Days like today are the reason why I blog

Because it is one of our ordinary days. I would forget days like today if I did not mark them down.

I offload the kids at Woburn. First to sit in something that is pleased to call itself an educational session.

Really, it is more of the old sameas sameas. The kids can spot it a mile off. It starts with the routine about whether snakes are slimy.

Honestly, is there a script all education officers are following across the land? Uh. I forgot. There is. It is Target 3.4 and Are snakes slimy? is how you begin.

This is a problem with the uniformity of the National Curriculum, laid out like a greying corpse across the land. Its withered hands have reached far and touched tongues.

Education officers, once people, now incant identical zomboid murmurings, no matter where they are or what animal they're holding. It all sounds like a script worked for a level and a target, so the box can be ticked and the coffin carried off.

We do better, and Woburn does better, when we engage with the keepers and staff to talk naturally and normally about matters they know and love. Which they do, and in their faces and eyes we see real commitment and animal worship. All those monkeys look the same to me, but the soft looking keeper under the monkey bar is able to count them and name each, fondly, one by one. I bet they have to frisk her for monkeys when she goes home at night.

So I can say that Squirrel, Shark and Tiger did not roll out of the educational session brimming with enthusiasm. They looked a little tired. But they enjoyed Woburn, again; a place they've been to often in the past, and the memories helped them find their way again.

They mostly ran off then, and went about their business, so I can't tell you what they did. There were plastic swans involved. And lemurs, and wallabies, and pointing at things. Squirrel wandered around humming, probably. Shark came back with a story about how a harris hawk went off script in the pretty flying birds demonstration and butchered a duck minding its own business a grass hummock.

My wide-eyed anxious Tiger, beset with nervous fears and identity issues, stayed close by. Tiger had a wobble by the penguins and looked set to smash the place up, taking a couple of Humboldts with her because they didn't swim still enough for her to draw them. I went off to the special place I reserve in my head, labelled Emergency Escape Routine for Public Humiliation by Child and stared at the sky for a time. When I came round she was stabbing the tail end of a penguin with her pencil point so I guess the moment had passed.

Then here, on this quite ordinary day, filled with plastic swans, slaughtered ducks and sleeping lions, are the photographs.

Getting that off my chest

Today I shove Squirrel in front of the computer in her bedroom, find the Key Stage 2 Rocks and Soils BBC bitesize, and say have a go at that.

Five minutes later after an argument that begins it depends, she's scored 9/10.

I clip her round the ear for misreading the question about rock splashing from volcanoes. Yes, Squirrel, shut up about the marble with the heat and pressure. You did not read the word FROTH. You know they want the answer pumice, so no supper for you tonight.

Of course I am quietly satisfied, but I am a hard task mistress. Squirrel got here, to this knowledge filled world, without dressing in grey and white and never being allowed near a rock face. She got here by rolling in mud, scraping her knuckles, and crushing soil under her fingernails.

Well, today's lesson proves me right. Home education gets us to the same place, with years of added freedom.

But a result like that makes me want to shout out and applaud the people over here who are standing up to Balls and saying children matter more than he does. And what is Balls' response? Bully Boy is threatening to send the Heads home with letters to their mums and a fine from their pocket money. Pathetic.

So here is the rant that I immediately took downstairs, and it fell out my mouth much as it's falling out my finger ends. Only I'm skipping the effing and blinding.

What is the SATs? It is a bunch of packaged factoids, some of which is such a low level of comprehension my eyeballs fall out. These ridiculous factoids are presented as total truths: absolutely certain, finished, done complete bits of unquestionable knowledge. And nowhere can you say it depends, which is what we are shouting here most of the time, because we know knowledge isn't complete. It is only ideas in development that ask for challenging and questioning.

What is all this SATs crap even doing via a computer screen anyhow, like is this the homework kids have to do when they get home from school?

This is weird computer-mediated knowledge which is telling kids the world can only be known through someone else's pre-packaged selection. This is like the kid next door who won't eat plums picked from his own plum tree in the garden. He'll only eat them plastic wrapped from Tesco.

