Not a must-read for the joy-filled

Christmas is a great strain. I think it is made worse, being in Hong Kong.

In England, I can see the point. The lights and the tinsel are needed, because a December mid-winter is damn dark and cold. We have to bring sparkle into the bleak somehow.

Straight off, don't tell me to do it with the Christian. I am a gal of human blood, gristle and bone; earth, light and dark. This winter festival comes from feeding need. But I don't mind the religious believers overlaying my primitive with fine spiritual sentiments and the loveliest language, of course not. I'll get in on the act myself if it means I can take a time to join them, and listen to the music inspired by their devotions.

I believe it's basic fire and warmth which keep the cold from taking the hardest toll. And we can hope a bit of glam might bring anticipation; perhaps we could have rewards after all, even though in reality most of life outside looks dead and done for.

Show a few pin pricks of light, and we might also enjoy our imaginations. We can grow stories from dark places in long nights. For that, bring company, and add some over-eating to remind our bodies of human satisfaction.

Full stomachs, warm toes, shared minds, all safeguards in the moment against the lean months ahead, and yes, I can see the point of Christmas in dark, cold England.

But I am out here, and denied my December England. I don't have the props. No dark and starry nights, foot-stomping in frost, or winter breath showing me undeniable evidence before my very eyes. The weather in sub-tropics Hong Kong is lukewarm sunny, like an early English summer. The people stroll by in shorts, no-one looks to their own breath, and there are no hearths.

I can't give myself up to any widespread self-deception, either, as I can do in England. Few of the traders around us share this festival, so there's no cultural conspiracy which I can look to, to sweep me along. The shops will stay open throughout, the Christian families take their observations seriously, and the retail experience is just that. Christmas comes fast in the sales opportunity calender of round-the-world retail festivals, just after the Golden month, Hallowe'en and before the New Year.

I am left then, with a denuded Christmas of one plastic tree, 24 dented baubles and three strings of lurid tinsel.


But because I have an imagination and a bottle of sherry, I'm thinking up means to make one or two days more special than the rest. I will enjoy watching the children be delighted by chocolate and puzzles.

And I know, on peering into her stocking, Tiger won't ask, like me, What is the point? Well, I'm opening the sherry because we all made it through another year. And look, even though I am not in England, I'm still alive! That has got to be worth a moment of reflection. Please don't blow it to tell me otherwise.

Michael Gove; infant with train set

Not surprising.

Since Global Gove left China his eyes have been all wide-eyed and starry; his brain ticking away like an infant planning playtime.

What knocked him out in China, apparently, was an ordinary book of homework. He was told it was merely research papers - look, nothing special! Simply written by ordinary students.

There was probably a moment of silence as the awe-struck Michael took this document in his trembling hand, the jealousy rising, for what the Asian education system produces, while his brain tells him these papers by 13-year olds are surely to be compared to the professional academic, peer-reviewed journal articles in the miserable, fallen-behind, lost-the-global-educational-race, failed UK.

So, like infant Joe, he's determined to change your education system. He's bringing it up to date for a twenty-first century world. He has a train set. You are the dinosaurs.

Now what steps could Michael plan, to turn your kids into proper world scholars, whipping the behinds of the Mini Changs? With his eyes starred from the successes of the east, but with his Tory heart beating, here's playtime.

1. Raise your parental anxiety level.
Essential to all ideologically-driven change, the parent-dinosaurs must first be softened up, and made to feel like shit.

We ask, What is wrong with your kid? Tinkertop is failing. She is falling behind! Look! She wants to stuff worms in her pockets and she's aged six! Why is she not reading like her Asian competitors? Do you stupid parents not know Mini Chang has already read the Asian classics and she is aged five.

Huh. Tinkertop is doomed. Unless you access the right nursery from age two and pump her brain with a standardised Phonics Reading Course from a reputable education supplier to be conducted at home on weekends.

2. Undermine the professional authority of state-trained teachers.
Here's my next train coming! Toot toot!

PGCEs waste time, don't they? Dossy, scrounging students, loafing for a year? And look at the result! Failing schools. You dinosaurs are right not to value Tinkertop's poxy teacher!

What the UK train should do is make teachers better. Beat them. Make training courses shorter, 100% classroom-based, and no pedagogy nonsense.

Then howabout taking courses away from universities altogether? Encourage private business to take over training!

We could assign school functions to lower-class, state-trained ancillaries, on hire-em/fire-em contracts, and schools could buy in services of privately-trained, classroom-experienced Deliverers of Curriculum.

Schools could ignore the local authority, and buy services from agencies who supply specialist staff, for a fee. With only a small contribution from you - which you are sure to make to improve Tinkertop's chances of success - the government provides the service you want and saves money!

3. Set up UK Education on business franchise principles.
Put the dinosaur parents on the train! Then, even though I am in charge of the track, it looks like they are driving the train!

Tell the dinosaurs they have total control to buy Tinkertop's educational services. You want your school to be academies, don't you? Academies want to be run like businesses! What's more, they're an excellent means by which to cream off public money and put it in private hands.

Think of the possibilities, dinosaurs. You could buy in everything. Private companies could offer curriculum packages, school administration services, security, homework marking - anything!

You name it, everything educational could be outsourced! Tinkertop's entire educational career from birth could be supplied at competitive cost by private enterprise!

All led by Michael's mates, come round for playtime.

Nonsense. We are only playing.

We've been top to bottom, right to left

By now, it should be obvious to anyone curious about home education.

One reason we declined school and chose other, is that we wanted to give our kids some social advantage.

I'm not joking. It is true. The problem with school is that a young person is locked for up to fifteen years within an institution that contains, more or less, people just like them; all treated pretty much the same.

It does not give a young person the widest view of society.

You school-choosing parents I have encountered who wanted to rectify that - to pack into a child's 'free' time of evenings, weekends and holidays a greater range of peoples, with a full variety of experiences - have had to show similar determination and guts to the parents I usually meet in the home ed world.

