Quick, before we come to our senses

Ellen McHenry takes me by the hand once again, egging me on with her seductive written materials and her fun educational games, to give me enough self-delusion that I can introduce a fortnightly Chemistry session to a bunch of kids in a sort of let's-have-a-bash-at-this-before-we-all-fork-out-for-a-GCSE-tutor.

The molecule building set we found at the sad animal shop for a pound helped enormously, and much amusement with hydrogen and carbon was had by all.

Ellen McHenry The Elements, recommended to the home ed hoards.

The Ladykillers

It's undeniable. Most of the audience is aged over 60. I feel sad about that. Not at any age over 60 - the benefit of that means you can notch up a few wisdoms and experiences - but at how few audience members comprising this particular theatre-going evening are aged under 60.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are the odd ones. They're being introduced to new-hope post-war Britain to see The Ladykillers, the stage production of the film which most of the audience saw the first time round. I bet their feet didn't touch the floor as they sat in their cinema seats.

This is the stage version of the film, created by Graham Lineman and Sean Foley, and thoroughly entertainingly updated it is. Bonus scenes and a don't-take-it-too-seriously car chase up a scenery flat are played out on an impressively lob-sided set.

Banging the waterpipes joke is retained, and General Gordon is there by dint of your imagination, but there's no horse and no Frankie Howerd barrow boy. Instead, you can enjoy a modern music piece and wonderful background stories to help the character development. No, I couldn't tell you who does what and why, it would spoil the emergence of those needs and quirks, so yes, watch the video of the film, assemble a group booking to lower your ticket price, and go to see the stage play in a spirit of compare and contrast.

The other clear benefit is that you can introduce the juniors to the practicalities of acculturation as age meets youth. Where we can all be reassured that what we find funny stays just the same.

And tell me what is wrong with modesty and courtesy

Doubletake Film Club today, plus an Art session with a home educating artist.

Latin? The tutor cancelled, due to icy roads.

I said Snow? Ice? No excuse. Spend time on Ten Ticks maths website instead then go out and scrape together an ice dolphin. Someone can help me prepare dinner and we'll watch Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers.

See, education officer slumped over your desk at the local council, helpless in the face of this week's snow closures?

Pft. We don't have to wait for the grounds to be gritted. Everyday is a gritty learning experience round here. I expect Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to bust into life and carry on with their activities through the blizzards, even when everyone else gives up.

Which brings me to my point about this.

Broadly, I agree. Except about the control over the 'secret garden, strip-tease culture'.

The culture is most certainly not out of my control, thank you very much. Culture is very much in my control. The responsibility is mine, and I am in charge of teaching it to three future citizens. I am not letting them grow up to blindly consume the tripe from the lowest common denominator or passively consume the dross without question. And the rules for behaviour are ultimately set by me, not by Jessie of 3G.

Say no to the sexualised imagery and land punches on the superficial garbage dressed up as freedom of expression that washes daily across the nation's television screens, monitors, phones, games and toys.

Do not adopt a helpless stance and sod off with the victim of corporate power. Take the power back. Boot out a school that's failing them and open a book instead. Turn off the TV, don't buy the games, restrict the phone use, keep tabs on the internet access, choose the friends wisely, and eat together - or as much as the family as you can muster - where you can argue out the 3Rs - Respect, Responsibility and Resourcefulness - then use the damn RRR to hammer out a few non-negotiable ground rules, and find out which ones the kids can't agree with.

As a last resort, get the offspring in the car, lock all the doors, drive them to the woods while delivering a moral assembly, then tip them out and put into action some values of mutual support and cooperation in finding the way home.

I have one final card up my sleeve, and it is to be utterly, totally, fearless when talking about anything and everything. Being open and receptive to any question means the children know to trust you, parent, to ask, at their own pace, to wonder at their own speed, and to learn by their own instigation.

Parent. Not state, school, government representative, local council officer, Lady Gaga, Mr Spooky from the corner, the NSPCC, Hot TV, Femail, website XXX, or Jessie of 3G.

And this, to me, is taking control of culture.

Perhaps where all the passion is going

Into these. I am combining sensuous materials in ever more inventive ways to conceal, making these delightfully intriguing items more difficult to reach, more improbable that the viewer could claim 'your book? It just fell open', and more desirable to tuck away between your knickers in your knicker drawer.

