Dwelling on thoughts is usually a bad idea

Because I'm not giving in, and writing about my feeling today, as I march the gritlets along the street to Bedford Museum for a workshop on the siege of Bedford.

That feeling, like everyone's read those newspaper stories now. So the woman who passes me? When her eyes glance for a fraction of a moment as her brain checks out a mum and three kids trailing behind, and what comes tumbling next into her head to spread that shadow over her face and cause that flickering frown?

Huh. Another parent condoning truancy. A parent who's kept their kids from school, one of those pretending about home education. Religious nut. Warped person. Someone not like us, like normal people. How can their kids ever be normal? Look, no friends. Isolated. Locked away. It's a disgrace. Something should be done.

Wondering what other people think is probably a bad idea, because it won't make much difference to how we live, and what our values are. I'll carry on doing what we do, everyday, because I believe for me and mine, it is right. But it all just got harder to get over our ideas, free from prejudice, free from those thoughts, and those press insinuations.

We meet a group of home educators of all types up on the windy Castle hill. Some are outraged by the Badman report, angry at the attack on privacy and choice. Some shrug their shoulders and say, with resignation, it's what this society is moving to, what can we expect? Others say home educators should accept visits, should enjoy them. Another says they're leaving the country. They've had enough. A last, optimistic, says look on the bright side, says something good will come.

The education officer doesn't seem to expect anything, so we oblige. She gaily suggests the kids reenact the siege of Bedford, then hands out costumes, wooden props, and a crossbow, which she says, to everyone's disappointment, doesn't really shoot bolts, so don't try. Chuck some plasticine about instead.

We don't learn much we didn't already know. We'll come back home and read it from Wikipedia.

But it's a chance for the kids to all meet up, have fun, run about, dress up as archbishops, gate keepers, soldiers, cooks, scribes, lords and ladies. They whoop and shout, play at making grass medicine for the wounded, and send secret messages from castle walls that don't exist. The parents chat, and everything is so very ordinary, and so very normal.

Thank you Richard Vaughan! Grit's new job is PROSTITUTE!

Hey, Richard! Writer of the article on HOME EDUCATION for the TES! Yes, you! You wrote the article published 12 June!

Richard, you might have saved us.

Since I gave up a full time job to HOME EDUCATE my children, I've become used to making decisions, like, do I buy new boots at John Lewis for £180? Or do I buy used shoes at the RSPCA charity shop for £3? Well, sometimes there's no real choice, because my kids need books, resources, outings, computer stuff and art materials. And tell me about the cost of those acrylics!

Well you obviously appreciate that home educators don't usually receive money from the state just because they've chosen a different way of education from you. Not a bit. Usually, it's a big hit on our time, commitment, energy, and pockets.

Which is why your suggestion is just tickety-boo! It could be a nice little earner, no? Don't be SHY! It was you, wasn't it Richard, who conflated the article on HOME EDUCATION with this paragraph on PROSTITUTION?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has issued new guidance with the Home Office to safeguard children from sexual exploitation and prostitution. It revises guidelines published in 2000 in a report, Safeguarding Children involved in Prostitution. Delyth Morgan called all frontline professionals to work together to identify children at risk of sexual exploitation and take the 'best steps to keep them safe from harm'.

Of course you know that home education often means learning things together with our children. So if my child is now living in a world where HOME EDUCATION and PROSTITUTION can be dealt with as if they are pretty much one and the same thing, of course they should know about it.

Well, I'm their teacher! I'll find out first!

Now bear with me Richard, because I'm new to this game, and I may not have all the lingo just yet. I've done my advertising on the back lanes.


And I've had a little rummage in the wardrobe and come up with this. Do you think it will help?


Look a bit closer, Richard. Something might tickle your fancy.


Sorry, I don't have all the face mask stuff yet. I found these eye patch things that Dig bought back from an aeroplane.


Ohh la la, Richard!


And when we are very naughty, Richard, I could read to you about THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH.


And then we could get down to some serious work. Again, you'll have to forgive me. It's just what we've got in the cleaning cupboard right now.

Well, Richard. Big Boy. Thanks for suggesting this angle. Me, I would NEVER have THOUGHT that HOME EDUCATION AND PROSTITUTION BELONG TOGETHER.

