I cannot make my camera take pictures, as cameras are supposed to do. No matter what I try, it claims it cannot remember anything more, then says it must go and lie down as it is tired.
I loudly press all its buttons, jiggle its brain, give it a good talking to, and slap it about a bit.
Nothing. So I have no pictures from the City of Caves attraction for you. Squirrel says I cannot photograph underground anyway. I beg to differ. This is Nott'm, city of ambition and enterprise. They can turn dark into light if they wish.
The City of Caves attraction is quite good; better than I was expecting after the sales talk from the desk (there are caves... you can't go down all the caves... the caves are private... well, we have a couple of caves... um, they are just caves, really). But the attraction is much more than that! The information on the walkie-talkie audio is dramatically and engagingly presented, and the caves are dressed up a bit to represent various historical periods. I enjoyed it. Although I became confused about where to stand and walk, which irritated the children, given there is only one way I could actually go.
This is our education, not just being on holiday, even if it looks like it. So here is the output. Squirrel said it was very good and she particularly liked the pebbles; Tiger declared she learned so many things she could not say exactly what; and Shark said, How many hours till five o'clock?
Sadly, we have to leave Nott'm and all the caves, private, or otherwise paid-for at attraction rates, because Shark is camping this weekend with the WF, in the wood at Thetford.
Showing posts with label underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label underground. Show all posts
Friday, 22 June 2012
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Hello, Nott'm!
Ah, Nottingham! Place of my 1960s childhood, fragile growth, and miserable school confinement!
Once the proud dwelling of Saxon Lord Snot; home to a fine Norman Castle; late battleground of Richard I and evil brother John; and the defiant site where the English Civil War began. What a heroic past you have!
Now you wear your twenty-first century triple glories as English city of gun crime, drug-dealing, and anti-social binge drinking. I am told I can see your city centre unveiled regularly on late night shock cop TV, but I spare your modesties. I have never looked.
Dear Nott'm, I am your exiled daughter! Gone to the fragrant shires I am, and never, in all likelihood, will return to dwell with you again. I know, for I see you today, maybe the first time in twenty years, and you are too big and urban and scary and the newspapers proclaim last night's murder behind the Pizza Express.
Although yes, despite your changes, you stay the same. It is a comfort to see your lions once more, looking as grim and menacing as they ever did. Which is a feat, considering they have King Tut-style manes. But I look at them fondly; they are a meeting place for ghosts.
But we are not here for me to reminisce before I die from an attack of the tortoise balloons.
No. I have maintained that our visit here to Nott'm is an educational undertaking for geological and geographical purposes. We are to stroke a sandstone escarpment, find contours on a map, and provide an excuse for me to deliver my interesting lectures on settlement, land use, communication patterns and physical environment.
Thus I have promised myself. I will not tour Nott'm excitedly pointing out the car window breathlessly exclaiming This is the park my mum took me to! and This is the hedge I was sick in after Goose Fair! although I do lapse a bit into burbling that, now and again. But the children egg me on to do so, something terrible, strangely on each occasion I begin to outline the Burgess urban land use model.
And in truth it is hard to stop. In the city centre, those Victorian buildings are every bit as impressive now as I recall years ago, except for the ones that have been knocked down for redevelopment, obviously. The Broadmarsh centre still lives on, as tacky and desolate as before. The Council House in the market square, that grandly conjured building, a show-off of a place, recklessly declaring the ever-lasting might and power of the Corporation, still stands! And the library where I wrote my fantastically erudite A-level essays! Not closed down! Hurrah for the people of Nottingham!
Okay, enough of that, otherwise the sandstone rock will be unexplored and Burgess sat alone forlorn.
The little grits eagerly tour the castle. (Where my mum took me!)
Delight at the secret tunnels. (Mortimer's Hole!)
Marvel at the world-famous Robin Hood statue. (My first story books!)
Admire the Trip cut into the rock! (Bad teenage angsty stage.)
And walk right past the doors in the walls. (Don't anyone ever tell me they are store rooms.)
Then, almost overwhelmed with excitement, I drive my little grits ceremoniously past my old school. (Knocked down, eliminated from all records, name removed from memory, gone; existing only in my scars.)
Once the proud dwelling of Saxon Lord Snot; home to a fine Norman Castle; late battleground of Richard I and evil brother John; and the defiant site where the English Civil War began. What a heroic past you have!
Now you wear your twenty-first century triple glories as English city of gun crime, drug-dealing, and anti-social binge drinking. I am told I can see your city centre unveiled regularly on late night shock cop TV, but I spare your modesties. I have never looked.
Dear Nott'm, I am your exiled daughter! Gone to the fragrant shires I am, and never, in all likelihood, will return to dwell with you again. I know, for I see you today, maybe the first time in twenty years, and you are too big and urban and scary and the newspapers proclaim last night's murder behind the Pizza Express.