On the ice

Spend the afternoon in the freezing cold a-perched upon the highest hill we have for miles around, watching Shark, Squirrel and Tiger tear downhill on their grand sledging adventures.

The damage cost is not high, considering the enthusiasm with which they throw themselves downhill. They only bust two plastic sledges out of the three. They recruited the pack Labrador to tow their stuff back uphill, which probably saved the third, and they conducted a sort of practical pioneering test by crawling up the 45-degree incline of the hill, back to the start line, supported only by a broken hazel stick which doubled as a not-very-good climbing iron.

(Okay, I tweaked one bit of that tale of the afternoon for dramatic effect. I did not stay for the full three-hour ice experience. After the first fifteen minutes I legged it to the safety and warmth of a nearby Village of the Damned, aka, Shopping Centre, where I spent two hours in Paperchase fondling pencils.)

Need to care

I think something wrong is happening with me. The wrongness may have been brought on by the menopause or something, but today I am strangely walking about the world in a softer, perhaps even a non-aggressive, manner.

The stair carpet, for example. It tried to kill me, and I merely sighed as I tripped over the hanging thread, lurched forward to swing off the banister and narrowly avoid putting my head through the picture window at the dog leg to the stairs.

In other ways, too, I have noticed a gentling in my reactions towards ordinary irritations. Those routine disturbances, like the office ceiling falling in and the oven door (or what's left of it) sinking its iron tooth into my leg, then tearing out a chunk of my jeans as I pass.

I am sure I would have bit my knuckles, ground my teeth, or kicked the crap out of the oven door (or what's left of it) before beating my fists in despair at my solitude and uselessness to do or change anything about my decaying state of life in this house.

But in these uncommon days I seem to have become more resigned to the mash, mess, and loss, which I can only put down to changes in me. The house is certainly no better. I have bound up the tap that leans with a rubber band, wedged a plant pot against the door that won't shut, banged another nail in the doorhandle, and stuck duct tape over the hanging threads on the worn, torn stair carpet. Maybe I am become resigned to it all, have given up the fight on it, and have surrendered myself to the wobble on the kitchen floorboards and the garden door handle that always comes off in your hand.

That would be sad.

So I have promised myself. Next time the oven door leans over to rip a strip from my old clothing, I shall turn round and aim a kick at what's left of it, then go on the rampage to threaten the doorhandle with two more nails and a hammer.

Double love heart with a cupid dart

Apparently I double booked. Now on three days running, so compounding my crime.

Kid can't do sub aqua. I scrounged tickets to hear a man talk about maps. Kid can't do Woodcraft Folk. I just forgot. I booked the theatre instead. Mummy, what about the science fair? Sheez. I paid money for the horse workshop.

I could make a point about being overwhelmed with stuff in this ridiculously busy world we live in, home ed la-la land. I daily wade knee-deep in activities, events, workshops, and would you like a ticket opportunities. There is simply too much to do, and too much to follow up. Fear not if you're aiming to jump from school to home. Poke about this earth, and find education is a deep, rich field.

But on the time thingy, I tried! My wishes never came true for two Tuesdays in every week and the magic spell totally failed for 78 hours every Thursday. So I have to face it. Given the obstinate and uncooperative way the calender behaves, I just can't fit everything in and, worse! I double booked the entire week.

Okay, then there is that other thing right now. I admit. It's not only a too-wide educational vision and a slight dose of dementia with a smattering of calender blindness.

My head is bound in leather, ribbon and chain.

All I can say to Shark, Tiger and Squirrel is I'm sorry.

How about as punishment you take away from me the entire responsibility for organising a timetable and shut me in my craft room instead?

Chain or cord?

Either is spot on. You just can't go wrong with book bondage.

S is for Secret

I'm finding felt is a great additional insert to these keepsakes books; it's simply great to pin things to, from charms and cloth fragments to paper and card. Brass pins, safety pins, nappy pins, all work fine. Felt and pins come with all the right connotations, too. Like traditional hand working pragmatic solutions. Red leather works a treat, too.

Frill Me

And another thing. Knicker books absorb your weaknesses, strengths, boldnesses, experiments, expressions, fears and secret delights, and they take those confessions completely without judgement.

Nothing here but sex and power this week

No apologies. Blame my Valentine's stall. I just booked it.