Hats off to you, because at some point you inevitably end up sword-waving at some little Hitler in post of headteacher who threatens that your day off for an outing with Weird Aunty Laura is be defined as 'truancy' and thus will count towards your prosecution.

But I could never be bothered to go down that fighting route - nor roll out of bed, dress, make egg sandwiches, or play poxy school-gate politics - so we chose the conflict-avoidance path of other, and considered the wide range of social worlds home ed could lead us to.

And it has. Even though we've had plenty of family punch-ups on the way.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have been pushed into many social worlds and met people beyond their normal boundaries of class, wealth, cultural values, and social attitudes. Some they've liked, some they've feared, some were frankly bizarre, and some they couldn't understand.

It's all our great experiment, you can put it down to that, if you like. To introduce children to a great many people and circumstance (i.e. the real world) in the idea that kids come out the other end as adults with a wider understanding of people and society, i.e. having social advantage.

Well this is how it works in practice. Yesterday Shark, Squirrel and Tiger considered the life of necessity and hardship led by Shoeless Farmer Chang.

Today (thanks to Sophia leading me astray), they've enjoyed the life of frivolous extravagance, taking tea at The Peninsula where, if you're one of us, no explanation is needed.

On the market stall

I set up a beach mat on a concrete step. Then I make the children sit by the roadside for five hours selling hand-made leather notebooks.


I call it an Education.


The Local Authority probably calls it Child Exploitation, but they can shut up.

I'm teaching my kids about the horrors of the business world and, because it's a Sunday, how hard it is to practice the seven virtues.

Restraint.
Great self control required to abstain from yelling at the passers by WHAT'S THE SODDING MATTER WITH YOU? WHY AREN'T YOU BUYING THE DAMN NOTEBOOKS? HEY! YOU'RE NOT EVEN LOOKING!

Persistence.
You bet. The Grit and the Gritlets are born to this virtue. None of us is giving up. After an hour I set the mini grits the challenge: make people STOP.

Shark suggests trip wire strung between our stall and the banana tree opposite. Yes, this would do the trick. I would try it, only I haven't wire long enough.

After some buyer enticement strategy thinking I decide to employ my endless capacity for charm, added to a little light nudity and some come-hither eyeball rolling. Shark made me stop. She became extremely agitated, shouting, Not the hand gestures, mummy please no no no.

That actually brought someone over and I sold The Dancer! Success! And only two hours in!

Shark wouldn't say it again so we had to wait another hour.

Chastity.
Not applicable. I am sitting on the road that leads to the beach. And ladies, round here it is the temperature of a warm summer's day in England. Of course I'm not going to stop my eyes wandering appreciatively to manly bodies and well-turned buttocks.

Patience.
Problem virtue. I am not patient and neither are the mini grits. We want stuff now; preferably without mercy.

In fact, I consider sitting at the roadside for five hours being peaceably nice to people is a challenge in itself. Especially when I am not allowed to trip them up, knock them down, verbally berate them, nor show even the merest glimmer of hostility. This is a tough one.

But I am learning. I managed to sublimate some of my aggressions into a scornful commentary whispered under my breath at their departing rears, Of course he will not buy you Little Button because he doesn't love you enough and he thinks your arse is too big.*

Charity.
Aha! I sell two notebooks in one go! Lady Musician and Shy Romantic. To a woman who is clearly a discerning person, appreciating the fine accomplishments of hand-stitched notebook making.

And as for the charity, not bloody likely. I'm here to sell the ruddy books, not give them away for the improvement of my soul.

My next customer, requiring only a small amount of marketing manhandling, is very soon desperate to possess Flowers (the one where I may have filled the inside pages with pictures of semi-naked men). However, she persists in haggling Hong Kong style. I feel sure she is putting off the millions of other customers who are surely desperate for my lovely notebooks. In the end I take two dollars off the price just to get rid of her.

I think that could count as charity.

Kindness.
I'm sorry? I'm here to SELL stuff. As far as I remember, kindness did not figure big in the selling world. I consider that making the damn things in the first place was an act of selfless love for which I am now seeking enough reward to buy more leather and make some more.

Humility.
Well it is a humbling experience, sitting at the side of the road for five hours, growing colder and more desperate with overtones of hysteria.

At the end of the afternoon, the old farmer passes us, tugging his lettuces behind him on a trolley. He is thin enough to hide behind a broom handle, has no shoes, wears rags in winter, and what he doesn't sell, he eats.

I make Shark, Squirrel and Tiger consider how he has to work all day, everyday, in all weathers for a product that can be obtained free of charge by slugs. Today he'll probably make less money than me, and he won't while away the time by consuming the profit in biscuits.

Humbling, indeed.


By the end of the day, my arse was numb, my knee joints frozen up, and I felt obliged to give the mini grits some of the proceeds in ice cream, plus their desired notebook each.

But we sold five notebooks (and one book box), considered humanity, earned enough money for six more offcuts of leather in Sham Shui Po, and delivered an education suitable for a Sunday. On balance, sore bum excepted, a day well spent.


*Throughout the ordeal I felt increasingly like Bernard.

After my brain was sucked out by aliens...

...I was left with no understanding at all.

Why are three children following me? Who expects me to feed them? And who is that strange man? The one trying to pull himself up by his hair, while he stares wild-eyed at the heap of leather, sparkle, and paper offcut piled around me on all floors, surfaces and, inexplicably, hanging from the door.

Ignore these people. I find they go away in time.

Instead, look at my lovely notebooks!

The Cream Collection includes...

Ice Cream Swirl
Lickable.
What would it be like to everyday taste
strawberries and vanilla?

Nature Lover
Beguiles and frustrates in equal measure.
Slip your fingers in here and they'll only catch on the twists and tangles
of thread that stitch it all together.

Should it be Love?
Fireworks, sparkle, party time.
You never know which way it could go.
Shall we keep it light and simple?

Big Button
There's no denying it. One big, big,
button.

