The January greys

I shall be glad when this weather has done with grey.

Swallowing fistfulls of sunlight in tablet form, I scurry off to soak in rays of happy light from my fake daylight bulb in the upstairs kitchen. Just thirty minutes prevents all gloom!

This is what I believe, so do not take it from me with your tales of cold logic or calculating science.

But I must have an everyday of positive thinking! Come hell or high water, damn and blast this planet. Yes it will be this creative, positive, bright and breezy, shining day, and I will fashion it from my meagre resources. Or die in the attempt.

So I try my daily walk (in the rain), cut short (the rain) to the local Tesco. (Even though I know that Tesco are false friends who will not miss me when I die.)

I decided to photograph the street debris en route. Photo number one is of three pieces of meat. Some things are beyond explanation. I wondered, on the way home, too late, whether someone had laced them with cat-killing poison.

Take my feet as an elegiac couplet in a correspondence with the weather.

But I then wondered if it could be poetry that lifted my soul? So here is my poem, post-Tesco visit, called Shopping List.

Baking Pots
 Reduced Price
Haddock
Cucumber Whole
Crusty White
Bananas, Loose.

My last resort is close. Dangle fake diamonds from my ears and drink rum.

But then! I save the day! I manage to fix my eyeball onto my snake box.

(It's a work in progress.)

I put this off till Sunday, hoping Sunday could make a difference

Hoisted aloft with rage. In fact, it has been difficult for Dig and the family to coax me down from the ceiling.

The third second after I found out, I took up my new residence there, two meters up, third arm of the faux-chandelier, building my lair of exquisite rage with snarling bare-fangs and sprouted facial hair.

Growling, in my opinion, is better than Shark - my beautiful, strong, sensitive girl who withstands all - suffering maximum distress by Mother Marching, bull-direct at school gates, swinging baseball bat to herald The Speech of The Abused, or what I bloody well think, all knuckle-fisted, bare-boned, sharp-toothed; filled with the ferocity of foul revenge screaming Where is the FUCKING ENGLISH LESSON?

What should be in your English lesson? IMHO those precious 50 minutes should acknowledge the identities of women, girls, and make a space for a clear line of words from a woman's head through her level eye and from her equal mouth.

Shark should be given that space, and if she is not, then I'm laying down the motorway to our woman souls and flattening the way ahead so she - daughter of mine - can stand upright on that surface and walk its length, and know it is right to say, this is Me, this is my-who-I-am and this voice is Mine. It is Woman Voice and you shall not take it from me.

Strangely, having written it out here in hieroglyphs, I feel slightly better, or fractionally less unhinged, and will write an email to the English teacher instead that begins, Dear Jane,

Wherever in the world you roam

I spend my Saturday in joyful, artful, restful peace, quietly composing and stitching Wherever in the world you roam. Made with you in mind: for the person who travels far away, yet is reminded that love stays at home.

Yes! I have a stall at the magnificent Handmade and Vintage, held in the big indoor square in front of John Lewis in Central Milton Keynes, March 4-5.

The big, busty shows where you can buy anything from a repaired juke-box to a metal-twisted wand.

Save the date!

And if you'd like to fondle my leather and net,

See you at Stall 13.

Love, Knicker Drawer Note Books.

(Who, according to my customers, should be in Vogue.)

xx

A turn round the park

I live in a community where people solve their problems with a practical immediacy, yet it's a place where the community resources are becoming more subject to control by others.

Since I deduce this state of political control on the basis of a bit of string, a public notice, and an abandoned shopping trolley, I allow that my deductions might be open to other interpretations.


I mean, I'm not exactly Sherlock. I've missed loads of the bleeding obvious, even when it's stared me in the face.


See what you think. Here is the bit of string.

Holding up the Victorian iron railings. Probably no money to mend these, or in a budget not available. But I really like this resourceful, problem-solving approach of the common man/woman, in the style of Honey, I fixed it.

As to the sawn-off stump in the park, purpose pre-stump, I can only guess. The stump was supplied by a manufacturer in Ayrshire, if you'd like to supply a clue. These days the toddler play park is over the other side of the park, so I can't see the stump showing me the ghost of an old carousel. I like the way it's just left there for you, to trip over in the dark.

Next to the park, I see BT is taking down the phone box. They gave 42 days for us to ring them up and plead for its survival, from September last year.

What I liked about this was this box's proximity to an entire line of old GPO exchange boxes, all standing in a terminal line on the other side of the wall, property of the local museum. This is the line of the dead, and the fence dividing them is no barrier at all. I wonder if anyone called to save this remnant of the public payphone era?