For goodness sake, turn this generation out of doors, kick them into mud piles, send them running along beaches, face down into rock pools, scrambling up hills, climbing up trees. Kids should be at the world, exploring it, picking it apart, reinventing it for themselves, not sitting passively receiving bits of it because someone else made a decision that would be a quiet and neat thing for them to do.

And where is creativity in all of this SATs crap? I want people around me who observe with sharp eyes and speak aloud. No matter how ruddy uncomfortable it makes me feel. I want people to bring questions, fresh perspective, strange angles, personal tellings, because all of that inspires me and does away with everything I thought I knew and recreates everything afresh. How can the SATs crapfactoidlist do that? It offers only a disconnection from the world we live in. It invites a child to distrust their own observations, to refuse to speak them, to be passed as right or wrong. That is only a disconnection from a person's own intuitive sense; disempowerment and disengagement.

And boy, am I cross about the way knowledge is twisted to fit the final answer. What is the point of thinking anything if you know you must give the answer they already gave you? What is the point of wondering what if this happens, wondering what if that didn't happen, wondering anything at all?

Well Shark, Squirrel and Tiger can take the ruddy SATs at Key Stage effing 2 with no sodding preparation and that will stand as absolute stick-my-finger in your eye to the total idiot who said to me today that kids are disadvantaged if they don't complete those pointless facile tests.

And HIP HIP HOORAY to every teacher who scorns them, and to every Head who collects that letter to take home to mum.

So I went straight back upstairs after offloading all that spewed out frustration with the type of crap children have to live with, pouring from this anti-educational, tiny brained mentality that's been - not leading us, but telling us what we can and cannot do - and Squirrel says she just went and did the Key Stage 3 Astronomy, and scored 11/12, so now can she have supper?

I'm on this path, and I'm going in that direction

Walking with the rock watchers again, starting from West Wycombe, across Bledlow Ridge, through Hearnton Wood and down to Bradenham cricket green.

Are you with me?

If you're using Grit's directional skills, forget it. I might say left when I mean right, and point down that hill when I go up it. Follow my walking directions into the wilderness beyonder and after two hours lost, crawling eye-level with thicket, you wish you were dead. The only way out from here is to amputate your own leg and eat your own shoes. On the plus side, you can write a book about the trauma, then get on Midweek with Libby Purves.

Grateful I am then, to trudge behind the trail of rock watchers; those people who know what they're doing, where they're going, and what rocks to catch and eye-spy along the way.


Shark, Squirrel and Tiger dance along at the tipping point of the ridge. I want to remember them like this. Wind twisted hair, pinked cheeks and wet wellies. Not like this early morning, blasting the house apart, exploding every brick and bit of mortar: snarls for war cries and fingernails for spear tips. Watch out! That's how girls play.


Sometimes they overwhelm me, these children, with this life. Right now it has sadnesses and an emptiness so great you would never fill a desert with it all. I could be lost and wandering there for years looking for a way out.

But it is a beautiful, cloud bashing blustery day, with an icy edge. The wind belting up those Chiltern hills comes like a cold slap to the face.

Just right. I need that, to bring me to my senses. I need to remember to head in forward direction only, even if it is the wrong way. It's better than nothing. It might help me not to fall out of bed to despair at states and loss I can't control. Not to dwell on unfulfilled promises, bruised hearts and fearful futures. OK, that stuff happens. There's other stuff too. Like this direction, straight ahead. Keeping going, wherever it's toward, let's find beautiful moments along the way, something worthwhile, those moments, worth holding onto.

Tick tock, time is short

I have 30 minutes to write this blog post. Thirty minutes. That's how long before the screaming starts again and they break down the locks and stampede here, to this silent office space.

Tiger snarling that Shark has shoved her favourite unicorn up a hawthorn tree and hung it there to be scoured by wind and rain, sure to have its horn stolen by evil fairy spirits who drink its magic powers. Shark will hurtle close behind full of accusing scowls and stabbing fingers. Squirrel, peace brokering, will be gone in hiding because when the house storm comes, it starts like this, with banging doors and claps of thunderous wrongs.

