I put on the film, Journey to the Center of the Earth. The 1957 version, with James Mason and all. I've called it Film Studies, on the basis that it gives me two hours free while the gritlets are goggling at the dimetrodons, so you can call it treatment for depression.
I last watched this film aged about eight, and cherish fond memories of James Mason running about in a plastic tunnel with a giant mushroom. Then I thought it possibly one of the finest, most magical films ever to have been made, and probably credit this film for pointing me towards literature and inspiring me to read the children's editions of the Jules Verne collection in the local library.
So today I watch a bit too, or as much as I can before I go and beat myself up for failing, in my two hours off, to tackle ordinary household duties, like dirty laundry, filthy sinks, and bits of space rocket on the floor. But the bit I watch is frankly bizarre and makes me wonder about my memory. In fact this film starts so bizarrely it matches anything Grit and the gritlets can muster while they crash about English fields scouring the land for monks or moths or sewage or badgers.
For a start, nearly everyone in this film, James Mason excepted, looks like a cross between Beverly Hills and Munich. They're all clean-cut young folks stained with the same colour of wood varnish and flashing perfect dazzling smiles, while dressed in weird costumes that remind me of lederhosen. Worse, one of the male leads with a rugged all-American jawline has this fake Scottish accent, not helped by striding around in a kilt feeling the need to hack out och ach ach och like he's caught a rat in the throat. When they're not striding about being American Scots, the characters break into song.
Clearly, none of this troubles the gritlets. Just like mama 40 years ago. The gritlets are totally absorbed by this surreal Journey to the Center of the Earth, and remain so, even after I absent myself to scoop up bits of rocket and cry in the midst of my depressive bout. When I return, it's all over, the prehistory's been proven, and I ask whether the film helped everyone think about the stuff we did on explorers, or Darwin, or geology or, I add hopefully, anything at all.
And then Squirrel says she was sorry when the dog was eaten. I don't remember a dog, but somehow manage to talk at length about dogs and what Americans might do when they're starving and lost underground and there is a dog and it looks tasty.
Squirrel stares at me blankly. It takes us forty five minutes to ascertain that she didn't say dog, she said duck, and then I remember that of course, in the film it is Gertrude the duck. And she is eaten.
Which makes perfect sense, because it is perfectly normal to take your pet duck to a journey underground from Iceland to discover the origins of life, even if you are from Beverly Hills dressed up in lederhosen and singing Hollywood songs before being spewed out from a volcano whereupon you can get married and live an ordinary life of fame as a fake Scottish geology professor.
Makes our life sound quite normal.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Friday, 7 November 2008
The TV aerial that there's nothing wrong with
There is one sure antidote to a failing day, and that is do nothing. This is the most wonderful medicine, and I am sure is practised by home educators everywhere.
So today this is the bold target I set for myself and the gritlets. At breakfast I suggest we don't go anywhere, or do anything, or try to be clever with stuff, like a plan, or a piece of paper and a pen, or indeed anything, especially look for socks, which surely won't be matched anyway.
I suggest I read The December Rose by Leon Garfield, if anyone wants to listen.
If only it could stay like that, snuggled up on the sofa, Squirrel on the left, Tiger on the right, Shark lolling on the sofa back, grumbling that it's always her turn on the back, and she never gets a chance, ever ever ever, to sit on the fluffy cushions while a story's being read.
But then Grit remembers about the aerial.
Mr Pod, who lives on the middle floor, says he cannot get a picture on his new telly. He thinks we have an old aerial, and he's rung up a man in Northampton to drive goodness knows how many miles to come and fit a new aerial. I think I might have said, perched somewhere on the hall stairs last night, surrounded by screaming, and possibly with a noose round my neck, that I thought this big old house had a new aerial fixed a little while ago, and that it should work with this new fangled lark that is digital.
But because my brain resembles a plate of cold mashed cabbage, what with the screaming and the isolation, maybe those words didn't get through. Or maybe it is because somewhere I am thinking, I know nothing about aerials. The gritlets do not watch TV. And I don't get the chance even for Coronation Street. Now, only the DVD Night at the Museum and endless Dad's Army videos, so no TV at all. Therefore, I conclude, my brain ticking away like a plate of mushy peas, I probably do not know what I am talking about when it comes to aerials.
Anyway, Mr Pod, with his round face and his round made-for-television glasses stares blankly at me, like I cannot possibly know what I am talking about because I do not say it from behind a TV screen and do not look like Carol Vorderman. So Mr Pod must be right because he says he is, and it is all the aerial's fault, and there is a man coming here on Friday, and that is unstoppable, and by the way he is out fishing in the North Atlantic, so can I sort it out and let the aerial man have access to the roof.
And these are all my thoughts and recollections which gather on me as I settle down for a long read about Barnacle and the boat.
So I post the children on look-out duty and say we will read about Inspector Creaker's hunt for the locket through Victorian London until the man comes about the aerial.
And a couple of hours pass and we all forget.
Then I happen to take a break, wander through the hall, and there on the mat is the card which says Hi! I am your aerial man! I've just driven 90 miles with my ladder to fit your new aerial and YOU SODS WEREN'T AT HOME.
Which means I can now telephone the number on the card and say Hi! I'm the poor sod without a husband edging on a nervous breakdown down in the flat where the buzzer doesn't work, waiting for the aerial man we don't need and who didn't knock, called by the bloke who doesn't know what's wrong and isn't here. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with the aerial, and if there was your ladder wouldn't reach, so please, don't come back.
Like I said, I set out to achieve nothing today, and that's exactly what I did.
So today this is the bold target I set for myself and the gritlets. At breakfast I suggest we don't go anywhere, or do anything, or try to be clever with stuff, like a plan, or a piece of paper and a pen, or indeed anything, especially look for socks, which surely won't be matched anyway.
I suggest I read The December Rose by Leon Garfield, if anyone wants to listen.
If only it could stay like that, snuggled up on the sofa, Squirrel on the left, Tiger on the right, Shark lolling on the sofa back, grumbling that it's always her turn on the back, and she never gets a chance, ever ever ever, to sit on the fluffy cushions while a story's being read.
But then Grit remembers about the aerial.
Mr Pod, who lives on the middle floor, says he cannot get a picture on his new telly. He thinks we have an old aerial, and he's rung up a man in Northampton to drive goodness knows how many miles to come and fit a new aerial. I think I might have said, perched somewhere on the hall stairs last night, surrounded by screaming, and possibly with a noose round my neck, that I thought this big old house had a new aerial fixed a little while ago, and that it should work with this new fangled lark that is digital.
But because my brain resembles a plate of cold mashed cabbage, what with the screaming and the isolation, maybe those words didn't get through. Or maybe it is because somewhere I am thinking, I know nothing about aerials. The gritlets do not watch TV. And I don't get the chance even for Coronation Street. Now, only the DVD Night at the Museum and endless Dad's Army videos, so no TV at all. Therefore, I conclude, my brain ticking away like a plate of mushy peas, I probably do not know what I am talking about when it comes to aerials.
Anyway, Mr Pod, with his round face and his round made-for-television glasses stares blankly at me, like I cannot possibly know what I am talking about because I do not say it from behind a TV screen and do not look like Carol Vorderman. So Mr Pod must be right because he says he is, and it is all the aerial's fault, and there is a man coming here on Friday, and that is unstoppable, and by the way he is out fishing in the North Atlantic, so can I sort it out and let the aerial man have access to the roof.
And these are all my thoughts and recollections which gather on me as I settle down for a long read about Barnacle and the boat.
So I post the children on look-out duty and say we will read about Inspector Creaker's hunt for the locket through Victorian London until the man comes about the aerial.
And a couple of hours pass and we all forget.
Then I happen to take a break, wander through the hall, and there on the mat is the card which says Hi! I am your aerial man! I've just driven 90 miles with my ladder to fit your new aerial and YOU SODS WEREN'T AT HOME.
Which means I can now telephone the number on the card and say Hi! I'm the poor sod without a husband edging on a nervous breakdown down in the flat where the buzzer doesn't work, waiting for the aerial man we don't need and who didn't knock, called by the bloke who doesn't know what's wrong and isn't here. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with the aerial, and if there was your ladder wouldn't reach, so please, don't come back.
Like I said, I set out to achieve nothing today, and that's exactly what I did.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Going backwards, downhill
I am failing right now. Lots of bits of me are failing. I am failing to see a way out of failing. Which means I do the thing that occasionally I do, and that is close my eyes, grit my teeth and get on with it.
There are so many reasons why I am failing, I can't count them all. But the house is filled with crap, so I'll start there.
We have enough junk here to advertise ourselves as a landfill, then everyone for miles around can come and dump their stuff on us, and do you know what? I wouldn't even notice your contribution. The floor of the schoolroom is already knee-deep in bits of cut up paper, cardboard, plastic junk, toys, and a model for a space rocket.
What's more, Squirrel, who sometimes has a way of learning that I do not understand, she has set out a few death traps by tying the furniture together. She ties the legs of chairs and tables together with lengths of wool, then hides the tripwires under cardboard boxes and calls them space rockets. Frankly it is driving me crazy. It is driving me so crazy that if she does not stop this, I will find something to kill.
