Popular culture? Fail.

I told the kids they had to prepare themselves. We are going to watch Dr Who and his 50th anniversary programme.

They stared, blankly. No-one has ever watched Dr Who in this house. We don't turn on the TV for a start. No one knows how.

But this is a big cultural event, I insisted. Everyone, all over the world is watching! I distinctly remember growing up with Patrick Troughton, my favourite. Intense, with a touch of the unpredictables. I gave up at Sylvester McCoy.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger looked at me piteously, like they are meeting one of the afflicted. But they have not yet developed subtle avoidance techniques to duties and obligations, like exiting the room, sharpish. So I plan to figure out how the TV works, then sit them in front it with a packet of ginger nuts, quick as a flash.

I had my arguments ready. I said, As home educated children, it behoves you to recognise and partake of popular culture. Without knowing society's significant cultural moments, the signs, systems and semiotics, people might think you, my poor home educated child, are excluded! People may receive the erroneous impression that you are out of touch, unable to take part in society, unaware of everyday common normalities!

'I know all about Dr Who' snapped Squirrel impatiently. 'It is that man who plays Richard II.'

Only three years behind

Lucky we keep up with popular culture!

Because in this up-to-the-minute gritty household we are now hugely enjoying Sherlock, updated by Moffat, Gatiss and co., and procured on DVD from LoveFilm in great batches of satisfying episodes.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are happily pointing out to me the many references to the original stories, from pig poking to globe spinning. They love it, and so do I. A totally recommended way to spend 90 minutes. Looking forward to the next instalments.

(But please someone give me a nudge when it starts.)

Pride and Prejudice

We are very much socially improving! We are to begin a marathon session of the BBC's 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice!

I confess. I do not know whether I am looking forward to it or not.

I become emotionally affected by romance plots which is awkward for all concerned. I must discreetly put my fingers over my eyes at the kiss.

But it is a necessary Austen to know, by any means, is it not? And I have young ladies to consider. One day I will set them free in the world of English-shires culture, bound for middle-class dinner parties, and I would hate for them to miss out on what constitutes canon England.

Anyway, now I have writ it on our scholarly kitchen timetable. It is there as P&P so I cannot get out of it. Although by referring to it as Postage and Packing I am making a good start. I could tell the children that it means we all stand in the Post Office queue today and tomorrow waiting to be served.

But worse than my feeble deception would be that we have agreed to go round to someone else's house to watch it, and I cannot betray them now. They might hurt me if I go all Little Weed at the last moment and claim we have to stand in the PO queue.

The reason, by the way, that we have to see it at their house is simple. Their TV is miles better than ours.

Theirs.

Like a cinema screen with lights and sound and popcorn.

Ours.

Sorry. I forgot to push back the rood screen which hides the tellybox bought in 1895 and is in the corner where it is handy to shove all the junk including, on occasions, one of a selection of non-working vacuum cleaners.

There! It is like watching a video at the local museum.

But P&P! You know the one, yes? With Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. He of the duck-pond shirt and she of the sidelong simper. I bet you saw it the first time round.

We are breaking the six-hour P&P down into two screenings, today and tomorrow, which means I shift our Film Family Fun Night because otherwise Coriolanus will be slap bang in the middle of Episodes 3 and 4. Then Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will misremember the plot of P&P and, at some future dinner party engagement - because let's face it, that's all I'm doing this for - they will ask awkward questions about what happened to the Roman general who comes in half-way through, slaughters everyone then Darcy throws himself in a lake and isn't that an odd book to write?

Now I have written all of the above, I think I am quite looking forward to the opportunity to improve our sense and sensibilities of English culture in the country shires. It is 30 years since I read the book and, like most other middle-aged women of middle-England, I could grab a discreet eyeful of a bloke in a wet shirt holding a riding crop in a provocative way and I shall not complain, not at 3 in the afternoon, that much is certain.

Let's watch a film!

I have resurrected Family Fun Film Night.

For any nosy-parker sitting at a desk in the local council, this is our version of a media education, so there is no need to read further. Simply tick your box and go, happy to know how this conscientious home educating parent has offered another day's well-rounded instruction to her delighted offspring.

For everyone else, you may as well know that Family Fun Film Night is where I put myself beyond mortal help.

I kick off the day's joy by declaring it a day of Film Studies, greeted by universal groaning. Then I deliver an extended leaden lecture on something irrelevant, like whether Orcs are woolly or hairless. By tea-time I have spent five hours looking for the right video. I conclude the evening's entertainment by standing in front of the TV set alternatively cursing it and pathetically pleading with it to work, sometimes actually negotiating compromises with the heap of junk, like, Please work and I will never call you a dumb arsed bastard ever again.

Sometimes the evening has irredeemably ended when I declare Family Fun Film night finished for the week, the month, make it for ever. Then I can sink to my knees in front of the box in a parody of worship to bang my head on the floor.

I do not know what is the matter with the TV, apart from it doesn't work when I come near it. It has a little display that flashes up the mystical L1 and nothing else. Then there are more buttons and knobs than I can manage. And the remote control (not that I can ever find it) is like a panel ripped from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Half the buttons can be operated only if you have the knowledge of Scotty and the other half have long been melted into the plastic by a child wielding what may have been a heated iron bar, so the chance the volume presser will ever press again is zero.

When I finally make the damn technology come alive (it was bought c1985 so you can see what I'm dealing with), then I must face the task of reassembling the dispersed cinema audience. The audience has gone into hiding, fearful of the unreasonable shouting and whining coming from the front room. But I have found appeasing buckets of popcorn and Co-op pancakes are a sure and winning allure, plus the promise that no-one has to get out of bed in the morning before ten o'clock after a night's Film Studies.

At last we can begin! Tonight's screening is the first in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings (the Orcs now make terrible sense, as does my horrible dramatisation of Anglo Saxon grammar from Sweet's Anglo Saxon Primer).

We watched. Or tried to. I thought it was very dark. Literally, not metaphorically. After an hour I wondered aloud whether Peter Jackson had any lighting at all. Shark said she thought it was a setting on our TV, and she hadn't said anything because she was happy not to see hairless Orcs before bedtime. Trying to interpret their speech as Anglo Saxon grammar was enough.

But blow me down, she is right! Do you know, the girl is educated in the ways of media technology. There is a little turny knob on the TV, the one to the left of the blue plasticine (put there to remind myself which one was the volume), and if I turn it, I scatter the darkness and bring forth bright!

Well I never. But I think this not only shows how home education is a complete project in cooperative family learning, it demonstrates how media studies in particular is an excellent vehicle by which the child can take on the role and mantle of the expert.

Because we can all agree that mother's totally crap at it.