Although yes, despite your changes, you stay the same. It is a comfort to see your lions once more, looking as grim and menacing as they ever did. Which is a feat, considering they have King Tut-style manes. But I look at them fondly; they are a meeting place for ghosts.
But we are not here for me to reminisce before I die from an attack of the tortoise balloons.
No. I have maintained that our visit here to Nott'm is an educational undertaking for geological and geographical purposes. We are to stroke a sandstone escarpment, find contours on a map, and provide an excuse for me to deliver my interesting lectures on settlement, land use, communication patterns and physical environment.
Thus I have promised myself. I will not tour Nott'm excitedly pointing out the car window breathlessly exclaiming This is the park my mum took me to! and This is the hedge I was sick in after Goose Fair! although I do lapse a bit into burbling that, now and again. But the children egg me on to do so, something terrible, strangely on each occasion I begin to outline the Burgess urban land use model.
And in truth it is hard to stop. In the city centre, those Victorian buildings are every bit as impressive now as I recall years ago, except for the ones that have been knocked down for redevelopment, obviously. The Broadmarsh centre still lives on, as tacky and desolate as before. The Council House in the market square, that grandly conjured building, a show-off of a place, recklessly declaring the ever-lasting might and power of the Corporation, still stands! And the library where I wrote my fantastically erudite A-level essays! Not closed down! Hurrah for the people of Nottingham!
Okay, enough of that, otherwise the sandstone rock will be unexplored and Burgess sat alone forlorn.
The little grits eagerly tour the castle. (Where my mum took me!)
Delight at the secret tunnels. (Mortimer's Hole!)
Marvel at the world-famous Robin Hood statue. (My first story books!)
Admire the Trip cut into the rock! (Bad teenage angsty stage.)
And walk right past the doors in the walls. (Don't anyone ever tell me they are store rooms.)
Then, almost overwhelmed with excitement, I drive my little grits ceremoniously past my old school. (Knocked down, eliminated from all records, name removed from memory, gone; existing only in my scars.)
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Someone grounded them in reality
Grit: Look! Squirrel, Shark, Tiger! Isn't the Wye Valley beautiful! Let's live here forever!
Squirrel: Mummy? Can you see that house down there? It costs more money than you have.
Grit: I can see people kayaking on the river! I want to go kayaking!
Shark: Mummy, you do not know how to kayak.
Grit: Not knowing how to do something has never stopped me having a go!
Tiger: Yes, and it is embarrassing.
Grit: Shark! Can you see the wild peregrine falcons nesting round the Symonds Yat cliffs?
Shark: No. Did you get these binoculars from freecycle?
Grit: There's one! Look! I've found one!
Tiger: Mummy, give that model back to the RSPB man. He thinks you're stealing it.
Grit: Let's take a lovely walk together!
Tiger: Run! The watties are coming!
Grit: Here we are! Clearwell Caves. These are ancient. Let's imagine. People have mined red ochre paint in these caves for seven thousand years!
Shark: And now you can buy it at Hobbycraft.
Grit: Feel these rocks and look at the iron pigment on your fingers! Imagine if you were a stone age child digging this rock by hand! What pictures would you paint?
Squirrel: A telephone.
Grit: This tour is amazing! There are miles of passageways underground! Would you like to come caving?
Shark: No. Unless there are fish.
Squirrel: Are we allowed down here?
Tiger: Mummy! Stop taking photographs. It is completely dark and they won't come out.
Grit: That was a fantastic day out, wasn't it, girls? Now we're in the car to go back home, you can tell us all about your adventure week at PGL, Squirrel.
Squirrel?
Friday, 4 July 2008
Life in the tin mine
For us, school never happened, but home education did. Sometimes I worry about that. Perhaps we took the wrong way, or the foolhardy way, or the way running straight to Hell, prison, or the checkout at a Tesco filling station.
But today is one of those days when Education Our Way makes perfect sense. It is the right thing to do when I see Tiger grow and make better sense of the world, and herself in it, and all happening before my eyes. It just happens to be underground, that's all.
But this is the heart of Our Way. It takes time. And sometimes we have to have nerves of steel, go the course, and wait for Tiger to cross that particular line, where she can say 'I did that'.
Because there are some things, Tiger, you will not do. You will not go in dark places, or stroke cats, or speak to the waiter Asif at the Indian restaurant, because these things are scary. Sometimes they're not scary, but you're stubborn. You won't sit down and read aloud, even though I know you can damn well read because I spy on you, following your eyes on Black Beauty. And you won't show off your knowledge in public either, even though I'd like you to do that sometimes, especially about Edward III. And neither will you answer polite making-conversation questions about your sisters, your hair, your holidays or your shoes. And nor will you smile at the woman at the Co-op who last week laughed and asked if the beer was for you.