But if I take control, and scissor my way through the wool and paper models and all the home-made junk and throw it away, I am guilty - no, by my own standards, damned as far as hell and back - for stealing the precious learning experience my children own, and which is rightly theirs.
And if only I could dump it secretly. Because I cannot tip the junk in the recycling sacks. No. Because these sacks are clear. That means you can see through them. Then Squirrel sees that her darling mama, the one she trusted, the one she thought was on her side, she just picked up that space rocket with the secret messages to Lem the unicorn, and she shoved them along with all the other crap produced here at a rate of 40,000 pieces of paper a day, and stuffed them all in the rubbish.
Well, Squirrel, Shark and Tiger, the sight of you all, three years ago, wailing and screaming in anguish and pain while ripping out from the recycling bin all the millions of bits of paper you graced with wax crayon scribble is a sight I'll never forget in my life. So now I throw your stuff away in black plastic bin liners so you can't see it, and scream that mummy just threw away all your art. Why don't you just stab me in the heart with kebab skewers and have done with it?
But listen here girls, I am trying to teach you right now the difference between rough working drawings and the finished pieces that we work hard to create and will proudly show to other people. And there is a difference, OK? So please, unless you want me to kill myself right here and now, allow me to throw out the forty seven bits of paper with half a horses head drawn on them in yellow wax crayon.
Now another reason why I am failing. Some days I feel we learn nothing, do nothing. Except go backwards. To keep that dreadful vacuum of life away, everyday I maintain an activity, a busyness, because if I do not lay down my head on that pillow each night, thinking today we achieved something, anything, then I know my body will shut down in a cannot go on state, while my mind might explode and go awol. That thought scares me witless and keeps me planning just for another day. One more day.
And this is part of that very big reason why I am failing, crawling, really, lost, in a dark box, is that home education can be a lonely, lonely option. Especially when the husband you might once have had is sitting in business class far above the Pacific ordering another glass of wine, while the only adult here is reaching some end part of what it is to cope, and soon will be entering that place which is not coping.
Then here come these days when it isn't enough to be surrounded by garbage, or failing to learn anything, or struggling alone.
Here comes a day when I am confronted by this timetable that I have carefully set up - the gym and trampoline lessons - and these three little voices say this does not work for me. Which would be fine if the little voices that belong to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger actually said words this measured and reasonable: this does not work for me.
But I guess like so many children, this does not work for me actually translates into screaming, yelling, slamming doors, swinging punches, clawing at the walls, throwing stuff around the room and hurtling their bodies to the floor in a bomb blast of chaos, misery and damage. And all of that is prompted today when I say, it is Thursday and time for gym and trampoline. And then two of my little charges say that phrase, this does not work for me, but translated into Shark and Tiger language, while Squirrel sits in the car and witters on about her hat, and I feel the right thing to do with my life right now is to end it.
Todays, like today, when I am drowned in junk, alone, walking blindfold backwards, missing those carefully planned lessons of gym and trampoline, listening to screams, sitting weeping in the car, in despair, I can only do what I can do. Bang my head with my fists, grit my teeth, resolve to get on with it, and hope that somewhere in the chaos and the crap and the misery, all this grit, one day, some other day, somewhere else, some other time, delivers a pearl.
There are so many reasons why I am failing, I can't count them all. But the house is filled with crap, so I'll start there.
We have enough junk here to advertise ourselves as a landfill, then everyone for miles around can come and dump their stuff on us, and do you know what? I wouldn't even notice your contribution. The floor of the schoolroom is already knee-deep in bits of cut up paper, cardboard, plastic junk, toys, and a model for a space rocket.
What's more, Squirrel, who sometimes has a way of learning that I do not understand, she has set out a few death traps by tying the furniture together. She ties the legs of chairs and tables together with lengths of wool, then hides the tripwires under cardboard boxes and calls them space rockets. Frankly it is driving me crazy. It is driving me so crazy that if she does not stop this, I will find something to kill.
But if I take control, and scissor my way through the wool and paper models and all the home-made junk and throw it away, I am guilty - no, by my own standards, damned as far as hell and back - for stealing the precious learning experience my children own, and which is rightly theirs.
And if only I could dump it secretly. Because I cannot tip the junk in the recycling sacks. No. Because these sacks are clear. That means you can see through them. Then Squirrel sees that her darling mama, the one she trusted, the one she thought was on her side, she just picked up that space rocket with the secret messages to Lem the unicorn, and she shoved them along with all the other crap produced here at a rate of 40,000 pieces of paper a day, and stuffed them all in the rubbish.
Well, Squirrel, Shark and Tiger, the sight of you all, three years ago, wailing and screaming in anguish and pain while ripping out from the recycling bin all the millions of bits of paper you graced with wax crayon scribble is a sight I'll never forget in my life. So now I throw your stuff away in black plastic bin liners so you can't see it, and scream that mummy just threw away all your art. Why don't you just stab me in the heart with kebab skewers and have done with it?
But listen here girls, I am trying to teach you right now the difference between rough working drawings and the finished pieces that we work hard to create and will proudly show to other people. And there is a difference, OK? So please, unless you want me to kill myself right here and now, allow me to throw out the forty seven bits of paper with half a horses head drawn on them in yellow wax crayon.
Now another reason why I am failing. Some days I feel we learn nothing, do nothing. Except go backwards. To keep that dreadful vacuum of life away, everyday I maintain an activity, a busyness, because if I do not lay down my head on that pillow each night, thinking today we achieved something, anything, then I know my body will shut down in a cannot go on state, while my mind might explode and go awol. That thought scares me witless and keeps me planning just for another day. One more day.
And this is part of that very big reason why I am failing, crawling, really, lost, in a dark box, is that home education can be a lonely, lonely option. Especially when the husband you might once have had is sitting in business class far above the Pacific ordering another glass of wine, while the only adult here is reaching some end part of what it is to cope, and soon will be entering that place which is not coping.
Then here come these days when it isn't enough to be surrounded by garbage, or failing to learn anything, or struggling alone.
Here comes a day when I am confronted by this timetable that I have carefully set up - the gym and trampoline lessons - and these three little voices say this does not work for me. Which would be fine if the little voices that belong to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger actually said words this measured and reasonable: this does not work for me.
But I guess like so many children, this does not work for me actually translates into screaming, yelling, slamming doors, swinging punches, clawing at the walls, throwing stuff around the room and hurtling their bodies to the floor in a bomb blast of chaos, misery and damage. And all of that is prompted today when I say, it is Thursday and time for gym and trampoline. And then two of my little charges say that phrase, this does not work for me, but translated into Shark and Tiger language, while Squirrel sits in the car and witters on about her hat, and I feel the right thing to do with my life right now is to end it.
Todays, like today, when I am drowned in junk, alone, walking blindfold backwards, missing those carefully planned lessons of gym and trampoline, listening to screams, sitting weeping in the car, in despair, I can only do what I can do. Bang my head with my fists, grit my teeth, resolve to get on with it, and hope that somewhere in the chaos and the crap and the misery, all this grit, one day, some other day, somewhere else, some other time, delivers a pearl.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
A grand day out down the sewage farm
Here we go, once again to the sweet-smelling English fields, in pursuit of an education. This time to the local sewage farm.
First we must all don yellow jackets. Yes, Tiger, that includes you. Do as you are told. It is because there are poopy lorries here. You might be knocked into a vat of poo by accident. Of course I will not throw you in. I was joking.
Now for the guided tour.
From this point, I became very confused. Really, I became lost about the order in which all the poo and waste water from all your houses goes through the vats, channels and drains. In fact it is so totally confusing down at this sewage farm you can be very glad I am not in charge of the control buttons.
At some points the waste stuff needs to go into these tanks ...
and along these channels ...
then under this sprayer thing...
and this hole in the ground has something to do with it too.
And from all that poopy washing-up and laundry water comes clean water again. Bio things have something to do with it, and fatty particles are removed, crisp packets and artificial limbs are fished out, and fertilizers for farms are made, so cleaned up stuff heads back onto the fields for the carrots, and you can turn on the tap in the shower and hopefully not be drenched in wee. Amazing, right?
But I know you come to this blog for more than to learn about what goes on in English fields, or about Grit's exciting life of home education with triplets and an absent husband; it is also to learn something new about the world we all share.
Well I can teach you something new. It is how to make poo.
Take one Weetabix biscuit and pour over it a small amount of cold tea. When the Weetabix has soaked up the tea, you should be able to squeeze it and shape it like a poopy. Then drop it in a bucket of yellow coloured water and Voila!
Shark in charge of the poopy drop.
Next week, how to make nuclear fusion in the bathtub.
First we must all don yellow jackets. Yes, Tiger, that includes you. Do as you are told. It is because there are poopy lorries here. You might be knocked into a vat of poo by accident. Of course I will not throw you in. I was joking.
Now for the guided tour.
From this point, I became very confused. Really, I became lost about the order in which all the poo and waste water from all your houses goes through the vats, channels and drains. In fact it is so totally confusing down at this sewage farm you can be very glad I am not in charge of the control buttons.
