The January greys

I shall be glad when this weather has done with grey.

Swallowing fistfulls of sunlight in tablet form, I scurry off to soak in rays of happy light from my fake daylight bulb in the upstairs kitchen. Just thirty minutes prevents all gloom!

This is what I believe, so do not take it from me with your tales of cold logic or calculating science.

But I must have an everyday of positive thinking! Come hell or high water, damn and blast this planet. Yes it will be this creative, positive, bright and breezy, shining day, and I will fashion it from my meagre resources. Or die in the attempt.

So I try my daily walk (in the rain), cut short (the rain) to the local Tesco. (Even though I know that Tesco are false friends who will not miss me when I die.)

I decided to photograph the street debris en route. Photo number one is of three pieces of meat. Some things are beyond explanation. I wondered, on the way home, too late, whether someone had laced them with cat-killing poison.

Take my feet as an elegiac couplet in a correspondence with the weather.

But I then wondered if it could be poetry that lifted my soul? So here is my poem, post-Tesco visit, called Shopping List.

Baking Pots
 Reduced Price
Haddock
Cucumber Whole
Crusty White
Bananas, Loose.

My last resort is close. Dangle fake diamonds from my ears and drink rum.

But then! I save the day! I manage to fix my eyeball onto my snake box.

(It's a work in progress.)

I put this off till Sunday, hoping Sunday could make a difference

Hoisted aloft with rage. In fact, it has been difficult for Dig and the family to coax me down from the ceiling.

The third second after I found out, I took up my new residence there, two meters up, third arm of the faux-chandelier, building my lair of exquisite rage with snarling bare-fangs and sprouted facial hair.

Growling, in my opinion, is better than Shark - my beautiful, strong, sensitive girl who withstands all - suffering maximum distress by Mother Marching, bull-direct at school gates, swinging baseball bat to herald The Speech of The Abused, or what I bloody well think, all knuckle-fisted, bare-boned, sharp-toothed; filled with the ferocity of foul revenge screaming Where is the FUCKING ENGLISH LESSON?

What should be in your English lesson? IMHO those precious 50 minutes should acknowledge the identities of women, girls, and make a space for a clear line of words from a woman's head through her level eye and from her equal mouth.

Shark should be given that space, and if she is not, then I'm laying down the motorway to our woman souls and flattening the way ahead so she - daughter of mine - can stand upright on that surface and walk its length, and know it is right to say, this is Me, this is my-who-I-am and this voice is Mine. It is Woman Voice and you shall not take it from me.

Strangely, having written it out here in hieroglyphs, I feel slightly better, or fractionally less unhinged, and will write an email to the English teacher instead that begins, Dear Jane,

Wherever in the world you roam

I spend my Saturday in joyful, artful, restful peace, quietly composing and stitching Wherever in the world you roam. Made with you in mind: for the person who travels far away, yet is reminded that love stays at home.

Yes! I have a stall at the magnificent Handmade and Vintage, held in the big indoor square in front of John Lewis in Central Milton Keynes, March 4-5.

The big, busty shows where you can buy anything from a repaired juke-box to a metal-twisted wand.

Save the date!

And if you'd like to fondle my leather and net,

See you at Stall 13.

Love, Knicker Drawer Note Books.

(Who, according to my customers, should be in Vogue.)

xx

A turn round the park

I live in a community where people solve their problems with a practical immediacy, yet it's a place where the community resources are becoming more subject to control by others.

Since I deduce this state of political control on the basis of a bit of string, a public notice, and an abandoned shopping trolley, I allow that my deductions might be open to other interpretations.


I mean, I'm not exactly Sherlock. I've missed loads of the bleeding obvious, even when it's stared me in the face.


See what you think. Here is the bit of string.

Holding up the Victorian iron railings. Probably no money to mend these, or in a budget not available. But I really like this resourceful, problem-solving approach of the common man/woman, in the style of Honey, I fixed it.

