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Pack up and go home day!

Farewell, field at Stonham Barns! Arrivederci, home education HesFes gathering! Au revoir the debating corner, the talks, workshops, music sessions, strange hair brigade and the delightful furniture shop where I succumbed to the charms of your shabby chic candle sconces.

It was good, people, but I lamented the absence of the solar powered cinema, and I would fare better with choices in hippie food beyond pizza and chips.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger delighted in their feral pack-gathering, happily joining up with the Hertfordshires and Hong Kong home edders to be about their unfathomable business. Me, I sat about in the travelling library, or hung out with the Shanghai contingent and Ida from up the road.

We all agreed a useful policy to promote home ed was to spend yet another year bludgeoning the public with information of their legal duty and freedom of choice, helped along with tales of our wayward outdoor ways, warts and all.

At least then, mama and papa of Tinkertop, you know what life she can have, once set free from the school's zero-arts policy, the uniform grind of a daily maths and spelling test, and Mad Jessie of 3G who stalks her on Facebook.

Thus I hail our annual home ed gathering, all round, another roaring success! (I have to. I have no Plan B.)

Wet Tent Art

Yeah, there was a camping downpour. Don't ask when. I lose myself with time even when I have a diary and a repeater alarm clock. Put me in a tent in a field and I'm timeless. But this moment I have a camera, a goal of musing through idleness, and vague recollections of Mondrian.

It's just doable! (So let's not do it.)

This is one of those blog posts I really urge myself to read, because it contains words of wisdom.

For many months I have been deaf to wise words, but I note that it is only now I am beginning to hear them.

Admittedly, I find myself listening to wise words only when they have been dropped in a vat of water, thrashed ten times against a horse skin (horse not in it) and poured in a stopper-dropper craft bottle before selling to gullible idiots like me at twenty quid a pop.

I currently have this chronicness called puffyupandfalloffyitis the remedy for which the quack doctor (after securing my house and all its contents) has supplied to me. His thoughtful remedy is this: many splendidly large quantities of coloured pills the size of doorknobs to be swallowed throughout the day, supported by some self flagellation at times of your own choosing but it must be done with a fancy daisy.

Frankly, I am so tired of puffyupandfalloffyitis the bloke from the tyre shop could have told me my cure lies in balancing a chinchilla on my head while standing in a bucket of water at midnight and I would be asking him about his hourly rentals on chinchillas. Puffyupandfalloffyitis can get us sufferers down and desperate.

But the good quack doctor also said that leading a less stressful life can be helpful in my search for a final solution.

I recall that this has been told to my brain and body before!

Of course, then it was from one of those white-coated androids. My body and brain ignore such tellings, yes they do, because body and brain are about their important business with stuff like triplets, a Citroen Berlingo with a dent in it, a pile of dinner potatoes, and a great sense of responsibility to be bashed about like a hammer against a clock with an ultimatum.

But it is now these wise words should be attended to. Do less stuff. Do less stuff slower. Do less stuff slower and with more attention to the preparation and the mopping up. Do not overegg with wrangling thinking on the stuff which you must do slower while preparing and mopping up. Simply enjoy all the stuff just as you go.

In other words, body and brain, do not take the opportunity this week to poke the diary (let's say for the 34th September), and think Aha! I can fit into this day the workshop starting at 9am if I drive to Leicester at 2pm to join the talk at 4pm so we can do the play at 6pm and return at 10pm. If I wee in a bottle about junction 16 of the M1 I save the ten-minute stop at Newport Pagnell services, which makes it all just doable!

Frankly, body and brain, this sort of lifestyle should cease. It may be a contributory factor to your puffyupandfalloffyitis.

This camping trip should mark a turning point. And it will, body and brain, if you bother to read on. This trip, to the lovely Suffolk, with all the other hairy hippies in the happy fields, should remind you that idling and loafing are commendable activities. Footling and playing are goals in themselves. Staring at fields, skies, clouds and wavy grains, following whimsical distraction, surfing ideas, enjoying semi-random connections, so that one can begin thinking about plastic computer tables and drift away to imagining being a cuckoo dancing on a washing line, these are all truly worthwhile experiences.