At some points the waste stuff needs to go into these tanks ...
and along these channels ...
then under this sprayer thing...
and this hole in the ground has something to do with it too.
And from all that poopy washing-up and laundry water comes clean water again. Bio things have something to do with it, and fatty particles are removed, crisp packets and artificial limbs are fished out, and fertilizers for farms are made, so cleaned up stuff heads back onto the fields for the carrots, and you can turn on the tap in the shower and hopefully not be drenched in wee. Amazing, right?
But I know you come to this blog for more than to learn about what goes on in English fields, or about Grit's exciting life of home education with triplets and an absent husband; it is also to learn something new about the world we all share.
Well I can teach you something new. It is how to make poo.
Take one Weetabix biscuit and pour over it a small amount of cold tea. When the Weetabix has soaked up the tea, you should be able to squeeze it and shape it like a poopy. Then drop it in a bucket of yellow coloured water and Voila!
Shark in charge of the poopy drop.Next week, how to make nuclear fusion in the bathtub.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Anyone for the horse head museum?
Local museums are wonderful places, aren't they? Here the gritlets can source ideas for the doll's house Victorian interior...
Or spend a long time looking at small things under microscopes...
Then contemplate the worldwide moth collection...
And spend a very long time wondering about the horse head.
In fact Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are so engaged at Bedford Museum that everyone is quite sorry the visit ends when we are thrown out at closing time by the lady with the keys, who wants to go home to put up her feet and have a cup of tea.
Grit now thinks that she should target specialist museums around the UK, and possibly around the world in further pursuit of a rounded education.
Where would you go?
Or spend a long time looking at small things under microscopes...
Then contemplate the worldwide moth collection...
And spend a very long time wondering about the horse head.
In fact Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are so engaged at Bedford Museum that everyone is quite sorry the visit ends when we are thrown out at closing time by the lady with the keys, who wants to go home to put up her feet and have a cup of tea.
Grit now thinks that she should target specialist museums around the UK, and possibly around the world in further pursuit of a rounded education.
Where would you go?
Monday, 3 November 2008
Dignified in Cambridge
I subject Shark, Tiger and Squirrel to an experiment today.
It is: Can the little grits go in and out of Cambridge with dignity intact?
Well this doesn't go half bad. I navigate the park and ride with only a bit of undignified screaming from Tiger who refuses to get out of the car. I quietly bribe her with a fruity bun, and promise that she can tell me about significant markers on the bus.
This is one of Grit's travel strategies when entering any new place. Identify supermarkets, petrol forecourts, police stations and post offices on the way in, and store them in a special part of the brain, because we may need to return to them at any moment. I am training the little grits for this job. So far they are not doing too badly, although marking out 'man with dog' I say is not a reliable landmark.
By asking the bus driver for directions we then navigate our way here.
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is a splendid building stuffed with fossils and bits of rock. It is also open on a Monday, when many museums are closed for cleaning. The little grits spend a couple of hours here and big Grit declares that since everything is going so well she will bring everyone back when the Darwin exhibition opens in 2009. Actually she makes this statement while vaguely aware of screaming somewhere in the building.
Due to her keen mother instinct, Grit discovers this is Squirrel, who has locked herself in the toilet and can't get out.
But because things are going well and we are still mostly a dignified addition to the studious place that is Cambridge, then it's over the road to here. Largely to see the whale skeleton. We spend a happy hour in the University of Cambridge Zoology Museum squealing Ugh! Look! Don't look! Ugh! Ugh! This is not undignified at all, and is quite the normal response to rows and rows of pickled things in jars. It all strongly remind me of the biology teacher's store cupboard at school.
Now everyone is simultaneously starving and put off food for life thanks to looking at pickled stomachs, so Grit suggests a breath of fresh air and let's find a restaurant. This is a big treat and is the only reward for dignity. And it can only be Pizza Express, thanks to their brilliant marketing coup with a child's menu that actually works for children by treating them like grown ups.
It is here that Grit discovers she has stolen the giant magnifying lens from the Sedgwick Museum by stuffing it in her bag with Shark's drawings of sea creatures.
Despite this, I think things are going well on the dignity front, at least before the toffee cubes from the ice cream sundae kick in.
We have about fifteen minutes for that to happen, when the screaming will start. Just enough time to dash back to the Museum, confess the crime, hand over the goods, and run for the bus to the car park. From here, we drive home. Where we miss Squirrel's ballet lesson by fifteen minutes but are just in time for Shark and Tiger's drama.
Which means that overall I declare today's experiment a success.
It is: Can the little grits go in and out of Cambridge with dignity intact?
Well this doesn't go half bad. I navigate the park and ride with only a bit of undignified screaming from Tiger who refuses to get out of the car. I quietly bribe her with a fruity bun, and promise that she can tell me about significant markers on the bus.
This is one of Grit's travel strategies when entering any new place. Identify supermarkets, petrol forecourts, police stations and post offices on the way in, and store them in a special part of the brain, because we may need to return to them at any moment. I am training the little grits for this job. So far they are not doing too badly, although marking out 'man with dog' I say is not a reliable landmark.
By asking the bus driver for directions we then navigate our way here.
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is a splendid building stuffed with fossils and bits of rock. It is also open on a Monday, when many museums are closed for cleaning. The little grits spend a couple of hours here and big Grit declares that since everything is going so well she will bring everyone back when the Darwin exhibition opens in 2009. Actually she makes this statement while vaguely aware of screaming somewhere in the building.
Due to her keen mother instinct, Grit discovers this is Squirrel, who has locked herself in the toilet and can't get out.
But because things are going well and we are still mostly a dignified addition to the studious place that is Cambridge, then it's over the road to here. Largely to see the whale skeleton. We spend a happy hour in the University of Cambridge Zoology Museum squealing Ugh! Look! Don't look! Ugh! Ugh! This is not undignified at all, and is quite the normal response to rows and rows of pickled things in jars. It all strongly remind me of the biology teacher's store cupboard at school.
Now everyone is simultaneously starving and put off food for life thanks to looking at pickled stomachs, so Grit suggests a breath of fresh air and let's find a restaurant. This is a big treat and is the only reward for dignity. And it can only be Pizza Express, thanks to their brilliant marketing coup with a child's menu that actually works for children by treating them like grown ups.
It is here that Grit discovers she has stolen the giant magnifying lens from the Sedgwick Museum by stuffing it in her bag with Shark's drawings of sea creatures.
Despite this, I think things are going well on the dignity front, at least before the toffee cubes from the ice cream sundae kick in.
We have about fifteen minutes for that to happen, when the screaming will start. Just enough time to dash back to the Museum, confess the crime, hand over the goods, and run for the bus to the car park. From here, we drive home. Where we miss Squirrel's ballet lesson by fifteen minutes but are just in time for Shark and Tiger's drama.
Which means that overall I declare today's experiment a success.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Peace and quiet
One of the most satisfying parts of home ed is that, at a whim, you can follow what you need to do, drag the children behind you, and call it a project on history. Or geography. Or something. Anything. You don't need to ask the permission of any head teacher, fill in any form, or persuade anyone of the merits of the fantasy you are following. Except Squirrel, and she can be bribed with a cuddle and four squares of chocolate.
Which means that today, I call up Big Bro, tell him we are heading his way with sleeping bags and heavy woollen blankets, then I pack the kids in the car and drive off to the beautiful countryside that is Suffolk. On the journey, we stop at one of the places on all this earth that never fails to provide me with heart's ease, and that is here, at West Stow, amongst the Anglo Saxons.
West Stow is a treasure. The gentle hill rises and falls and curves round the river, and sunk into the ground on the brow are post holes; the earth memory of people who dug, grew, lived, toiled and died here hundreds of years ago. And at this site, houses have been carefully and slowly rebuilt in an experimental reconstruction. Today the houses, made of oak, ash, hazel, send out thin wisps of black smoke, coiling round the thatch, because on many weekends, the reenactors come here and live, with the fires, the farm, the river. I know why. The peacefulness is almost tangible; only the bird cries and the pig snuffles through the shuffling leaves and the wind moving over the Lark valley. When I turn round the corner of the path that leads up through the houses, I don't see or feel my denim jeans or Squirrel's bobbing angora hat. I am time transported to weather beaten faces, loose woollen cloaks, soil-marked fingernails and heavy leather shoes, beating up the path, back home.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Saturdays are horrible
Because... 9.40am. I take Squirrel over the road for her tennis lesson. These tennis lessons have been a trial. Even though the courts are literally over the road. In fact they are so close, if I were strong enough I could throw Squirrel over the fence, saving myself the walk to the entrance gate.
But tennis doesn't start until 10am. Squirrel must wait 20 minutes while the first lessons finish. But I can't wait with her. Because this is where I must be in two places at the same time.
At 9.45am I need to take Tiger to the ice rink for her skating lesson which also starts at 10am. To drive there, run in, sort out skates and have her ready, I need 15 minutes. So at 9.45 the key turns in the ignition, ready or not, because skating lessons cost a fortune and we are not missing a minute.
This conflict of lesson time is not helped by the fact that Dig is not here. He is in Japan. Which means there is no-one to look after Shark, who wants to stay at home.
