twtwtw

Pack up and go home day!

Farewell, field at Stonham Barns! Arrivederci, home education HesFes gathering! Au revoir the debating corner, the talks, workshops, music sessions, strange hair brigade and the delightful furniture shop where I succumbed to the charms of your shabby chic candle sconces.

It was good, people, but I lamented the absence of the solar powered cinema, and I would fare better with choices in hippie food beyond pizza and chips.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger delighted in their feral pack-gathering, happily joining up with the Hertfordshires and Hong Kong home edders to be about their unfathomable business. Me, I sat about in the travelling library, or hung out with the Shanghai contingent and Ida from up the road.

We all agreed a useful policy to promote home ed was to spend yet another year bludgeoning the public with information of their legal duty and freedom of choice, helped along with tales of our wayward outdoor ways, warts and all.

At least then, mama and papa of Tinkertop, you know what life she can have, once set free from the school's zero-arts policy, the uniform grind of a daily maths and spelling test, and Mad Jessie of 3G who stalks her on Facebook.

Thus I hail our annual home ed gathering, all round, another roaring success! (I have to. I have no Plan B.)

Wet Tent Art

Yeah, there was a camping downpour. Don't ask when. I lose myself with time even when I have a diary and a repeater alarm clock. Put me in a tent in a field and I'm timeless. But this moment I have a camera, a goal of musing through idleness, and vague recollections of Mondrian.

College for home ed kids

You know how home ed goes, right? Sweat, tears, panic, fear, sleepless nights, and that piece of paper you ironed. The one when Tinkertop proved she could write. The one you keep as the Almighty Evidence, just in case the EWO calls round again.

But in dark moments of confusion and chaos, you might seek solace from your local group.

Fine. If you don't live in the exact area of the dysfunctional split where the grudge match is played out between the philosophical free rangers, the tutors-for-profit educational support services, the Evangelical Christians, the feral hippies in the wood, and the home schoolers who came up with the great idea for the timetable and the uniform.

But there's always online! Blogs, lists, forums, and email chat.

But the online world mirrors your face-to-face local group. Where you realise just how wide blown apart is the spectrum of home education. Cross-sectioned with dozens of learning approaches, a pile of different philosophies, thousands of uniquely strange kids, and all blasted with the prejudices, opinions, weaknesses and bizarre beliefs that you've come to expect from humanity.

If it didn't get mind-blowing enough, add the government's eternally changing statements, guidances, legislations, amendments, committee reports with the legal challenges, court cases, media reporting, comedic nonsense trotted out by the TES, and the opinion of your cousin Valerie who says now your kids won't ever learn how to socialise.

Home education? I bet you recognise it.

So the fact that sometimes you can just be given a bit of news straightforwardly comes somewhat as a relief.

Like for jaded old Grit, keen to hear the present situation on colleges for September 2013. Yes, despite what I may have heard, colleges can still accept home educated 14-16-year olds, the courses can be funded by a local education department, and the college does not need to act as if they were a school. The national pattern remains scattered, and if Tinkertop wants to poke her face in on a college course, you may have to educate your local admissions tutor who may be confused about their college responsibilities.

Phew.

It's for updates like that I go to the HesFes talks. Without the HesFes talks, you could always go to places like here.

And don't start any arguments, now.

At some point there were bees

HesFes 2014

If you are one of the .0000000001% of the UK population right now sitting on the fence deciding about whether or not to attend HesFes 2014, then I can reassure you.

Ignore what I said about the hippies, and come along.

For loads more promising reasons than to see whether the kids you dump in a field set up an anarcho-syndicalist state, or whether Tinkertop will go instantly all Lord of the Flies and the management will be taking down the pig's head by Sunday.

Reasons like the talks, discussions, and grown-up sharing debatey stuff, which is going on all day long, formal and informal, organised and chaotic. Not just on the best hippie methods for cooking roadkill and stuff like that. But useful talks. Like educational options, Special Educational Needs, flexi-schooling, exam issues, virtual colleges, and even the bleedin' law - the very words which give us our strong-armed righteousness and a fine sense of virtue while we go about undermining the rest of society.

So yes. Parents considering or embarking on alternative forms of education, come to HesFes.

Not just for children. Or hippies.

The hippie guide

Hello from HesFes, the home educating festival, held annually in a field, where I am happy getting down with the hippies!

Actually, all types of people come to HesFes.

Exhibiting all sorts of behaviours.

