Denied a village fete, matron of the shires composes a long blog post

So in my diary were these appointments with England.

That is: Stewkley Village Church Fete; Family Fun Day at Oxford's Museum of Musical Instruments (sure to turn into a vale of tears); Morris Dancing in Stony Stratford; and a grand time with the Royal Institution and their happy forensic science hands-on, Poking About in Cadavers.

Reader, we did none of them.

The children opted to stay at home all this weekend and mess up the garden. I would show you pictures of what they did, but it is raining and I can't be bothered. Suffice to say it involved squatting in mud, stabbing at the earth with screwdrivers even though they have been told not to, and sieving soily lumps through my broccoli colander, the one that I searched for all last week.

I am quite sad. Not about the loss of my colander. I have learned my lesson. Now I buy charity shabby chic and not pricey Philippy Starck. Not about the loss of my garden, either. That attachment went a long, long time ago. When the creatoids from Zelta Minor came to live on Planet Earth, and I watered my soil with tears. The next year my cherished garden gave me back brambles to bite my legs.

I am sad because of a different form of loss: all this England stuff is the stuff of my lesson making.

Yes, I know all this ye olde England country worship on this blog makes me sound like I am an insular small-minded crotchety old battle-axe, complete with wellies, tweed, Yardley, a shelf for a bosom yearning after the mythology of the shires, and ripe for the picking by UKIP.

That as it may. It is also the education that lures me.

For example, I maintain (recklessly) that Morris Dancing down your local High Street has the same stuff of living to teach us as Wagnerian Opera!

Well, okay, I won't push that, but what I mean is, I can get something from Morris dancing to tell the children; it is a creation of people, history, society and culture, just the same as Wagner or the village fete or the dread of the family fun day.

Give me Morris dancing and I can give the children a two-hour discussion on folk history. If I feed them chocolate ice cream, I can get onto philosophy and politics. If I shut them up long enough with promises of pasta pie, I can take on death, religion and art. See? I am already inspired enough to start the research.

But their decision means I must remain at home, lessonless, denied an opportunity to pontificate (hence the long blog posts). Instead, my students are lured by the magic of the soil, and stab at it with screwdrivers even though they have been told not to.

Do not tell them how I am sad at their choice. How secretly I have unfulfilled desires for which home education is merely a cover. That beneath the shelf of my tweeded bosom beats a heart yearning to poke my nose in England's local doings. I am here for such a short time! I must get on my wellies! If I cannot attend a village fete before the end of July they will be all done and dusted! And then what will happen? It will be the nightingale trauma, all over again.