I should give you a discount.*

*But sadly, due to irritating ideas about accuracy, decency and fairness in this country, I've been forced to accompany the opening of my new business with a letter to the Press Complaints Commission.

My children have done this

Last year I saw the entries for the Turner Prize on display at Tate Britain.

A model sitting on a toilet wasn't quite enough to prompt me to action.

After all, I'm beyond bored with Brit art and the like. Corpses hanging from trees, people with penises growing from their faces, a pile of soil, a heap of bricks, celery, tin foil... a squatting dummy seems rather tame.

It wasn't that which prompted Grit to shift herself from her chair. No.

It was a passing comment by a Dior-clad uber tart in a London art gallery who, dripping perfumed couture and diamonds in front of a pool of yellow paint splashed over a bedsheet, declared loudly, 'It really annoys me when people say "My child could have done that!"'

That was it.

Each month, nine-year olds Squirrel, Shark and Tiger worked a day with me on this project. First we visited Whipsnade wildlife animal park, taking observational sketches. Next we looked at the work of painters listed here. Then we studied colour, form, composition, line. We converted a bathroom to a studio. There, we tried all styles of brushstroke. We worked with different qualities of acrylic. We mixed, matched, blended, sketched, considered, talked, painted, cried, laughed. Then I marched to the local community art space, booked the space for two weeks, Dig made the posters, and we spent Sunday putting up the art.

And this is my children's exhibition. It's called HIDE! If you can't come along, here are the paintings on the walls.











And here is a little of the behind-the-scenes work.




Uber tart, My children did that.

Children educated at home more at risk of abuse

That headline up there is from The Independent. Or should that read The Incredible Inventing Newspaper.

Stupidly, I've always read The Independent by preference.

Heck, I've followed their diet, gained two stone and STILL been loyal, but reading the educational pages of The Incredible Inventing Newspaper on the Badman report requires me to stand upside down on my head with a pair of socks over my eyes just to get a hold on the perspective of the reporting here.

I'd just like to say out loud, in defence, that the education pages of The Independent have always been crap.

That should read TOTAL CRAP by the way. Weak, lacking incisiveness, lacking criticism, lacking any thoughtful independent journalism at all. Probably because they are basically a vehicle for advertising, let's face it, and you can't be independent when there's several thousand pounds being waved at you from the ad manager to crow about an MBA course, or a private school who'd just like a little plug about their carrot scheme.

Well the education pages are like a joke against educational reporting. They should be labelled SCHOOL IS LOVELY LICKY LICKY or something, because there's precious little discussion about education. It's like the editor of that section, possibly Coco the clown, cannot conceive of an education that takes place outside of school. Except when six photogenic toothless 5 year olds do some gardening in the school playground and then it deserves a close up photo opportunity of a cute grinning kid holding a carrot and a double page spread exclaiming VEGETABLES ACHIEVE ASTONISHING LEAGUE TABLE PERFORMANCE.

It's not only the educational feature and news writing in The Incredible Inventing Newspaper which are tediously and relentlessly school arsy licking.

You should read the weekly Educational Quandary sorted out by the smuggymuggy Hilary Wilce. These are hilarious. Really, me and Dig fight each other to get hold of that bit so we can guffaw our way through breakfast. For a start the problems come from people like Mrs Trellis wringing their hands over issues like How many hours homework should a five year old do? and What should happen to chairs in the classroom? Should they go on top of the school desks? and Does this help the cleaner or not?

But this 'news item' about the Badman report really went further out than I have ever seen.

Let's be kind. Coco the education editor who unicycles to work wearing a squirty flower and whizzing bow tie probably saw a press release on home education come in on from the government Ministry of Truth.

Coco pressed COPY and PASTE because the press release fitted in a spare quarter of his empty page. There. That didn't require any questioning, no quizzical finger-on-chin moment to wonder whether these statistics actually exist,* no critical thinking of any type, and no independence either.

Mr Balls is probably delighted by how easy this is, to get crap like this splattered unconditionally in front of hundreds of thousands of readers.