On the other hand, the local primary school is bounded by a set of four fences and two gates of varying  heights and steel mesh. This border is policed by Boundary Gate and Barrier Contracts. I think it definitely tells me something about the way our neighbourhoods are changing, and I don't need to be Sherlock for that.

But finally! A practical solution of a long standing variety. Bring your shopping home in a supermarket trolley then dump the trolley on top of the garage.

There's something quietly comforting about that.

Good for the soul

I am eagerly anticipating the creative payoff that will result from my daily wanderings.

This is one of my rules: you walk about briskly for an hour in your Exploratory Excursion not only as a way of making sure you put on pants and leave the house - but to rest your mind and liberate your soul. Or whatever it is, that moment that makes me think, I wonder how I can stitch in a twist of sinister darkness to the Journal of the Travelling Woman?

Aiming for a twist of sinister darkness, I took the left-hand turn because I know where the right-hand turn leads.

I admit I did not particularly did not feel comfortable walking under the bridge, with its whoo-whooo sounds echoing and bouncing between the walls like a ghost trapped between the girders. As it is also the pigeon-roost neighbourhood, I was jolly glad my coat had a hood.

And I found an aqueduct! Water sluicing down the hill, calibrating the level of the Grand Union Canal. Strangely satisfying.

Forking paths. Which would you choose?

Obviously we chose the same. And encountered the marks left from the ghost-tribes, with the hands impulsed by the neolithic, who still meet at the underpass.

Then a proper Gothic moment, by the arch, and the decision to enter the deep, dark tunnel with its who-knows-what ahead.

Seriously, there is no way as a single woman walker that I would choose this path, so I am feeling the Exploratory Excursion has come up smiling today, bringing with it such adventures into uncomfortable territory as this.

 

Satisfying then, to emerge back home, contemplating my stitching room and in some tiny way, changed.

The realities of choice

Dispiriting. Getting out of bed before dawn and getting Shark to school.

Shark is equally glum, and still considering her options. She's had a few sparkling days of living normally. Organising her own time, following her interests, playing with her thermistor, and asking herself, I wonder what will happen next?

Now, she says, she knows. The school will find ways to waste her time. Her time will be micro-managed, interests will be guided on someone else's terms, the day is chopped into another's organisation, and she is back in the inescapable company of the dreadful Maths teacher, the teacher who cannot communicate even a passing interest, let alone passion. Roll on 3pm.

Dispiriting indeed.

I use my brief time with her for my words of motherly wisdom. I tell her to make up her own mind and we will support her, regardless of her choice.

More usefully, perhaps, I tell her, if she is undecided, don't fret. At some point she will know. A line will be crossed - violating the way she creates her life, striking against the principles she uses to guide her choices, bringing a depth of emotional pain or a physical threat - and then the decision will be clear. This person, this place, this circumstance, it is all doing more violence to a state of being, than the rewards they bring.

Street walk

My daily walk through town.

Just as I was thinking how walking is an act of theatre - ipso facto I am walker, actress, audience and critic - I come across the remains of a previous performance.

Who uses flour bombs? Seems only right to make a stop at our local second-hand bookshop to browse the theatre shelf.

I am not sure whether grubbing through used books for half-an-hour counts as Exploratory Walk. (Subdivision: Woman in Landscape / Urban/Rural / Flameuse / Walking Lit&Lang.) Whatever, I just have to carry about in my backpack a rather lumpy C. Day-Lewis along with Women in Technology.

Then I turned left and took the back road, looking to see if I could drop down to follow the canal.

Not here, evidently. I walk as dictated by whimsy (one of the walking rules). But the signage caught my eye, regularly placed along what feels like a border fence.

Designed to tell me I'm now on private land in a 'gated community' without gates (but with signs), so clear off.

And if I was walking in anyone's company, you'd have to listen to a soapbox full of opinion about the horrors of this experience with its implied threat via these border notices that if I do anything that someone doesn't like, I'll be fined and imprisoned.

So I took a lot of photographs of the signs, half-hoping a security guard would appear and I could have a right set-to with moral righteousness and illegality both on my side, all at the same time. Bliss.

I also enjoyed a good grumble in my own head about the complicities or resistances of people involved in the privatisations of public land and the steady way that unaccountable private companies might work to control social behaviours.

As it was, no-one tuned up to turf me out the 'gated community' without gates (but with signs). Even though I stood in the road for 15 minutes, waiting.

I then walked along a public footpath next to land locked up behind green railings, owned by the old Railway Works. Or, with my local knowledge, I'm assuming the Works owns this land: there's no sign to say, so it could be owned by a giant squirrel protecting their nut stack. (Unlikely.)

But I look at the heavy green railing, determined to protect what's inside and keep me out. I see those tree branches, like the fingers of the imprisoned, poking through the bars, tentatively wondering if what is on the other side is liberty.