Yes, body and brain. If you pay heed to my wise words, you may achieve your less stressful life.

Okay, only for the coming week. But then we will see if that indeed has any further impact on your horrible puffyupandfalloffyitis.

And know, body and brain, that whatever you choose to do, I resolve one summer to come blogless and shoeless in whatever state I find myself, to idle time away in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, staring at the sky and wondering if dancing cuckoos really do wear noisy pink tutus as they so indignantly claim.

Aim: Take the children camping.

Method: Squish into the interior of a metal bowl the following: four tents, including the pop-up tent which won't pop-down; two self inflating mattresses, one too short and one which won't breathe out; the bag containing the old inflatable mattresses and a foot pump because you never know and it will give the kids something to do while you thrash about with a mallet; mallet; four sleeping bags, except I haven't got one, so pack a duvet and a blanket; blankets, extra, just in case, plus woolly socks, wellington boots and sandals; hospital kit containing 5 varieties of medication, 2 litres of zinc oxide, a tub of vaseline, and three plasters; toothpaste; map because the bastard satnav broke down and never recovered; emergency contact numbers when the inevitable disaster happens at 3am; RAC card; all tickets, season passes, bits of stuff that end up lost in a field; talk of great adventure, even though we know everything is doomed from the start; unquenchable determination not to give in; smile, because at some point I might mean it; and kids. Don't forget the kids. It's their holiday, too.

This one will do it

I am on the search of another cure for my tortoise balloons. The diet isn't working. It is ages before the hospital appointment. I must embrace the homoeopathic approach.

To this end, I first have to abandon the kids in a park. Not any old park, obviously. The park of our Monday meet. When a bunch of home educators come together so we can introduce kids to other kids, call it the S-word and, while the offspring disappear to beat each other with sticks, chat about how no-one understand us.

I think of our local home ed groups a little like an extended family - dysfunctional disparate people, some of whom have nothing in common except for the fact that we all educate outside of normal - yet we still come together routinely to alternatively amuse and piss each other off.

We can support each other too of course, while we bitch and whine, which means I feel safe to dump my kids on them while I attend to something much more important. Me. I need to zip across town and track down this miracle homoeopathic creme with its seductive packaging and fragrant promises.

Back in the park, someone would phone if there was blood.

See? This is how focused I am on the kids and home education in general. Not at all. I am the centre of my attention. I have to make myself be fit for purpose, which presently I am so clearly not.

For a start, I look ahead in my diary and see that I am soon to be sleeping in a field, joining all the other hardened home educators in the annual sleep-in-a-field-fest.

I doubt my capabilities for enduring that, even when I am on top form, so I have already negotiated an opt-out clause mid-week. But I'm worried that in this present state of health I shall not be able to carry out this sleeping-in-a-field responsibility at all. I won't be strong enough. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will never forgive me.

So the only option is to dump them with the helpful extended family who can complain about me when I leg it, and go grovelling in alternative remedy shops looking for the perfect answer.

Yes! I find it! Aqua, Prunus dulcis, Calendula, Lavendula, Anthemis nobilis, Citrus grandis. A force of Roman deities sweeping to my aid!

But this cure will work, trust me. It promises everything I want in the world!

Instant relief, perfect skin, normal eyelids, a properly responsive autoimmune system, refreshed spirit, fortitude, emotional strength, the stamina to sleep a week in a wet field, weight gain to make a shapely thigh and not a thick ankle, a dinner of spinach and salmon, deep red wine, a vulnerable naked man, and a tiny toy fox terrier to keep in my handbag.

This could be it. Now all I need do is apply it thrice a day, and lo! The magic will prevail!

The only reason for the past few days

My centre stage. Peaseblossom Tiger and Woodland fairy Shark. Attendants to Queen Titania. Sworn enemies to Puck, mischievous sprite. A wonderful performance in the woods (and the rain).

Take a bow, children. I would travel all this road, and more.

This could be the start of a whole new adventure

I think the novelty of camping has worn off Squirrel's diamante sparkles. In fact, she has chickened out. She has slipped off to Am and Jol's to spend the night there, in something called A BED.