On this basis, I could send Coco an educational press release about how I have a dog called Asparagus who wears pink bootees on his ears and how Asparagus is standing as a candidate in the next general election on a ticket of more lovely schools and bones, and they'd print that.

Of course I can't suspend my reading of The Incredible Inventing Newspaper. Absolutely not. The education pages are simply too much fun. Just wait. Next we'll read

100% of Home Educators are Aliens in Disguise. Certified. True. Honest. And what to do about it, by Hilary Wilce.

* Thank you, Renegade Parent.

Home educated children hidden from view

I would hate to disappoint Mrs Gradgrind, so I'll admit for the last three days to evade the authorities I have gone to ground in the wilderness that is Suffolk and Norfolk.

On Thursday we found a suitable disguise in Moyse's Hall Museum that should ensure we do not stand out from the crowd on market day in Bury St Edmunds.

On Friday we found the perfect location to dump the Gritmobile, which we abandoned in a field.


Then we ran off into Bewilderwood to find a forest dwelling where we could hunt goblins and live undetected.


Finally on Saturday I found the perfect hiding hole here in a neolithic flint mine at Grimes Graves. That is, of course, the perfect destination for grunting lentil eating unbalanced unsocialised rabble who live on illegal substances, roadkill, and goblins.


You see? HOME EDUCATED CHILDREN ARE HIDDEN FROM VIEW. Mrs Gradgrind, you probably didn't see us from your view behind the school desk in Classroom 3, Block 2.

Would you like to try me on socialisation?

I wish I had conversations like this everyday

I take a day off today from persecuting my own home educated gritlets and I try it with someone else's child on a school visit instead. I meet Marcie. Age 6, in Bewilderwood, Norfolk.

Bewilderwood* is a giant playground in a wood, supposedly inhabited by small and wild green goblin creatures like crocklebogs with spikes coming out their heads, pointed ears and frog faced grins.

While Squirrel, Tiger and Shark swing about in trees, I collapse my ancient arse and lungs on a piece of wood shaped like a snake, and up comes Marcie. She stands in front of me, puts her hands on her hips and looks at me defiantly, through suspicious narrowed eyes, like I am someone about whom she might yet scream POLICE! if it suits her. And we have the following conversation.

M: Who are you?
G: I'm a boggle, in disguise.
M: Really?
G: Yes.
M: You don't look like a boggle.
G: That's because I'm in disguise.
M: Why are you in disguise?
G: Boggles like me put on human disguise so we can come here and sit on this bench.
M: You are not a boggle.
G: Yes I am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Not.
G: Am.
M: Well you don't look like a boggle to me. Except for the hair.


* Go, but don't go in the school holidays when it will be standing room only.

Thinking of home education?

I know some readers of grit's day send their kids to school. You are welcome to come here and realise why that is A GOOD IDEA.

Read Grit's tales of home educational mismanagement, disaster, triumph, despair, ambition and failure. And if you were in any doubt before about sending Tinkertop Moonbeam down the schoolie road, after a couple of days with me, school will seem like a fair do all round.

And you can come here safely, and laugh at our banana skin lifestyle. I won't attack your choice. I am not anti-school. Some children truly enjoy school and thrive there. For some, school offers a creativity, outlet and stimulation, perhaps differently or more than can be offered at home, no matter how loving that home is. For others, school is safe; they don't want to go a home that is not safe. I have taught in classrooms and seen these things first hand.

But for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, I am anti-schools-the-way-they-are-for-us. I don't want to subject my three little aliens to what's on offer down our road: uniforms from age 4, homework, boring hours, pointless tasks, behavioural contracts, tests, defined and narrow learning, tick boxes, measurable goals, and a miserable government-imposed restriction on time for practical science, music, art, dance, creativity... all these things seem to me to take joy away from the wonderful, sparky, insane, spontaneous, upside-down world that rightly belongs to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

They wouldn't go to school anyway, let's face it. They are as bolshy as mama and papa.

We tried. We sent the gritlets to the school nursery. But Mama hated nursery because the teacher had nothing in her head that anyone could make sense of except a list of attainment targets, which she once made the foolish mistake of trying to hide under her hand when Grit walked in to collect her offspring. Tiger hated nursery more than she could say, but she could howl it. Shark hid in the toilets. Dig grew ten foot tall, ripped all his clothing off his body and turned green when it was suggested we might in future like to arrange for permission to be granted to take our children out for the day. Squirrel was Squirrel, went her own way, ignored all the rules, received a smack on the head and visited A&E. That combustible combination pretty much sealed the entrance door back to school.