Memo to self: charge the camera battery in the mornings

Did as advised by two men (with a book to plug), and had fun with my time management.

I Pomodoro'd my working morning.

Except I had to cheat. You are supposed to split your working time into 25-minute blocks, then take a 5-minute break, and start on another 25-minutes, and so on, until your book is written/ the house is painted/ the accounts complete/ whatever you promised yourself you would do in 2005. Voila! Finished!

The first 25 minutes flew by, and I didn't want to stop, so didn't, until I'd done my book-stitchery for an hour or so, then I went to have a 10-minute break.

Unfortunately - and I suspect, a duty not held by two men with a book to plug - I had then to make coffee for our Travelling Aunty and put the laundry on.

By the end of 15 minutes I was into the washing up from yesterday's breakfast. (Left on the hopeful happenchance that elves would come along and sort it out. No such luck.)

After the coffee-making duties, the laundry, the washing up, some more washing up, and a disinfecting of the kitchen surfaces in a pathetic attempt to clear out the rat that has taken residence in the property, nearly an hour had passed.

I bet two men (with a book to plug) organise their days while assuming these sort of jobs are done for them. I am growing increasingly resentful about that, and am using 2017 to regain my proper womanhood. Well, that's the plan, obviously. I haven't started on it yet.

But I did go for a walk, because now I am a flaneuse.

I go where I fancy, in the nature of the dérive. It is just as well my drift includes rural as well as urban, because even though I had not planned my path, my feet directly for the local field, made a straight path of it downhill and found a new bird hide.

I thought it would be a straightforward affair to come home by simply returning on the route I'd come, but I got embarrassingly lost in the damn field and had to make my way round all the fences, like a woodlouse tracks its borders, looking for the hole that leads out.

Anyway, have the illustrated record of my drift. Before the camera battery died.

 

This time, with feeling

Hurrah! 2017! I can feel my flurry of new resolutions coming on.

I wonder if I could do that bloggy-thing again. Post, not for posterity, but for the bewilderment of my children, every bleeding day!

Not sure. Last time I writted about home education (for years, possibly), I not only wanted to impart how life can be from the vantage point of implementing a bastard strong-armed educational righteousness vis-à-vis Real Life, I also wanted to Prove Dig Wrong.

In 2006, Dig said I wouldn't keep any record past the first week. And I just needed to show him what an iron streak of bloody-minded Oppositional Defiance Disorder can do.

But this time, it all feels different. My ball of determined rage/anguish/singlemindedness is gone. I have softened, remoulded by experience, and willing to take on a few new shapes. So this time, Dig might be right. If I started up the daily blog again, for it to last nearly one week before I reappeared in July, it wouldn't even bother me! Life moves on, and this time, it couldn't be all about an education.

But who can tell what happens next. I am open to a feeling for this, and a feeling for that.

And that is what I want. I'm going to make 2017 a year, unpredictably, full of it.

Arthur King now lives in our cupboard

Spent the last twelve hours sorting through the whereabouts 1920-1970 of Arthur King from Gateshead.

Merry Christmas.

I do not know Arthur, except he looks rather dashing in a uniform and I put a copy of him on our wall of Stolen Ancestors, by which method I hope to strew false clues to a false history, and have my daughters waste their hours trying to track down relatives we don't have.

Arthur had a jolly time of it, if the photos are anything to go by.

And, hopefully, often behaved in a manner that did not meet with the full approval of the Aunty in the Frilly Hat.

But if you are looking for Arthur, then we have him now, safely tucked up, at the back of the heirloom book cupboard, next to Wyn and the Townings. I wondered if he married into the Townings, in which case welcome to the family (girls: your Gran's maternal side c1900), but if he didn't marry a Towning, then I don't think we should have him.

Of course I don't resent the space he takes up, but somehow one's own glorious heroines, heroes, black sheeps, ne'er-do-wells and convicts should come first, should they not?

I'm only pressured into doing this now because Aunty Dee is coming to stay. I want those boxes, including Arthur, tidied up and put away. Otherwise she will get everybody out again and that's the end of my dining table for six days. You recall that last time, she got quite agitated when I suggested throwing away the letters from the GPO 1964-68. I asked if she was going to write a history of Gateshead administration 1964-68, considering we also have letters from the bank and the house insurers, and she just narrowed her eyes at me, like I was in league with the Devil.

Tiger, Squirrel and Shark are a little bemused by this sudden flurry into genealogy. I can't be doing this long, I reassure them, because I have things to do, things to leave behind, and the arrangement of King, Arthur, even looking dashing in his uniform, is not one of them.