In the face of all this onslaught, this social life, this exposure, this world of other people, school would probably have been a disaster. You become so painfully shy in some situations that it's embarrassing to watch. I feel my toes curl. I slap myself to remember that every week you have lessons with kids you know, and have friends far and wide. And about your shy shrinking, we can bite our knuckles, grit our teeth, roll our eyes, or just plain worry about whether we're doing the right thing.
But then along comes a day like today and I realise our agony and my poking you in the back in the Co-op queue won't make a scrap of difference. Because it's quite clear, and proved to me again and again, you will do whatever it is you want to do when you are ready to do it, so I should just shut up and stop worrying.
And this is, I believe, the true benefit of Education Our Way. We can, if we relax enough to remember, give you the time you want to go on at your own speed, your own pace, and learn the things you want to learn when you're ready to learn them. And all my job is, is to carry on putting those opportunities in your way for you to pick them up and run off with them.
Today we toured the National Trust Cornish mines and engines site, and found out about Trevithick and how the industrial revolution and the Cornish engine shaped Cornish life and made Cornwall the world centre of mining. Seriously, in 1800 the whole of Cornwall must have looked like one sprawling mine. It can't have been too attractive, but there was work, and money. As we trace the mines across the country, the lush rolling hills bear few scars to what mining must have made of this land. And we found out all about this, and we poked you in the back when the lady asked you if you'd enjoyed yourself. Then our route through mine sites and engine houses led us, in late afternoon, to Poldark mine.
Almost as soon as we arrive, the deed is done. We are going down the mine. Dig draws Shark and Squirrel aside who are delighted with the news and gasping for the hard hats. But Dig does not tell Tiger, who hates tunnels. Dig tells me let her work it out for herself. I say I'll stay on the ground with her, because there's no way she'll go down a black hole in the ground.
After some moments in the assembly area, she works it out, why we might have paused there. Oh! Would you like a mine tour? I ask, innocently, like we just had that idea. Tiger's eyes widen as awareness creeps in. It's alright, I tell her, I'll hold your hand and there are no cats. To my surprise, she readily agrees, and adds that it's raining outside, so if we do not go down the mine, she will get wet.
Fifteen minutes later we are standing in tunnels of rock, wearing hard hats – and I do need one – this is not one of those safety-crazy places where you must wear special gear because in the next 500 yards there is wooden beam. No. I need one because already I've bumped my head twenty times and had to stoop so low I'm virtually on my knees. Our feet are in puddles of running water, which is pumped from the mine daily, we are told, otherwise it floods. And Tiger, my little anxious Tiger who is frightened of tunnels, cats, Asif and the woman at the Co-op, is leading the way, delightedly scampering and already steadied by the gentle hearted guide who has been a miner all his life and, he says, would do it now if only his wife would let him.
As I watch Tiger, with her flushed excited face, I wonder why I'm surprised. Here she is, in the capable company of this skilful, knowledgeable man, learning about life in the mine, and the upper world could be a million miles away and she would not care.
Our guide is a wonder to meet. He strokes the warm and damp rock as if it were the coat of a spoiled pet. These two granite blocks moves sideways towards each other, he warns, looking up to the curves above, as if he is noting the characteristics of difficult customers at the local pub by closing time. He adds these customers are kept apart - and he slaps strong wooden beams above us. Don't worry, he says with a wink at Tiger, they won't come down. And if they do, they'll hit me on the head.
Here in the mine we can smell, feel and hear these massive beings. We can almost hear them growling and shuffling into place. We can feel our feet wet and our heads bumped, and Tiger is loving it.
We learn more as we go on, further and deeper. Our guide knows intimately the veins of blues and browns in the rocks around him, he can spot the haphazard chance, the movement sideways in the earth's crust, the slip of brown and grey and blues that promise copper and tin. We are indeed a million miles away. For Tiger it's a real experience and revelation. She can go down mines, stroke underground rock, smell earth-air. And she did those things without a school inspector, a head of department with a clipboard and a risk assessment sheet ticked and crossed in twenty places. She did those things without a dreary worksheet headed Key Stage 3, Life in the mine, while sitting in a classroom, shrink-wrapped and sanitised, and that is one million miles away today from Tiger's happiness, and my own.
But today is one of those days when Education Our Way makes perfect sense. It is the right thing to do when I see Tiger grow and make better sense of the world, and herself in it, and all happening before my eyes. It just happens to be underground, that's all.
But this is the heart of Our Way. It takes time. And sometimes we have to have nerves of steel, go the course, and wait for Tiger to cross that particular line, where she can say 'I did that'.
