Children educated at home more at risk of abuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Thank you, Renegade Parent.

Home educated children hidden from view

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

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

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


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


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


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

Would you like to try me on socialisation?

I wish I had conversations like this everyday

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

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

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

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


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

Thinking of home education?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because this really is June 10

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

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

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

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

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

Don't you all eat live chickens?

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

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

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

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

Go on. Tell me that's not normal.

Mr Balls should gaffer tape my mouth SHUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MR BALLS, I FAIL.

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

Because someone leaves the tap on

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

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







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

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

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

This sort of freedom has to stop.

Unfortunately, water always finds a way through.

Delyth Morgan, you talking to me?

Another Saturday, another day in the glorious English outdoors!

These are the sort of people we meet.

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

Where was I?

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


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


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





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

Come to your own conclusions about oddball

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

I cannot understand that point of view at all.

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



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



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

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


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


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

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


Like I say. Make up your own mind.

No wonder people are suspicious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Is this how we hothouse?

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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

Grit, did someone get your dander up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next we might slice off our ears

One big reason we home educate is ART.

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

June 14?

OHMYGODWEHAVEONLYTWOWEEKSTIGERSHARKANDSQUIRRELBLOODYHURRYUP!

We are in a field. And it's harmless

You see? It's a giant telephone. We worship this sort of thing. We strew wires then rub ourselves over with mobile phones. Here they are, laid out on a table, waiting for the high priest to bless them.


Of course when we're not following the cult called British Telecom, we're hanging by a selection of 1970s trim phones where we hope to make nuisance calls to the elderly and infirm.


I apologise.

I simply cannot confess I derive a sort of nerdy pleasure from a day in a field celebrating the history of the telephone.

Although I admit the young man who talked for several hours in an animated manner about the history of the telephone pole did become quite interesting. I know a lot more about that now than this time last week.

But what I truly love is the eccentricity of it all. The fact that it is so close to us, and happening in a field right by you. You need only come outside, and look.

In these green and pleasant lands of England you will discover a little gathering of experts staring intently at the ground measuring ant hills using a comparative analysis designed by a visiting scholar called Norman. Or you may find a gaggle of elderly men excitedly discussing species of woodlice. Or here will be the annual walk of ladies who celebrate knitting patterns 1970-1980. And there will be Grit, Dig, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger scrutinising a telephone pole and engaged in deep discussion with a telephone pole expert over the letter P.


Truly, look down your street. How many people and their harmless loves and gentle obsessions do you know live there? There may be more than you thought. I think you should come join us, and find out. What's happening in a field near you this weekend?

Don't come to Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes is a new town somewhere north of Watford. Don't go there. It is filled with fat addicts on DFS sofas drinking alcohol, smoking, watching XXX movies and having sex with kittens. And they drink the blood of virgins.

There. That should do it. I use this tactic for celery, apple and nut salad. So far, that has worked.

Because if those kids of mine get a whiff of what a divine, Eden inspired taste this salad is, then they will scoff the entire bowl and there will be nothing left for me. So that salad is bad, children. BAD. Only BAD people eat it. And the same for blueberry fruit salad, which will KILL you. And cake. Especially doublechoc cake over which I have poured rum, brandy, creme de menthe and port.

Actually, that last one may be true.

Well the truth about Milton Keynes is that it is a pretty amazing place. And don't think it's all new. The town rises on ancient settlements. The round house post holes discovered at Blue Bridge next to the Roman villa are thought Bronze Age. As are the torcs found locally, made of enough gold to make that ring round your finger look like painted plastic.

If Bronze Age ain't enough, there are Saxon and Medieval finds, Tudor buildings and a complete Victorian town. If you're interested, wander here and here.

So it's a fascinating place. And when we visit the Milton Keynes Museum today in pursuit of an education about a medieval lifestyle, that amalgamation of time zones makes perfect sense.

What a day! Water divining, archery, medieval justice, the reenacted manorial court sessions, the early music songsters Lumina, calligraphy with quill and ink, a spot of Victorian hooping, and a talk from a fine lady who scrapes dead animal skins to make parchment and vellum because that's how it's done for hundreds of years. And the local Cowley is now the only maker in the UK of the parchment and vellum used in the House of Lords.