But if you are looking for King, Arthur, just get in touch and I'll get him out the cupboard.

'What can you do with a book?'

Cruising around t'internet one day, looking for ideas about the history of the book, I came across a software salesman - call him something like World Leader of Marketing and Sales Think It Solutions - and he said, while promoting the glories of Think It Solutions, 'After all, what can you do with a book? Once you've read it, that's it.' Then he made a throwaway gesture, like tossing a match.

Hail the future. Buy the ebook!

Well, I have a visceral hatred for people like him, that is true. But what a future!

Have a problem in your life? Can't sort out your own narrative? Howabout we rent a space in the cloud to add our problematic, messy, stream-of-conscious unconnected thoughts. Then press GO, and the lot is reorganised for we inadequate people with our incoherent notes, we who barely string a sensible narrative.

But now, with Think It Solutions, Scrivener meets your Personal Life Coach! Your incoherent notes in the cloud will tell you what to do, what to avoid, how to live better!

Ideas sifted, organised - some undesirable ideas deleted: they come close to thought-crimes - then the lot smoothly connected. Your new plot worked out, your role presented back to you, your narrative of past, present, future, sorted. 

Forget your own cultural connections, your own knowledges that you're striving to articulate, ignore all that, because don't they just get in the way of how your personhood needs to balance itself in today's market! 

Here's what to do next. Pay an extra $150 and send your unique Think It Solution to your phone for downloading to your fridge, because part of the solution is to change your diet, then press YES! to debit your account for this week's special offer Comfort Scented Candles #deliverynow!

Only make sure you keep up the payments for cloud rental. You wouldn't want all your personal notes, your thoughts, the metadata of your life, suddenly taken from you. Payments to restore your notebooks will be high!

In the earth I shall bury my notebooks - the grubby old books and thoughts made on paper, thoughts writ by hand with pencil and pen, ideas that are scribbles and doodles and jottings, the thoughts I committed when I connected one idea to another - I shall bury them somewhere. Not in your view, World Leader of Marketing and Sales Think It Solutions. First you'd have to find them, to toss a match, or press Delete.

In those buried books, I shall leave notes about things that never happened, jotting for fictions, connections of thinkings that show my cultural history, thoughts that have no conclusion, instincts that don't want a resolution, truths I can never speak straight, the thoughts that live only because they are unsolvable contradictions, all the notes from my hand that make me my who-I-am. I shall bury them all, clues for a history that it's in someone's interest to erase.

That's what you can do with a book.

Hurrah! Santa-Free Zone!

It comes down to this: I did not tell my children that a strange man comes into their room at night to leave presents. The end.

This polar position of mine has drawn fire and ire, it is true. Even before I had kids, as I confidently asserted about the age of eighteen, sitting in a boyfriend's house, declaring to his mother, that I would never, ever, tell my kids that Santa existed, and in my opinion, that was lying, and I knew this was like saying 'the Pope is gay' to a Catholic. I was a walking, talking, venial, mortal, eternal sin. Well so what? That relationship wasn't going anywhere, anyway.

When someone gave me the foolhardy task of raising my own mini people, I stuck to my No Santa line, because it's a lie, Godammit. I still remember the hurt and injury when I found out. I also remember saying to my mother I'll never believe anything you say, ever again. Frankly, I'm not risking that from Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I need them to believe me, because they have yet to hear the family history.

So I explained to my miniatures that Santa was a story, plain and simple. We looked at pictures of fat men in red suits from Coca-Cola advertising strategies circa 1930. Then I told them how some people (the innocent and gullible) liked to believe Santa was real, and - to my uncomprehending children - gave the instruction that they were not to shout out in a Tesco queue in the presence of other 4-year olds, Santa's not real! Santa's not real!

When the mother-in-law-never-to-be heard me declare my soul's intent as a young 18-year old, well, that was me frozen out of all celebrations, joys, and Christmas spirit, because I had stolen Christmas, irreparably damaged it, spoiled it for everyone, made a fool of myself, couldn't iron a shirt, and had no right even walking on planet earth because I was a child abuser and probably a mass murderer.

I cannot say the tone has shifted much in the response to my Santa-Free Celebrations. For whatever reasons, the line still can make people uneasy, and if you are a fellow No-Santa, then you'll have experienced the awkward pauses too.

One of the charges that has been levelled at me, is how I am encouraging children to have No Magic and No Imagination at This Special Time.

I have never given an adequate response to that charge, because it doesn't make any sense. Does it mean we can schedule Magic and Imagination at Christmas and Easter, but not mid-July because, somehow, not being A Special Time, mid-July would be Wrong?