As to the sawn-off stump in the park, purpose pre-stump, I can only guess. The stump was supplied by a manufacturer in Ayrshire, if you'd like to supply a clue. These days the toddler play park is over the other side of the park, so I can't see the stump showing me the ghost of an old carousel. I like the way it's just left there for you, to trip over in the dark.

Next to the park, I see BT is taking down the phone box. They gave 42 days for us to ring them up and plead for its survival, from September last year.

What I liked about this was this box's proximity to an entire line of old GPO exchange boxes, all standing in a terminal line on the other side of the wall, property of the local museum. This is the line of the dead, and the fence dividing them is no barrier at all. I wonder if anyone called to save this remnant of the public payphone era?

On the other hand, the local primary school is bounded by a set of four fences and two gates of varying  heights and steel mesh. This border is policed by Boundary Gate and Barrier Contracts. I think it definitely tells me something about the way our neighbourhoods are changing, and I don't need to be Sherlock for that.

But finally! A practical solution of a long standing variety. Bring your shopping home in a supermarket trolley then dump the trolley on top of the garage.

There's something quietly comforting about that.

Good for the soul

I am eagerly anticipating the creative payoff that will result from my daily wanderings.

This is one of my rules: you walk about briskly for an hour in your Exploratory Excursion not only as a way of making sure you put on pants and leave the house - but to rest your mind and liberate your soul. Or whatever it is, that moment that makes me think, I wonder how I can stitch in a twist of sinister darkness to the Journal of the Travelling Woman?

Aiming for a twist of sinister darkness, I took the left-hand turn because I know where the right-hand turn leads.

I admit I did not particularly did not feel comfortable walking under the bridge, with its whoo-whooo sounds echoing and bouncing between the walls like a ghost trapped between the girders. As it is also the pigeon-roost neighbourhood, I was jolly glad my coat had a hood.

And I found an aqueduct! Water sluicing down the hill, calibrating the level of the Grand Union Canal. Strangely satisfying.

Forking paths. Which would you choose?

Obviously we chose the same. And encountered the marks left from the ghost-tribes, with the hands impulsed by the neolithic, who still meet at the underpass.

Then a proper Gothic moment, by the arch, and the decision to enter the deep, dark tunnel with its who-knows-what ahead.

Seriously, there is no way as a single woman walker that I would choose this path, so I am feeling the Exploratory Excursion has come up smiling today, bringing with it such adventures into uncomfortable territory as this.

 

Satisfying then, to emerge back home, contemplating my stitching room and in some tiny way, changed.

The realities of choice

Dispiriting. Getting out of bed before dawn and getting Shark to school.

Shark is equally glum, and still considering her options. She's had a few sparkling days of living normally. Organising her own time, following her interests, playing with her thermistor, and asking herself, I wonder what will happen next?

Now, she says, she knows. The school will find ways to waste her time. Her time will be micro-managed, interests will be guided on someone else's terms, the day is chopped into another's organisation, and she is back in the inescapable company of the dreadful Maths teacher, the teacher who cannot communicate even a passing interest, let alone passion. Roll on 3pm.

Dispiriting indeed.

I use my brief time with her for my words of motherly wisdom. I tell her to make up her own mind and we will support her, regardless of her choice.

More usefully, perhaps, I tell her, if she is undecided, don't fret. At some point she will know. A line will be crossed - violating the way she creates her life, striking against the principles she uses to guide her choices, bringing a depth of emotional pain or a physical threat - and then the decision will be clear. This person, this place, this circumstance, it is all doing more violence to a state of being, than the rewards they bring.

Street walk

My daily walk through town.

Just as I was thinking how walking is an act of theatre - ipso facto I am walker, actress, audience and critic - I come across the remains of a previous performance.

Who uses flour bombs? Seems only right to make a stop at our local second-hand bookshop to browse the theatre shelf.