For Dig, Grit and the little gritlets, home education has been a hard struggle of learning how to learn together. We think it's worth it. You should hear the negotiations and problem solving strategies that go on sometimes. You'd think you walked into a backroom at the United Nations where they are just sorting out that Arab-Israeli thing.

Outside the state system we are free to choose the best way of education. The kids play, grow, develop, build piles of soil, experiment with plaster of paris and then figure out together how to unblock the drains. Mama imposes some non-negotiable aspects of home ed, like reading, maths, science, French, eating green things and brushing teeth, so don't cross her on those. Together, so long as we cope with the triumphs and fall outs of home ed, we think we make a pretty decent family, although a little oddball in the lifestyle department.

Which is why the publication of this report, with its recommendations, is so hard to take.

This is a body blow to us, our way of life, a denial of the respect we thought was due to us for our choices, a betrayal. More, it has implications for every family in England, because it seeks to place the state as the decision maker in your child's education.

If you are seriously considering home education, fantastic. It may be the right thing to do for your child. It can be a thrilling family adventure. And don't be put off by Badman and Balls.

Because have you noticed what an amazingly strong, vigorous, confident bunch of people compose the home education world? We're not going to give that up.

Because this really is June 10

Chronologically challenged and diary disabled, when I get to the end of a year, I look back and think What the fuck happened? So I entrusted blogger as the vehicle to capture what we were doing, what I was thinking, and which field I was in.

The blog also is a useful record because I may need to remember where Dig was, where I was, and the circumstances of a particular time in case we are taken to court.

Everyday now we are made into a new form of criminal in this lovely British society of ours, and consequently we are threatened frequently with prosecution. Companies routinely rip monies from our bank accounts for services we cancelled years ago, and for which the bank agrees we do not owe, and then said company sells the debt that isn't there, attempts to send round the bailiffs and take us to court. TRY IT AGAIN U-NET.

We home educate, run a business, manage more than one household and STILL I deal with debt collection agencies chasing the tennant for £315.12. The tennant lived in one part of our house and LEFT TEN YEARS AGO.

So for my record, on Wednesday 10 June, hours before the Badman report was unleashed and the newspapers in readiness churning out the propaganda from the government on how we home educators abuse our children, Grit and the gritlets packed a bag to go live in a caravan for two nights in Suffolk.

Don't you all eat live chickens?

If you read the newspapers and the social chitchat from that place of normality, sanity, balance and Al-Qaida, the NETMUMS coffeehouse, you'll meet the following opinions about home educated children, who apparently...

1. never leave the house
2. are hidden from view
3. are psychologically, emotionally and physically abused by their parents
4. fail to achieve their full academic potential
5. are inadequately socialised
6. lack focus, structure, routine
7. are badly behaved
8. receive an inferior education
9. are indoctrinated by their parents
10. interact only with fundamentalists, religious zealots, creeps, weirdos, live chicken eaters etc.
11. are educated behind closed doors because the family have 'something to hide'

I thought I'd just snap that public opinion this week. Before things get really bad.

And I'll add that on an average home educating Tuesday at Grit's house, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger attend a French lesson, then I drive Shark to her sailing, Tiger to horse riding and Squirrel to dance. I'm reading Robinson Crusoe over breakfast, and it's fitting in neatly with the audio CDs of This Sceptered Isle. In their spare time, the kids have several maths and science websites they explore, and they're also adding the finishing touches to their art, for the exhibition they're running from Sunday. Then at the end of the day we eat live chickens and, before bed, worship the devil.

Go on. Tell me that's not normal.

Mr Balls should gaffer tape my mouth SHUT

DUH! Here I was, misguided and foolish, doing that HOME EDUCATION stuff all wrong. Damn those kids and their rights to a free-thinking education.

Because from Mr Balls' view right now, that home ed stuff that I've been doing? All WRONG.