Love of that type, sentimental and romantic, pft. Booted firmly out the window.

I'm running with my goth and steampunk lines; designs informed by immortality, death, submission, domination. Works for adultery, love forbidden, non-sanctioned, disapproved, filth, dirt, and desires plain wrong. Enjoy.

All notebooks are made for privacy that becomes secrecy: a hold for wants, confessions and forbiddens, close and private. Concealed pockets, hidden folds, and discreet envelopes store incriminating evidence.

Texture, touch and feel with leather, embossed card, handmade papers, velvets and embroideries. Ribbons, ties, and chains wrap and bind the pages you don't want casually exposed. One customer tells you better than me. Three fastenings to get in? Someone would have to be pretty bloody shameless to pry.

But, wait a moment, the seekers of these books won't be the sort to splatter their desires over Facebook or Twitter, nor show to the world my handiwork folded in their knicker drawers, so I'll photograph these darlings now, before they flee from me forever.

(And in the making of these places for your desires, the guilt might be all yours, but the pleasure is all mine.)

Monday playtime, home ed style

Usual hard-core outdoor group, meeting in hail, wind, snow, mud, rain, gale, storm, flood. Wherever there is playtime.

Clock without hands (30p)

I have a problem with time. The problem is complex and has no solution, so I'm not expecting any answers.

When I look at this problem, this problem that has no solution, I know that time is frightening and scary and leaves terrible scars and deep wounds and then look what it did to my hair (grey) and my jawline (sagging). The bastard.

But time is comforting and consoling and kind. Time places deep layers of forgetfulness over my sorrows, so that when I colour my hair (brown) and do my most determined jaw exercises (firm) where I am sure the muscles along my throat outline a perfectly smooth neck (I am standing just so and the light is dim), then I can't recall how I was so dismayed.

But time is more annoying, most frustrating, more complete with anguish than any other circumstance I know, because I can never grab hold of it, not one thread nor spark of dust to keep and hold and say, this is the moment I'm keeping. Forever.

Time won't let me do that. It moves on so beautifully effortlessly and smoothly with day and night flowing regardless of me, that I can only admire its resilience and staying power and think, here are qualities to draw inspiration from. Quiet understatement and unbowed vision. Set your face to the horizon and let nothing impede your course in life. Those are strengths indeed to teach the children.

I don't have any answers to my problem with time. Maybe I just like having the problem.

But I do find the most perfect present to myself today at the car boot sale that Squirrel loves to junk monkey her way round, every Sunday morning.

I've put my clock without hands on the only piece of hierloom furniture I own, standing proudly between the broken decorated picture frame that has no picture and the carved wooden box that holds all my secrets.

The lolling about in bed blog

The home ed life is so relaxing!

Except, obviously, for the general concerns about the unknowns, the daily trawl through the family politics, that dread of responsibility, the penury that comes from the loss of one income, and the abyss into which my head is routinely plunged - sink in there and I know for sure I've destroyed the future of my children forever and blighted their lives in a misguided educational experiment with no guarantee of reward.

Apart from that! The home ed life is so relaxing!

Take timetables. Home ed means that childhood is not a process of dancing to someone else's deadlines. No school makes me do the job I don't want to do for someone else's benefit. Specifically, I'm not whipping the entire family activity to fit in with school bells and homework diaries.

Better still, I get to divide up the week to my benefit.

Not only can I plan stuff the kids want to do - supportive workshops, field trips, museum visits, outdoor tours and theatre visits - I also specify no early morning starts, no 7am beginnings, no requirement to climb out of bed before 9am, and one afternoon a week I can fit in a swim. But it is cold, my bed snuggled toes are warm, and I'm waiting for the heating to kick in, so today, getting up can be 9.30. Or 10, because everyone is still quiet in their beds, reading.

The late start won't make much difference. We have squished into these last seven days the Whipsnade animal workshop, Shark's sub aqua, Latin lesson, Woodcraft Folk, homework afternoon, movie club, art lesson, science lecture, play away, Astro club, wildlife group, family reading (Nathaniel's Nutmeg), film night (Goodnight Mr Tom) and the installation of another bookcase.