Little Button
For the love of tiny, shiny, cream-coloured buttons.
Have to put them somewhere, Squirrel.
Can't hold the inventory system in your pockets everyday.

The Brown Collection includes...

The Sophisticate

You are one classy lady!
But I promise not to take delight when I witness you fall in the gutter.
In fact I'll help you out. I seem to be down here already.

Bound 'n' bead
A girl after my own heart.
You cannot leave those beads alone.
Is there anywhere you won't put them?

All the W's
Wistful, Wondering, Waiting, When will it be Wednesday?
Wonderful notebook for the Woman with the copy of Woolf, the Walnut desk,
the Whimsical gaze, and the Floral-patterned tea dress.
(Okay, there's an F. Obviously it doesn't all have to be W.)

Ahh, flowers!

And such a pretty cover!
Now who's to say the paper inside isn't bursting with delightful pictures of naked men?

(I'm only told you can get away with porn that way.)

The Red Collection...

Little Red Book
Chew on that, Chairman Mao.

Sshh!
You cannot betray the secrets of the boudoir!

(My secret is, there is no boudoir.)

The Black Collection...

Little Black Book
Strictly NO PEEPING.

Black and Silver
For the lady with the Halston spaghetti strap evening dress.
It's not true that I'm out to punch you in the face.
I just tell myself that when I'm jealous you actually have somewhere to go to wear it.

Some of these I must package and send to you, thank you for being here.

But for the others, I have a fantastic get-rich-quick scheme! I shall sit by the road selling hand-made notebooks! What could possibly go wrong on that one?

Notebook heaven

NOTICE

Suspension of household services.

No laundry. No cooking. No cleaning. No nice, soothing, consoling words.

No bleedin' nothing.

Mama is BUSY.*

*Making notebooks.

Not any old notebooks. These are notebooks made for characters.
Totally unique.

(And I think only of you when I make them.)

Shy Romantic
Leather so soft you can't tell where your fingertip ends and the notebook begins. Bound with a pink ribbon, velvet on one side, cord on the other. A design that cannot reveal itself ...until you gently unbutton the cover.



Once inside, turn the pages and they'll blush pink and cream. And ohh! Pictures to surprise and delight you! But I couldn't photograph those. Leave this delicate little book with some modesty, please.

Film Lover
It's obvious. You want to get your hands on this little tightly-bound suede number as soon as the cinema lights dim, when you can unhook that satin ribbon and unlace that embroidery cord.


I know you say it's to record the perfect elements of film noir. But here's the truth. You only want to get your fingers into this beautiful pocket-sized notebook, to make your mark on those beautiful clean white pages, and linger over those images of film memorabilia.

Save it till the lights come up, when you can open to unfurl...


the Buster Keaton umbrella! Sprinkled with silver sparkle!

To the Woman who Wants to Write Letters
Let's end our whiny envelope excuses and feeble letter laments! Let us take one of these notebooks each! With yours in hand, you can write me that message! And actually post it!

Here, see my answer in this cream leather notebook, bound by cord, clipped by peg, and wrapped about with beads to count the days before the letters arrive.


Let us unfold those pages together to display our note papers & pockets; essential to file stamps, stickers & paperclips.


Now I cannot take you by the hand and walk you to the post office, but would it help if I gave you the damn notebook?

Lady Musician
I know this. Life is hard when passion is your only guide. I know too, your suffering; you, driven attic-wise, moulded by creative forces beyond your control, your soul eased only on a Sunday morning when you get your fingers round the old joanna.

Then for you, this. A notebook of sound, to soothe you in your restless sleep.


It has a bell on.


And it tinkles.

Wild wire
Where is this character going next? What? They didn't die? Well, who gives a damn! It's too much fun to watch!


Life, held together (only just) with flexible gold wire. Fastens precariously with a clasp. Sometimes not at all! Totally impractical, unsustainable and unsuitable for all normal activities. Can't be held in anyone's pocket, bag, or briefcase. Needs a space all of its own.

The Dancer
Soooo cooool, this modern interpretive dance. Eggs and Lycra! And here's me, still trying to recover from the peacock and hoop!

It is true. I am a dance ingenue. But I make a mean gold-covered leather book with soft cream handmade paper pages which leap from the interior. A little like the dancers on the front, leaping to get off.


(I'm sorry one of them lost an arm in the attempt.)

Mine. Mine, mine, all mine.
Soft brown leather (like my eyes); single bead (like my tear); floppy tassel (like my beard).


More tomorrow.

At last I discover...

...what I want to do with my life. It is to come and live here, in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.


I shall stay here forever, and spend my days making fine hand-sewn leather notebooks with unique decorations, fastenings, and creative embellishments.

Because Sham Shui Po is the only place a crafter can ever be.


It is a Hong Kong front end for the clothing, design and accessories manufacture in mainland China. Which means it is stuffed floor to ceiling, street to street, nose to tail, back to front, inside to outside, alpha to omega, with buttons, ribbons, threads, sparkly things, lace, fabrics, embroidery, leather, sequins, clasps, buckles, decorative metals, beads, chains, pom poms, crafty things and more crafty things at prices that mean they can have all my money for ever and ever amen.


By the third shop on the second street my heart had stopped working and my eyeballs dropped out.


It was only by Squirrel's support that I made it beyond the stone bead shop where I had begun to hyperventilate.


Sham Shui Po is nirvana, plain and simple. When you arrive here, you will find me where I left my body, propped up against the decorative metal pieces for attachment by thread, right there, between the cherubs and the antique fashioned love hearts.

International just ain't English

Today, we home educating group of pan-global mamas and papas use Christmas as an excuse, and go out together for Christmas dinner.



There wasn't much I recognised of Christmas dinner in a vegetarian Indian meal made by Hindus in a Chinese district of Hong Kong. But I guess it was the route of least offence in bringing together a large mixed crowd of expat home educators, drawn from a range of nations, round the same table under the one banner of Christmas.

Then, for a moment, even though the company was very warm and lovely, I admit, I felt a teeny bit homesick.