Mr Balls, my teaching performance is way down. If I continue to inflict on my children this sort of unfocused, unstructured activity, lacking rigour, direction and purpose, like VISITING THE CINEMA, just score my teaching performance on the home educating league table of deliverable performances a BIG FAT ZERO.

Make that a double big fat zero with extra zeroes for my failing to deliver the Labour government's perfectly reasonable performance standards with assessable attainment targeting and differential academic goals on a planned framework including identifiable edubabble for verification of learning outcomes to be assessed and authorised by the due departments and shared stakeholders in the assessment process.

Guilty as charged. Last week I took Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to see Night of the Museum II. Because they asked to go.

OK. The film is a load of crap, a vehicle for Ben Stiller, and is naked US cultural propaganda with barely any focus to link together the characters. And I still took them to see it and I called it EDUCATION.

And why? Shark, Squirrel and Tiger like Night at the Museum. It's one of their favourite films. So when the sequel came out, of course they want see that too. And there I was, promising to be at that cinema for numbers III, IV, V, VI and VII. Or until Ben Stiller selfcombusts, whichever comes first.

Mr Balls, you're probably aiming to re-educate me. Because this is a non-state approved activity. No matter that Night of the Museum II provides excellent material for Tiger to chatter about. Endlessly. Tiger's ambition is to be a film animator. But an education aiming to fulfil my child's potential is just not good enough, is it?

Neither is what we now do on Monday afternoons. The kids see Dale.

I know I said, Move over, God. Dale is mightier than God. Dale, the king of animation and the controller of the plasticine, is running a set of animation courses for the little home ed kids, and wow, aren't my kids lucky enough to go to that.

But screw the animation. Tiger needs to TOE THE PARTY LINE.

Because what did we home educators really achieve today? Go on. Put it in the newspapers like this. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger chatted about a film. And then this afternoon they mucked around with plasticine.

You see? LACKS RIGOUR. Clearly, I need to have done lesson structure 17, attainment target 3.5, assessment 4, key stage 3, time allotted 40 minutes, test assessment due date 12/10/09.

MR BALLS, I FAIL.

But you haven't got enough gaffer tape to go round my big fat mouth now.

Because someone leaves the tap on

We home educators are spilling about like water. Who knows where we are?

Here we are one moment, sloshing around in a great big puddle. And Then! Gone! We might have dribbled down between the floorboards, or soaked away into the fields. We might be ANYWHERE.







You see? Who knows WHERE WE ARE TODAY? We might be in a swimming pool, or a museum, or gardens, or cinema, or workshop, or library, or high street. We might be in a felt making workshop at the Museum of St Albans! ANYWHERE.

But this is as good as HIDING. Clearly, we need to be regulated.

PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW WHERE WE ARE. People who I don't know need to know my children. What they are doing. What they have been thinking. What I have been teaching. I might teach them non-state aligned and non-state approved ideologies, like HOW TO MAKE FELT. Of course this sort of thing would never do.

This sort of freedom has to stop.

Unfortunately, water always finds a way through.

Delyth Morgan, you talking to me?

Another Saturday, another day in the glorious English outdoors!

These are the sort of people we meet.

You can see I'm studiously avoiding any mention of what's going on over here. Yeah. Get tough with me. Why don't you. C'mon then Andy Winton. Because school is the place where adults can make children realise what is normal social behaviour, isn't it? You said it. What Grit is inflicting on her children is not normal, is it? No, this is not normal at all. You see that woman with the back pack? Keep your eye on her. SHE WEAVES BASKETS.

Where was I?

Oh yes. With Linda Johns in Salcey forest. The artist who works with natural materials and has enjoyed a wonderfully successful installation in a forest in the English shires. A little while ago we attended one of her walks, and today we're on her workshop. And she's teaching us how to make one of these. Perverted, huh? This is just a cover for Satanic worship.


And now look at the sort of dangerous tools she leaves lying around for children! Who's to stop anyone of those innocents picking up those pliers and STABBING THEMSELVES IN THE EYE. Where are the parents? That foolish Grit is standing by taking photographs! Oh, wilful, foolish GRIT! Don't you know the STATE SHOULD PARENT THESE CHILDREN?