This is very comforting to me, the woman who yolks together her control issues alongside the horror of knowing I have no control over time - but I have to say that having the responsibility for how the week divides up is not as bad as I once feared. Encouraging, even. I'll get up at 11.

Creating leaders for tomorrow

Once a month, a group of us fearless parents take our home ed kids to the great outdoors, where we dump them, en masse. Then we parents leg it, leaving the offspring entirely to their own choices, negotiations, problem-solvings and knife-sharings.

You can tell we parents do this in great conviction. You know those notions: the tribe raises the child; it's an interdependent society; we all have to learn to co-operate ourselves out of hazards; we must learn to negotiate routes through problems; find those places in ourselves that are strong, weak, indifferent; and set in motion the reality and wonder about being a leader or a follower. 

I entirely believe in these ideas, too. I'm more than happy to put them into practice. And the afternoon is always a test of kid co-operation. They quickly come to face their options. Once we've frisked them for breadcrumbs and pebbles, they have to consider that if they don't form some functioning social cohesion, one of them will be eaten by lions, picked up by the police, or become feral and have to be raised by wolves.

After a suitable time, we return to pick up our children, praying it hasn't gone all Lord of The Flies.

But this time, it's the parents who are late at the meet point.

All I can say is, I have nothing but a quiet awe for people who can find their way out of woods.

 

I simply do not know how they do that directional north-south-east-west positioning thing without technology. Have they got more magnetic sensory equipment located in their noses than the rest of us? 

If I had become a leader rather than a follower on our six-mile hike - across every track that looked exactly the same as the last one - I would still be there, somewhere, lying dead and stiff under the mud and frozen soil. But no, thanks to my wise choice in becoming a follower, I wasn't dead by sundown.

Neither were any of the children. Don't ask what went on with them. Be happy only to know that this time there were no broken arms, busted teeth, split lips, torn clothing, or a pig's head on a spike.

I mean, it's not like I have an addiction, honest.

One of the bestest things about the culture of home ed is that you can be passionate about the strangest stuff, and no one stops you, tries to deflect you, knocks you off course, or tells you how your interest is not worth learning about, it isn't useful for the exam, so you must stop wanting to find out about it, and do these sums instead.

That's true for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

I make it true for me, too. 

Consequently, I have found a weakness in my soul for architectural detail. 

It's alright, I can handle it. 

Although last night I did catch myself saying, I'm going to bed early to read my book on window sills.

Movie business

Today, DoubleTake Movie Making.

Shark, who's not going to this season's education in film making, launches her Latin homework at the world instead, choosing film rather than file paper.

(You can tell daddy Dig's been here. Mama hasn't a clue how to make the show work. Amazingly, shouting at a piece of video editing software before bursting into tears doesn't work.)

Turning home ed into your business

I cause a big fuss in the local home ed groups.

Surely not, Grit! That doesn't sound like you!

Yup. A big fuss was caused. I caused it. Mostly by not reading a bunch of emails I shove in a folder called NotReading.

But I have learned things! Every unhappy trouble has wisdoms to impart, does it not? Even if it is It is a bad idea to sleep with someone who dresses up as a Dalek, or Two buckets and spades divided between three toddlers is not a good way to save two pounds in cash.

So this particular bruising experience has taught me about the future. I can see, it's a business outlook for Educational Support Services in the land of home education!

Duh. I have been sharing my skills, offering my home ed experiences, giving stuff away for years, entering into the great collaborative enterprise that I knew as the community of home ed. But I need to become mean, keen and, hopefully, ruthless in all matters of business.

I am considering these ways of conducting myself when, as if by magic, I discover this miserable place in another email account I don't read every day either.

Clearly the stars have aligned. It's time for me to market home ed! If I'm going to make a good business out of home ed, I must adopt Grit's Top Ten Tips to CoinMyCommunity!

1. Bring business to the home ed world.
Adopt good business practice! Don't buy in a workshop at 50 quid, then tell everyone and divvy up the cost! Blimey, that is the old hippy way of doing things.

The new way is to buy in a workshop at 50 quid then re-sell it for 150 quid. Remember, there is nothing wrong with making a profit in business! (Unless the accountant finds out. Then they will advise you to report a loss so you don't pay tax.)

2. Position everyone else as a rival.
Essential if you are to cohere your market. Other home educators are obstacles if they blab how you can cadge this and that, get discounts here or there, share skills, find the free events, co-operate, divide up a tutor's costs, and take to Tinkertop's back room to avoid the hall charge.