I have resolved this problem by telling Shark that, while Tiger is skating, Squirrel is sitting at the tennis courts and, until I return, she must look after herself. And if something happens, like the house exploding, the roof falling in, then go to the neighbours. This is pointless, because Shark is reading Why the Whales Came by Michael Morpurgo, and she's not putting down that book for anything, so forget it. She'll be sitting in exactly the same position she was when I walked out the door, just surrounded by roof tiles and bits of exploded wall.
Well, all that dashing about and leaving neglected children to fend for themselves while the house explodes is pretty bad already. But Saturdays gets worse.
Because at 2.20pm I need to take Squirrel to her ballet exam class. And leave Tiger and Shark together at home, even though they might be at that stage where they are prepared to rip each other's faces off. And today we cannot join the RSPB walk, even though we would all like very much to go, because the ballet class lands smack down in the middle of it all. If Dig was here, then I could occupy Shark and Tiger with robins and starlings, and Dig could suffer the You have failed cold shoulders of the ballet mums.
And this is why I hate Saturdays. Because I am one person, with three children. And Saturdays makes me feel very alone.
But tennis doesn't start until 10am. Squirrel must wait 20 minutes while the first lessons finish. But I can't wait with her. Because this is where I must be in two places at the same time.
At 9.45am I need to take Tiger to the ice rink for her skating lesson which also starts at 10am. To drive there, run in, sort out skates and have her ready, I need 15 minutes. So at 9.45 the key turns in the ignition, ready or not, because skating lessons cost a fortune and we are not missing a minute.
This conflict of lesson time is not helped by the fact that Dig is not here. He is in Japan. Which means there is no-one to look after Shark, who wants to stay at home.
I have resolved this problem by telling Shark that, while Tiger is skating, Squirrel is sitting at the tennis courts and, until I return, she must look after herself. And if something happens, like the house exploding, the roof falling in, then go to the neighbours. This is pointless, because Shark is reading Why the Whales Came by Michael Morpurgo, and she's not putting down that book for anything, so forget it. She'll be sitting in exactly the same position she was when I walked out the door, just surrounded by roof tiles and bits of exploded wall.
Well, all that dashing about and leaving neglected children to fend for themselves while the house explodes is pretty bad already. But Saturdays gets worse.
Because at 2.20pm I need to take Squirrel to her ballet exam class. And leave Tiger and Shark together at home, even though they might be at that stage where they are prepared to rip each other's faces off. And today we cannot join the RSPB walk, even though we would all like very much to go, because the ballet class lands smack down in the middle of it all. If Dig was here, then I could occupy Shark and Tiger with robins and starlings, and Dig could suffer the You have failed cold shoulders of the ballet mums.
And this is why I hate Saturdays. Because I am one person, with three children. And Saturdays makes me feel very alone.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Probably not that much in need
Clearly I do not move in the right circles. Tiger, who has the right contacts, wangles herself an invitation to a party at the BBC. Today, as a Child in Need, she's whisked off at lunchtime in a minibus to scoff cake alongside Pudsey Bear, have a sing song, and be showered with fuss and compliments over the colour of her cardigan.
Tiger has managed this needy status thanks to attending Shed, the inclusive drama group that all the gritlets attend on a weekly basis and which has just received, courtesy of Pudsey and all givers, a lovely cheque so Shed can continue inclusive drama-ing up and down the country for another year or so. And they thoroughly deserve it too, and long may Shed continue.
But sad to say, these gritlets seem to take far too much of this adventuresome party life for granted. It may be time to change things.
I could start by asserting my rights. As Mother in Need. The one who works ceaselessly for her children's education and the one who got the little grits into Shed in the first place by arguing their special needs status as small person-type triplets.
With a Mother in Need status, I wouldn't say no to a day off, a big box of chocolates, the occasional thank you from Dig, and another couple of hours magically appearing before lunch. Because not for the first time do I approach my lonesome day by squeezing in as many activities as are humanly possible; activities which might educationally occupy the gritlets and keep me busy enough at the same time to ensure I do not sink in a haze of self-pitying alcohol abuse by tea-time.
So while Tiger is being photographed with Pudsey, the hard working mother takes her remaining offspring to the last sailing of the season, and then onto the spooky walk through the woods behind the cricket green. This is held by our wonderful parks department, and I know the ghouls, ghosts witches and demons are staff of the parks department dressed up and hiding behind trees, but all the tickets were sold pretty sharpish and I had to plead special status here too. You see? This is an example of the ceaseless, thankless work that goes on round here by this sad and lonely mother in need.
Anyway, when we're done with the walk and the hallowe'en games, then I take Shark and Squirrel to the party at the arts centre, where we get to play with glow sticks, warm ourselves by the bonfire, admire the scarecrows made on Wednesday's group workshop, and watch the horror film put together that day by teenagers working with a local film-maker. Then, after another party-fuelled social whirl of a day, we pick up Tiger and go home.
Rightly, all the gritlets should think themselves charmed and fortunate with a life like this.
But Squirrel is in protest and suggests she might be more in need than us all. She laments that the hot chocolate at the hallowe'en party was the worst she had ever tasted in her life.
My mother might have chosen the word, spoiled.
I, of course, will use the word, fortunate.
Tiger has managed this needy status thanks to attending Shed, the inclusive drama group that all the gritlets attend on a weekly basis and which has just received, courtesy of Pudsey and all givers, a lovely cheque so Shed can continue inclusive drama-ing up and down the country for another year or so. And they thoroughly deserve it too, and long may Shed continue.
But sad to say, these gritlets seem to take far too much of this adventuresome party life for granted. It may be time to change things.
I could start by asserting my rights. As Mother in Need. The one who works ceaselessly for her children's education and the one who got the little grits into Shed in the first place by arguing their special needs status as small person-type triplets.
With a Mother in Need status, I wouldn't say no to a day off, a big box of chocolates, the occasional thank you from Dig, and another couple of hours magically appearing before lunch. Because not for the first time do I approach my lonesome day by squeezing in as many activities as are humanly possible; activities which might educationally occupy the gritlets and keep me busy enough at the same time to ensure I do not sink in a haze of self-pitying alcohol abuse by tea-time.
So while Tiger is being photographed with Pudsey, the hard working mother takes her remaining offspring to the last sailing of the season, and then onto the spooky walk through the woods behind the cricket green. This is held by our wonderful parks department, and I know the ghouls, ghosts witches and demons are staff of the parks department dressed up and hiding behind trees, but all the tickets were sold pretty sharpish and I had to plead special status here too. You see? This is an example of the ceaseless, thankless work that goes on round here by this sad and lonely mother in need.
Anyway, when we're done with the walk and the hallowe'en games, then I take Shark and Squirrel to the party at the arts centre, where we get to play with glow sticks, warm ourselves by the bonfire, admire the scarecrows made on Wednesday's group workshop, and watch the horror film put together that day by teenagers working with a local film-maker. Then, after another party-fuelled social whirl of a day, we pick up Tiger and go home.
Rightly, all the gritlets should think themselves charmed and fortunate with a life like this.
But Squirrel is in protest and suggests she might be more in need than us all. She laments that the hot chocolate at the hallowe'en party was the worst she had ever tasted in her life.
My mother might have chosen the word, spoiled.
I, of course, will use the word, fortunate.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Brilliance! (And not so brilliance.)
In a flash of brilliant super organisation I manage to get Shark into a five-hour art workshop at MKG gallery, where she will conduct scientific experiments and call them art, a la Gilberto Zorio.
If this was not enough success, then I obtain tickets for Squirrel and Tiger to attend Lyngo children's theatre performance of Tom Thumb with a Q&A session on how the wonderful stage props work.
And because there is an hour magically appeared in today's timetable I astonishingly read aloud an early translated story of Perrault's Le Petit Poucet, from which Tom Thumb derived, and which copy I have no trouble finding whatsoever. Indeed, this collection of Perrault tales seems to jump into my hands from one of the bookshelves we have foolishly stacked up to ceiling height around this house, where usually we can't find anything. I can only deduce we have good fairies sitting on the roof waving six-metre wands.
But I know that some people believe for every day of brilliance and uber organisation, there must somewhere be a day of stupidity and chaos.
This might account for that day when I thought it a good idea to cease the dripping kitchen tap by pushing a foam bung up it. The irritating dripping noise stopped. So did all the lights in the downstairs rooms because I flooded the ceiling void, fused the circuits, and caused significant water damage up the walls and over the floor.
The foam might have been from a child's alphabet set which would also explain the missing letter L.
If this was not enough success, then I obtain tickets for Squirrel and Tiger to attend Lyngo children's theatre performance of Tom Thumb with a Q&A session on how the wonderful stage props work.
And because there is an hour magically appeared in today's timetable I astonishingly read aloud an early translated story of Perrault's Le Petit Poucet, from which Tom Thumb derived, and which copy I have no trouble finding whatsoever. Indeed, this collection of Perrault tales seems to jump into my hands from one of the bookshelves we have foolishly stacked up to ceiling height around this house, where usually we can't find anything. I can only deduce we have good fairies sitting on the roof waving six-metre wands.