I am not sure whether grubbing through used books for half-an-hour counts as Exploratory Walk. (Subdivision: Woman in Landscape / Urban/Rural / Flameuse / Walking Lit&Lang.) Whatever, I just have to carry about in my backpack a rather lumpy C. Day-Lewis along with Women in Technology.

Then I turned left and took the back road, looking to see if I could drop down to follow the canal.

Not here, evidently. I walk as dictated by whimsy (one of the walking rules). But the signage caught my eye, regularly placed along what feels like a border fence.

Designed to tell me I'm now on private land in a 'gated community' without gates (but with signs), so clear off.

And if I was walking in anyone's company, you'd have to listen to a soapbox full of opinion about the horrors of this experience with its implied threat via these border notices that if I do anything that someone doesn't like, I'll be fined and imprisoned.

So I took a lot of photographs of the signs, half-hoping a security guard would appear and I could have a right set-to with moral righteousness and illegality both on my side, all at the same time. Bliss.

I also enjoyed a good grumble in my own head about the complicities or resistances of people involved in the privatisations of public land and the steady way that unaccountable private companies might work to control social behaviours.

As it was, no-one tuned up to turf me out the 'gated community' without gates (but with signs). Even though I stood in the road for 15 minutes, waiting.

I then walked along a public footpath next to land locked up behind green railings, owned by the old Railway Works. Or, with my local knowledge, I'm assuming the Works owns this land: there's no sign to say, so it could be owned by a giant squirrel protecting their nut stack. (Unlikely.)

But I look at the heavy green railing, determined to protect what's inside and keep me out. I see those tree branches, like the fingers of the imprisoned, poking through the bars, tentatively wondering if what is on the other side is liberty.

Memo to self: charge the camera battery in the mornings

Did as advised by two men (with a book to plug), and had fun with my time management.

I Pomodoro'd my working morning.

Except I had to cheat. You are supposed to split your working time into 25-minute blocks, then take a 5-minute break, and start on another 25-minutes, and so on, until your book is written/ the house is painted/ the accounts complete/ whatever you promised yourself you would do in 2005. Voila! Finished!

The first 25 minutes flew by, and I didn't want to stop, so didn't, until I'd done my book-stitchery for an hour or so, then I went to have a 10-minute break.

Unfortunately - and I suspect, a duty not held by two men with a book to plug - I had then to make coffee for our Travelling Aunty and put the laundry on.

By the end of 15 minutes I was into the washing up from yesterday's breakfast. (Left on the hopeful happenchance that elves would come along and sort it out. No such luck.)

After the coffee-making duties, the laundry, the washing up, some more washing up, and a disinfecting of the kitchen surfaces in a pathetic attempt to clear out the rat that has taken residence in the property, nearly an hour had passed.

I bet two men (with a book to plug) organise their days while assuming these sort of jobs are done for them. I am growing increasingly resentful about that, and am using 2017 to regain my proper womanhood. Well, that's the plan, obviously. I haven't started on it yet.

But I did go for a walk, because now I am a flaneuse.

I go where I fancy, in the nature of the dérive. It is just as well my drift includes rural as well as urban, because even though I had not planned my path, my feet directly for the local field, made a straight path of it downhill and found a new bird hide.

I thought it would be a straightforward affair to come home by simply returning on the route I'd come, but I got embarrassingly lost in the damn field and had to make my way round all the fences, like a woodlouse tracks its borders, looking for the hole that leads out.

Anyway, have the illustrated record of my drift. Before the camera battery died.

 

This time, with feeling

Hurrah! 2017! I can feel my flurry of new resolutions coming on.

I wonder if I could do that bloggy-thing again. Post, not for posterity, but for the bewilderment of my children, every bleeding day!

Not sure. Last time I writted about home education (for years, possibly), I not only wanted to impart how life can be from the vantage point of implementing a bastard strong-armed educational righteousness vis-à-vis Real Life, I also wanted to Prove Dig Wrong.