You should have seen the look on Squirrel's face when I suggested that escape route. You may have caught the warm glows of relief glittering like brilliant sunshine through your windows this afternoon.

All the better joy for Squirrel, because the idea popped from the blue, like a summerday gift from an aunty you didn't know you had, and she's loaded.

Until this moment, Squirrel had resigned herself, like a true gritlet, to suffering for the art of others, and resolved to extract her revenge later, when their guards are down. And here we are, suddenly turning up at Jol's without so much as a toothbrush and a change of knickers and anticipating a whole night away from a dark dark tent in a dark dark wood.

On the phone earlier, I must have sounded desperate. I pulled the car over, as far as you can get on a single track road, and shouted to Jol through a coming-going signal, We are close by! Let's come and see you!

We are not close by at all. From the campsite to Jol's it is a forty minute rocket down a dual carriageway at 70 mph. We made it in half an hour. Crawling over the threshold to Jol's house probably made her pity me all the more. That's a HOUSE, by the way, WITH BRICKS. Walls. Doors. Cushions. Carpets. Tables. Sofa. And Jol, making lovely hot real coffee. At the sight of the toilet, I almost wept.

Then, just as it is time to return to the field, I had the idea of leaving Squirrel. Can I leave Squirrel here? I blurted to Jol. She, gracious and unfazed and wondrously stable, said Of course! Am will be delighted! And that was done.

I very much wanted to stay myself. But Tiger and Shark finish their forest rehearsals at six each evening and, if I am not there, Tiger will burst into tears, thinking I have abandoned her. I will not abandon you to camp alone in the woods, I say. I don't even add my usual line, not without frisking you for breadcrumbs first. Somehow, after three nights in a tent with the disastrous mother Grit, I don't think Tiger will laugh.

That fear of solitary camping is down to Shark, by the way. Without any regard for the impact she has upon the tender hearted, Shark has bounced about for days, being delighted by the whole camping experience, and suggesting she'll be adventuring into the unknown outdoors at the first opportunity, perferably with a sea lapping close by and without any tedious parents holding her back by saying they have forgotten to pack 1001 Interesting Facts about Fish. Now I think reading Robinson Crusoe was probably a bad idea.

Tiger has enjoyed the theatre, loved the theatre really, but she has had enough of the camping experience. Mostly on account of last night's industrious midge, who has had the temerity to puncture my delicate Peaseblossom daughter in thirty or forty places.

Dig - you may be wondering about him - has spent one night with us, and hightailed it back to the office home to work. On the bright side, literally, he has left us another torch.

But we are nearly done. We see the performance tomorrow; the end result of all this labour and sacrifice.

And for me? Not for the first time, I can feel myself shifting my ground. After I have put this bravestupid foot forward, I am not giving in and going back. I can already hear my voice saying to Squirrel, If we find the right campsite, yes, one with toilets, and we find the right location, yes, by the beach, and we find all the equipment we need, yes, for hot chocolate milk every morning, then yes, don't you think, Squirrel, you can go camping again? I think you will find the answer to that question, Squirrel, will be yes.

Two trips to the camping shops later...

...and I am equipped to fight another ten hours.

I have three mattresses, two duvets, four torches, two wind up lanterns, four bottles of beer and an empty bladder, having squeezed out every last drop of pee in a toilet that doesn't scare me witless.

I should make it through the night. Don't correlate the beer and the bladder. I will deal with that problem when I get to it.

You may be wondering about food on this camping experience. The food is excellent. I have no complaints. Other people are doing it. I have no hand in it whatsoever, beyond throwing daily bread and fruit supplies to the little grits. Each evening, other home educating parents are taking turns to deliver top quality hot nosh to us all.

And if you are wondering what we are doing camping in a field at all, then yes, I have taken leave of my senses. Apart from the normal insanities that come from home education, Shark and Tiger are taking part in a theatre summer school with Heaven and Earth theatre company, leading to performance on Wednesday.

And while they are gone throughout the day to various parts of the Hertfordshire woods for workshops and rehearsals, Squirrel is groaning and moaning that life is boring without sisters. That statement I am preserving so I can haunt her with it later.