But like I say, don't come here.

Because we people who love Milton Keynes and all its history can have this place ALL TO OURSELVES.

Shark tries her hand at dowsing, or water divining, at Milton Keynes Museum.
We don't have the knack. You see that square she's standing on? It's a well. We didn't find it.

Much better at the quill business though.

And this should be suitable attire for mama's driving style.

Here's a dead sheep stretched over a frame for parchment making.
Don't come to Milton Keynes. We will do this to your cat.

But if you are ever brave enough to visit a place where the inhabitants have wall eyes, no teeth and machetes, we will punish you by forcing you to roll Victorian iron hoops.

You have been warned.

What else can you do with plants anyway?

Apart from turn them into a medieval apothecary patronised by unicorns?


Incidentally the unicorns are the variety that nest in trees

and have to be coaxed down by special ambassadors with umbrellas.

Yes, I'm still calling this home education. Defiant, aren't I?

Soon I will have a fetish for panniers

I have trashed the environment and laughed! I have driven less than 100 yards because I could not be bothered TO WALK. I have turned lights ON and OFF and ON again and LEFT THE ROOM! I have abandoned my computer all night to HUM!

I admit to all these things! And MORE. Dirty things, like wanton electricity usage and two fridges, one which stores a decrepit cantaloupe melon we will never eat.

But now I am reformed! This summer I am GREEN.

GRIT HAS A BICYCLE.


I know it is one of twelve bikes scattered around the garage and garden. I have been buying them from the local tip (£3 each) or wangling them from people on Freecycle.

But when I get them home, I find the reason why these bikes are at the tip, or offered on Freecycle.

None of them work.

Well my current bike of choice is working now, thanks to SuperManDig. OK, so it has no back brake, a front tyre that is continuously making a pppfffff sound, no lights, three gears that are permanently frozen, and the saddle is not very comfortable for my lovely bottom. But I have tied a bag to the handlebars and OFF I GO.

Today I cycled to the shops, bought sixteen satsumas, a lettuce, some watercress, a tin of red kidney beans, two loaves of sliced bread winking at me from the reduced bin, six eggs, a copy of the Beano, and tried to fit them on all on my bicycle and about my person.

Then I realised this is why I drive.


But this small person comes in handy. She has a strap-on Barbie bag.

Now if I can do it, ANYONE CAN.

Hornet's nest

If you read Grit's diaryblog you will know that she home educates three kids.

What a lonely tortured nightmare of persecution, doubt, self scrutiny and impossible challenge home education is.

There again, what a liberation home education becomes.

But you may find that if you step away from what is normal and expected of you and yours - like school and all the structured family lifestyle that institution imposes - then your well marked road ends, and your field begins.

At first there may seem like precious few tracks across that field to the other side. You feel compelled to choose your track wisely but, in setting out, you have no wisdom to guide you. Only your own instincts and the experiences, ideas and welcomes of others.

Some tracks will truly help you, but others will downright mislead you. Some people on tracks that look good will dig bear pits and cover them with grass. Then they might sit and watch you from their hiding place behind a tree while you attempt to navigate their path with your children, precariously, trying to do what's right, before you all fall down a big hole. At that point, I don't know whether I hear laughter, or whether that's just the murmurings of the trees.

Possibly, I am rambling. I am seeking a metaphor for the tracks and pits that make up local home ed groups.

Local home ed groups are strange alliances of peoples who band together in fields looking for tracks and paths.

Sometimes the only part of the lives of these wanderers, explorers and pioneers that can possibly cross and touch is the single fact that they home educate. Nothing else corresponds. Not lifestyles, not outlooks, not parenting values, not ages, not interests, not ambitions, not anything at all.

But here you are, stuck in a field with someone you don't like, or much sympathise with, and both of you have to navigate past each other. Either that, or slaughter each other right there on the spot. Overcome this hazard, and you may meet someone warm, helpful, supportive, who offers a hand when you're lost, or points you in a direction that will reward you and celebrate your achievements.