Because from here, in the slide down to the big day, I know I will miss my local time-of-the-year ways of England. I have no neighbour with whom to compare shovel action; no Doreen at the Co-op with her Christmas tree earrings; no menacing threat of visitations made by extended family; no anguished considerations about whether to tip the paper boy; no ambush by tinselled charity muggers; no real opportunity to compete on points of mince pie snobbery; no enforced reindeer-antler wearing; and no repressed evening gathering where giggly and risque behaviour appalls everyone, if only they could remember it. (I certainly hope no-one can.)

I will miss all that. For the second year running.

I worry that the children too are far gone from England.

Here I am, teaching Shark, Tiger and Squirrel the multi-national, cross-cultural behaviour suitable for a global scale round the dining table, but are they in danger of being a little culturally lost, and even failing to pick up important local identities?

Like tonight. I fear that my children simply do not know how to behave properly, like English people should.

They refuse to join in the table running, cannot join the rowdy game of throw-balloons-about, and even fail to be drawn by the lure of Santa hats.


After an hour, I observe how my mini grits depressingly begin to resemble the middle management team at the office Christmas party. The tee-total ones. Despite the fact that everyone else's nationhood of kids is running around the tables and playing throw-balloons-about.


It tells me one thing. I must, for the sake of my children, forget I am international in Hong Kong, and get into the proper spirit of Christmas. Then I can teach my gritlets our fine English Christmas customs.

I will tell myself, it is all very well being a global citizen, but some local customs can never be bettered.

We will start gently with whiny complaints about trees, baubles, tinsel, the weather and the cost of everything. Then we will move on to complaining while over-indulging in mince pies. Next we will try social etiquette, where we alternate between being over-polite and downright offensive, before we try advanced skills: making cruel and acerbic judgements on someone else's Christmas decorations while pretending not to.

Finally, I will ensure everyone understands how your mother has a god-given right to get a bit tipsy and launch herself face first over the sofa because it is Christmas.

I think the lessons should begin tonight, ladies, with my large glass of port.

Spontaneous

What I have found is, when it comes to sleepover culture, I am a total amateur. The real professionals of this genre are ten-year old children.

Like Flizz. She jumps up in the middle of a Chinese park and shouts I've got a good idea! Let's swap sisters! One of yours can come to us and I can come home with you!

I am out of my league. If I put up any opposition it boils down to a half-open mouth and look of dementia.

Because I am from an old folk's perspective, where sleepovers cannot be spontaneous! Surely they have to be organised, parental signatures obtained, release forms issued, a timetable drawn out, somehow with monthly planning, and maybe a meeting or two arranged with spreadsheets and power point demonstrations.

Give me a week or two and I can think of reasoning in detail why no sleepover can be accomplished for the next three Saturdays in a row, and probably all of next year.

I am motivated by fear, of course. I am almost frozen with the terror of imagining the freak accident that causes damage to someone else's child. Maybe I will inadvertently push them off the balcony or bury them under a tree. What then?

Or they will have a wretched and miserable time of it, go home and exclaim Thank God I'm home! Mother you will never know the state of their floors!

If I had been honest and said those things in the Chinese park, I know it would have been pointless. Flizz would have pooh poohed them. She is a home ed child, which means she has already experimented with throwing herself off the balcony and who gives a damn about the floor?

But I am still of the old guard, edgy and uncertain. Flizz's ten-year old confidence makes it a little better: the new wave of sleepover cadets are clearly capable enough to arrange solutions for themselves without the unnecessary complications dreamed up by elderly doddering parents.

So that's what we do. Squirrel gaily scampers off with Flizz's mum, and Flizz jumps on a bus and comes home with us. It doesn't matter, she says, that she has no jimmy jams because we are sure to have a spare pair (gulp, the two available pairs are probably cut up for dolly dresses). The toothbrush doesn't matter either, she says, because you can buy those anywhere. And so what if she's wearing the same clothes again tomorrow? She looks indifferent at me as I raise this last weed of a thought before loudly asking me Is there something wrong with you?

So there, I was taught a lesson. We had a sleepover and it all went well. I did not accidentally assault, poison, or damage someone else's child. She didn't give a damn about the floors. There was only a slight ruckus between me and Shark which probably sent Flizz home saying God, that woman ought to chill.

And I never want to hear again, thanks, how home ed children are socially isolated, how they never see friends, how they never do ordinary kid fun stuff. We deal with certainties in our world. Where, clearly, friendship does not wait on parental organisation, scheduling, or the next free Saturday in the upcoming month.

The rat

I should have remembered to tell you about the rat.

This is my reward for choosing to live on an island with snakes and frogs and things that live. The creeping jumping slithering scurrying things lived here first.

The experience was all horrible. I may have forgot because there are things I don't want to remember.

About 2am, rat scrabbled a way into my bedroom and that was THAT. I spent the rest of the night on the sofa in terror, fully dressed and sitting mostly bolt upright, clutching a plank of wood. Apart from the two hours I lost when my eyes closed down, I was ready. Me or rat. No way was it going to gnaw through me without a fight.

When morning came, I never had seen rat. Not tail, whisker, nor brown shape slipping between table and door. But I was no better in my mind. The problem was, I never saw rat leave. By daylight, I hunted all over, and there was no rat to be found. Only a small broken grill on the laundry room floor. Nevertheless, the following night I tried again to stay awake with all the lights ablaze, stationed on RAT GUARD DUTY.

The rat has not come back. Apart from the horror left marked on my soul, its only lingering impact is on Dig, like he has the final laugh, because when I grip someone by the arm and, a little hysterical and wild-eyed, tell them This story is true! Once I slept with a RAT! he smiles, and looks rather pleased.

Can you trust the children?

Term end approaching!

It is inevitable, isn't it? The piteous infant mewling. The forlorn cries expressed from some of the miniature offspring, their wails now only of exhaustion, relief, and gratitude, so glad school is over.