Now, what was I saying? About the art? Yes, it's very creative, isn't it? We had two hours, weaving with copper and tinned copper, making delicate shapes that hide between the trees.





And say, Delyth Morgan, you have concerns that some home educated children are not receiving the education they need? Say what? MY CHILDREN CAN NOW USE PLIERS AS WELL AS MACHETES.

Come to your own conclusions about oddball

Some people say home educators are a minority bunch of oddballs spilling off the fringes of society.

I cannot understand that point of view at all.

Anyway, today I take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to a brownfield site to look at some broken up tarmac.



This is one of those walk-and-talks in a field that Grit is so good at gatecrashing. It is led by Derek, ecologist, and he's accompanying a group of wise ancients to this industrial landscape to find out what grows on land blasted by gravel extraction and asphalt dumping.



The gritlets bound alongside him like puppydogs, exploring what's under rocks, how far you can push a car key into an oily slick of asphalt and whether flag iris send out perfumes.

Of course to the home educator this makes perfect sense. On our two-hour exploration we discover that quarried holes filled with water draining quickly from asphalt dumps make fish-free ponds and perfect breeding grounds for wildlife otherwise gobbled up by finny fiends.


Newts live here, as do damselflies and dragonflies. They attract the birds in a small ecological haven. We discover brownfield sites are preferred areas for lichens, orchids, invertebrates, sprouting elms, hazels, watermint, wild strawberries, thistles, iris and grasses. Undisturbed waste sites carefully managed to reintroduce grazing by animals yield rare and delicate native flowers.


All this we learn today, and more. We smell the air, feel the difference to our bones walking on asphalt, clay and gravel, taste the watermint and longingly eye the tiny red beads of wild strawberries. Over the two hours we enjoy the company of someone from whom all questions are answered carefully, thoughtfully, and knowledgeably. Derek is our teacher and this land is our school.

We contemplate learning a different way to this. Perhaps dressed in grey and white and staring at a black and white photo of a brownfield site while a cover teacher whose expertise is Maths, and probably not Ecology, intones that the work set is Read the passage about the land and answer the multiple choice below.


Like I say. Make up your own mind.

No wonder people are suspicious

Time is one of those life skills I haven't quite cracked.

I can wake up on a Monday thinking it is Wednesday, then someone spoils it all by saying it's Thursday and if we don't pay the milk bill this minute, Dairy Daisy will see us in court.

This is bad, because Wednesday was the day I was aiming to be good mummy and stay at home and learn how cook green beans without setting two wooden spoons on fire. Thursday was the day I was going to shave my legs. And now those days are all mixed up and we may eat leg shavings and charcoal again for dinner.

It's not only the days that are hazardous. Mixing up any time at all can be dangerous to your health, so let me warn you about that.

One confusing day when we ate lunch before anyone had breakfast, Squirrel yells out Why is there glitter stuck to the potatoes? You tell me, Squirrel. Maybe I was forced into a five hour craft session starting at 7am while I am wearing a towelling robe, and then lunch needs to happen otherwise I hit the cooking sherry. But now thanks to your glitter consumption I spend the rest of the day naked at the keyboard typing in questions like Do potatoes cooked in PVA and glitter result in intestinal problems? That one will confuse all medical practitioners supporting the online NHS help systems. Forever.

So there is no doubt about it. Some days are just all mixed up and all crossed out. See that calender? Those are not tear-off dates, they are certificates of achievement.

Of course some days in this home educating whirlwind of ours, I achieve more in seven hours than I would normally fit into a seven day wake-sleep cycle. OK, it is mainly stuff the children want to do, and usually because they're chasing me with pointed sticks. At least Shark has a new strategy. She has taken to hyperventilating with stress half an hour before I think we might go out, because being late to arrive anywhere is even more humiliating than having a mother who cuts her own hair. But this is a good technique because now for any appointment I definitely need to leave ready for the drive by the hospital, so these days we are arriving mostly on time.

But look at this week. I have already spun down that cosmic hole of time confusion. Already it is Thursday and no-one told me. We didn't yet do the stuff I planned to do last week. Or on Tuesday. And I still have a to-do list that is unrolling right now along the M1.