Each to their own. The teens, possibly psychologically dented, thanks to their mother's brutalities, had December's magic and imagination like this instead:

Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House. Brilliant and thrilling, with a plot that involves deceitful mother-love, accidental baby burning, and anvils. Fantastic staging! I LOVED Anita Rachvelishvili's voice as Azucena. If you have pots of gold, then buy tickets. And if you have £7.50, then book kids into the schools performances. The only trouble with my ROH attendance is now I've got into the habit. The idea of not attending HURTS, and we are close to the edge of non-eligibility. So yay me because I've started saving to pay the sodding membership fees to get the mid-range seat prices. Lidl value range pasta at 29p for 500g should help towards this need.

Strange Beasts and Where to Find Them in 4D. I wanted 3D but they only offered the 4D experience. Honestly, don't bother. 3D is fine; you get monsters and explosions right at you, but 4D? Half-way through, I turned to glare at the bloke behind me, for kicking my seat. Then I realised that was the 4D moment. Someone spat at me and Dig spilt wine down his trousers, even after we'd told him your seat will wobble.

King Lear at the Old Vic. Of course I had to take my Gribblysnofflebobs to experience this bit of theatre history. Who would miss Glenda Jackson as Lear? I'd have to be in hospital or dead. A mighty Lear, a superb Fool, a strange Brechtian thread, and a fantastic storm with bin plastic and video rain. Excellent minimalist force. Loved it, although we had to catch the Drunk Express to get home, which was unfortunate.

So there we have it: a December of No Imagination and No Magic. So far. But I suspect that nothing will redeem me: without Santa, I will remain outside human society for ever. Hmm. Thinking about it, I might start a meet-up group for like-minded No-Santaites who like theatre. I'm sure we could get together and wear hats.

The Tempest, RSC

I hang around the back of the curtains at Theatreboard these days, but I'm hoiking out this post and doubling it up here, for the use of home educators looking for a video-Shakespeare theatre experience:

Took four 16/17-year olds to see The Tempest at the RSC yesterday. Much discussion followed, including sharp observations (one at college studying theatre). For those interested in teen views, here are 4 teen critics...

1: Wanted the stripped-back and bare versions of the play in the style at the Globe (pre-Rice) with 'actors in the raw' without props, so they were going to be difficult to please ... Teen critic complained about the opening scene with the actors not moving while the ship sloshes about ... they wanted the physicality of the actors bashing themselves about the stage and hanging onto ropes, as one would presumably do in a real Tudor storm; they thought the beginning showed the actors over-relying on the cinematic experience, or acting so as not to be in conflict with it. I think they ended the evening quietly impressed and won over by the beautiful brightness of colour and the imaginative use of image, but after they'd begun by whining 'This is not cinema, I want theatre' then it was hard to come back from that.

2. 'Stunning' Hugely impressed by the riot of colour and image; they enjoyed Ariel's turn as a hologram but complained about image twitching - we couldn't decide whether these were momentary glitches or a deliberate fractioning of movement to echo a style of electrical interference, Ariel being a spirit of the air, an'all (the latter interpretation is fine by me).

3. Enjoyed the costuming generally; very appreciative of the bones of the ship and how adaptable that was as a set; thought the Caliban costume was 'great' and loved the attention to detail on Caliban's fingers and fish fins; also loved how the characters on the island seemed to get muddy feet as they went though the play, as if showing they really were on an island; loved how the play had a bit of everything - opera, slapstick, anguished screaming and frivolity.

4. Found a lot to think about in the relationship of Prospero and Ariel, as in Prospero seemed to love Ariel more than he loved being a wizard conjuring spells with a stick (and who wouldn't want that?); commented how Russell Beale's performance brings out the menacing side of Prospero - they've previously seen Roger Allam in the role and they noted how very different were the interpretations. In the Allam version Prospero came over as resigned but bearing grudges, impetuous and given to rash judgement; with Russell Beale, Prospero comes across as much more considered: no-one wanted to get on the wrong side of him because he'd be vengeful and dangerous. As Prospero screams in Ariel's face, we all felt here was someone with such internal rage and sorrow, he'd be capable of anything.

Personally, I loved the presentation of this play. I thought the combination of sound and light and image was a knockout wonder, and I loved how it brought back the Masque to a proper status, and seems to mark a moment when we can have a new way to explore imaginative theatrescapes. I'd love to see it again in the cinema run, to compare how it works on a screen. Simon Russell Beale is wonderful, and I didn't feel the acting was at all compromised or weakened by the image show. So, from me, a lovely, lovely show. Moving, and visually WOW.

 

And if you have an opinion on it, then share it: http://theatreboard.co.uk

Black Friday, Day of National Shame

Yes, I hate Black Friday.