Come return in January, so despairing will be the sighs from some of them, they will cause a minor typhoon in the tropics.

Inevitable then, how you flirt with the idea of making school stop for a time in 2012. Who wouldn't? But because the school closes its doors to your fantastic idea of flexi-schooling (more fool them) you might wonder about the fearful route of home education.

But I am here to help! Even if this post is only for the two of you. One day I shall change the idea of primary education in England for a generation. I will have children led by artists, geologists, scientists, archaeologists, musicians, foresters, old lady lace makers, philosophers, librarians, poets and dancers. All kids will be equipped with fields, woods, all outdoors, and I will have them playing, creating, making stories, music, art, staring at the sky, and bloody well being left alone to climb trees and build their own social system.

That caters for the up to age 7s nicely. And I will ban anyone with a clipboard within 200 miles of them. Yes, that too. I have a magic wand somewhere. When I find it, I will use it.

Until then, bad luck. If you really do choose home ed in 2012, then alongside your must-have character list of bloody-mindedness, teeth-grinding determination, and the hahaha of false confidence, you will need strategies to deal with insecurities, fears and the neighbours.

Join the club. If you have any words of wisdom about my favourite fears in the land of home education, then let's have them. We have a lot of fear swilling about and we could do with some suggestions:

1. Fear what we're told will happen to Tinkertop if she is removed from school will all come true.
2. Fear that Tinkertop will end her days sleeping on a park bench. Illiterate, unemployed, alcoholic, pregnant, on drugs, crazy. All by next Thursday and it is YOUR FAULT.
3. Fear of social exclusion. Whatever that is.
4. Fear that your family, relatives and friends will never speak to you again, never help you, and never lend you money. Ever again.
5. Fear of not being able to do it. And when you do it, that it is the wrong it.
6. Fear of being with your own kids. Locked in the house. All day long. And they have scissors.
7. More fear, of generally disabling variety, about life. Things like never being able to buy shoes or have sex ever again. (True. At least round here.)
8. Fear of the weird people in home ed. You know, the ones who knit their own hair because they don't believe in commercially grown cotton.
9. Fear of the Ed Psych, Social Services, EWO, the LA, the PCSO, truancy patrol, all schools, forced adoption services, family law courts, the headteacher you don't even fancy, in fact everyone in any remote position of authority, including the parking attendant who works at Netto and Miss Timms the ballet teacher you have previously despised.
10. Fear of missing out, but not sure what constitutes out.
11. Fear that after one week Tinkertop will come to the crushing conclusion that any school is better than your attempt at reading a book aloud with all the voices.
12. Fear that you won't like the person you have to become to do it. And Tinkertop won't either.

So I can address all of those issues.

Just not today, that's all. Because today I am busy. A large group of us home ed mummies and daddies must get together in a dark room to watch a panto.

This panto is put on by our kids, aged 6-15. They found a script on the Internet, then sorted the whole drama themselves; beginning to end, costumes, props, learning the lines, rehearsals, direction, dramatic action, who controls the light switch and what to do about yeaughh! - the kiss - when NO WAY are you kissing him, no matter how good looking he is.

Thus we have Beauty is a Beast. A total and complete cross-cultural, mixed-age, mixed-sex group, call-it-education SUCCESS. Not one parent did DIDDLYSQUAT for this over the last three months, except one who booked a rehearsal room on a weekly basis, made tea for the parents of the panto stars, and sat in on rehearsals for 30 minutes in case two siblings punched each other. (NOT MINE.)

Well, we proud parents photographed each other,
waiting for the final show. We did that.

So yes, I can address all those fears you might have if you are considering home ed in 2012. But as you can see, the children can do it so much better.

All you got to do, is trust them.

Lunar eclipse

Wake up in strange mood, then realise what it is. The lunar influence!

That explains it. A burstingly ripe, round moon, waiting to be combined with the soft embrace of the deep shadows of the earth! What intimacy of life's rhythm is to be shared with we women keepers of eternity, this very night!

I look down at my helpless arrangement of limbs and torso that last enjoyed action in 1876. If only the pull of the moon were true! If only I could be all plumped up with voluptuousness once more, lose twenty years, and have anyone give a damn!

Then the moon at its most full and beguiling would be worth something! I would steal it and keep it, along with its life force, in the cupboard, then never again would it seem I have taken the crumpled body of the peat bog man to wear for my own.

But I cannot go about stealing moons. Someone would notice. Anyway, it wouldn't work. The moon cannot make something from nothing. I couldn't even get propositioned yesterday in Wan Chai! Maybe the rates are too high. I mean, a thousand dollars? Is that too much?

Whatever. When darkness came, we crowded together on the roof, nursing hot chocolate, cameras, and a grudge about the torch.

We watched in awe. The soft embrace of the earth was beautiful to see. It made the moon blush red.


Have people no modesty? Some of them even filmed the encounter.

Santa will be very happy with me

I negotiate with Dig to triplet-mind Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, while I travel to Hong Kong island to do the Christmas shopping.

Success!

That may have been the success of the day, it is true.

But I am never downhearted! My achievements can be yet dragged - kicking and screaming - from what merely appears to be abject misery and failure.

Here then are my achievements on the Christmas shopping front. I am in celebratory mood.

1. I attempt the ordeal in Wan Chai, hot-spot for prostitution and plumbing. I am trying to think of something like an achievement for that. Maybe it is that I was never mistaken for either a prostitute or a plumber in the entire afternoon.

2. I pass a lot of shops selling taps. I realise that you can get anything you want, tap-wise, in Hong Kong. Gold dolphins arising from shells? No problem. I become an expert on taps. (Not on prostitution.)

3. I recover my bearings after becoming hopelessly lost and wandering aimlessly in the wrong direction because I cannot read a map. It only takes an hour!

4. I never bumped into anyone (not counting the handbag incident), and I never had to walk with my fist stretched out in front of me aimed at face-height, like I do in Mong Kok.