Do you love us mummy?

A huge amount, I blithely say. More than all the tea in China.

But perhaps not quite enough to repeat those last ten hours in my life, ok?

I know that you Shark, now say you love camping. And you Tiger, say tents are fun for a first night. Even you Squirrel, my diamante daughter, add that you enjoyed the idea and now are we going home?

But let's not mince words. Let's say that for mama the first night in a tent was A LIVING HELL.

How do I count the problems? Let me do it in order, procedurally. In that way, it will be like basketry, and I shall weave out my peace and calm.

My first problem is the countryside sinks into darkness and there is no electricity.

I admit. I did not actually think ahead when I said Fantastic! Let's go live in a tent! I will blame the kids and say my total lack of speculation was guided by my children. And they never think more than ten seconds ahead. Which at the time of agreeing to camp in a field, seemed a better guide than planning. And my outlook is, your attitude to a new situation predicts how much you're going to enjoy it. So of course that all fits. I wanted the children to enjoy living under nylon. Say nothing about dangers, horrors, spiders, creepy crawlies in my socks. I did not think of these. I did not want to think of much at all.

In my defence, that lack of planning was also a protection. Because I might betray to myself how much of a town girl I really am. While I love striding across those fields feeling the wind on my face by day, I also like, by night, brick walls, electric light sockets and warm beds.

But look! In the countryside it falls dark! How beautiful is the grey cloak of dusk settling upon us in the wooded glade.

Where are the torches mama?

What torches?

What do we have apart from NO TORCHES? Well, we have NO TORCHES. Aha! We have one wind up lantern! Where is that? Oh yes, where is that.

Remind me now, where is Shark? Shark has declared she is not staying with us thank you very much. We are undignified and our tent is embarrassing. Shark has found herself somewhere else to stay. A nice cosy spot in the organiser's tent down the other end of the field. And she'll have that wind up lantern, thanks.

So with a falling down tent and one child disappeared to someone else's tent in the dark dark woods carrying the only light we have, there is only one thing to do. GO TO BED.

Oh dear. Let me pause to weave another therapeutic basket.

My second problem becomes apparent twenty minutes after climbing in a cold sleeping bag. I am lying on the world's quickest deflating airbed. Once Grit's fat arse climbs aboard it sinks quicker than the Titanic. Thanks mainly to the FIVE HOLES. How many holes I do not discover until daylight, when I drench every inch of that airbed in cold tea and bitter tears to discover at which point the little air bubbles ooze up and prompt me to slap on another rubber patch from the bicycle wheel puncture repair kit.

But it is daylight.

And the next problem is the composting toilet.

Now I'm sure there are many models and makes of composting toilet. You can tell me they are very worthy and good. Then you can slap me round the face for pining after a draining system that will destroy the earth.

Because this particular model of composting toilet has a sort of partition inside the bowl, where you aim the pee in one area and the poopy in the other. I know really it is straightforward, because unless there is something tragically wrong with your body, then pee comes out the front and poo comes out the back.

But you try getting those in the right order after four hours of broken sleep on a hard cold forest floor, a torture interrupted only by the dream of pain that you are being eaten alive by badgers who are mocking you because they have torches and you do not.

Now, my darling Shark, Tiger, and Squirrel. I love you more than all the tea in China. But after the first night of living hell I am ready to up sticks and leg it out of that tent quicker than a rat up a drainpipe propelled by rocket fuel. I know now it will take more than LOVE to make me stay one more night in this tent, even if it means you get to flit about in Shakespearean mode coached by Danny Nussbaum.

To stay here, I can no longer force my brain to shut off and shrivel to the size of a pea. Let's face it, I did that already. And it did not work. No. I now come with a LIST OF DEMANDS.

1. I want a self-inflating mattress like Michelle's otherwise the deal is off.
2. I want a proper set of wind up torches otherwise the deal is off.
3. I want a proper sleeping bag, and extra duvet, otherwise the deal is off.
4. I want to go home today, use the toilet and the shower, otherwise the deal is off.
5. I want to stock the car with beer, red wine, bars of chocolate and those delicious breadsticks from Waitrose, otherwise the deal is off.