Not just hippies.

In fact, I think hippies might be an unfair generalisation of the types of people who attend HesFes.

Why don't I offer a guide? After all, if you've never been here, I bet you're wondering, Could HesFes be for us? See? I am so very helpful! (And safely out the way.)

 Here it is then, Grit's (very dodgy but thankfully brief) guide to some of the lovely HesFes hippies!

The ultra-permissive.
A straight down-the-line liberal approach, taken as far as it can go. Parent bungs Tinkertop a sleeping bag, thirty quid, and bag of weed saying, Make it last the week. Actually, may not provide the sleeping bag. (You can always doss down with someone, somewhere.)

From the outside, this parenting style can appear, to the untrained eye, dangerously indistinguishable from the couldn'tgiveatoss approach. However, proponents of ultra-permissive will argue there are significant differences based on ideology. Feel free to come and shout about the distinctions while holding a wooden baton.

The attached.
Barely visible beneath piles of offspring. Wraps babies across chest, round ankles, papoosed on back. Has several toddlers dangling from necklaces. When not dreamy singing while staring into space, or discussing the miracle of the breast, can be found crawling about the floor making choo choo noises.

The free range.*
Demands Tinkertop sit calmly to consider endless personal-safety instructions suitable for all manner of everyday hazards (strangers, play equipment, parks, water cannon, breast enhancement surgery, kettles, food, plastic bags, cash machines, paper, sky), before suggesting Tinkertop (for whom it has all gone in one ear and out the other), should now go out to exercise her autonomy to play. Parent misguidedly thinks Tinkertop is now well-equipped to make a common-sense judgement if called upon by chums to combine a hosepipe with a cat.

(In my experience, a high incidence of this type of parent can be found at HesFes.)

The green.
A treasured heirloom from the sixties.Wears miles of rainbow-dyed organic cotton, has strange hair, talks earnestly of big pharma, one-world government, the practical problems of building cess pits, and travels about the country lanes of England in an old van with the exhaust dropping off. After two days, the sole child in their care is indivisible from a mud bath.

The spiritual guidance.
Uniquely bonkers, can be found tapping into the earth's energy flow while carefully avoiding setting themselves on fire with the open flames that become the womanly hearth. Tinkertop may have her own set of 500 healing crystals, talks chakras with ease, and can hold a lengthy discussion with a pine cone.

The welly.
Eminently sensible types carrying sun hats, wellington boots, jumpers, tee-shirts; seen hoicking large straw bags around, containing 20 litres of factor 50 sunscreen, 2 litres of insect repellent, spare hairbands, extra bottles of purified rehydration water, and two packs of sanitised handwipes because you never know. Child is nowhere to be seen, but is probably catching up on a little light George Eliot in the travelling library.

The disappeared.
Irresponsible type who dumps the kids, turns off the mobile phone by accident-on-purpose, and legs it to explore Stowmarket. I have no idea who this could be, because obviously, you can't find them, but let's all pray there's no emergency requiring the fire brigade, and anyway I have pitched the tent next to an earth mother welly type who is sure to have a plaster.

The authoritarian.
Control-freakery type parenting approach probably not found at HesFes.

The couldn'tgiveatoss.
One who, to all appearances, seems to have been driven to despair/madness with Tinkertop's outrageous ways. Ends the week by being banned from the camp site for ever and ever after telling the organisers to go pleasure themselves.

I think that might be it for now, or should be, before I get into trouble.

But, casual reader, do not think that home ed has a monopoly on these parenting styles! Yes, I know it looks like it when 500 hippies converge on a field, but you can find these parent-types in all ways of life, whether choosing home ed, the local comp, or dumping Tarquin as a boarder.

And you HesFessers are welcome, of course, to add your own observed types to the rich guide that is home ed life to be found camping in a field.


*Not to be confused with the business which supplies educational support services, probably requires the accountant to declare a loss and thus avoid paying tax and, basically, isn't free.

It's just doable! (So let's not do it.)

This is one of those blog posts I really urge myself to read, because it contains words of wisdom.

For many months I have been deaf to wise words, but I note that it is only now I am beginning to hear them.

Admittedly, I find myself listening to wise words only when they have been dropped in a vat of water, thrashed ten times against a horse skin (horse not in it) and poured in a stopper-dropper craft bottle before selling to gullible idiots like me at twenty quid a pop.