What I need to do is claim these hippies are competition; that they run rival groups. This strategy forces everyone to take sides. Divided and ruled. Hopefully, they'll all come to me at CoinMyCommunity!

3. Restrict information.
Don't hint at other ways of doing things. Don't suggest the teacher doesn't have to be CRB checked. Never suggest parents do stuff themselves, buy their own tutor for cheaper, or admit that Tinkertop doesn't have to complete a sodding 100% National Curriculum guaranteed trackered worksheet in triplicate to get a decent education.

Never, never, ever, let parents find out they can just take their kids to the park. If it slips out, make them believe the best way to take the kids to the park is in a timetable when I'll be selling duck food for 50p a bag.

4. Obfuscate.
Use the words home education and home schooling as if they are interchangeable. Never suggest home education comes with a set of cultural values, a philosophy and community-based action, and home schooling comes with a great deal of school.

5. Position yourself as the only show in town.
Yes, tell all service providers of workshops, events, formal teaching, walk-and-talks, all stuff, that CoinMyCommunity is the organisation where home educators freely come. Tell them to reach home educators here; the only safe and trusted company to do business with. (Only don't use the word business, obviously, that breaks rule number 6.)

6. Forget to say, CoinMyCommunity? Actually, it's a private company.
Avoid being open and upfront. Claim CoinMyCommunity is just a big cuddly-huggy-wug home ed group. Never discuss the company footing on which it stands. Avoid putting the company registration number on all sites, correspondence and, if you can get away with it, invoices.

Claim CoinMyCommunity is nothing more than a vehicle for processing Paypal payments, which are understandably complex, considering I'll be charging a flat rate for the kiddy Christmas party.

7. Provide a one-stop solution.
Yes, to every newcomer to the home ed world (there are thousands of you! Thousands!) tell them this is the easy way to do it! My way! I have everything stitched up! I have timetables! And worksheets! With CRB-checked tutors and, when I set it up, online monitoring!

8. Swot up on Vance Packard.
Covertly use Packard's compelling needs to sell education services. We home educators? We need to be loved. We crave security. We want approval. We are fearful, and only want the best for our children. We don't want our home ed mess to mean Tinkertop misses out.

Make sure all services provided are hitting those buttons. Newcomers need comforting and supporting, because they are stupid enough to take a decision that will upset someone. Obviously they fear the opprobrium about to pour on their heads. This is where my offer to meet their needs is so important. My business can prey on their insecurity, doubt and fear by promising instant answers, step-by-step solutions, organised events, more CRB teachers, offering a big happy tick from the Local Authority, and providing extra worksheets! School, in fact!

(Shh! Never let on how there's an alternative Mad Badger home ed community operating right under your noses!)

9. Use the language of school.
Do not yack on about ways of living and learning. Do not even try and create a language to describe how education can be a seamless part of life. PAH. That is crap. Shut up with the segueing.

Use the language of school. Break home ed life into English, Maths, Science, French, like what parents understand and you can sell. Then keep clear divisions between subjects, bringing in stuff like Key Stages GCSE levels targets topics framework assessment learning objective certification award. This will make everyone think This is education!

10. Aim big.
Of course with Grit's Top Ten Tips I'll do pretty well. But it's no use going to the local authority looking to stitch up a deal. They're broke! We have Academy land! Anyway, Our Great Leader Gove wants us engaged in the great business of profitable educational enterprise. With my future, I can be looking for premises, running online facilities, buying in accreditation, outsourcing timetabling, monitoring attendance and, soon enough, running a free school!


Phew. Thank you for reading. But you happy school-choosing people can safely depart, feeling protected from the politics of home ed land!

But consider Grit here, having caused misery through the land, upset the local educational business enterprise - and thank goodness I've finally asked to be removed from the damn list I never read - and facing only the Mad Badgers as consolation; here I am, scrabbling around for community crumbs on the home ed floor, desperate to give the kids a daily functional education, while simultaneously pointing you towards those bright, bright light$ $hining in your educational future$.

But surely, we've been here before? All happening in our back-yard.

Primary to Secondary with Whipsnade

Primary home ed? Piece of piss.

