's the landlord.

He says, in a miserable voice, that the neighbours have rung to complain about the noise emanating from our roof at home.

(For readers who imagine the roof is angular, like an inverted V, I have to disappoint. The roof is flat, with table, chairs, and a boiler. Of course the builders put walls all round, so no-one gets the urge to push anyone else off. Although we have had some close shaves.)

Now, being made highly aware of how this looks - the very responsible parents having abandoned unsupervised triplets after 9pm while we swallow beer with added meths in the local dive - we sup up quickly and hurry home. In the four minutes it takes us to get there, we imagine all the ghastly details of the blood bath that has surely been taking place. So horrendous it must have seemed, that the neighbours are now in hiding and the police are calling in back-up support from the Hong Kong swat team.

When we arrive we find Shark in tears and Squirrel and Tiger marching about the house harrumphing in outrage with the clear injustice that has ended their evening.

Their story is that they took themselves off to the roof to party with a packet of Oreos and some skipping games. (Are your parties ever this wholesome?) There have been no battles, no blood, but an hour of playing with giggling and girly squealing.

We say, good defence.

But sadly no avail. Because the complaining neighbours have a baby. Between cuddles for Shark, and nods of agreement to the outraged Squirrel who's all for going over there and shoving monkey shit through the window, we explain that baby trumps triplets.

First-time parents (totally convinced this is the only baby born in the entire world for millennia) certainly trumps 11-year old triplets (who fail to comb their hair, look a bit feral, and who are guilty of keeping strange home-educated hours).

Because here is the fundamental law, people. Children must not be seen or social after 9pm. From this time, they must be in bed.

Especially here, in Small World Island. Children must get up at 6.40am to catch the 7.20 ferry off the island and take the school bus that secures their place behind a desk with a workbook at 8.30. They will return on the 4.50 ferry, when they may be seen walking on the island back home. From this point, they must be quiet because they are eating tea to 6.30pm and then completing two hours homework. Before bed.

We remind the children that we are nothing if not law-compliant.

On the other hand, I do have quite a large consignment of monkey shit.

Wandering old git talks to self

2011-11-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

I am out-of-things, disjointed, dislocated. Unhooked by time.

Probably post-viral.

That, and fell off the chain-end of a pointless what-is-the-point bloggery thinking, beginning from my sick bed.

Regretfully, I clicked the monthly stats. I see the numbers of happy grit's day readers took a nose dive, lifted only by a popular post on SEN kids who look like truants, and the ever-popular search, naked men in Bali.

But don't get me wrong. I am not particularly sad, nor especially surprised by sinking stats.

I am not very friendly, not at the best of times. I have a terrible record of visiting blogs, even ones I like. And my record for actually commenting when I get there is even worse.

And I already totally failed on the marketing. Wrapping a short skirt and false eyelashes on this blog and putting it out about the virtual world, touting for readership, is not something I can do.

Worse, I am not even on Facebook!

NO WAY can I give up my identity on there. What if I want to conduct an affair? By Thursday everyone would know about it and someone would be trying to flog me lubricant jelly.

Deliberately, I used to hang about the mummy blogs - probably much in the spirit of a miserable ghost who rattles its chains on the landing - where I could catch people unawares with my whiny plea, there is another way, or jump in whenever some misguided parent wrote something foolish, like 'better get used to it, school is compulsory'.

They ignored me. But maybe I somehow believed that positioning myself on the fringes of the home ed/normal world would help.

That place probably did bring up a few readers; those up for a laugh at the misfortunes of others, or the morbidly curious, like people who stare at a car crash.

But now I can't even be bothered with that role. The final bell was when the Britmums thing became a forum with an underlying agenda of whipping up enthusiasm for flogging each other stuff to sell it back to PRs. Beyond the idea there is another way, I have nothing to sell.

So I wondered where to position this blog next. A place that needs little effort. I could hang the blog about home ed land, and tackle home ed politics issues.

That would be okay, but home ed politics isn't that interesting, even to me. I would have to be all polemic, and is my heart in it? At some point I would just say, Oh I don't give a damn about the funding. Call yourselves what you want, EOTAS, AE, EO, WOTSITS. Basically I'm faithless and loyal to my own kids.

That's not a useful position to take if you're looking for a wide and provoked readership.

So I came to the same conclusion I always do when I'm idle. I shall keep the slog for my educational record. Something practical. Even though it feels like a bit of a sad and lonely space for an old hippie preparing to fight a battle with a local authority, when the local authority doesn't know they're at war.

Now, in this newly-found resolute mood, here is today's educational record. We visited the fantastic Hong Kong Planning and Infrastructure Gallery to talk about settlements and land use for the IGCSE Geography syllabus! Yippee!

There. And please don't feel the need to say anything nice. I won't sniff much about declining stats. I always think positive. Eric and his chums might stop calling.

Illness has many benefits

2011-11-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

Of course I observe the level of family support for my near-death experiences. Or should that read, I observe how illness brings out the character in all of us.

Dig takes the opportunity to lock his office door behind him. Nothing new there.

Squirrel, also, remains barely cognisant of my perilous state; she is involved in making a dolly house. She has been on the roof for several days doing stuff, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Including when they lower her mother out the bedroom window on a rope to drop her on the waiting hospital trolley below.

Then there is Shark. True to form, she looks between a repeat of yesterday's Daddy dinner and the snortygrumbly mummylump and pushes off. She finds somewhere else to hang out until it's all over, namely the house of a chum down the road.

In her new, healthy household she is immediately adopted as a missing daughter, provided with a cosy bed, taken out and given dinner at a restaurant with her new identical twin sister who doesn't piss her off, and goes and has a fantastic time watching movies and cuddling toy fish. (I do not expect an imminent return.)

But Tiger, dear Tiger, she is all concerned looks and sad states, having become my home-sick therapist of recent weeks. I shall not look unkindly on this companionship. I shall not suggest it is because she has sniffed out her mother's proclivities for comfort-munching on chocolate bars and extra packs of double choc-chip cookies.

So I would just like to reassure her. She now tops the inheritance list, and is first in line for the Tesco value knickers.

Edited to add: It is late Sunday evening. This morning Tiger took another peek at my gurnying pasty face and clearly considered her options. She grabbed a bag of embroidery threads (thanks, Deb) and disappeared. Six hours later she comes home clutching $16. She says this is profit she's made by selling friendship bracelets to tourists from a squat they have set up at the side of the road.

I do not know what to observe first. Whether it should be how in England I would now have exited the roof and be travelling the stratosphere but here, in Hong Kong, sitting in the street selling stuff is obviously alright or, Did you hear that? It was my jaw, landing with a clang on the kitchen floor. Because we are talking about the ultra-timid TIGER?

In either case, I would like to say I do not particularly feel betrayed; she can still have the Tesco value knickers. I am a bit of a miserable old whinge bag and I would have taken the same course of action.

I merely take on board the message as clear as if it were appearing in a blinding flash at the roadside on the way to the hospital. Mother, these children will all look after themselves. You should have sick days more often.

I wonder if I could convince everyone that my true cure would not be lemon water with honey, but cheap gin and easy men?