In 2006, Dig said I wouldn't keep any record past the first week. And I just needed to show him what an iron streak of bloody-minded Oppositional Defiance Disorder can do.

But this time, it all feels different. My ball of determined rage/anguish/singlemindedness is gone. I have softened, remoulded by experience, and willing to take on a few new shapes. So this time, Dig might be right. If I started up the daily blog again, for it to last nearly one week before I reappeared in July, it wouldn't even bother me! Life moves on, and this time, it couldn't be all about an education.

But who can tell what happens next. I am open to a feeling for this, and a feeling for that.

And that is what I want. I'm going to make 2017 a year, unpredictably, full of it.

Arthur King now lives in our cupboard

Spent the last twelve hours sorting through the whereabouts 1920-1970 of Arthur King from Gateshead.

Merry Christmas.

I do not know Arthur, except he looks rather dashing in a uniform and I put a copy of him on our wall of Stolen Ancestors, by which method I hope to strew false clues to a false history, and have my daughters waste their hours trying to track down relatives we don't have.

Arthur had a jolly time of it, if the photos are anything to go by.

And, hopefully, often behaved in a manner that did not meet with the full approval of the Aunty in the Frilly Hat.

But if you are looking for Arthur, then we have him now, safely tucked up, at the back of the heirloom book cupboard, next to Wyn and the Townings. I wondered if he married into the Townings, in which case welcome to the family (girls: your Gran's maternal side c1900), but if he didn't marry a Towning, then I don't think we should have him.

Of course I don't resent the space he takes up, but somehow one's own glorious heroines, heroes, black sheeps, ne'er-do-wells and convicts should come first, should they not?

I'm only pressured into doing this now because Aunty Dee is coming to stay. I want those boxes, including Arthur, tidied up and put away. Otherwise she will get everybody out again and that's the end of my dining table for six days. You recall that last time, she got quite agitated when I suggested throwing away the letters from the GPO 1964-68. I asked if she was going to write a history of Gateshead administration 1964-68, considering we also have letters from the bank and the house insurers, and she just narrowed her eyes at me, like I was in league with the Devil.

Tiger, Squirrel and Shark are a little bemused by this sudden flurry into genealogy. I can't be doing this long, I reassure them, because I have things to do, things to leave behind, and the arrangement of King, Arthur, even looking dashing in his uniform, is not one of them.

But if you are looking for King, Arthur, just get in touch and I'll get him out the cupboard.

'What can you do with a book?'

Cruising around t'internet one day, looking for ideas about the history of the book, I came across a software salesman - call him something like World Leader of Marketing and Sales Think It Solutions - and he said, while promoting the glories of Think It Solutions, 'After all, what can you do with a book? Once you've read it, that's it.' Then he made a throwaway gesture, like tossing a match.

Hail the future. Buy the ebook!

Well, I have a visceral hatred for people like him, that is true. But what a future!

Have a problem in your life? Can't sort out your own narrative? Howabout we rent a space in the cloud to add our problematic, messy, stream-of-conscious unconnected thoughts. Then press GO, and the lot is reorganised for we inadequate people with our incoherent notes, we who barely string a sensible narrative.

But now, with Think It Solutions, Scrivener meets your Personal Life Coach! Your incoherent notes in the cloud will tell you what to do, what to avoid, how to live better!

Ideas sifted, organised - some undesirable ideas deleted: they come close to thought-crimes - then the lot smoothly connected. Your new plot worked out, your role presented back to you, your narrative of past, present, future, sorted. 

Forget your own cultural connections, your own knowledges that you're striving to articulate, ignore all that, because don't they just get in the way of how your personhood needs to balance itself in today's market! 

Here's what to do next. Pay an extra $150 and send your unique Think It Solution to your phone for downloading to your fridge, because part of the solution is to change your diet, then press YES! to debit your account for this week's special offer Comfort Scented Candles #deliverynow!