5. I found the art supplies shop despite having scribbled over the address, and I was brave enough to enter the little door at street level, where the concierge ignored me.

6. I managed to get a lift going in the right direction. Better still, this time I did not end up on floor 35 for the karaoke bar, where I did not need to frantically press buttons in the manner of a total imbecile who cannot use a lift. At floor 15, a crowd of Chinese people did not get in, cramming in a space for 10, and forcing the lift back up to floor 35 before trying to take me hostage to sing Cantonese love-pop songs. (It is taking me some time to recover from that afternoon, actually.)

7. The art supplies shop was open.

8. I did not spend Dig's monthly wage on paper, paint, sparkly things, and glue.

9. I have acquired a lot of Chinglish schedulers (pointless but irresistible), and an assortment of pretty craft items that will prompt the children to fantastic craft (pointless but hopeful.)

10. I never told Dig that I found the exact same items $44,256 dollars cheaper and three shops down the road from the ferry pier. Neither did I mention that if I had just bought the stuff there I would have saved five hours of his child-minding time while I wandered blindly about Wan Chai becoming a tap expert and wondering if at any point I might be mistaken for a plumber or a hooker.

Success. I can barely wait for Christmas Day.

Carbon Chemistry for kids

It isn't often I recommend any paid-for course or curriculum, is it? Mostly because, until now, we haven't followed any.

Well, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have now followed one - just a weeny one - and I want to recommend it.

Hmm. I feel strangely guarded about recommending any 'learning product' to the home ed community.

I'm not sure why. Maybe because the community is so diverse, any recommendation is likely to be pointless. Or perhaps I just don't want to cause any fuss.

I know it seems a modest enough thing to do - recommend a course - but in my experience the home ed world is filled with individuals who have very strong opinions about hearing things like this. Usually they are more than willing to share those opinions. Vigorously. It's what I sometimes love and hate about this community, you wonderfully irritating people.

I mean, if I chose to recommend a paid-for curriculum on a discussion list for example, and I picked the wrong list, the reactions I might get are various.

Contempt might be one of them. Someone will tut here is an example of trying to turn an income from need. Education is already free, and people are always trying to make money from it.

Someone else will caution how any course is all very well but you have to watch the American ones. They seem normal, yes. Really the author has an underlying political goal to promote a Christian right-wing agenda.

The woman who is bonkers might pop up at that point to say the author is actually a follower of Satan. Evidence, right there in Chapter 3. What's more, you can find videos on YouTube to prove it. (Someone usually suggests psychiatric help.)

Another voice will pip up then that if you're following a structured curriculum, why don't you go live in the offices of the Local Authority? And didn't you know it would all be for nothing, because all exams are pointless?

That suggestion might be added to by someone hinting darkly that if you follow a structured, paid-for, local authority sanctioned curriculum today, then the government will make it law for everyone tomorrow.

Finally, someone will brightly add their autonomously educated son has 15 A Levels and an offer at Cambridge.

At that point everyone agrees it's a totally individual choice and a wonderful way to conduct an education.

All of which is a long way of saying, I'm not recommending this weeny course on any home ed discussion list. Fortunately, I have a blog.

I can say Boo. Our Carbon Chemistry Co-op is finished. The final workshop was held today. I am forlorn without the Carbon Chemistry Co-op. It has been brilliant. Big smackeroos to our weekly host Kriss, and to author Ellen McHenry.

I thoroughly recommend it.

The course, the experiments, and especially the coming together of a dozen kids once a week to follow the structure and create a chemical chaos. It stood up well to their assaults.

Not so cruel

I think a lot about Britain.

I hear the old place is set for trauma on a new scale, as this week it is to be destroyed by weather. Not enough then, to be squeezed in the grip of the Heartless Tories, froze to death in the winter dark, and generally forced to suffer under the iron fist of Christmas Shopping.

Because we are bathed in a warm golden sunshine here in Hong Kong, and I have a bedroom view of green woolly mountains, I sometimes feel it is incumbent upon me to do that expat thing I see done in the comments following British national misery news. Where someone with a name like Imaluckybleeder cheerily pops up under the latest crisis to gloat that the sun is shining where they live, they have a cold beer, and they couldn't give a toss because they hated Britain anyway.

It is unnecessary, isn't it? My heart and my sympathies lie really in England, even though the sun is very warm and the mountains very beautiful. So I would like to reassure the people of Britain that a temporary expat life is often not as wonderful as Imaluckybleeder suggests. Crap local beer aside, here is the misery from this particular exile. Let this hand hold with yours.

1. La famille Grit is soon to be living in Hong Kong without income. This is a remarkable feat of financial management and household planning. I would like everyone to think of us as smart-arsed tax evaders as we swank it up in one of the world's most expensive cities. In actual fact we are mostly incompetent, and will probably be living from now until March on Pot Noodle.

2. My stomach ache is worse. Next week, thanks to a contract ending, Dig loses his comfortable access to medical services. This means, until we return to Blighty in March, we will officially be in Hong Kong as tourists. Since I might be heading for full-scale Ebola by the weekend, I have clearly timed my need for expensive medical treatment, perfectly.

3. The phone camera is bust. The damn thing won't switch on. I have done the usual: left it alone to consider its options, prodded it, shouted at it, bashed it on the table, and threatened it with fire. It ignores me and mocks me with its little blank screen. Obviously it wants to die. Whatever, let the little bastard suffer, see if I care. It has pictures of Squirrel from today's home education outing. Cycling with a group of kids at Kowloon City Park.

4. We are at the brink of war with the neighbours. Give it a couple more days and we shall actually be at war; I shall be pouring bleach into their balcony plant pots and they will be shovelling dead geckos through the letterbox.

War is happening because when Shark, Squirrel and Tiger play, the neighbours complain. At first I was sympathetic - they have A BABY - but then I wondered if they were ringing the doorbell right at the off because they simply don't like the sound of kids playing and want to shut them up. Maybe they want to complain because they feel like it. Maybe the baby won't play with Mr Froggy so it must be our fault. Even Dig, who does not usually take my side over anything, is beginning to be a little fed up with them.