And on those terms, and only those terms, I might stay just ONE more night.

And love, ladies, has nothing to do with it.

There is a path that leads the other way

One pro school argument I've heard is that school offers such fantastic educational opportunities, that you simply cannot match what they do.

Do I believe that? Like in an average school exam mill little Moonbeam has the opportunity to be beaten up in the playground for wearing the wrong socks, or the opportunity to be taught indifferently by a maths teacher coasting to retirement, or perhaps the opportunity for the French lesson to be taken by the maths teacher again because Miss is having a breakdown apres le hammer incident.

If the look on my face says to that pro schooler not convinced about those fantastic opportunities, I may hear about how the Year 9 group got to work with a real! live! artist!

And if I question that claim closely I find that last year in a desperate bid to crawl out of special measures the school sent in the community artists, and 5 out of 150 kids were given special permission to attend a workshop for an afternoon. Today the school still crow about it like they'd dug up Picasso and found he was alive and well and buried by accident.

Or then there's the fantastic school trip to London. Whoopee. The type of school trip where two hours in the Science museum is all you get and you spend one hour queuing. Or try me on the fantastic trip to Switzerland. The one of astronomical cost, where Bazza, Gazza and Wazzer were airlifted to a hospital for alcohol poisoning and Tinkertop came home pregnant.

Honestly, I have not yet found any activity in school that home educators cannot do better out of school.

Likewise, there are a ton of activities home educators can do that schools can't do or won't do.

In the worst case, what schools won't do includes science lessons. And don't tell me that's not true, because I've covered classes for the science teacher on sick leave after the gas taps incident. I've been told by year 10 kids that a cover teacher makes no difference, since they don't do the experiments anyway thanks to Mad Pete who cannot be allowed near rubber tubes. Either that or the four day risk assessment that must be carried out because Tinkertop might come near wood, or water, or whatever is this month's killer. So the science class watches the experiment on video and kids write up the procedure at home. Or at least the A-C candidates do.

Then again, home educators are saved from plenty of activities in school that would boggle your mind, if only you knew, and you would not want them replicated anywhere near your darling Tinkertop Moonbeam.

Seriously, there is such a range of activities home educators can choose or create for their kids outside school - and I would stick out my neck and say there is nothing we home educators cannot find - that far from me being overawed by schools as fantastic places of educational opportunity, I have to question why they exist at all. Unless it is to provide child care while parents go to work.

The only problem is, of course, is that to drag Tinkertop out of school, take on those educational responsibilities and support her while she teaches herself - to actually do this home education thing - you must effect a lifestyle change; you must compromise your cash, time and home. You must be a parent of bloody minded determination, thick skin, and fistfulls of knuckles made of steel that won't snap when you chew them down. And your place in the neighbourhood? Social status? Out the window, along with free time, a disposable income, posh friends who invite you to lunch, and all fantasies involving clickclacking about shopping centres footswathed in Jimmy Choos.

Which brings me to the nitty gritty of our home ed life - which is what this blog is about - and what the home educated Tiger and Shark have opted to do for the next few days. They will be working with an all-age group of kids and a team of actors and artists to recreate Midsummer Night's Dream on a five-day outdoor summer school. And it's only for home educated children, so the pro schoolies can go queue at the Science Museum. We'll wait until school starts again and the place falls quiet before we go to see Wallace and Gromit.

But here's the rub. Having Tiger and Shark running about in a field for five days dressed as fairies requires one big lifestyle commitment. From mamma.

And that one big commitment - not the food supply or a continuous smile of support no matter how crap everyone is - is to break her rule forever and sleep, for four nights, in a wet field in Hertfordshire without phone contact, computer, sense, or sanity, and worse, with a composting toilet, in a construction which looks shockingly like this:


Now those parents who next time try and tell me what fantastic opportunities are available to Tinkertop, while scuttling back to work and contemplating the purchase of kitten heels over lunchtime, I can see where you are really coming from, and what you are really saying. You are saying Lifestyle change? Not bloody likely.