Only make sure you keep up the payments for cloud rental. You wouldn't want all your personal notes, your thoughts, the metadata of your life, suddenly taken from you. Payments to restore your notebooks will be high!

In the earth I shall bury my notebooks - the grubby old books and thoughts made on paper, thoughts writ by hand with pencil and pen, ideas that are scribbles and doodles and jottings, the thoughts I committed when I connected one idea to another - I shall bury them somewhere. Not in your view, World Leader of Marketing and Sales Think It Solutions. First you'd have to find them, to toss a match, or press Delete.

In those buried books, I shall leave notes about things that never happened, jotting for fictions, connections of thinkings that show my cultural history, thoughts that have no conclusion, instincts that don't want a resolution, truths I can never speak straight, the thoughts that live only because they are unsolvable contradictions, all the notes from my hand that make me my who-I-am. I shall bury them all, clues for a history that it's in someone's interest to erase.

That's what you can do with a book.

Hurrah! Santa-Free Zone!

It comes down to this: I did not tell my children that a strange man comes into their room at night to leave presents. The end.

This polar position of mine has drawn fire and ire, it is true. Even before I had kids, as I confidently asserted about the age of eighteen, sitting in a boyfriend's house, declaring to his mother, that I would never, ever, tell my kids that Santa existed, and in my opinion, that was lying, and I knew this was like saying 'the Pope is gay' to a Catholic. I was a walking, talking, venial, mortal, eternal sin. Well so what? That relationship wasn't going anywhere, anyway.

When someone gave me the foolhardy task of raising my own mini people, I stuck to my No Santa line, because it's a lie, Godammit. I still remember the hurt and injury when I found out. I also remember saying to my mother I'll never believe anything you say, ever again. Frankly, I'm not risking that from Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I need them to believe me, because they have yet to hear the family history.

So I explained to my miniatures that Santa was a story, plain and simple. We looked at pictures of fat men in red suits from Coca-Cola advertising strategies circa 1930. Then I told them how some people (the innocent and gullible) liked to believe Santa was real, and - to my uncomprehending children - gave the instruction that they were not to shout out in a Tesco queue in the presence of other 4-year olds, Santa's not real! Santa's not real!

When the mother-in-law-never-to-be heard me declare my soul's intent as a young 18-year old, well, that was me frozen out of all celebrations, joys, and Christmas spirit, because I had stolen Christmas, irreparably damaged it, spoiled it for everyone, made a fool of myself, couldn't iron a shirt, and had no right even walking on planet earth because I was a child abuser and probably a mass murderer.

I cannot say the tone has shifted much in the response to my Santa-Free Celebrations. For whatever reasons, the line still can make people uneasy, and if you are a fellow No-Santa, then you'll have experienced the awkward pauses too.

One of the charges that has been levelled at me, is how I am encouraging children to have No Magic and No Imagination at This Special Time.

I have never given an adequate response to that charge, because it doesn't make any sense. Does it mean we can schedule Magic and Imagination at Christmas and Easter, but not mid-July because, somehow, not being A Special Time, mid-July would be Wrong?

Each to their own. The teens, possibly psychologically dented, thanks to their mother's brutalities, had December's magic and imagination like this instead:

Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House. Brilliant and thrilling, with a plot that involves deceitful mother-love, accidental baby burning, and anvils. Fantastic staging! I LOVED Anita Rachvelishvili's voice as Azucena. If you have pots of gold, then buy tickets. And if you have £7.50, then book kids into the schools performances. The only trouble with my ROH attendance is now I've got into the habit. The idea of not attending HURTS, and we are close to the edge of non-eligibility. So yay me because I've started saving to pay the sodding membership fees to get the mid-range seat prices. Lidl value range pasta at 29p for 500g should help towards this need.