So I better make it quick.

Today we walked with a wildflower watch. It's led in the driving rain by the old lady I'll probably become, the sort of lady who never writes but corresponds, the type who military marches in her socks and trainers, swishing her umbrella, out of time, working for a lost good cause, shouting Heavens! and Really? What has become of us all!


On the briskly walked, soaked-through paths laced through the ancient woodland over by the Greensand Ridge, our leader pauses in her march, holds up her hand and smiles at us all, waiting for the silence to precede her declaration. She points kindly to Wood Sorrel.


Shh. Don't wake it. It's the sleeping beauty of the woodland. In the pouring rain, its little leaves fold up and tuck away; a tiny, beautiful, sterile flower tilts at the soil. The later head, without any show of petals at all, will next grow invisibly, and hold the seed. Spreading slowly, it needs you to be quiet, and leave it respectfully about its business. It knows its own story. Today it is gently beautiful and tomorrow it will disappear.


Next our guide stops us at Wood Anemone, its pinkwhite petals dripping and heavy bowed with rain. It is already a ghost flower, and returns each year, despite our noise and boots, to haunt the same season and the same place, unaware that the time has moved on and the world changed.


Then we journey on the deep wet paths to Yellow Archangel, beautiful, stinking, twisting this way and that, declaring it is different, writing accusing letters probably to the neighbours; then Dog's Mercury, common as muck but giving us all something to talk about with its rampant ways; then Goose Grass, Lily of the Valley, Violets, Cuckoo Flower, Jack by the Hedge.

We pause at Wood Vetch, its exotic coiling leaves stitched like lace along the stem, bound by invisible threads from beginning to end. We stare at showy marsh marigolds, shameless in these quiet woods like a bottle blond strolling through a Church door, then the emerging bugle, catching up, not quite there. We pause to tell the invading daffodils to shove off. Lords and Ladies over there we don't talk about because we all know what they're up to. We raise our eyebrows and nod, because that is a proper thing to do.


And I only have thirty minutes to write about all the plants of this ancient woodland, and I cannot do that.

All I can say is that I was grateful for every minute of this walk. When we stop at the Town Hall Clock I am suddenly happy and sad all at once; reminded that I hunted these diminutive flowers down as a child, called them that same clock name, wondered at their many flower faces, handed fistfuls of them deep into skirt pockets, scattered them around, and thought them endless.

Then I quite forgot about them, and have never thought of them since. I hope Shark, Squirrel and Tiger remember, in forty years ahead, when me and the guide are both gone on beyond. I hope then amongst all the rush and busy days, and accusations over unicorns and children and families, they have the time to pause, and look down, and find them too.

Welcome, May

I love May. I love this month, and all this season.

I love the nature of it. The blackthorn, now curling away, burst out last week like stuffing from a pillow. It shouted that Spring is here! and the earth warmed up. My goodness, how quick did I shoo the kids out of doors to take advantage of those bright bluesky days with their living greens and paper whites before I folded those hours away in notebooks and memory albums, along with the thin cotton clothes we briefly wore, to better prepare ourselves: soon there'll be the cold blustery winds back again, before the English rains of early summer.

And the folklore too. I love that. I love the breaking point from winter to spring and the stories that fall out of the crack: old knarled hands and muttering trees, spirits and sprites and foolish young fellows, head-turned by young women whose magic is never as it seems.

For our close and tiny family, it's a month of celebration too, with birthdays and anniversaries coming round like records of long gone glory days. I look forward to silently rehearsing those days every year. I count them, and store up their numbers in defence of the judgement days ahead.