5. I have done nothing for Christmas. NOTHING. Apart from procuring two moose heads in a wreath. It will all be as last minute as last year. The only gift items I can think of for the dear daughters is an envelope full of cash apiece. But given the circumstances we are soon to find ourselves in, I'll be asking for a loan come January.

Let's not scare the middle-class readers

The best place today is over here.

Enough material to keep this blog going for months.

I tutted and eyeball-rolled, of course, about the general tone and direction of the article. But I'm kind. It's the Guardian. And I'm giving the writer the benefit of the doubt; Jeevan probably wrote this piece for the paper's tender and delicate middle-class audience. Surely he knows what education is really out here. He only assumed the voice character type naive!

I say, everyone! Isn't it astonishing what some parents will do?!

Maybe it's right to keep the Guardian readers dipping their toes into the shallow end, Jeevan. Don't let them over the boundary, or near the deep end, thick with the radical unschooled working classes! These people will blow your mind!

It was a bit irritating, the oooh-aren't-we-daring, middle classness; the lurking fears on 'losing out', 'missing out' and blahblah how 'families will have to work hard to ensure they're up to speed with the curriculum in later years'.

There, you let it out. The National Curriculum is the middle-class code book of Acceptable Knowledge. Go beyond the boundary at your peril.

But I was grateful too for the article, because it brought out this fantastic comment, which I totally adored. I'm almost tempted to hunt down SwissedCottage and give them a big smackeroo.

Sounds like the newest craze for upper-middle class yummy mummies - perhaps something to fill the day for the ladies-who-lunch crowd? Their Tarquins and Saskias will be learning about artisanal cheeses and mid-20th century interpretive dance, whilst the Shanes and Jodis on the estates learn about whatever is on Sky TV...

It perfectly picked up the tone of the article, yet missed the point of learning outside school completely.

But say they're a little bit right! Because when a family takes a child out of school, their approach will probably promote that family's values and culture. So yes, you could say a middle-class family will seek to raise a middle-class child, like a Jewish family will raise a Jewish child. What? Did anyone know that?

But I'm not so sure you can say the same about ideas.

Once you come out of school, out here in the real world, what we learn comes from people in society. Guess what! There are different social groups out here!

Learning out of school is the most astonishingly egalitarian experience. You meet all sorts. Everyone is a teacher for your child. And, unlike school, you can't control the ideas people come with; you can't say what your child will learn or not; you can't predict or measure what your child will take away from any experience or interaction in the real world.

In my experience, learning outside the boundaries has been far more socially broadening than at school, where the intake can be narrowly focused. Out here you can rub shoulders with the family who live in the rough side of town, and the family who live at t'Hall, and both of you have got to help each other's kid build that space rocket.

See? Ideas are even stronger than class. Ideas that bring people together, regardless of whether we wear clogs or Manolos. Ideas about education, freedom, about learning, of choice, and autonomy.

With those ideas, people can tear up the middle-class code book. Yes, I know! We can even think dangerous ideas.

Now I've let out one of the secrets about knowledge! But shhh. We don't want to give anyone the vapours. Better not tell the Guardian readers.

Nearly a perfect fantasy day

It isn't often I can do exactly as I like.

Wait. Stop there. I would like to claim 'exactly as I like' means indulging in thrilling conduct. Dangerous, dirty, and unbecoming. If memory serves me right, that behaviour might have implicated silk, heels, and two-seater sports cars.

Regretfully, I think that ended. I didn't give permission. When kids arrived, those days left.

Parental life now diverts me, i.e. I do grocery shopping, laundry, and self-piteous whining, alternating with heavy-duty staggering across deep and sinking badlands of responsibility. I am wearing old shoes and odd socks. I may have grown a beard.

My fantasies out of this mire - into the lightness of leisure and pleasure zones - sadly reveal how limited my expectations and ambitions have become.

Fantasy, to do exactly as I like, is now the impossibility of enjoying a few hours without continuous interruption, in solitary peaceandquiet. Maybe loafing about the house with no imperative to deliver food into anyone's mouth except my own. Better still, no-one to disrupt my cupofcoffee + packetofbiscuits.

Tiptop fantasy number one also adds the indulgence of reading what I'd like, writing when I'd like, listening to music without needing earphones, and being able to stare at pictures going past my eyes on the iplayer without niggle of guilt that I should be doing something with someone else that is educational.

Well, surprisingly, I do enjoy some of my fantasies today. Mostly thanks to a stomach ache and feeling of nausea, but still. Enough to hole me up on the island, provide me with a Get Out of Jail Free card, a perfect excuse not to have to face three million Chinese coming at me with high heels in Wan Chai, and another reason to evade the responsibility of Christmas shopping in the art supplies shop, at least for a while longer.

I spend my feeling-a-bit-off-day loafing about the house, wearing an old tunic with a coffee stain down the front, and ignoring the children in a professional manner by saying I am not feeling well, go and ask your father.

Thus I get to listen to some early music, watch an episode of The Killing, and read from Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French (funny) to Leslie Chang's Factory Girls (not funny).

Of course I do not manage all my fantasy intact. (It possibly also shows why I never achieve anything of substance and would be foolish to set my ambitions higher than a daily blog post.)

In the writing of these few miserly words, I have been interrupted 17 times; eight of which were demands for food, mugs, laundry, and scraps of paper. Two of the more irritating interruptions included my apparently necessary involvement in a fight over who is the more horrible sister (Shark or Tiger?) and the impact a husband can have, when he comes into the room, announces 'it is too bright in here' and proceeds to switch all the lights off.

The start of another expensive new hobby

Do you girls know how many pairs of shoes I could have bought? Do you?

French, typically

I should have known.

I should have known that the French Animation Film Festival would not involve cute, tongue-in-cheek plasticine, à la Wallace and Gromit. It would automatically require animated scenes of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.