In my defence, we did plenty other things on Tuesday. OK, I cannot actually recall them, so I will read my own blog later to try and decipher when and what I should have done, like pay Dairy Daisy for 15,000 bottles of milk over five years.

But there is only one solution when I am not absolutely sure what day it is. Choose the local open pool. A little sunshine sparkles the air. I couldn't have planned better. What's to lose? We are faced with a black hole of infinite timeless existence and this may be the last afternoon where a little sunshine seeps from the sky. And it doesn't really matter what day it is, because let's face it, I don't need to take the kids to school.


And although that lack of ability to recognise and follow that time thing, or to keep to a timetable much beyond getting up and falling over is all downright annoying, and the milkman has probably in all vengeance now run his electric trolley over the cat thinking it is ours, once we step out of a routine then we home educators experience the most fantastic, thrilling, freedom.

Is this how we hothouse?

Because this is one of those days when the starting blocks are pushed away and we're OFF!


First there is the train to London and then to the V&A where Squirrel and Tiger run to jewellery for their upcoming craft projects and Shark must see wooden sculpture in wood so she can develop ideas for another wood carving session with Jeremy Turner


but then mama says EEK! Time to dash to the Royal Institution for that lecture on chemistry to see Steven Rossington of the University of Salford exploring the properties of gases, liquids and solids and playing around with the relative inertness of nitrogen and the explosive ability of oxygen which is code for BLOWING THINGS UP and would make an excellent addition to your child's party


but then as Grit is chewing the cud with Michelle up comes a Tiger and bleats but Mama Squirrel wants to go Kayaking now! and Grit might groan but this is a sort of child led education here so its out of that building


jump on the train and straight up the fast line out of London where Taxi Dig drives us straight to the lake where Squirrel is 30 minutes late for her paddlesports club and wearing a butterfly dress but no matter! she jumps in the lake with a kayak


and a member of the public stands there watching Squirrel unsuitably attired with everyone else wearing helmets and wetsuits and buoyancy aids and not butterfly dresses and ponytails and that member of the public shouts Hey! Is that your daughter?

And then Grit, fresh from wounding over her home education choices, where she is perceived as a danger to society, an abuse to her children, a suspect in a crime that hasn't been committed, and the reason why all good schools fail, expects to receive another smack in the mouth and sighs Uhuh.

And that member of the general public points to Squirrel and says That is a proper GIRL! None of this namby pamby mucking about stuff there, eh?

And I am so proud it is all I can do to stop myself from grabbing that stranger and landing them a big smackeroo.

Grit, did someone get your dander up?

There are some morons out there - sorry, some uninformed ignorant twats (that sounds so much better) - who believe that home education means children stay at home.

When children stay at home, they do not see anyone else. Nope. Not a living person. Maybe the postman. Or maybe not, since last week we kidnapped him, butchered him and used his liver in the Satanic rituals we conduct in the cellar.

And then again, because we home educate, no-one sees our children, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. So you can naturally assume the things we do to our offspring behind closed doors.

Of course what we do is brainwash them. That's timetabled 9.15am to 11am. Then we hot house them for their Masters degree in Pure Maths, 11am to 2.00pm. You'll note there's no lunch involved. Satanic rituals take place 2.00pm to 5pm. Then the evening's taken up with constant humiliation and beating. Bed is 7pm with a bowl of gruel. That's when mama and papa have sex in every room of the house involving drugs, vodka, excrement, goats, PornTV, she-wolves, you name it, we done it.

Because we use this word home education. Which must mean, in the brain of the average moron, that it takes place only in the home. Where we must have something to hide.

And somewhere in this field is Shark, Squirrel and Tiger,
not going anywhere on their bicycles.
Certainly not to Tuesday's activities
which involve French, horseriding, sailing and no dance.

Next we might slice off our ears

One big reason we home educate is ART.

Readers of this blog know we abuse our children with art. We have been abusing them regularly now. For years. We're going to continue. And we're continuing a bit quicker right now thanks to the exhibition of the acrylic on canvas that Tiger, Shark and Squirrel love to do so much of and which starts on June 14.

June 14?

OHMYGODWEHAVEONLYTWOWEEKSTIGERSHARKANDSQUIRRELBLOODYHURRYUP!