Strange Beasts and Where to Find Them in 4D. I wanted 3D but they only offered the 4D experience. Honestly, don't bother. 3D is fine; you get monsters and explosions right at you, but 4D? Half-way through, I turned to glare at the bloke behind me, for kicking my seat. Then I realised that was the 4D moment. Someone spat at me and Dig spilt wine down his trousers, even after we'd told him your seat will wobble.

King Lear at the Old Vic. Of course I had to take my Gribblysnofflebobs to experience this bit of theatre history. Who would miss Glenda Jackson as Lear? I'd have to be in hospital or dead. A mighty Lear, a superb Fool, a strange Brechtian thread, and a fantastic storm with bin plastic and video rain. Excellent minimalist force. Loved it, although we had to catch the Drunk Express to get home, which was unfortunate.

So there we have it: a December of No Imagination and No Magic. So far. But I suspect that nothing will redeem me: without Santa, I will remain outside human society for ever. Hmm. Thinking about it, I might start a meet-up group for like-minded No-Santaites who like theatre. I'm sure we could get together and wear hats.

The Tempest, RSC

I hang around the back of the curtains at Theatreboard these days, but I'm hoiking out this post and doubling it up here, for the use of home educators looking for a video-Shakespeare theatre experience:

Took four 16/17-year olds to see The Tempest at the RSC yesterday. Much discussion followed, including sharp observations (one at college studying theatre). For those interested in teen views, here are 4 teen critics...

1: Wanted the stripped-back and bare versions of the play in the style at the Globe (pre-Rice) with 'actors in the raw' without props, so they were going to be difficult to please ... Teen critic complained about the opening scene with the actors not moving while the ship sloshes about ... they wanted the physicality of the actors bashing themselves about the stage and hanging onto ropes, as one would presumably do in a real Tudor storm; they thought the beginning showed the actors over-relying on the cinematic experience, or acting so as not to be in conflict with it. I think they ended the evening quietly impressed and won over by the beautiful brightness of colour and the imaginative use of image, but after they'd begun by whining 'This is not cinema, I want theatre' then it was hard to come back from that.

2. 'Stunning' Hugely impressed by the riot of colour and image; they enjoyed Ariel's turn as a hologram but complained about image twitching - we couldn't decide whether these were momentary glitches or a deliberate fractioning of movement to echo a style of electrical interference, Ariel being a spirit of the air, an'all (the latter interpretation is fine by me).

3. Enjoyed the costuming generally; very appreciative of the bones of the ship and how adaptable that was as a set; thought the Caliban costume was 'great' and loved the attention to detail on Caliban's fingers and fish fins; also loved how the characters on the island seemed to get muddy feet as they went though the play, as if showing they really were on an island; loved how the play had a bit of everything - opera, slapstick, anguished screaming and frivolity.

4. Found a lot to think about in the relationship of Prospero and Ariel, as in Prospero seemed to love Ariel more than he loved being a wizard conjuring spells with a stick (and who wouldn't want that?); commented how Russell Beale's performance brings out the menacing side of Prospero - they've previously seen Roger Allam in the role and they noted how very different were the interpretations. In the Allam version Prospero came over as resigned but bearing grudges, impetuous and given to rash judgement; with Russell Beale, Prospero comes across as much more considered: no-one wanted to get on the wrong side of him because he'd be vengeful and dangerous. As Prospero screams in Ariel's face, we all felt here was someone with such internal rage and sorrow, he'd be capable of anything.

Personally, I loved the presentation of this play. I thought the combination of sound and light and image was a knockout wonder, and I loved how it brought back the Masque to a proper status, and seems to mark a moment when we can have a new way to explore imaginative theatrescapes. I'd love to see it again in the cinema run, to compare how it works on a screen. Simon Russell Beale is wonderful, and I didn't feel the acting was at all compromised or weakened by the image show. So, from me, a lovely, lovely show. Moving, and visually WOW.