But it is French. Meh. I shrug, Gallic style. What elze can one draw in ze cartoon?

Thanks, La Femme à Cordes. I sit squirming while Tiger sensibly covers her eyes. This is acutely annoying, mostly because her continued interest in animation is a prime reason why we are here.

Naively, I see Animation listed in the French film festival catalogue and buy the tickets there and then. I assume we'll be safe; cartoons never deal convincingly with sex or death. Duh. No-one told the French that rule, obviously.

Incidentally, to guard myself against accusations of prudishness (which I probably am; it's my age), I would have hated La Femme à Cordes, even if I carried only the burden of my own adult consciousness into the cinema. It seemed to be a narrative of schlock disturbing images making not much point beyond demonstration of male power, rape, orgasm, and death.

Anyway, enough of that one.

The star of the show, and what captured my eye, was Georges Méliès Le voyage dans la lune (1902), restored as a hand-tinted colour version.

That is one splendid film, and our first science fiction movie, so chew on that, Avatar. It is so gloriously and endlessly worthy of study - not least for the pointy wizard hats and dolly birds gaily waving off the space rocket. And the exploding aliens are simply brilliant. Judge for yourself in black and white.

Now if you have nothing else to do of an afternoon but update your French animation, then try Chienne d'histoire, a story created beautifully with watercolour, illustration and collage - even if it does deal with dog slaughter - and the gorgeous and tender Le silence sous l'écorce. Happiness. Death. Snow. It'll make you cry.

Damn Frenchies.

How to colour hair the easy way!

1. Come to the ill-founded conviction that a crumpled face will surely be rejuvenated ten years by colouring the grey hair sprouting from the top.

2. Read all hair-related horror stories, avidly, for months. Absorb the terror of each one, slowly.

I coloured my hair and died. My mother coloured her hair and she died. Hair colouring ate my face. Superhaircolour says they are sorry after face-death misery left children motherless.

3. Peer nervously into all retail outlets selling hair colour. Think, When I am desperate and going slightly mental, so maybe death will no longer matter, I will buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

4. Stare enviously at other women. But they have coloured their hair! They are STILL ALIVE.

5. Reach a point on a Monday morning when life or death doesn't matter. Impulsively run out to buy Colour My Hair the Silky Easy Way.

6. Stare at box fearfully. It is a box of certain death. 200 sleeping tablets and a bottle of Whisky would be easier.

7. After six weeks, tentatively open box. Learn instructions by rote.

8. Ignore box for another two weeks. Plenty of time to prevaricate! Pray grey hair turns brown without assistance, and that crumpled face magically becomes age 20 again! Try and delude self with, I am so busy! I haven't had a moment!

9. Pluck up courage for skin allergy test. Dab fluid, awkwardly, on inside of elbow. (Rats, now I have to wear long sleeves because otherwise it looks like one of the children thumped me.)

10. Stare in horror as chemical foams on skin. Expect to die now in a severe allergic reaction. Grab children in terror. Scare them by whispering, slightly hysterically, Mummy loves you. You know, don't you? Feel the urge to confess. And it was me who ate the stash of chocolate Squirrel hid behind the bread bin.

11. Within 24 hours, forget about the patch test and wash arm. It is a shower! Who can wash with one arm sticking out the door?

12. Try the patch test again. This time, wash with one arm sticking out the door.

13. Decide it is impossible to prevent water dribbling between armpit and elbow. Stop to plan and think logically:

i. Colour hair when hairdressers are open. Thus, when severe allergic reaction kicks in, there is time to run screaming to them for an antidote.
ii. Colour hair not at rush hour, when A&E is accessible.
iii. Colour hair when another responsible adult is at home to call ambulance, lift body out of shower, assist medical staff in lowering corpse from window, console children, etc.

14. Decide on a day.

15. The day arrives. Drink a large glass of wine. It no longer matters that it is 9am.

16. Don plastic gloves and feel this course of action is as foolhardy as surgically removing your own liver.

17. Follow instructions sheet to the letter. Panic each time fluid touches scalp. Wait continuously for severe allergic reaction.

18. While waiting the 20 minutes development time, write Last Will and Testament. Sob a little in self-pity that life has come to this. A bottle of foaming fluid in a bathroom.

19. Emerge three hours later, having obsessively examined scalp from every angle, tugged at hair to feel if it is coming out, scrutinised arm for signs of severe allergic reaction.

20. Announce presence to dear husband and ask, How is my hair? Am I 20 years younger? Husband scrutinises head, as if looking for fleas, then says, Look round the back. You have missed a clump.

How we do it

I never know how best to answer that question, How do you do home education?

Tut. It's like asking, How do you live? Or How do you interact with your children?

But I guess they're asking when they have a gut feeling that not all is right with their school option, and not just because they're a nosy parker. Maybe they're considering choices ahead, and wondering what their experiences might be.

In which case, I try and help. Maybe with this?

5% sitting at the table doing anything alongside me which an onlooker could say looks like school. (Usually over breakfast.)

25% kids away doing their own thing. (Squirrel on roof, doing stuff, better not to ask. Shark reading fish book. Tiger creating horse animation.)

25% out with friends, groups, meet ups, workshops, events.

45% family, reading, cooking, talking, visiting, play, swinging punches, sulking.

Or maybe a narrative of events would help? Today's home ed diary reads:

'Chemistry workshops are going well. Our Leader is totally brilliant at galvanising kids. (Not literally, obviously. That would involve dipping them in zinc. I mean metaphorically.)

I bet I could run these weekly workshops back home. Looks simple. Involve a dozen chemical-minded kids to chant chemicals, run about, sing, do drama, experiment on a super-strength dining table, and now, watch TV. (One of the kids has to work out how to turn the thing ON and play stuff. Same as at home.)

But good result. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger can now make some sort of account for carbon.'

Or maybe I could photo record the most eye-catching and extraordinary moment of the day.


See? Home ed is easy. It's just living normal life, but with lots of friends and family. Does that help?