But I know that some people believe for every day of brilliance and uber organisation, there must somewhere be a day of stupidity and chaos.
This might account for that day when I thought it a good idea to cease the dripping kitchen tap by pushing a foam bung up it. The irritating dripping noise stopped. So did all the lights in the downstairs rooms because I flooded the ceiling void, fused the circuits, and caused significant water damage up the walls and over the floor.
The foam might have been from a child's alphabet set which would also explain the missing letter L.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
My kids like carving pumpkins
I dread hallowe'en.
I dread hallowe'en because I might be hounded by Evangelical Christians and forced to justify why I am serving the devil in an unholy festival of evil by encouraging my kids to hollow out pumpkins. And because I have no smart argument ready to defend myself, I have to say, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en because some ancient old hippie like myself might make me justify why my kids are carving out pumpkins when we all know that here in the UK when we were kids there were never any pumpkins, there were turnips. And we didn't carve those out either. And now we are awash with American culture and it is all my fault. And because I can't defend myself against these charges, I have to say, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en in case I am challenged by Dark Earth Mother who is into Samhain and Beltane and knows all the phases of the moon and thinks I am an ignorant arse for letting my kids absorb a commercialised invention from a capitalist culture that is destroying the planet. Everyone knows this time of year is an ancient pagan festival nicked by Christians. And all I can say to her is, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en in case I am faced down on my own doorstep by some miniature ghoul got up in a black plastic cape and fake fangs, all from Tesco at a cost of 12.99. He'd be banging on the door demanding protection money in the form of Mars Bars, while his dad carries a box of eggs. Then I'll have to fess up that we don't have any sweets because we don't like that trick-treating stuff, and all hallowe'en is to us is the excuse to carve out pumpkins, because My kids like carving pumpkins.
And on hallowe'en I dread the sad, disappointed faces of Squirrel, Shark and Tiger if they don't carve out pumpkins. I buy three; one each. We attend a special pumpkin carving workshop, where all the kids make fantastic pumpkin scarecrows to be exhibited round an outdoor arts space on the 31st. I think preparation for hallowe'en doesn't come any better than this. Especially for kids who like carving pumpkins.
Ghost by Shark.
And believe me, suspending that head above that sheet wasn't easy.
Blue by Tiger.
Or Evil blue, to Mr Evil and Blue Evil of Doom.
No-one could quite decide.
The Sun, by Squirrel.
I dread hallowe'en because I might be hounded by Evangelical Christians and forced to justify why I am serving the devil in an unholy festival of evil by encouraging my kids to hollow out pumpkins. And because I have no smart argument ready to defend myself, I have to say, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en because some ancient old hippie like myself might make me justify why my kids are carving out pumpkins when we all know that here in the UK when we were kids there were never any pumpkins, there were turnips. And we didn't carve those out either. And now we are awash with American culture and it is all my fault. And because I can't defend myself against these charges, I have to say, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en in case I am challenged by Dark Earth Mother who is into Samhain and Beltane and knows all the phases of the moon and thinks I am an ignorant arse for letting my kids absorb a commercialised invention from a capitalist culture that is destroying the planet. Everyone knows this time of year is an ancient pagan festival nicked by Christians. And all I can say to her is, My kids like carving pumpkins.
I dread hallowe'en in case I am faced down on my own doorstep by some miniature ghoul got up in a black plastic cape and fake fangs, all from Tesco at a cost of 12.99. He'd be banging on the door demanding protection money in the form of Mars Bars, while his dad carries a box of eggs. Then I'll have to fess up that we don't have any sweets because we don't like that trick-treating stuff, and all hallowe'en is to us is the excuse to carve out pumpkins, because My kids like carving pumpkins.
And on hallowe'en I dread the sad, disappointed faces of Squirrel, Shark and Tiger if they don't carve out pumpkins. I buy three; one each. We attend a special pumpkin carving workshop, where all the kids make fantastic pumpkin scarecrows to be exhibited round an outdoor arts space on the 31st. I think preparation for hallowe'en doesn't come any better than this. Especially for kids who like carving pumpkins.
Ghost by Shark.And believe me, suspending that head above that sheet wasn't easy.
Blue by Tiger.Or Evil blue, to Mr Evil and Blue Evil of Doom.
No-one could quite decide.
The Sun, by Squirrel.This pumpkin doesn't have a body because suns don't have bodies.
(It is also much, much better than last year when Squirrel carved
'Man walking a dog'.)
(It is also much, much better than last year when Squirrel carved
'Man walking a dog'.)
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Teaching the kids about architecture
Would you take your kids to a show home? A show home where everything is laid out perfect? Deep pile carpets, cream sofa, perfect bone china plates, colour coordinated bathroom with all the beautiful little bars of soap sitting on perfectly folded theatre set towels? Then the bedrooms: one like a princess room waiting only for the princess? Breathe deeply because this show home whispers I am style.
Grit takes her grubby little gritlets to one today. Partly because she is deranged by the vision that is home education, but also because she gets a buzz by doing these things, like the wet afternoons after the shopping creche closed. To go home I walked a slow, deliberate walk through John Lewis china and glass department. Best, my eyeful of toddlers were not strapped into the triple buggy. No, I just shouted Remember, kids! Mamma only has two hands! Be careful now! And that gave my sad day a little something like an evil sparkle: one way to resist a world that looked at me like an escaped freak from a sideshow was to become one.
Well now I do the same, and justify it not with What you looking at? But with We're home educated! like this is explanation and justification enough for some bizarre behaviour you're now about to witness.
Or it could perhaps be that home education unhinges you. Oh yes I believe it does a little, because once you step away from that normal template parent, then you start challenging all sorts of ideas and people and stick your face in places where it doesn't belong, and you may justify all oddities on the basis that knowledge is not something that is handed down to us; knowledge is something we produce for ourselves, and we're producing it right here and now and this is why we are carrying this chimney pot and that dead hedgehog.
And in this knowledge-liberated home ed world, this perfect show home is a perfect learning opportunity. Because last week we talked about architecture and looked at some working drawings and talked about building materials and construction methods. So today it's easy to say Let's go and see a building site!
You see how logical that is? How easy you can jump from talking about stuff to packing all the kids in the car and driving to a sales office here...
and interrogating the saleswoman for an hour, picking her brains about house building which Grit is pleased to call an architecture workshop, before watching the shock result when I say And can we now see the show home?
Once inside, Grit's plan of course goes wrong. This is the problem with knowledge - once someone gets hold of some, they start running about with it uncontrollably and doing what they like. A bit like Squirrel all over the show home with my phone camera. Because Squirrel, Shark and Tiger decide this is the perfect place to live in forever; mostly because it lacks any plastic crap over the floor and scribble on the walls - in fact no sign of real trashy human habitation at all - but so awe inspiringly Disney perfect is this palace to my little girls that they forget why we are here at all, but photograph every molecule in that show home. They finally only give up when the saleswoman's face is frozen by fear and the memory card on my phone is so fat and filled up that it is groaning under the weight shouting NO MORE PICTURES OF THE GREEN VASE.
But really, even after the shouting and fisticuffs over possession of the phone camera, this visit fits perfectly with Grit's project on architecture. Because these are not just any old homes, these are Oxley Woods homes, and they use no slates on the roof, and no bricks on the walls and they use torn up recycled paper for insulation. These are green homes with solar panels and ecohats and take a matter of minutes to build as opposed to half a year, and this is what we come to see:
As we are leaving, the saleswoman wipes her brow and heaves a big sigh and consoles herself with the thought that when all is said and done, the little grits are the house buyers of the future. And then I can add smugly, And the architects.
Grit takes her grubby little gritlets to one today. Partly because she is deranged by the vision that is home education, but also because she gets a buzz by doing these things, like the wet afternoons after the shopping creche closed. To go home I walked a slow, deliberate walk through John Lewis china and glass department. Best, my eyeful of toddlers were not strapped into the triple buggy. No, I just shouted Remember, kids! Mamma only has two hands! Be careful now! And that gave my sad day a little something like an evil sparkle: one way to resist a world that looked at me like an escaped freak from a sideshow was to become one.
Well now I do the same, and justify it not with What you looking at? But with We're home educated! like this is explanation and justification enough for some bizarre behaviour you're now about to witness.
Or it could perhaps be that home education unhinges you. Oh yes I believe it does a little, because once you step away from that normal template parent, then you start challenging all sorts of ideas and people and stick your face in places where it doesn't belong, and you may justify all oddities on the basis that knowledge is not something that is handed down to us; knowledge is something we produce for ourselves, and we're producing it right here and now and this is why we are carrying this chimney pot and that dead hedgehog.
And in this knowledge-liberated home ed world, this perfect show home is a perfect learning opportunity. Because last week we talked about architecture and looked at some working drawings and talked about building materials and construction methods. So today it's easy to say Let's go and see a building site!
You see how logical that is? How easy you can jump from talking about stuff to packing all the kids in the car and driving to a sales office here...
and interrogating the saleswoman for an hour, picking her brains about house building which Grit is pleased to call an architecture workshop, before watching the shock result when I say And can we now see the show home?