But the date day, May Day, May 1, is best of all. It is that righteous day. The celebration day I was brought up with in working class Nottingham, when it was not a time to weave garlands of drippysippy spring flowers or choose simpering sissy brides, but a day to celebrate bloody minds and brass necks. There was a morality to the day that was unbeatable. It was trade union time and labour movement time - and don't you forget the working class because they make this country what it is. It is time to celebrate endurance and survival and reflect on all the struggles until the cudgels are lifted up again tomorrow in defence of what is ours.

And a bit of me always feels that behind the blackthorn and birthdays and the story place, that this day is still rightfully ours.

Today is a day that families should be yoked together. They should be visible and loud. They should march in stately order, grip hands, take the path past the blackthorn clumps, process by the muttering willow, make their way down to the canal and the park, where they should eat ice cream, watch the Morris dancers, send the kids off to play, fool around on fairground rides, put rats down drainpipes to bash them with bats, then go home grumpy and all falling out. But all of it in solidarity, every bit.

Grit's guide to politics with kids. Rule 5.

Election fever has gripped this house. La Famille Grit is urgently discussing the key issues, morning, noon and night. Along with who stole the last chocolate hobnob, which is almost as big as the economy in the scale of things. When we find out who did that, and who's got the missing UK trillions, we're going to give them both a good hiding.

To help sort out one discussion from another and focus our minds on who says what, mama Grit has turned the front room into the Election Nerve Centre.

So this is Rule 5 in this house, and the final rule in Grit's fantastic quick-fix for kids, politics guide:

Rule 5. Grab the fever. Turn your house into a set worthy of Election Night Special.

So far we have created an array of up-to-the-minute interactive display boards, designed to bring superior political analysis and interpretation of live news results. Hark! I think the BBC is banging on the front door right now, hoping to take advantage of our state-of-the-art display system.

No, just the milkman threatening us with the Old Bill. Never mind, while we wait for the BBC, here is some of Grit's Election Night Display.


OK, I admit that the only flyer we have so far stuck up on the know-your-candidate board is the Green Party. We had to print that flyer off the website because the bastards won't deliver us one on the basis that we can't be trusted to recycle it.

David Cameron was up there but the slimy posh boy keeps dropping off. I don't have enough blutack to hold him up.

And don't ask me where the liberal democrats have gone. I did have a flyer to stick up but I possibly used it for a shopping list and wrote mackerel over King Clegg's face before stuffing it in my handbag.

But the minorities are very nearly up there. We have a BNP leaflet but my hand won't let me stick it to the wall.

No-one can find out anything about the independent candidate, although we've tried. He's done no canvassing at our door, he has no website, and I've seen no posters or leaflets. I may vote for him on the basis he will leave us alone and do nothing, and that is more or less what I'd like for a few years.

You'll notice the Labour Party is not up there yet. They will go up, oh yes they will, in the interests of fair minded and balanced politics, and Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are quite entitled to vote for them oh yes they are. I have not brain washed my children that far, just reminded them about the micromanaging culture that is destroying our community, and the way the Labour Party hounded and vilified home educators over the last year, then told all resident bodies in this house that if they do put Ed Balls back in power I'm going on strike so they will starve to death and have to eat the floorboards. I think that is fair.

So on balance, right now, at this moment, we are an undecided family, although the Election Display Board is helping allocate votes on a policy-for-policy basis.

I have to admit, there is one party the children like best, and especially their manifesto which promises to make wire coat hangers illegal.


Of course we are tempted by the multilingual Clegg, because he is not one or the other.

There again, we might revert to type, and go Green, because Squirrel says, having thought about it, that fairies really do need fighting for.

Grit's guide to politics with kids. Rule 4.

In January 2009, the Labour government decided to advertise home education.

They did it quite well. Within four months of their campaign starting, the perfectly legal option of education outside state school was covered in every major newspaper and magazine. It was the subject of TV news programmes. Videos created by adults, researchers, community groups and children blew across YouTube. Twitter and hundreds of blogs blasted out the news.

Another few months saw hundreds of thousands of documents, posters, leaflets, gatherings, picnics, celebration events and letters to lords, ladies, and Members of Parliament.

The home education agenda made thousands and thousands of people aware. Education is compulsory. School isn't.