I was mostly terrified by the awful responsibility but, looking back, it was easy. You can base the junior years on play, footling, and spontaneous inquiry, and I reckon the adventure would mostly go okay.

Thinking about it, you would have to lock the primary kid in a box and put a bag on their head to prevent them actively inquiring about the world or soaking up all their knowledge like a sponge.

It's difficult to go wrong with primary. Give them the freedom to explore, together with the support they get from their own home, and everyone's happy. You don't have to be bullied into spending squillions on lessons, certifications, CRB-checked tutors or school-based curriculums; you can bring these in as the child wants and simply drop them when it's no longer working. Getting off grid, away from the treadmill and the timetable, is part of the active process of learning.

But secondary home ed? Of course I'm nervous, all over again, but in a different way.

This time I'm worrying over GCSEs and qualifications while the little Grits confidently assert they are going to universities A, B and C with ne'er a thought to the interviewing or selection process. Shark, Tiger and Squirrel are beginning to fall into that way home ed kids have - the one which I suspect attracts the label weird - but it is the manner called confidence. They look at the world with a level eye knowing what they want to do and where they want to do it. Let's hope they bring, alongside that confidence, good dollops of pragmatism and awareness of the expectations of their interviewing lecturers.

That is my brain dump, for now I am covertly casting around for workshops which map onto the school age my kids have reached. That is, no thanks to the primary workshops for sticking and gluing, chanting and colouring in. In schoolwordology, I'm open to suggestions with workshops Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. Really, they are thinner on the ground. Are you listening, you museum people? Put on a good one, and we home educators will travel to you from miles around.

The KS3 workshop we already took at the Horniman was a big disappointment, watching it descend into D'you wanna stroke a dead badger, but I have high hopes today for the KS3 workshop at Whipsnade, on Behaviourism and Animal Training. Still, I am so terrified of disappointment, that it will become D'you wanna stroke a dead badger, I don't go in, but sneak off round the park with Mich, whose brain I can pick about free resources, places to go, and cheap ways of travelling through edu-land.

Picking up the kids an hour later, I find the wandering talk we had at home really did come in handy, and the little Grit workshop approval rating was high so, if you, like me, are fearfully scouring KS3 resources while wondering what is going to become of us all, then Whipsnade is not a bad choice. And it had a great group rate for educational entry, so don't let anyone pull the wool over your eyes about the cost.

On the whole, good day, with friends old and new. I am delighted by the whole of the park on a return journey after years; I am seduced by a Wolverine (which I imagine is like a giant kitten until I find it will casually rip your face off and indifferently chew on the bones of your skull); and I am pumped up most effectively and delightfully by a couple of strong gentlemen who rescue me from my own flat tyre.

See? Whipsnade has everything. From an educational workshop...

to a Wolverine

and a delightful view to a fantasy romance.

Eat eat eat

I confess myself staggered. Aghast, even. At what? At the vast quantities of daily food that one nearly-13-year old can consume, that's what.

When the lunchtime is done (an event occurring almost minutes after breakfast) and the daily bread is nothing more than a pile of crumbs on the table, I notice how the ravenous nearly-13-year old embarks on the fruit.

When the fruit is a heap of peel and dribble, the nearly-13-year old embarks on scouring out all cupboards for biscuits, crackers, nuts and savouries.

Then the nearly-13-year old gets serious about nutrition and goes on a hunt for the hiding place that contains mother's secret pack of digestive biscuits (the ones she has seen me take to my bed alongside a bottle of whiskey and the ipad).

After the digestives are nothing but a tangled wrapper by the wardrobe door begins the lament, When's food? When's food? When's food? That lacrymose plea doesn't stop until, um, the eight minutes it takes to consume food.

If that were it!

The nearly-13-year old then begins the scavenge afresh, casting about for nourishment and bodily sustenance. Obviously it has not been provided by breakfast (two toasted muffins and hot chocolate) followed by six bread rolls, three apples, four bananas, two oranges, one half-pack of oat biscuits, a soft ginger nut found behind the flour tin, a muesli bar with a sell-by date of August lodged in the picnic drawer, two handfuls of peanuts, my digestives, lunch (pizza, thanks to someone eating all the bread) plus all the left-over ingredients on the steady march to dinner. (Cheese, onion and potato pie with fried tomatoes and green pepper side dish.) Ten minutes after that the day's feasting is surely - hopefully - done!