Once inside, Grit's plan of course goes wrong. This is the problem with knowledge - once someone gets hold of some, they start running about with it uncontrollably and doing what they like. A bit like Squirrel all over the show home with my phone camera. Because Squirrel, Shark and Tiger decide this is the perfect place to live in forever; mostly because it lacks any plastic crap over the floor and scribble on the walls - in fact no sign of real trashy human habitation at all - but so awe inspiringly Disney perfect is this palace to my little girls that they forget why we are here at all, but photograph every molecule in that show home. They finally only give up when the saleswoman's face is frozen by fear and the memory card on my phone is so fat and filled up that it is groaning under the weight shouting NO MORE PICTURES OF THE GREEN VASE.
But really, even after the shouting and fisticuffs over possession of the phone camera, this visit fits perfectly with Grit's project on architecture. Because these are not just any old homes, these are Oxley Woods homes, and they use no slates on the roof, and no bricks on the walls and they use torn up recycled paper for insulation. These are green homes with solar panels and ecohats and take a matter of minutes to build as opposed to half a year, and this is what we come to see:As we are leaving, the saleswoman wipes her brow and heaves a big sigh and consoles herself with the thought that when all is said and done, the little grits are the house buyers of the future. And then I can add smugly, And the architects.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Remember that promise of lemonade?
Squirrel, Shark and Tiger are behaving oddly. Like agreeably. This outbreak of cooperation has been ongoing for several days. All this mutual support, like a deep underground rumble, is unnerving me, and I ask myself, Are they plotting something?
Are they huddling together in some strange tripletty-mind-pact, wordlessly? Plotting perhaps to lull me into a delusion that right now we have a content and happy home? Allowing me to rest that thought for a moment on my naive and smug backside? Long enough perhaps for me to consider that I am doing an OK job, what with single mothering, home educating, and keeping up with the laundry.
Perhaps when they've put a complacent foolish grin on my smug face, they'll proceed to wipe it off. They might lure me into the kitchen. Here they'll suddenly explode this satisfied atmosphere and Grit's brain into the bargain, by responding to some secret signal and reverting to triplet type. Like that signal when Tiger grabs Shark's head and slams it on the kitchen table hollering SHARK IS PISSING ME OFF! And then Squirrel will start crying that ghastly howling abandoned baby wolf noise that whoowooowooos like an ice pick skewering my synapses. And Shark of course will be fighting back by then, snarling and grabbing Tiger by the hair so she can draw her fingernails down Tiger's sweet face and ruin her chances of marrying into British royalty forever, despite the horse riding and skiing lessons for which we are specifically paying with that goal in mind.
And how will these little triplets justify this massacre of both the happy house and Grit's brain? It will not be of course prompted by something significant like our shared concerns over the collapse of the UK banking system, and how are we going to keep a roof over our heads. No. It will be something more fundamental to our lives, like Where is the lemonade? You promised lemonade! You said last April we would make lemonade and now look! It is October! You have not bought the lemons! And that is why we have to do this right now and put dynamite under the roof of this house! Then Grit will be that normal failing shit mother again; the one who blames herself for this mess and tells herself how wrong and badly she is doing everything and who proves it by wading across the kitchen floor knee-deep in last week's laundry.
But, like I said, none of this bad blame and misery stuff is happening. Not at all. After breakfast Shark, Squirrel and Tiger jump happily into the car. We drive to the woods to listen to a storyteller, which mummy Grit calls an English lesson, and no-one is phased by that, and then we run about and collect leaves and twigs and conkers to help tell stories. Afterwards, we come home and eat lunch nicely with table talk like, Will you pass the apple juice please? Yes! Here it is! Thank you!
Listen! Can you hear rumbling?
Are they huddling together in some strange tripletty-mind-pact, wordlessly? Plotting perhaps to lull me into a delusion that right now we have a content and happy home? Allowing me to rest that thought for a moment on my naive and smug backside? Long enough perhaps for me to consider that I am doing an OK job, what with single mothering, home educating, and keeping up with the laundry.
Perhaps when they've put a complacent foolish grin on my smug face, they'll proceed to wipe it off. They might lure me into the kitchen. Here they'll suddenly explode this satisfied atmosphere and Grit's brain into the bargain, by responding to some secret signal and reverting to triplet type. Like that signal when Tiger grabs Shark's head and slams it on the kitchen table hollering SHARK IS PISSING ME OFF! And then Squirrel will start crying that ghastly howling abandoned baby wolf noise that whoowooowooos like an ice pick skewering my synapses. And Shark of course will be fighting back by then, snarling and grabbing Tiger by the hair so she can draw her fingernails down Tiger's sweet face and ruin her chances of marrying into British royalty forever, despite the horse riding and skiing lessons for which we are specifically paying with that goal in mind.
And how will these little triplets justify this massacre of both the happy house and Grit's brain? It will not be of course prompted by something significant like our shared concerns over the collapse of the UK banking system, and how are we going to keep a roof over our heads. No. It will be something more fundamental to our lives, like Where is the lemonade? You promised lemonade! You said last April we would make lemonade and now look! It is October! You have not bought the lemons! And that is why we have to do this right now and put dynamite under the roof of this house! Then Grit will be that normal failing shit mother again; the one who blames herself for this mess and tells herself how wrong and badly she is doing everything and who proves it by wading across the kitchen floor knee-deep in last week's laundry.
But, like I said, none of this bad blame and misery stuff is happening. Not at all. After breakfast Shark, Squirrel and Tiger jump happily into the car. We drive to the woods to listen to a storyteller, which mummy Grit calls an English lesson, and no-one is phased by that, and then we run about and collect leaves and twigs and conkers to help tell stories. Afterwards, we come home and eat lunch nicely with table talk like, Will you pass the apple juice please? Yes! Here it is! Thank you!
Listen! Can you hear rumbling?
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Education for free down the shopping centre
Do you know, when we are doing well, this home education lark is like one long permanent holiday? Like ice creams and hot sunshine and golden sand every day?
However, please don't try it. The queues and crowds at the sea life centres, and in all the museums, workshops and galleries will become miserably long and I shall be forced to put Shark, Squirrel and Tiger into school to escape.
Remember that home educators are a ragbag of old hippies waiting for the revolution. We smell, too. Vile. Send your kids to school. School is best, that's what I say.
Now, where was I? Oh yes, home education, going well.
Today Grit (rancid old hippie, Scargill was right, it's all a government plot etc. etc.) takes her (vile, smelly) home educated kids to the (stinking capitalist enterprise), Milton Keynes shopping centre.
Here we can benefit from the studious Open University, which has set up lots of science education stalls as part of a grand science festival. This sounds odd, doesn't it, popping to M&S for knickers and emerging two hours later with a new planet and a gravitational microlens, but bringing knowledge to the people is one of the things the Open University is all about. And if the people won't come to science, then it must come to them. Well we don't need any encouragement about that, seeing as we hippies believe home education is really education anywhere, anytime.
Surrounded by shops selling ski boots and handbags we meet a lovely man who tells us how to land satellites on comets (comets, small deaf Squirrel, not camels), and how to grow bacteria behind our ears (Shark, stop sniggering, he said ears, not rears). Then we explore exoplanets, European space research and moon rovers, and discuss whether six billion pounds is a useful amount of money to spend on something that looks like a disability vehicle without the disabled person sitting in it.
All of this is wonderful education because the children imagine themselves as tiny as a molecule and Tiger, Squirrel and Shark make blobby things out of plasticine. Then Grit becomes ridiculously excited about OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb like she just found three squares of chocolate at the bottom of her handbag that she thought she'd eaten. Yes, as excited as that: the jumping up and down look!look!look! sort of excitement.
Now of course Grit with her education hat is all fired up again and is off to reinforce ideas about camels, rears, and nanotechnology and will be purchasing a copy of Fantastic Voyage almost immediately. All that is left of this splendid trawl round the science stalls is to remember next time to buy some knickers.
And, of course, copies of Das Kapital, On the Road, a tie-died frock rubbed with odour of goat, and some skunk for the kids.
However, please don't try it. The queues and crowds at the sea life centres, and in all the museums, workshops and galleries will become miserably long and I shall be forced to put Shark, Squirrel and Tiger into school to escape.
Remember that home educators are a ragbag of old hippies waiting for the revolution. We smell, too. Vile. Send your kids to school. School is best, that's what I say.
Now, where was I? Oh yes, home education, going well.
Today Grit (rancid old hippie, Scargill was right, it's all a government plot etc. etc.) takes her (vile, smelly) home educated kids to the (stinking capitalist enterprise), Milton Keynes shopping centre.
Here we can benefit from the studious Open University, which has set up lots of science education stalls as part of a grand science festival. This sounds odd, doesn't it, popping to M&S for knickers and emerging two hours later with a new planet and a gravitational microlens, but bringing knowledge to the people is one of the things the Open University is all about. And if the people won't come to science, then it must come to them. Well we don't need any encouragement about that, seeing as we hippies believe home education is really education anywhere, anytime.
Surrounded by shops selling ski boots and handbags we meet a lovely man who tells us how to land satellites on comets (comets, small deaf Squirrel, not camels), and how to grow bacteria behind our ears (Shark, stop sniggering, he said ears, not rears). Then we explore exoplanets, European space research and moon rovers, and discuss whether six billion pounds is a useful amount of money to spend on something that looks like a disability vehicle without the disabled person sitting in it.