That activity was a fantastic response. It showed what leverage ordinary people apply in government. We received applause from lords, and we sent bats down the bosoms of baronesses. Our reach went far. We made history.

We'll do it again. And I would say this is the best education in politics I could have given Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

Rule 4. Get active.

My children did things. They went places. They talked about the issues. They followed the progress of a bill in Parliament. They found out how to meet other people who had different and the same opinions. They found out how people make their voices heard through petitions, arguments, demonstration. They saw how visual and print media worked to support or undermine an issue. They learned about the role of an MP, and how MPs can pick and choose the cause they'll support. My children learned that they can make a difference.

So that's what I recommend. Look at the bills proposed by the government we get next week. Pick one to follow - one that matters - and follow it day by day, as it progresses to an Act. Watch it, read about it, go visit Parliament or your MP. It is by far the most active way you can teach your child about the political process.

More suggestions on how to involve kids actively in politics are over here.

For the moment though we're busy on important matters. Balancing chinchillas on Shark's head requires precision timing.

Grit's guide to politics with kids. Rule 3.

No messing.

Rule 3: Follow the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Here's Grit, always first with the news, eh!

But this is the real stuff. OK, you haven't got time to do it before the actual election in the UK, which is like, um, days away. But the classics are an excellent educational route into politics and power.

Don't suggest children cannot follow this fantastic history or get to grips with some of the issues contained in this slice of time. That breaks rule 2.

Because from Rome we get to talk about life. We stop being nice to each other. People bash, stab, poison and thump their way to power. They announce themselves conquerors, jackboot their way into foreign lands, stitch up dodgy deals, and over in Egypt shove snakes down their bras.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, all aged ten, are enjoying themselves hugely with this; with tales of Tarquin the BAD, Tarquin the EVEN WORSE, Octavius the Sneaky GIT, Caligula the BONKERS. They're thinking about the nature of power itself and the grip of the dynasty. They're thinking about checks and balances of talking chambers, advisers, group interests. They're learning how each of these characters ruled with or without consent, with or without fear, as tyrants, dictators, kings, nutcases. Which I think is communicating some pretty valuable and relevant lessons for 21st century global living.

But consider this: why is it in state schools that kids are not taught this stuff? They are taught that Romans mean central heating, sewers, nice baths, and olive oil.

But strangely, if you pay 20K in school fees, the Romans are about monarchy, republic, conspiracy, tyranny, dictatorship, the creation of a patriarchal society, the power of rhetoric, the role of the lawmaker and the merits of military rule. In other words, pay for it, and you get the stuff of politics.

It is not an accident then that the British Empire was furthered and built by men who went to posh schools and had a direct training in the classics. It is not a fluke that rich, privately educated blokes who today tumble out of Oxbridge Philosophy, Politics and Economics courses become heads of Tory parties.

Now Grit may be an old anarchist hippie but I believe this division between the know and knownot - the way that some people are allowed near the juicy stuff of the classics but lesser mortals are kept away - is all part of a long tradition of maintaining privileged knowledge; and some knowledge clearly is to be kept away from the clutches of the gutter classes. Which sort of answers that question, Why isn't politics taught in schools?

I wouldn't exactly call it a conspiracy, but I think we have a society where some kids are kept in ignorance and taught about sewers while other kids are taught about politics, and power.

Well stuff that. Today we have more books than we can count. We have information pouring out of our screens. We have access to all knowledge. We can find out how politics works, think about questions of power, consider approaches to democracy, empower ourselves as citizens.

So that's one of the angles of politics I'm passing on to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. And I'll leave it to their growing wisdoms over the years to steadily draw out the parallels between 496BC and 2010AD.

Grit's guide to politics with kids. Rule 2.

When you cannot figure out the menu functions on the new DVD and you pass that remote control to your six-year old, at that moment you acknowledge their expert status as supreme being of all household media.