Because there are some things, Tiger, you will not do. You will not go in dark places, or stroke cats, or speak to the waiter Asif at the Indian restaurant, because these things are scary. Sometimes they're not scary, but you're stubborn. You won't sit down and read aloud, even though I know you can damn well read because I spy on you, following your eyes on Black Beauty. And you won't show off your knowledge in public either, even though I'd like you to do that sometimes, especially about Edward III. And neither will you answer polite making-conversation questions about your sisters, your hair, your holidays or your shoes. And nor will you smile at the woman at the Co-op who last week laughed and asked if the beer was for you.
In the face of all this onslaught, this social life, this exposure, this world of other people, school would probably have been a disaster. You become so painfully shy in some situations that it's embarrassing to watch. I feel my toes curl. I slap myself to remember that every week you have lessons with kids you know, and have friends far and wide. And about your shy shrinking, we can bite our knuckles, grit our teeth, roll our eyes, or just plain worry about whether we're doing the right thing.
But then along comes a day like today and I realise our agony and my poking you in the back in the Co-op queue won't make a scrap of difference. Because it's quite clear, and proved to me again and again, you will do whatever it is you want to do when you are ready to do it, so I should just shut up and stop worrying.
And this is, I believe, the true benefit of Education Our Way. We can, if we relax enough to remember, give you the time you want to go on at your own speed, your own pace, and learn the things you want to learn when you're ready to learn them. And all my job is, is to carry on putting those opportunities in your way for you to pick them up and run off with them.
Today we toured the National Trust Cornish mines and engines site, and found out about Trevithick and how the industrial revolution and the Cornish engine shaped Cornish life and made Cornwall the world centre of mining. Seriously, in 1800 the whole of Cornwall must have looked like one sprawling mine. It can't have been too attractive, but there was work, and money. As we trace the mines across the country, the lush rolling hills bear few scars to what mining must have made of this land. And we found out all about this, and we poked you in the back when the lady asked you if you'd enjoyed yourself. Then our route through mine sites and engine houses led us, in late afternoon, to Poldark mine.
Almost as soon as we arrive, the deed is done. We are going down the mine. Dig draws Shark and Squirrel aside who are delighted with the news and gasping for the hard hats. But Dig does not tell Tiger, who hates tunnels. Dig tells me let her work it out for herself. I say I'll stay on the ground with her, because there's no way she'll go down a black hole in the ground.
After some moments in the assembly area, she works it out, why we might have paused there. Oh! Would you like a mine tour? I ask, innocently, like we just had that idea. Tiger's eyes widen as awareness creeps in. It's alright, I tell her, I'll hold your hand and there are no cats. To my surprise, she readily agrees, and adds that it's raining outside, so if we do not go down the mine, she will get wet.
Fifteen minutes later we are standing in tunnels of rock, wearing hard hats – and I do need one – this is not one of those safety-crazy places where you must wear special gear because in the next 500 yards there is wooden beam. No. I need one because already I've bumped my head twenty times and had to stoop so low I'm virtually on my knees. Our feet are in puddles of running water, which is pumped from the mine daily, we are told, otherwise it floods. And Tiger, my little anxious Tiger who is frightened of tunnels, cats, Asif and the woman at the Co-op, is leading the way, delightedly scampering and already steadied by the gentle hearted guide who has been a miner all his life and, he says, would do it now if only his wife would let him.
As I watch Tiger, with her flushed excited face, I wonder why I'm surprised. Here she is, in the capable company of this skilful, knowledgeable man, learning about life in the mine, and the upper world could be a million miles away and she would not care.
Our guide is a wonder to meet. He strokes the warm and damp rock as if it were the coat of a spoiled pet. These two granite blocks moves sideways towards each other, he warns, looking up to the curves above, as if he is noting the characteristics of difficult customers at the local pub by closing time. He adds these customers are kept apart - and he slaps strong wooden beams above us. Don't worry, he says with a wink at Tiger, they won't come down. And if they do, they'll hit me on the head.
Here in the mine we can smell, feel and hear these massive beings. We can almost hear them growling and shuffling into place. We can feel our feet wet and our heads bumped, and Tiger is loving it.
We learn more as we go on, further and deeper. Our guide knows intimately the veins of blues and browns in the rocks around him, he can spot the haphazard chance, the movement sideways in the earth's crust, the slip of brown and grey and blues that promise copper and tin. We are indeed a million miles away. For Tiger it's a real experience and revelation. She can go down mines, stroke underground rock, smell earth-air. And she did those things without a school inspector, a head of department with a clipboard and a risk assessment sheet ticked and crossed in twenty places. She did those things without a dreary worksheet headed Key Stage 3, Life in the mine, while sitting in a classroom, shrink-wrapped and sanitised, and that is one million miles away today from Tiger's happiness, and my own.
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