All of this is wonderful education because the children imagine themselves as tiny as a molecule and Tiger, Squirrel and Shark make blobby things out of plasticine. Then Grit becomes ridiculously excited about OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb like she just found three squares of chocolate at the bottom of her handbag that she thought she'd eaten. Yes, as excited as that: the jumping up and down look!look!look! sort of excitement.
Now of course Grit with her education hat is all fired up again and is off to reinforce ideas about camels, rears, and nanotechnology and will be purchasing a copy of Fantastic Voyage almost immediately. All that is left of this splendid trawl round the science stalls is to remember next time to buy some knickers.
And, of course, copies of Das Kapital, On the Road, a tie-died frock rubbed with odour of goat, and some skunk for the kids.
Tiger's (out of focus) molecules. Please keep up.
Light and paint
What's on the family learning project today? This fantastic art-science workshop from MKG based on the work of Gilberto Zorio, and part of the national Big Draw project.
Really, I have nothing smart, lippy, irritating nor tuttytuttut to say about this two hours of pure gold. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger make their own animated films on clear tape spun round a 1970s classroom projector and amuse themselves making shadow puppet theatre until the glow-in-the-dark footballs come out. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play with those well past dark, passing the ball very well to each other but completely missing the point about the feet.
And since Grit is now living dangerously with her increased radioactive brazil nut consumption, the Zorio exhibition suits me down to the ground. Because if I take a wrong turn round the gallery space I am threatened with electric shock, chemical burns, strobe-induced epilepsy and a rather vicious looking spear.
Highly recommended.
But is it art?
Looking a bit like a womb under the microscope,
let's call it Fish in Red Ocean.
Really, I have nothing smart, lippy, irritating nor tuttytuttut to say about this two hours of pure gold. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger make their own animated films on clear tape spun round a 1970s classroom projector and amuse themselves making shadow puppet theatre until the glow-in-the-dark footballs come out. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play with those well past dark, passing the ball very well to each other but completely missing the point about the feet.
And since Grit is now living dangerously with her increased radioactive brazil nut consumption, the Zorio exhibition suits me down to the ground. Because if I take a wrong turn round the gallery space I am threatened with electric shock, chemical burns, strobe-induced epilepsy and a rather vicious looking spear.
Highly recommended.
But is it art?Looking a bit like a womb under the microscope,
let's call it Fish in Red Ocean.
Friday, 24 October 2008
Living dangerously
Grit takes Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to a lecture room at the Open University to discover everyone is blasted by alpha radiation all day long. That is, when we are not being poisoned by radon gas, or blitzed by stray beta radiation - that's the type of radiation I can stop if I hammer aluminium saucepans on everyone's head. Strapping the lead suit on us all might be a tadge tricky and possibly dangerous, but it will stop most of the gamma rays from eating our brains and mashing our bodies.
As you can see, life after the children's radioactivity lecture is a lot more dangerous than it was when we started.
But this is possibly a good thing.
For example, it puts into perspective my worrying about the additional glass of malt whiskey following last night's particularly traumatic hair combing. Now I can have two glasses, the last one in celebration of surviving the radioactive rocks we foolishly brought back from Cornwall last July and which are sitting at this very moment like harbingers of doom on the front doorstep.
Knowing that life is dangerous at every turn also helps me elaborate my random dark depressive thoughts when I think I am going to die. Like, now the puffin which will kill me while I am seated on the toilet is actually a gamma radioactive puffin which explains why it is sailing through the air in the first place and can crash through the window above me.
But best of all I have now found a way of living dangerously everyday. Since children, life has just become too safe. Let's face it, the biggest risk I take is to occasionally drag the car out of a mud-congealed field without needing to hail a passing tractor. No. Now I can take a real plunge into the danger zone every breakfast time after that second cup of liquid radioactive coffee.
Pass me the brazil nuts.
As you can see, life after the children's radioactivity lecture is a lot more dangerous than it was when we started.
But this is possibly a good thing.
For example, it puts into perspective my worrying about the additional glass of malt whiskey following last night's particularly traumatic hair combing. Now I can have two glasses, the last one in celebration of surviving the radioactive rocks we foolishly brought back from Cornwall last July and which are sitting at this very moment like harbingers of doom on the front doorstep.
Knowing that life is dangerous at every turn also helps me elaborate my random dark depressive thoughts when I think I am going to die. Like, now the puffin which will kill me while I am seated on the toilet is actually a gamma radioactive puffin which explains why it is sailing through the air in the first place and can crash through the window above me.
But best of all I have now found a way of living dangerously everyday. Since children, life has just become too safe. Let's face it, the biggest risk I take is to occasionally drag the car out of a mud-congealed field without needing to hail a passing tractor. No. Now I can take a real plunge into the danger zone every breakfast time after that second cup of liquid radioactive coffee.
Pass me the brazil nuts.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
No good can come of this
While Dig boogies round strange places on the other side of Planet Earth, Grit drives the two minute journey to Tesco and buys booze. In quantity.
Really, she is not proud of this moment, so don't applaud.
In fact, my voice of guilt and doom tells me to hang my head in shame, have both my alcoholic pickled legs amputated, forget I have early onset dementia, and be denied a transplant. Because I have convinced myself that all this inevitable misery is my just deserts for one drop more than a small bottle of beer with supper. And that's before I push that trolleyload of beer, red wine and whiskey to the checkout. This little prim voice in my head, the one which sounds like my girls grammar school English teacher, the one who strangled herself with a lace collar, says I am going to die a horrid all alone death without a liver.
But today the other little voice in my head, the one that sounds like Jack Nicholson from The Shining and wears a red cape and has little horns and carries a pitchfork, whispers Come on, for here you suffer an absent husband, an alone October day, a home education schedule as gruelling as having an axe embedded in the skull, and squabbling triplets who can swing a punch that would knock out a donkey. That Doublewood whiskey at bedtime? It's your reward.
And what finally tips me over the edge, into the alcohol aisle of perdition?
Close to bathtime I can no longer escape the obvious. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger need their hair combing. Quite frankly it looks as if three dead cats got entangled in those woolpits. Tonight, only a decent malt will alleviate the pain.
And here's the problem.
We haven't got any. No whiskey. Beer. Wine. Don't ask where it's gone.
Well I could blame Dig. He normally buys, and possibly drinks, the booze. Now Dig has failed in this monthly husbandly duty, because he is not here. Normally, in his absence, I'll buy my beer when I run down to the Co-op for bread, cheese, stamps. But actually this routine is pretty difficult when I'm on kiddy call 24/7. And when I try to buy my evening bottle of beer on the sly, then Squirrel invariably pleads to pop into the Co-op with me, so then I buy beer with her standing at my side, eyes wide and innocently fastened onto the behind-the-counter hard spirits and cigarettes. The worst is when I get the tee-total checkout assistant at the till who slowly gazes from the bottle of beer, to me, to Squirrel, then back again, with a hardening face of judgement that damns me as a mother destined for hell. She should just go ahead and add, Would you like crack cocaine with that? For the CHILD. Well lady, do not bother, because truly, I have put myself in damnation already.
So with my beer run failing, I glumly face my evening meal with a glass of apple juice and probably kiddy spit in it too. There is only one solution. Stick the kids in front of Night at the Museum again and get the booze run over and done with. Buy the month's supply in one go.
And that's what I do.
I'll just pray the whiskey's not included in that timetable.
Really, she is not proud of this moment, so don't applaud.
In fact, my voice of guilt and doom tells me to hang my head in shame, have both my alcoholic pickled legs amputated, forget I have early onset dementia, and be denied a transplant. Because I have convinced myself that all this inevitable misery is my just deserts for one drop more than a small bottle of beer with supper. And that's before I push that trolleyload of beer, red wine and whiskey to the checkout. This little prim voice in my head, the one which sounds like my girls grammar school English teacher, the one who strangled herself with a lace collar, says I am going to die a horrid all alone death without a liver.
But today the other little voice in my head, the one that sounds like Jack Nicholson from The Shining and wears a red cape and has little horns and carries a pitchfork, whispers Come on, for here you suffer an absent husband, an alone October day, a home education schedule as gruelling as having an axe embedded in the skull, and squabbling triplets who can swing a punch that would knock out a donkey. That Doublewood whiskey at bedtime? It's your reward.
And what finally tips me over the edge, into the alcohol aisle of perdition?
Close to bathtime I can no longer escape the obvious. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger need their hair combing. Quite frankly it looks as if three dead cats got entangled in those woolpits. Tonight, only a decent malt will alleviate the pain.
And here's the problem.
We haven't got any. No whiskey. Beer. Wine. Don't ask where it's gone.