Everything about it. The name; the way we adopt an American cultural import without critical reflection; the global retail box shifters who drive it all; the insidious advertising preying on our need for security; the impulse purchasing that the day normalises and celebrates; the embarrassing photographs of people humiliating themselves in shopping rage over a flat-screen TV.  I cannot find one good thing yet to recommend it.

People, spare a thought for your independent retailers! They're not box shifters and discounters. They work hard everyday to create a shop and a trade that works for you and them. Think - ahem - of crafters and makers! Like the poor lady book-creators who stitch and bind by the midnight hours, just to put a crust of bread on the table for the children (and three teen-tickets at a fiver apiece for The Tempest at the RSC). They - we - cannot afford to offer you a 60% discount on a hand-made item, crafted with love, sold in a shop that we all work hard to support.

The whole Black Friday import is no more than a way to get you to support everything bad about global consumerism: the culture of underpaid and exploited workers in Asia, the overworking and bullying of retail staff, your own personal debt, and a great big toot for materialism. Meanwhile Black Friday rejects the things that should form part of our lives: honest fair-dealing trade, meeting the sellers and makers, and celebrating your independent shop owners.

I'm thinking all this, then I walk into the office, where Dig says, 'When do you need the car today? I'm thinking of going over to Bicester Shopping Village. I need new shoes and it's Black Friday.'

Post-16 choices

Some discussion these last weeks about choices for post-16 home ed kids. What next? Work? College? Loafing about? So many things to do!

I'll chip in, for the benefit of family and friends, and to cause pain to one wing of my extended family who, let's face it, are basically Scared by Strange, aka Tiger, Squirrel and Shark. Home educated all their life? How is that possible?

Then here's the choice of three typical home ed kids aged 16

Squirrel. Last seen heading off outdoors. She visited the nearest Agricultural College to look up courses in forest management. The lure of the chainsaw is strong. Visits beckon, to pig farms and silos. Discussions about badgers and tractors. We have started listening to The Archers. Maybe she can marry a farmer.

But Squirrel cannot decide between Outdoors, or Art. When Not Outdoors, she is found cutting things up and sticking and gluing and composing very fine sketchbooks. From my consensus-seeking view, I have reminded her that many dedicated and original artists work outdoors! Howabout our local Linda Johns! Anyway, Squirrel is taking a year to think and to apply somewhere for a course in something for 2017. Whatever Squirrel chooses, I have promised her close involvement with a falcon.

By-the-bye, Squirrel has a clutch of IGCSEs at Grade A. At school, I strongly suspect this quiet academic industry would have condemned her to No Choice. The staff would have discounted Art (not a real subject). Squirrel's aspirations to living off-grid in a wood wouldn't blip on their radar. No, they would have geared her into 3 academic A-Levels and then 50 grand's worth of debt in a subject she didn't, at heart, want to study, because, basically, she wants to live outdoors while sticking and gluing and that, to my mind, is fantastic way to live.

As an aside, I also want to tell you about Squirrel's mission for your youth, should she ever become Minister in Charge of Primary Schools: "All primary schools should be knocked down. All primary children should be educated in fields and woods. Why are children sitting in rooms? They should learn how to conduct themselves with Nature. What do you mean, 'what if there is a thunderstorm?'. Oh alright, they can have a Shed, but only to wait in while the thunderstorm passes."

Tiger. Taking a year to begin Latin A-Level online with Cambridge, while teaching herself Ancient Greek, Old Norse and Anglo Saxon. She notes Cambridge University "has some very interesting courses". High achieving academic goals are both her strength and weakness: if she gets less than 90% from her online Latin tutor, then all is lost and, in Tiger's view, proves she's not able. We parents are working on this, while wading through her piles of papers on Runic and Phoenician scripts, to achieve perspective.

Otherwise, Tiger loves Art, and has composed lovely sketchbooks which improve all the time. But no local Sixth Form offers Latin, Anglo Saxon and Art. She may settle for conventional A-Levels in History, Art, Something else, and continue to teach herself at home.

Shark. Gets up early each morning to attend a local Sixth Form College for conventional A-Levels: Physics, Biology, Maths, Engineering. Shark chose this route and, despite my whining, she has our complete support! But we are all experiencing the Culture Clash. Shark cannot believe how much is done for kids at school. "They don't even have to look up the Specification!" (I am reeling over the cost. Blimey, if anyone tells me how state schooling is free but home ed is expensive, then I have no response for you, except the evidence of my own bank balance.) Otherwise, continuing to enjoy Sea Cadet / marine life, even when we are the furthest point from the sea in all directions we can get.