I currently have this chronicness called puffyupandfalloffyitis the remedy for which the quack doctor (after securing my house and all its contents) has supplied to me. His thoughtful remedy is this: many splendidly large quantities of coloured pills the size of doorknobs to be swallowed throughout the day, supported by some self flagellation at times of your own choosing but it must be done with a fancy daisy.

Frankly, I am so tired of puffyupandfalloffyitis the bloke from the tyre shop could have told me my cure lies in balancing a chinchilla on my head while standing in a bucket of water at midnight and I would be asking him about his hourly rentals on chinchillas. Puffyupandfalloffyitis can get us sufferers down and desperate.

But the good quack doctor also said that leading a less stressful life can be helpful in my search for a final solution.

I recall that this has been told to my brain and body before!

Of course, then it was from one of those white-coated androids. My body and brain ignore such tellings, yes they do, because body and brain are about their important business with stuff like triplets, a Citroen Berlingo with a dent in it, a pile of dinner potatoes, and a great sense of responsibility to be bashed about like a hammer against a clock with an ultimatum.

But it is now these wise words should be attended to. Do less stuff. Do less stuff slower. Do less stuff slower and with more attention to the preparation and the mopping up. Do not overegg with wrangling thinking on the stuff which you must do slower while preparing and mopping up. Simply enjoy all the stuff just as you go.

In other words, body and brain, do not take the opportunity this week to poke the diary (let's say for the 34th September), and think Aha! I can fit into this day the workshop starting at 9am if I drive to Leicester at 2pm to join the talk at 4pm so we can do the play at 6pm and return at 10pm. If I wee in a bottle about junction 16 of the M1 I save the ten-minute stop at Newport Pagnell services, which makes it all just doable!

Frankly, body and brain, this sort of lifestyle should cease. It may be a contributory factor to your puffyupandfalloffyitis.

This camping trip should mark a turning point. And it will, body and brain, if you bother to read on. This trip, to the lovely Suffolk, with all the other hairy hippies in the happy fields, should remind you that idling and loafing are commendable activities. Footling and playing are goals in themselves. Staring at fields, skies, clouds and wavy grains, following whimsical distraction, surfing ideas, enjoying semi-random connections, so that one can begin thinking about plastic computer tables and drift away to imagining being a cuckoo dancing on a washing line, these are all truly worthwhile experiences.

Yes, body and brain. If you pay heed to my wise words, you may achieve your less stressful life.

Okay, only for the coming week. But then we will see if that indeed has any further impact on your horrible puffyupandfalloffyitis.

And know, body and brain, that whatever you choose to do, I resolve one summer to come blogless and shoeless in whatever state I find myself, to idle time away in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, staring at the sky and wondering if dancing cuckoos really do wear noisy pink tutus as they so indignantly claim.

Home ed camp

You education malcontents, people with children unhappiest, and alternative school seekers.

Next year, resolve to come by HesFes on a day ticket. The gatekeepers will let you pass, I promise.

For your visit, bring kid, or something of equal spirit, like a window in the childlike part of your soul still open to all things curious and promising. Come, safe in the knowledge that to be among these alternatives you need not disguise yourself by dress bizarre, nor by flowers in the hair, not tie dyes, nor dreads. Neither should you fear that in two footfalls of your entrance, some suspicious twitching hippie will offer you industrial strength smoking fluid.

Although yes, this home ed camp for a slice of this society is a little like you strayed through a time portal into 1969. A little unreal, like a psychedelic vision trapped in a field off the A1120.

I sit flopped in the shade, failing to find my computer a clear route back into the internet world of 2012. A teenager saunters past me, touching his black satin top hat and softly smiling. His fluffy brown dressing gown flaps about his ankles. He's followed by a four-year old, singing happily to herself, dancing alone to her own story in a neon pink scarf, all a-rattle with spinning silver coins. Six or seven skinny boys, coats made of mud layers, chase each other with water guns. Their faces earnest on urgent matters of life or death, closing in on enemies with fierce determination. Strange, their intergalactic game play, cutting through the scenes where children of all sizes and ages and paints weave around, some dancing, some running, some on bikes, some leading small panting dogs and headed happily for the showers.

If you bring a kid unsure at school, then warning. Come here early, fix a meet-up time to take them home, then watch them go. You won't be wanted. There's too much to choose from and too much to do. Adults are superfluous to this playground.