Now there is a general unwillingness to publicly discuss the slaughtering grounds of local home education. I've mentioned these and those. And there may be good reasons for this reluctance to explore the tensions and factions. Possibly because this is like a betrayal to the cause. Possibly because we seek a united front when so many still oppose us.

Those are good reasons, so right now I'll silence my mouth for the sake of that united front.

But there are some people who rise above it all, and act like some sort of directional signpost. They overlook differences, negotiate round mistakes, provide options, look ahead, believe in you and yours, protect and preserve their identities and relationships and never slaughter anyone. They are good people to find.

I don't know where this is going. I'm still in the field, finding a way through. I'll just say that if you are foolish, brave and crazy enough to leave those much trodden roads of school, and head off across this vast field of home education, you'll find many choices of paths before you, both helpful and harmful. And you'll meet all sorts of people in this field too, so don't worry that you'll be alone. Because truly, those fields are filled with people who can out-fool, out-brave and out-crazy you every time.

But sometimes, best of all, you'll meet people who manage to cross those fields, navigate those hazards, and still find time to show you a new direction. And those people are a real source of strength.

And never think there's nothing to do in these home educating fields.
Today there is support and help all round from home educators at the AIM gallery, Milton Keynes.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

At that moment I was happily mooching around, doing not much, sitting outdoors, dreaming in the English weather before the heavens rain down, when all of a sudden I am upright like a bolt of lightening shot straight from the blue sky and out my mouth and I shout OH MY GOD THE DOORS ARE MADE OF ASBESTOS. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

In this falling down three storey house of ours, in which we own the top floor and bottom floor but not the middle - like that is a wise policy in buying a house these days - then of course we have doors leading into what we call the common areas.

Common areas do not mean lose and vulgar women hanging over the banisters after midnight swearing until their lips turn blue. Only when I am really pissed off, or drunk.

The common areas are places like hall and stairs where the night inhabitants of the middle floor, MrPod and MsJuvenilePartyPiece, must pass in order to reach their own apartments when everyone else is in bed, safely tucked up and asleep. And to all of these entry doors leading from the common areas to the various apartments, the builder installed fireproofing panels. He converted the house sometime in the 1980s, when asbestos board was not yet banned and five-year stockpiles still remained, and he thus complied with all unrevised building and safety regulations.

(Incidentally, why these safety regulations exist I cannot imagine. Possibly in case Grit comes along with her slattern habit of placing a kilogram of green beans in a pan on the stove in a millimetre of water along with a conducting rod and a selection of flammable materials. This would be OK, but then she wanders into the office for two hours to drink beer and read blogs.)

But today I suddenly realise - no, I know for a total certainty - that this unscrupulous bastard of a builder nailed on the backs of the doors as his fireproofing material of choice, deadly asbestos. And we have found them very useful as pinboards. Worse, all the doorhandles have fallen off. Dig has bodged them back into place so they now grind away into the backs of the asbestos panels sending flurries of dust everywhere and killing us slowly.

The deathly door

At this point the internet comes in very handy. In thirty minutes I am an expert on UK building regulations 1970-2000 (domestic dwellings and conversions) and on use of AIB for fire insulation.

Within forty minutes I am on the phone to Neville at the local council's asbestos hotline where I converse in brown and white AIB and Type 2 asbestos testing procedures.

Within four hours I have contacted an asbestos handling company and set an appointment for Pete to come round, take a test sample and tell us within 48 hours if we are going to die, slowly, painfully, horribly, but not before I have hunted down that cheapskatingdeathdealing builder and shot him.

So Pete comes round, takes one look at the door and says, without a bat of an eye or a shadow of a doubt, Can you see the sparkle in the board love? That's Supalux. You can see the silicate particles. It's non combustible, has no dangerous substance and no special handling and when you're done with it you can tip it in your local skip.

Now of course I do not wish to worry any person out there, but this near-death experience with a panel of perfectly safe building material you can probably pick up at your local DIY store tells me not only that Grit is a bit of a twat, but also that near you there is a sophisticated track down system for asbestos and, if you are in any doubts, you will receive a prompt, efficient and courteous response from experts at the end of a hotline phone number.

And that expert's not me, clearly.

But if you have any missing teeth, give me half an hour and I bet I'd have some dexterity with dentistry.