There you have it. Three very different people making their own decisions! Just think, if it had all gone wrong, we could have had three children with suppressed ambitions, facing futures they never chose with passion, or simply bullied into changing life goals, each being told to fill in the UCCA forms, whether they wanted to or not, then doing so only because they couldn't think of anything else to do, and anyway, 'everyone else seems to be doing it'.

Hurrah for choice! Yes, your world still needs Artists, Scholars, Engineers, and people whose life goals include living off-grid in a wood.

The IAM course

I am learning to drive, second time around.

The first time I learned to drive was London, Hanger Lane Gyratory. Good training for Bletchley High Street, where I passed some sort of test in the 1980s. But since then, I have driven everywhere in third gear, badly.

So I thought I would learn it all again. I am now sitting with an observer on a weekly basis taking the Institute of Advanced Motorists course. I pore over videos like this. Then quietly slip out to have a go at my parallel park.

I totally recommend the IAM course, if you have any type of nerdy streak, any type of compulsion to get things right, or have children rising 17 about to hit the roads and you - parent-driving-teacher - are scared witless at the thought of sitting next to them while you approach an actual roundabout.

There are just a few obstacles causing me difficulty.

Left and Right. These two are quite confusing, are they not? So when the observer says Right and you turn Left, there is an awkward moment while we all work it out.

Directions in general. When the Observer says, Follow the road to Buckingham, I think, Where the hell is Buckingham? I know we're now only 3 miles from it, and it's around here somewhere, but unless I drive at it on my normal road, I have no idea whether to turn left or right. Embarrassing. Especially when part of the course is learning to observe the road sign you just drove past.

The commentary. Advanced drivers are supposed to say things like Accelerate. Third gear. Pedestrian. Dog on lead. Mirror check. Limit level increasing. See how concise it is? I am getting the hang of it. At the moment I am more in the way of, Accelerate, ooer, are you sure? What gear am I in? Oh dear I can see a Pedestrian. Ha! They have a dog on lead. It's not going to leap into the road if it's on a lead. Unless they have an extending lead. They are downright dangerous. Does that dog look a bit sad to you? I can see them in my mirror now. Was I supposed to Give Way back then?

Driving round for an hour in the car worrying about the planet. Because, on an IAM course, you're not driving from A to B with a purpose, you're driving the route A to B for the sake of it, just in a smarty-pants way which does not end upside-down in a ditch (an incident which we passed on my second time out). I force myself to quell my worry about my extravagant use of fuel, mostly by consoling myself that my bad old ways of driving in third gear was the most wasteful I could get.

Conclusion: It's consoling, comforting, and makes you a more aware driver. As in, did you ever know those things about kerbs? I have driven past kerb sides for 30 years without ever realising they come with their own stories. So yes, an IAM course would make a great Christmas present if you're stuck* and have ever wished your fellow-driver would slow down, speed up, take that corner more precisely, miss the dog, not crash the car, or be able to tell you stories about the kerb.

*I am not an ambassador and this is not a sponsored post, I am just in the middle of starry-eyed enthusiasm.

Advice to my daughters

I have been listening to Susie Orbach on Radio 4 In Therapy.

This is an all-fun road trip into the human psyche!

But it is undeniable that she helps me narrate my day's emotional baggage. (In my handbag-of-life today: slodgy grudge; sharp resentment; a slice of injustice/righteousness; a spike of pure hatred with extra acid attached; a weak diluted combo of humanity juice; offal slop; dash of tenderness and wistfulness. Yours?)

But, after thinking long and hard about life and all its wisdoms, I emerge with three bits of gold for you, my daughters.

Girls, three gold lumps should be enough; you can have one each and share them out when the going gets tough.

1. Have you noticed this? The pair relationships that endure are the relationships where you can change, and you both allow for that change; where you both can renegotiate how you live. In a changing relationship that endures, you can work out a new normal, and find something you want; something you can grow with.

Like your mother and father! We have nearly put each other under the patio on more than one occasion, but we are still here, together!

But listen, I realised how important this is - that relationships must change - with my own mother, when our relationship took a new turn after you were born. The fact that the Grim Reaper decided to then carry off your new Granny almost immediately is one of life's cruel injustices: we had a new relationship to negotiate, mother and daughter, and we never got that chance. But the fact that I knew we would both manage that readjustment gave me the knowledge that, despite everything I'd said aged 13, it was a pretty strong relationship we had.

Conversely, if your relationship changes, and you don't like it, can't say anything about it, feel it's all gone wroong, maybe know in your insides that you can't handle that change, then chuck it in; it's run a course, and things aren't going to get better. Maybe that relationship was based on one dimension: mutual interest, a short-term goal, lust, the pairings of enemies against a greater threat, whatever. It won't last. Go and create a relationship that can change as you do.