But the nearly-13-year old can manage the grapes I have hidden for the famine in the morning, an old fruit scone, my stash of cooking breadcrumbs, the rest of the sultanas, and Squirrel's secret sticky hoard of lemon bonbons.

This would all be fine! If it was only one nearly-13-year old, sweeping through the house devouring everything in its path.

But I have two more nearly-13-year olds, all simultaneously sweeping the entire property for anything edible or, in an emergency, anything at all that can fit between their gnashers.

I am consoling myself, as is my daily wont. I consider how I am so very grateful I am not (yet) nurturing a basket of nervous anorexics suffering palpitations at the sight of a soggy sponge finger.

I am, really, truly, grateful for that, and it is one big reason why I don't padlock the fruit scone to the cake stand and secure the bread bin lid with explosives.

But I do feel some balanced restraint is now in order. We want neither famine nor feast, at least not on an hourly, daily basis.

In my hurried and covert talks with other size-10 mamas who watch in horror while the dd chews through the entire contents of the refrigerator/freezer/cupboard/dishwasher (because that is where mama now hides the cheese and chutney), I have come to the conclusion that my anxieties about the unattractiveness of my fattypuffs and lardyarses are partly my own contrivance, partly the doings of the oh-so-helpful cultural influences of OK! Hello! Chat! Chit! Crap! and partly the national obsession with the thighs and bellies of people I have never heard of rolling down the columns of Femail.

So, although I am sure to disappoint the Mother's Weeklies of England who spend their days happily patronising each other with helpful tips for reducing fat and turning kids on to healthy eating! I think I have the answer in my own hands. Skimmed milk, more talk, porridge for breakfast, honey in place of sugar and better hiding places for my digestives.

From pain to shame

Take Tiger to the riding stables.

Here, have pictures.

Doubtlessly delighting any passer-by who hankers after tales of mane nuzzling and hoof picking. But for me, ankle-deep in horse shit, enjoying it all not so much, aka, suffering.

To my way of thinking, small, fat-bellied short-legged ponies with attitude who scowl and snort until you reluctantly give them a polo mint are equally as bad as tall haughty horses who look down their noses at you, and if they consider you at all, it is to briefly assess how inconveniently lumpy you will be as they trample you face down into the stable yard. Which they will do shortly, so fuck off out the way.

Of course Tiger is not of my type. She loves it all. Small, fat, bad-tempered types and indifferent, superior types alike.

I will try and arrange a marriage for her to a stables owner, so if there is any passer-by who is in the happy position of having a junior to inherit your generous stables (plus horses), and the junior looks like a horse, talks all day about horses, and doesn't bat an eyelid when I leave the room to go and read a book because horse worship may just kill me, then get in touch. We can marry yours to mine most successfully.

In more important news, I have a potato-related vulnerability.

I come to this conclusion as I am researching lucid dreaming (I have a notebook commission to do).

This morning, as I lie sleep-wakeful, fearful of missing the early start for the stables, I dream.

I am staying in a hotel but am completely naked as I arrive in my car to go to my room. This is shaming for me, obviously, so I try and bluff it out, pretending nakedness is normal in this modern day and age. I then attempt to behave even more normally by shoving a plastic bag containing peeled potatoes under the bed in the room I have occupied. While totally naked I am pushing the plastic bag under the bed, but it won't fit, thanks to other people leaving their belongings under the bed before me. (Annoying.) The next people who are due to occupy the room enter, and behave very courteously towards me, while I go round the room (clutching my bag of potatoes), collecting all the other things I cannot hide, like Shark's art projects which have mysteriously appeared on the widow ledge.

When I look up my dream of nakedness and potatoes, I reason the most suitable explanation is my fear of exposure. If Elibee and Mr W come round to dinner, I will be shamed by my lack of cooking repertoire (yes, at the moment it is mostly potatoes). I shall tell them, better make it the Indian take-away, like normal.

Souvenir jar

I am completely resolved to do this in my attempt to capture our outdoor adventures throughout the year.

Isn't that souvenir jar brilliant? I love it.

Shut up. I know mine will go horribly wrong. Of course my weekend away will yield a dollop of pondweed, a pile of wood shavings, a spare Arseface nose and a souvenir lump of horse shit, but a woman's got to try, dammit.