 

And if you have an opinion on it, then share it: http://theatreboard.co.uk

Black Friday, Day of National Shame

Yes, I hate Black Friday.

Everything about it. The name; the way we adopt an American cultural import without critical reflection; the global retail box shifters who drive it all; the insidious advertising preying on our need for security; the impulse purchasing that the day normalises and celebrates; the embarrassing photographs of people humiliating themselves in shopping rage over a flat-screen TV.  I cannot find one good thing yet to recommend it.

People, spare a thought for your independent retailers! They're not box shifters and discounters. They work hard everyday to create a shop and a trade that works for you and them. Think - ahem - of crafters and makers! Like the poor lady book-creators who stitch and bind by the midnight hours, just to put a crust of bread on the table for the children (and three teen-tickets at a fiver apiece for The Tempest at the RSC). They - we - cannot afford to offer you a 60% discount on a hand-made item, crafted with love, sold in a shop that we all work hard to support.

The whole Black Friday import is no more than a way to get you to support everything bad about global consumerism: the culture of underpaid and exploited workers in Asia, the overworking and bullying of retail staff, your own personal debt, and a great big toot for materialism. Meanwhile Black Friday rejects the things that should form part of our lives: honest fair-dealing trade, meeting the sellers and makers, and celebrating your independent shop owners.

I'm thinking all this, then I walk into the office, where Dig says, 'When do you need the car today? I'm thinking of going over to Bicester Shopping Village. I need new shoes and it's Black Friday.'

Post-16 choices

Some discussion these last weeks about choices for post-16 home ed kids. What next? Work? College? Loafing about? So many things to do!

I'll chip in, for the benefit of family and friends, and to cause pain to one wing of my extended family who, let's face it, are basically Scared by Strange, aka Tiger, Squirrel and Shark. Home educated all their life? How is that possible?

Then here's the choice of three typical home ed kids aged 16

Squirrel. Last seen heading off outdoors. She visited the nearest Agricultural College to look up courses in forest management. The lure of the chainsaw is strong. Visits beckon, to pig farms and silos. Discussions about badgers and tractors. We have started listening to The Archers. Maybe she can marry a farmer.

But Squirrel cannot decide between Outdoors, or Art. When Not Outdoors, she is found cutting things up and sticking and gluing and composing very fine sketchbooks. From my consensus-seeking view, I have reminded her that many dedicated and original artists work outdoors! Howabout our local Linda Johns! Anyway, Squirrel is taking a year to think and to apply somewhere for a course in something for 2017. Whatever Squirrel chooses, I have promised her close involvement with a falcon.

By-the-bye, Squirrel has a clutch of IGCSEs at Grade A. At school, I strongly suspect this quiet academic industry would have condemned her to No Choice. The staff would have discounted Art (not a real subject). Squirrel's aspirations to living off-grid in a wood wouldn't blip on their radar. No, they would have geared her into 3 academic A-Levels and then 50 grand's worth of debt in a subject she didn't, at heart, want to study, because, basically, she wants to live outdoors while sticking and gluing and that, to my mind, is fantastic way to live.

As an aside, I also want to tell you about Squirrel's mission for your youth, should she ever become Minister in Charge of Primary Schools: "All primary schools should be knocked down. All primary children should be educated in fields and woods. Why are children sitting in rooms? They should learn how to conduct themselves with Nature. What do you mean, 'what if there is a thunderstorm?'. Oh alright, they can have a Shed, but only to wait in while the thunderstorm passes."

Tiger. Taking a year to begin Latin A-Level online with Cambridge, while teaching herself Ancient Greek, Old Norse and Anglo Saxon. She notes Cambridge University "has some very interesting courses". High achieving academic goals are both her strength and weakness: if she gets less than 90% from her online Latin tutor, then all is lost and, in Tiger's view, proves she's not able. We parents are working on this, while wading through her piles of papers on Runic and Phoenician scripts, to achieve perspective.