Well I could blame Dig. He normally buys, and possibly drinks, the booze. Now Dig has failed in this monthly husbandly duty, because he is not here. Normally, in his absence, I'll buy my beer when I run down to the Co-op for bread, cheese, stamps. But actually this routine is pretty difficult when I'm on kiddy call 24/7. And when I try to buy my evening bottle of beer on the sly, then Squirrel invariably pleads to pop into the Co-op with me, so then I buy beer with her standing at my side, eyes wide and innocently fastened onto the behind-the-counter hard spirits and cigarettes. The worst is when I get the tee-total checkout assistant at the till who slowly gazes from the bottle of beer, to me, to Squirrel, then back again, with a hardening face of judgement that damns me as a mother destined for hell. She should just go ahead and add, Would you like crack cocaine with that? For the CHILD. Well lady, do not bother, because truly, I have put myself in damnation already.
So with my beer run failing, I glumly face my evening meal with a glass of apple juice and probably kiddy spit in it too. There is only one solution. Stick the kids in front of Night at the Museum again and get the booze run over and done with. Buy the month's supply in one go.
And that's what I do.
I'll just pray the whiskey's not included in that timetable.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Mad science
Tiger, on hands and knees, crawls towards a bucket of dry ice. Grit is reminded that buckets are usually for throwing up in, after a heavy session the night before. But buckets do not, in her recollection, normally produce something that looks like smoke, unless they are on fire. In which case the title of today's blog would not read Mad Science but Tiger throws up in a bucket which is on fire.
Yes, we attended a Mad Science lecture which we now vote as just about the best party entertainment going, only we can't remember much science and hope that words like sublimation enter our brains by osmosis. Whatever that is.
And just to keep daddy Dig informed while he is being wined and dined behind a light industrial estate somewhere near the North/South Korean border, this is what your little gritlets did next.
Threw themselves about in a contraption that looks like the the inner of a tumble drier
...hung lifeless from trees pretending to be sleeping leopards
...and failed completely to photograph any sister on the swing.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
No exit
This is ill at-home day for Grit, who is officially worn out, fed up and choking to death on her own swollen throat. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are all at various stages of cough-and-cold too, so I'm declaring our household diseased. We lack only a bell to sound.
At 9pm Grit takes to her bed and contemplates why, in some vulnerable moments, does she feel like the world is against her and why she is so beaten down and lacking in any resources at all. And strangely the memory of this notice pops unbidden into her head, as somehow summing up all that is life.
This notice she saw last Sunday in the ladies changing room at the lake; the changing room which is really a cold metal portacabin of a broken toilet and a disused shower. Because Grit went into this dank, dark and miserable place, slammed the door shut, and turned round to read this notice:
And then Grit pushed hard at the stiff, closed door, looked around, and thought to herself, What whistle?
At 9pm Grit takes to her bed and contemplates why, in some vulnerable moments, does she feel like the world is against her and why she is so beaten down and lacking in any resources at all. And strangely the memory of this notice pops unbidden into her head, as somehow summing up all that is life.
This notice she saw last Sunday in the ladies changing room at the lake; the changing room which is really a cold metal portacabin of a broken toilet and a disused shower. Because Grit went into this dank, dark and miserable place, slammed the door shut, and turned round to read this notice:
And then Grit pushed hard at the stiff, closed door, looked around, and thought to herself, What whistle?
Monday, 20 October 2008
The Magic of Oxygen
You don't see me organising events for our home ed groups. Yes, I feel guilty about that. Everyone except me organises amazing workshops and stuff, while I just take along triplets to pull each other's hair or poke each other's eyes.
But one day I am cruising about planet Internet when I eye-spy the Magic of Oxygen chemistry-based lecture to be held at the Open University. It's a breathtaking WhizzBangPop! aimed at school groups.
Then I immediately shoot an email to the organiser hinting at educational discrimination and threatening to disembowel myself over an office chair if home educated children are not encouraged to participate. Foolishly, because at that moment I am feeling the sweep of grand gestures and expansive statements, I suggest I could amass a group of, hmm, let's see, twelve people, children and adults, who would enjoy this lecture. Now I throw the gauntlet down. I say prove how much education matters to everyone and not just the Jessies in form 3G.
I expect to be ignored. But I am not. I receive a message by return which says the lecture will be well attended by schools but suggests perhaps fifteen home educators might be accommodated with some special chairs up the aisles.
And so I send out a message on the home ed email lists offering a jolly good deal on a Magic of Oxygen lecture and hey! because by then I am in full righteous organising flow, I throw in a Radioactivity lecture too.
And then I remember why I do not organise many home education events.
First, it is the organising. I am not good at administration. Of any sort. Numbers, ages, names, dates, locations, timings, letting people know, that sort of thing. As you can see, I have a problem recalling what day it is. Sometimes I beat my head with my knuckles to remember simple things like Where are my car keys? and What have I done with my glasses? Not surprisingly then, this Magic of Oxygen lecture quickly blooms to twenty emails in eight different directions, and several lists of names, notes and jottings which I immediately lose on my desk.
And here's the second reason why I don't organise things. Because it all goes out of control quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.
Here we are, showing up at the OU reception. From a promise of fifteen people, I turn up with an out of control rabble of thirty people and my face saying I don't know who they are, so don't look at me. The people who show up bear almost no resemblance to the list I carefully lost three days ago. Meanwhile, the receptionist is experiencing a bat-up-your-skirt day. Strange sorts of people not in suits are messing up her lovely reception and they do not have identity numbers or name badges and say they are meeting here and Now look! A baby with a pushchair has arrived and that is just about mind blowing and she may have to lie down behind the counter and inject drugs.
And this is typical of home ed groups. Tell me if yours is any different. From fifteen seats suitable for upwards of age nine I have amassed an intergenerational party of thirty for the WhizzBangPop! including a crying baby, two running about toddlers, grandma, and a selection of infirm who may need the oxygen. And now is foolish Grit thinking Crikey! We're for it! Because how can all our bottoms fit on fifteen chairs?
But should I have worried? No. The organiser is one step away from being more poorly organised than me, the out of control home ed rabble take over the lecture theatre, run about, and squeal yippeeyippeeyippee! and the school party leaves 40 empty seats because they never show up. Quietly I think, yup, next year, it won't matter how disorganised or out of control I am, because with a home ed lot like this, and a resource this good and free, I'll just send the invite to every home edder in a fifty mile radius, and we'll mob the place.
Be forewarned, Miss Bat-up-your-skirt.
Preparing for the WhizzBangPop!
But one day I am cruising about planet Internet when I eye-spy the Magic of Oxygen chemistry-based lecture to be held at the Open University. It's a breathtaking WhizzBangPop! aimed at school groups.
Then I immediately shoot an email to the organiser hinting at educational discrimination and threatening to disembowel myself over an office chair if home educated children are not encouraged to participate. Foolishly, because at that moment I am feeling the sweep of grand gestures and expansive statements, I suggest I could amass a group of, hmm, let's see, twelve people, children and adults, who would enjoy this lecture. Now I throw the gauntlet down. I say prove how much education matters to everyone and not just the Jessies in form 3G.
I expect to be ignored. But I am not. I receive a message by return which says the lecture will be well attended by schools but suggests perhaps fifteen home educators might be accommodated with some special chairs up the aisles.
And so I send out a message on the home ed email lists offering a jolly good deal on a Magic of Oxygen lecture and hey! because by then I am in full righteous organising flow, I throw in a Radioactivity lecture too.
And then I remember why I do not organise many home education events.
First, it is the organising. I am not good at administration. Of any sort. Numbers, ages, names, dates, locations, timings, letting people know, that sort of thing. As you can see, I have a problem recalling what day it is. Sometimes I beat my head with my knuckles to remember simple things like Where are my car keys? and What have I done with my glasses? Not surprisingly then, this Magic of Oxygen lecture quickly blooms to twenty emails in eight different directions, and several lists of names, notes and jottings which I immediately lose on my desk.
And here's the second reason why I don't organise things. Because it all goes out of control quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.
Here we are, showing up at the OU reception. From a promise of fifteen people, I turn up with an out of control rabble of thirty people and my face saying I don't know who they are, so don't look at me. The people who show up bear almost no resemblance to the list I carefully lost three days ago. Meanwhile, the receptionist is experiencing a bat-up-your-skirt day. Strange sorts of people not in suits are messing up her lovely reception and they do not have identity numbers or name badges and say they are meeting here and Now look! A baby with a pushchair has arrived and that is just about mind blowing and she may have to lie down behind the counter and inject drugs.
And this is typical of home ed groups. Tell me if yours is any different. From fifteen seats suitable for upwards of age nine I have amassed an intergenerational party of thirty for the WhizzBangPop! including a crying baby, two running about toddlers, grandma, and a selection of infirm who may need the oxygen. And now is foolish Grit thinking Crikey! We're for it! Because how can all our bottoms fit on fifteen chairs?
But should I have worried? No. The organiser is one step away from being more poorly organised than me, the out of control home ed rabble take over the lecture theatre, run about, and squeal yippeeyippeeyippee! and the school party leaves 40 empty seats because they never show up. Quietly I think, yup, next year, it won't matter how disorganised or out of control I am, because with a home ed lot like this, and a resource this good and free, I'll just send the invite to every home edder in a fifty mile radius, and we'll mob the place.
Be forewarned, Miss Bat-up-your-skirt.
Preparing for the WhizzBangPop!
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