Similarly, when I want to understand what Gordon Brown means when he talks about managing the economy, I turn to the experts. I ask, Squirrel, what would you say if Tiger borrowed your whole pocket money, blew it on chocolate Maltesers and then told you that you're going to be grounded for non-payment of her library fines?

Squirrel would deliver a strongly worded opinion about that financial management, and I would almost certainly this time remove the metal bar before we got started on that discussion.

But the point is, I assume my kids are experts already. In almost everything. From economy, education, welfare and society through to the environment, trade, defence and the benefits and hazards of the justice system.

For which read, politics.

Rule 2: Assume kids are already experts

This is obvious, if you think about it. By age two, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger had definite opinions on my parenting skills. They shared those opinions freely, loudly, and in Tesco, to a maximum capacity audience. So their ideas about social cohesion were formed.

By age three their opinions were expressed about power, and how much of it they could exert over any situation if they locked themselves in the bathroom and removed all their clothes. Maybe, with fine timing, they could explore the literal concept of naked power five minutes after I said let's go shopping.

By age four they had views on crime and punishment thanks to the incident with the rock and scissors and the soil down the toilet. The NHS came shortly after thanks to the head wound from the first day at nursery.

At age five, they had a worked out approach to solving the educational problems of this country. Mostly created while watching their peers frogmarched down Bash Street School dressed in grey and white, while they took a leisurely breakfast and decided today they'd like to build a den in the woods.

And so it has gone on. Now Shark, Squirrel and Tiger offer challenging opinions on all manner of political issues, from the notion of fairness to the practicalities of the economy, thanks to the pocket money regime monitored by the Bank of Grit.

So I'm saying that kids should be treated like the people they are when it comes to politics. Wise, knowledgeable, experienced. Anything less sounds patronising and, given their expertise with rock, scissors and metal bar, round here I wouldn't try anything other than rational debate.

Thank you, Milton Keynes

Thank you for envisioning a town built around parkland.

Thank you for bringing here the types of outspoken, committed people we like.

Thank you for creating and maintaining inspiring playgrounds, which we discover on our journey, and never knew about before today.






And thank you, Milton Keynes, for nicking Ed Balls. Driving while talking on his mobile phone.

You just gave me one more reason why I love you.

Grit's guide to politics with kids. Rule 1.

It's no good, is it? I have to talk about it. The general election. Because Grit, like most smug home educating bastards, must seize this moment. I must grasp this stingingnettle opportunity.

Yes. I must now teach the little grits about politics.

I bet you'd like to think, given that we home educating types are brainwashing hothousing childabusing zealots*, that teaching my kids about politics means threatening them with rope and shouting Vote for the green-flavoured dope-smoking hippies or I tie you to the radiators again you little grits.

Unfortunately, the little grits run fast when they see the rope. They also, like most home ed kids, take no notice of a pointless parental unit like me, especially on matters which fall into the category called make up your own mind. Worse, these small opinionated people are by now thoroughly deinstitutionalised and completely individualised. Which means they roll out of bed with their own ideas on how they're going to run the planet.

Let's hope then you and me are in a spaceship heading for ZeltaMinor, that's all I'm saying, because some of those planet running ways include forced consumption of pasta and compulsory horse kissing.

Anyway, like most kids, my little grits combine a total certainty about the way to run a planet with their rights over who sits where at the breakfast table and who's not wearing mama's old cardigan again. They then mix this opinionated mishmash with a bunch of half-baked ideas sprinkled with half-arsed questions. Like Why can't conger eels rule the world? and What would happen if Gordon Brown ate only helium?

But this is where any Parent-Teacher comes in, and this is politics with kids Rule Number One that I can share with you, lovely thisfar-reader.

In fact, now I'm in full rhetorical mode, I'll don my best public service hat and tell you that these are my hard-earned wisdoms. Indeed I gladly pass them on to you, if you are looking to seize this election moment too, and educate your offspring in the ways of the world political.

Rule one. Answer all the questions about Gordon in a frock.

Yes, all the questions. Every one. You must answer them. No matter how pointless, stupid, and annoying.