Displaced persons, these accidental grown-ups, they relax by standing idly by, hands in pockets, shuffling their feet, waiting and talking or hanging about in the hope that they're needed. Some sit huddled outside bright marquees, clutching teas and earnestly talking edubabble. Others listen inside tents, weighing up wisdoms of speakers on personal experiences of education laws, special needs, local authorities, education plans, government policies, how to open doors of learning when others closed them down. I sit watching and wondering about everybody, while children chatter and music plays.
 
Around us all are places for activity: the grand solar cinema, tents for food, coffee, and rest, the travelling library, the art tent, the pole lathe, the empty chair dangling the label Public Speaking, and a plastic body displaying stomach, heart, and lungs.

Behind me another sign goes up. These signs catch me with their intentions: for a moment, they promise this great heaving, moving camp might stitch my dispersed children back where I would see them as a single group again, maybe for a Thursday flowers in wood at 2pm; perhaps come as a team at 4pm to shape beads, play games, write poetry, print scarves.

Maybe over there, come 6pm, I could find my children. Or not. It wouldn't matter. These hours belong to them, and I am one of the flow of parents, not needed. The notes I peeled from my purse this morning have sent my tribe scattering away, hunting their own cooked dinners and ice creams; secured them gone for better things to do than I can offer.

Someone interrupts me and asks whether I found the internet connection out of here. I say no, not yet. So I'll shut down the computer, settle back, and soak up the time.

Proof

See the delightful Dior-tinted Big Toe of Grit. Here it relaxes, taking the lovely Suffolk air, having fun, CAMPING.

PROOF that I have put up a tent at HesFes and not died in it. Additionally, I would like to say that I actually have slept a night in it!

Honour is satisfied. Dig owes me a fiver.

But the campsite at Stonham Barns is very lovely. It has six toilets and a shower. Maybe there are some 750 people here. Who can count?

Oh look! I see how my very lovely brother lives not far away from this centre of all alternative education action taking place this week in Suffolk!

He possesses, I note, certain living essentials. Like walls, doors, roof, curtains, functioning toilet, shower that some kid isn't occupying with the sole aim of washing the dog, bed, and bedlinen (get it yourself: Val has kindly departed the house in a huff, in anticipation of my imminent arrival).

Ahem. HesFes is a wonderful place where the children can live the autonomous dream, is it not? Here you are surrounded by like minds. You can let your children run free, safe in the knowledge that they will sort themselves out with friends, workshops, lectures, books, discussions, free play, music, practical tasks, films, public speaking, washing the dog in the shower, threading knitting needles and tent pegs in each other's hair, painting themselves blue, and feeding happily on breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you bung them a tenner every morning and mutter Be off with you, young autonomous types! Psst. I'll be back tomorrow, after breakfast.

Two delights, but one week

I have a lot to thank The Stables for.

No, not the horse house. The Stables.

Jazz and live music outfit.

Thank you Stables! And Arts Council, MK Council, and performers. For creating the fantastic 2012 International Festival, Milton Keynes!

Thank you for your imagination, vision, and ambition, for procuring an international array of performers, creating a national event, and having the staying power to send a lot of organising emails. I bet it involved that.

Flipping through the IF programme with great excitement, I can choose a dozen things for the mini grits to do, from the quirky to bizarre.

Perfect.

Not so perfect, during the IF week: Team Grit isn't here.

We are out. In a field at Stonham Barns, Suffolk.

IF coincides with HesFes, the home educating festival. Magnet and exhibition centre for alternative educationalists, out-of-schoolers, part-schoolers, unschoolers, hippies, travellers, radicals, libertarians, autonomous anarchists, pink hair brigades, ferals, half-wolves, small people who know how to handle a knife, Cassandras in their own lands, and righteous principled harbingers creating your country's educational renaissance, if only you would bloody well listen.

I bet HesFes took a lot of vision, ambition, imagination and organising emails as well. 

My fingers flip the programme for IF. My greedy eye and arty heart catches the pleasure that is ahead, but it's too late! My principled soul and clapped out body must go to HesFes. And I am obliged to Dig's wallet. He paid for HesFes tickets already. The month he was safely in Brazil and didn't have to live in a tent.

The IF programme winks at me, seducing me with its loveliness. I am easily led.

After a struggle with my soul (takes fifteen seconds) I decide that Wednesday I will abandon HesFes and pop back for a tryst with IF at Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Can't miss that.

But for today, the junior Grits can experience the gorgeousness that is the beginning of IF.

Enjoy then, Sacrilege bouncy Stonehenge

 and Carabosse fire gardens.