Otherwise, Tiger loves Art, and has composed lovely sketchbooks which improve all the time. But no local Sixth Form offers Latin, Anglo Saxon and Art. She may settle for conventional A-Levels in History, Art, Something else, and continue to teach herself at home.

Shark. Gets up early each morning to attend a local Sixth Form College for conventional A-Levels: Physics, Biology, Maths, Engineering. Shark chose this route and, despite my whining, she has our complete support! But we are all experiencing the Culture Clash. Shark cannot believe how much is done for kids at school. "They don't even have to look up the Specification!" (I am reeling over the cost. Blimey, if anyone tells me how state schooling is free but home ed is expensive, then I have no response for you, except the evidence of my own bank balance.) Otherwise, continuing to enjoy Sea Cadet / marine life, even when we are the furthest point from the sea in all directions we can get.

There you have it. Three very different people making their own decisions! Just think, if it had all gone wrong, we could have had three children with suppressed ambitions, facing futures they never chose with passion, or simply bullied into changing life goals, each being told to fill in the UCCA forms, whether they wanted to or not, then doing so only because they couldn't think of anything else to do, and anyway, 'everyone else seems to be doing it'.

Hurrah for choice! Yes, your world still needs Artists, Scholars, Engineers, and people whose life goals include living off-grid in a wood.

The IAM course

I am learning to drive, second time around.

The first time I learned to drive was London, Hanger Lane Gyratory. Good training for Bletchley High Street, where I passed some sort of test in the 1980s. But since then, I have driven everywhere in third gear, badly.

So I thought I would learn it all again. I am now sitting with an observer on a weekly basis taking the Institute of Advanced Motorists course. I pore over videos like this. Then quietly slip out to have a go at my parallel park.

I totally recommend the IAM course, if you have any type of nerdy streak, any type of compulsion to get things right, or have children rising 17 about to hit the roads and you - parent-driving-teacher - are scared witless at the thought of sitting next to them while you approach an actual roundabout.

There are just a few obstacles causing me difficulty.

Left and Right. These two are quite confusing, are they not? So when the observer says Right and you turn Left, there is an awkward moment while we all work it out.

Directions in general. When the Observer says, Follow the road to Buckingham, I think, Where the hell is Buckingham? I know we're now only 3 miles from it, and it's around here somewhere, but unless I drive at it on my normal road, I have no idea whether to turn left or right. Embarrassing. Especially when part of the course is learning to observe the road sign you just drove past.

The commentary. Advanced drivers are supposed to say things like Accelerate. Third gear. Pedestrian. Dog on lead. Mirror check. Limit level increasing. See how concise it is? I am getting the hang of it. At the moment I am more in the way of, Accelerate, ooer, are you sure? What gear am I in? Oh dear I can see a Pedestrian. Ha! They have a dog on lead. It's not going to leap into the road if it's on a lead. Unless they have an extending lead. They are downright dangerous. Does that dog look a bit sad to you? I can see them in my mirror now. Was I supposed to Give Way back then?

Driving round for an hour in the car worrying about the planet. Because, on an IAM course, you're not driving from A to B with a purpose, you're driving the route A to B for the sake of it, just in a smarty-pants way which does not end upside-down in a ditch (an incident which we passed on my second time out). I force myself to quell my worry about my extravagant use of fuel, mostly by consoling myself that my bad old ways of driving in third gear was the most wasteful I could get.

Conclusion: It's consoling, comforting, and makes you a more aware driver. As in, did you ever know those things about kerbs? I have driven past kerb sides for 30 years without ever realising they come with their own stories. So yes, an IAM course would make a great Christmas present if you're stuck* and have ever wished your fellow-driver would slow down, speed up, take that corner more precisely, miss the dog, not crash the car, or be able to tell you stories about the kerb.

*I am not an ambassador and this is not a sponsored post, I am just in the middle of starry-eyed enthusiasm.