In fact, this is how I teach anything, if you can call it teaching. Well OK, I don't. I listen to the questions asked by my little grits Tiger, Squirrel and Shark, and I answer them, as best I can. Sometimes my answer is, I do not know, I never thought about that, then I follow it up with Let's find out, and the consequent printing of fourmillionwikipediapages and the purchasing of 65 books on Amazon. After three weeks I can legitimately say It is all more complicated than I thought.

Now I know we don't have time for that, because there is an election to decide. But it is in this spirit that we approach the election with kids. They ask questions, we think up answers, and we all talk about it round the breakfast table, or at the side of the radiator if anyone's feeling uncooperative.

Fifteen minutes in and you may find that small offspring are filled with questions like Why is he doing that? What is he talking about? These are good questions and if we are going to join the great enterprise of educating the nation's youth in matters political, the answer must not be Shut up and eat your tea.** A bit more time and they are offering opinions like He would look stupid in a dress and He's not making me eat peas for anything. This is all good stuff, and round here we professionals call that engagement.

Now, that is Grit's fantastic Rule Number One.

I bet you can barely contain yourself for Rule Number Two.

*Balls, your crimes aren't forgiven.

**All you experienced home educators are rolling your eyes now, aren't you? Because of course you detect I have succumbed to that home ed crime of twisting everything the offspring say just to the subject I actually want to them to talk about. So Squirrel will casually say Gordon Brown would look better in a frock, and I will say Yes Squirrel, Gordon Brown would look better in a frock. And it is a jolly silly thing in our society that he cannot do that if he wants. Now let's talk about citizenship, autocracy and monarchy from the point of view that all men including Gordon Brown and the Duke of Edinburgh should be free to wear frocks, if they want.

One of those walks and talks

A long, long walk...

to see plenty of these...


some of this... with plenty of that...

and a pause for this...


before some more of these...


Strangely, I am reminded of this. And do you know what? With no aim beyond enjoying this day, that feels good.

One place, two worlds

You should know this. Whenever we home educating hordes take our offspring to a museum, gallery, discovery centre, we grubbers and bumscratchers behave like we own the place. Which, for most of the places we go, we kind of do, because we are part of this nation, and these places belong to us.

You see? There's that attitude again. I can't help it. Don't blame me. It's what we're used to. It's a knowledge of our rights.

We expect to be there for at least five hours. We expect to be able to talk at length with the staff, move freely about the place, stop where the kids like to write, draw, talk, and pay discount rates as well, because yeah, we're home educated, and the entry fee need not be as expensive as you think.

But we have this attitude, right? We have it because we have this sense of entitlement, and when we visit these places, we enjoy it, and good things happen. That's our experience.

Of course we try to be understanding and not show too much of the smugbastard.

OK, the CCTV cameras might catch us rolling our eyes and tutting when the school party comes round. We watch the crocodile-delivered kids do the supervised ten minutes in the gallery, be herded up, shouted at, and moved on for the next 60 kids to roll in behind. If they didn't see the art, tough luck. The buses leave at 2.30.

The exact time in fact that home educators breathe a big sigh of relief because we've still another couple of hours before closing time, maybe to look round, ask the staff to explain points of interest, join a workshop, do more talking, watch the edutainment video again, and play in the picnic area.

So I have to say that we get used to this lifestyle.

Until now. Because we take a tour to Bletchley Park where we are labelled as a school party.

Did this come as a shock? I am still bandaging my wounds.

Do you school choosing people really put up with this? We are met at the gates with armed clipboards and jackboots, told we are late, that everything is our fault and maybe we started World War II. On that matter, they'll check on their clipboards and get back to us. Then we are frog marched to our designated places and these are the rules and you do not disobey the rules and where is your sticker? We all must wear stickers. No exceptions. And they must be visible at all times and we must go here and here and here because the schedule says so and yes, by the way, it was all our fault.

And no-one said Welcome.

But as home educators we know Bletchley Park. And we love it. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have been annual pass holders. They have spent happy hours running between huts, learning about ancient computers, following trails, watching old ladies nod off in visitor chairs.

