One of the problems

One of the problems with being a home educating parent is that you inevitably make all the wrong decisions.

For example, here I am, alone in Hong Kong.

(Ignore the three children.)

Imagine me here, sitting all alone at the lonely dining table with my sad and lonely solitary cup of coffee.

(Ignore the three children, the three hot chocolates, the heap of biscuits, the tea cakes and the scones.)

Suddenly I realise. I AM ALONE AND I COULD DO ANYTHING.

Think about this. I have access to a pile of Dig's cash. I am a broad-minded liberated woman. And I AM CLOSE TO AN OUTLET OF PRADA.

Get my drift? I could dump the kids in the library, leg it to spend the day in Prada and, best of all, I would come home to no sensible, hard-working, grown-up adult, gripping their chest, going ashen faced, and gasping in strangled horror, 'You paid how much? For a hand bag?'

(Not that this has ever happened before.)

But this is where being a home educating parent is ALL BAD BAD BAD.

Because this is the point I make the wrong decision. I telephone a man. (He bears an uncanny resemblance to a gnome.) And I offer to give him all Dig's hard-earned cash in exchange for Cantonese lessons.

That's right. Cantonese lessons. Even though they are at this stage a bit pointless. As in, we are leaving Hong Kong in two weeks. The only Cantonese speaker I am next likely to meet is the woman who runs the Silver Sea on the High Street. I don't think she'll be impressed by my knneee-howw and maaan-gwoo. But.

I am a home educator. I must prioritise over all other desires related to time, money, and generally being alive, the education which is at stake.

Always.

This is bad, is it not? It is allocation of resources all at the wrong end. It is the wrong decision. It is principle beating down desire, and education winning out over the covetous ownership of a delightful hard-working well-designed bit of woman kit that would see me right for years to come.

Bugger.

Of course I am considering my options.

(I am weaselly.)

There is always a compromise and a best-way-all-round, is there not? If I can quickly find a tricky route, whereby I justify the distribution of financial resources on a Spring 2012 Prada handbag via grounds educational/pedagogical/philosophical/socially-just-and-beneficial, then I have cracked it!

Leave it with me. (I managed it over The Peninsula.)

And ignore those three children requesting theatre trips, horse-riding lessons, and visits to Scotland to see salmon jump up rivers.

(Until then, the Jimmy Choo that I am carting around is fake. But you can call the children well-educated.)