What we leave behind

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are taken off by The Hat to enjoy Proteus Theatre in The Secret Garden.

I mope about the house, lost. January blues have set in. Time is already overwhelming me. It slips by, doesn't it? When I try and catch hold of it, it's gone already, and I'm left empty-handed, wondering how did that happen?

Maybe it was Mr Death opening the year, catching us in the flick of his coat-tails, followed by the day we do best, which is sloosh about in water and mud.

Perhaps it makes me think. And the thing that I think, as I look forward to my age and stage of purple and grey, is that when you are young, you can fantasise about everything and anything and there is timeless potential to make it real. You can be anything. One day I am going to be a great photographer, learn to play the piano, travel to the Andes and learn to like watching ballet. More than that! I am also having the man of my dreams by my side with a permanent lust, I will have all the youth and energy at my disposal for any adventure required and desired, plus I will at some time in the future, unspecified, enjoy sipping cocktails, timelessly travelled to all exotic locations, perusing a train timetable, wondering whether we should hop along to Agra or Samarkand.

As the years come and go, those fantasies start to have a little less possibility about them. I'm not saying I will never attempt the Andes, or learn to like watching ballet, or board the wrong train and end up in Uzbekistan, because one or two of those goals are still just about possible, perhaps with the benefit of dementia to mislead me at the train station, but I am unfortunately starting to have a bit more pragmatism about my fantasies. I cannot delude myself as perfectly as I once did. There is an annoying squeak in my brain that tells me I will give up at the foothills because my fantasies now require a decent hotel rather than a back pack and a tent. And I know for sure I will only attempt the ballet if someone else is paying and the most comfortable seats in the house come with ice cream at the interval and no-one nudging and judging me if I nod off.

Worse, what I know I can't do, is everything else, unspecified. The whole potential of life. My one day's, might do's and could do's. Come 2013, I now have enough years to have acquired a few shrivellings and scythings, losses and lacks, and holes in the soul where a life should be, and I have the intuition that from here on, they are not going to be magically replenished.

I have decided I can do two things. I can kick out the pip squeak voice of reason and make my fantasies utterly brilliant and satisfying in any direction, comfortably safe from reality. And I can console myself with the thought that I will eventually leave behind the things that I have made or done, and hopefully they aren't only tears, a pile of unread bills and a horrible mess.

I cast around for my triumphs. They will be minor, and that is okay. They do not necessarily have to be beautiful, and that is okay too. Neither do they have to be permanent, nor cherished nor adored by strangers or onlookers. All okay.

Thankfully, the Arseface sisters seem to fit the bill. Maybe they just have to pass on something of love. Then that stitched-on smile becomes more important than anything.

Let's start as we mean to go on

Good to be normal

Started the year by visiting Suburbia.

Mr Death got there before me. Playfully, he cut down the hostess's father, slicing Christmas Day and Boxing Day into two halves of the same holiday; Before Dad Died and After Dad Died.

Presumably Mr Death hoped to snatch away the rest too, turning the celebratory New Year's Party into a commemorative Mourning Wake; taking with him not only the end of the year but the new start, finishing in one stroke all celebrations of returning life, hopeful dawns, and fresh beginnings.

He failed, of course. This is Suburbia. Suburbia takes death in its stride. They see void, and defy it. They defeat it with normal, laying out the tablecloth, spreading out the savouries, putting out the sweets, and loading the nibble tray with Tesco cheese balls, mini breadsticks and savoury onion rings. Death does not defeat Suburbia. Suburbia defeats death.

The invited neighbourhood attends. Collecting here for New Year's drinks, chat, and nibble, is Brenda from down the road; Joyce from over the road; Gerald from up the road; and the entire family from the street over the way by this one. There is laughter, raised glasses and talk of lounge paint and holidays in Wales.

I am the interloper; I come on a drive of 40 minutes cross-country, to see an old friend of 20 years or more. After a time, I say goodbye with a hug, grateful how Suburbia is, that her normal carries on, comforting, quietly in strength, defying death; grateful there is small talk about things not being how they used to be; grateful there is resilience and determination and fortitude, and it is all expressed in the onion rings, cheese balls, and how-do-you-do's, never minds, mustn't grumbles, and see you again, let's make it soon.