Worse then, for us, because today we are a school group, and everything changed. I am not saying the sessions were not kind to the children, nor run efficiently. They were, and pitched at the right level by gentle, knowing speakers. But the organisational attitude changed towards us, and expectations lowered. People felt we had to be managed, ushered, controlled, monitored, supervised. We were separated from normal society, from other visitors, and we needed to be given orders because the assumption was, that whatever happened next, we were sure to break the rules.

So I would just like to suggest that if your child goes on a school-booked visit anywhere, ask what would they have done, if they had space, and time, and leisure.

Then book a weekend visit and go see the place properly.

Yes, the treatment brought out the juvenile delinquent in me.
I stuffed my sticker down my front
in the hope that I would be challenged by The Clipboard Law.
Then I could legitimately pull down my vest and expose my bosom.
Ahem ... One more thoughtful than me
might consider how schools construct the antisocial
behaviour they simultaneously condemn.

Take a step back

We've been doing this thing for a good few years now and, despite what I said, the world hasn't ended.

This thing being the home education thing. And we have been through a few things now too, in pursuit of the home education thing. Some of them involving knocked out teeth, metal bars, head wounds, and a mermaid squatting on the toilet, but at least now I have got to that point where I can look back at those things and say, well that is maybe what this choice of life involves.

When we first started home education it felt very daring and rebellious and courageous, the sort of thing that good parents will do to protect their tender baby offspring, and maybe that is like fighting evil empires to rescue cute innocent rabbits with fluffy fur and big sad eyes.

But on those days when it all went horribly wrong and my hideous spawn knuckledragged their way through the day, grunting and yelling and thumping the shit out of each other, it felt like I was mentally and emotionally not cut out for this intensive life alongside them. On those days, home education is the equivalent to climbing a mountain naked with a cougar strapped to your back.

But then along comes a day, like today, when I feel I have some perspective on the matter. Maybe it is spring. Maybe it is the way the sun streaks through the window, and I can respond to that. I can look around me and see Shark is quietly reading and Squirrel is deep thinking, working out some maths, and Tiger is humming as she sits on the floor sewing a dismembered rabbit head to a plaque, and I can think, right, we are doing alright. This is alright. And now the sun is shining and the air breathes clean. I can look to the sunshine and say hey everyone, would you like to take a walk in the woods to find flowers and Spring things? Everyone gazes up and looks at Spring busting through the window and happily pulls on shoes and out we go.

It's as simple as that. We meet up with other parents and other kids and our helpful Parks people, and we run around in the sunshine and learn about ancient woodland and bluebells.

Yes, here I am living a life that I chose because I thought it was the right thing to do. But I have in many ways doubted my ability to withstand it. Some days it is the most difficult life I could have chosen: a life where the kids can strain me and drain me and hang me out to dry, a life which on a bad day can seem like the worst possible choice and the stupidest thing ever to have chosen; a life with humiliations, sacrifices, and the pressure to locate the yellow embroidery thread to stitch up a penguin flipper before Tiger smashes up the entire house.

But some days it is so right, because look out at that world. Yes, it has horrors and glories. There are woodlands, bluebells, and sunshine too. And I get to share it all with the people I love.

I gave up my Beth Chatto garden for this

A recreation of a Jurassic mud swamp.


A reenactment of The Battle of the Dinosaurs


A grave.


Of a unicorn.

I am told that the unicorn is not dead. Merely resting. Tonight, if I wake screaming in terror at the nightmare that is the Dawn of the Flesh-Eating Zombie Undead Unicorns, forgive me. It is the result of playing in the garden.


A blackboard badger. On stilts.


A home-made hammock held up with string and ribbon. (I approve of that. It saved me £13.99.)


An assault course.

And dinner for two. Two unicorns, of course. This is their pudding. Painted mud pie. In the background is probably the main course. Corpse.


Spring is here, and the children have taken over the garden.

The midnight terrors are beginning.