2. Be true to yourself. You have a moral code, albeit one that you might argue with, make compromises towards, try and ignore, pretend ain't there. It is there, and you will know when you cross it, because you do violence to your own being. It's too simple for me to say 'don't cross your own boundaries', but if / when you do, then know it, forgive yourself, and make redress with yourself to bring yourself back to a state you can live with. Don't lie to yourself or make excuses. Be honest. Call a spade a bloody shovel, and if you've used one of those to bury anyone, better fess up. Also, go and see Hamlet, and contemplate how you might have made a less bloody ending.

3. If you do blunder about the world, heaping humiliations and miseries upon your own head and the heads of others, then know this: we will always be here for you, we elderly parents, for as long as we are standing, perhaps together, for which refer to Gold Lump 1. You are our tribe, and tribe members look after their own. We will look after you*, and we expect you will look after us. Think what your Granny would say! Blood is thicker than water. (And don't make me spill either.)

*Unless, as I have cautioned you, you choose to become a drug taking lady of the night, in which case you first will have a lot of explaining to do.

'Good fun' Probably doesn't make for a great story.

Tuned in to Radio 4 just in time to hear the miserable child saga which leads to this week's Children in Need appeal.

Today, Skye is experiencing yet more misery with feckless irresponsible parenting: the bonkers dad (not even a 'real' parent) now attempts 'home school' with some conspiracy theories based around 9/11.

The drama depends on it - listeners who live in Mainstream Land where children are looked after, schools are safe community places where people care, and school dinners are free - expect 'home school prison', don't they?

Give us a drama, a book, a talk, an article, and the moment that trigger is given - home schooling - then we good, attentive audience all know what's next! Feral, chaotic, uncaring; starving neglected children and a lot of running away.

Incidentally, Skye and Dexter do a lot of running. I could say, well, at least this feral chaotic life is keeping her physically exercised. Imagine her peer group. They haven't run anywhere for days. They all sit at desks for hours because the school playing fields were sold.

Yes, take my tone as: I am wearily unsurprised. Home education - or, to give it the 'official mainstream label of home schooling' - is once again the casual, stereotyped meme of child deprivation. A means to an end in a saga of misery.

Tiger, Squirrel and Shark would probably give different interpretations to the words, 'home schooling' and 'home education'. As would the hundreds of kids in our community who have been, um, outside Mainstream Land, yet - get this! - happy, looked after, fed, living in the world, able to choose their own paths, not bullied, not abused, not beaten up, not taught conspiracy theories by feckless druggies with mad dogs, but just, um, educated.

What we home educators need, is a bit of help in this cultural loading of stories, books, plays and articles.

At the moment, it's all stacked against us. We don't often get stories telling Mainstream Land about our good bits; we usually get teen dramas where we are given roles as folk devils and ne'er do wells. Where home educating parents are uninterested and uncaring, where kids who don't go to school have no idea about social values.

We got a heroine of sorts in the form of Mina, child in David Almond's Skellig. Mina didn't go to school but was 'home schooled' (even though there was no evidence of school, only evidence of autonomous education, so wrong label); but she was still represented as being very much alone and outside society. Hmm. Home ed kids have lots of friends. The friends they have are in a different world than Mainstream Land, that's all.

Home Ed Land has greater mobility and flexibility; friends move in and out, move away, appear and leave. Friendships can be short-term and intense as they can be long-term and enduring:  Tiger, Squirrel and Shark have grown up with friends from age 5, and still dearly miss Short-haired Bee who left for Scotland. It's different, or it's just the same, I expect, to Mainstream Land. I dunno. Discuss at your leisure.

But if you are spreading some cultural knowledge in this week's misery-fest of the 'home-schooled' Skye, then please, remember, home education needn't be a short handle grab for misery, exclusion, despair, pain and child neglect. Tell some stories where - after all the difficulties we parents face and the negative assumptions made about our kids - home education can be just simply, quite good fun and a great choice in life.

Parents evening

What are you supposed to say, as a parent, at school parents evening? What should you not say?

Dilemmas like this go right over my head.

As any reader know, I have no courtesy and not much politeness strategy. I have, however, sat on the other side of the desk. As teacher, I have said things like, Tinkertop is a delight to have in the classroom! or Tinkertop is a proper little madam, but now I've met you, it all makes sense.

But tonight I am Parent! And as parents, we start off with Design and Technology.

Pause, while I recall the interviewing admission tutor, refusing to enter Shark for A-level on the grounds that she is home educated and therefore five years behind. (Grudge number 567, Volume XII, CP 25/2/1321/2.)

But Shark talked her way onto this course, and we learn she's looking at an A-grade, probably thanks to her oblique home ed perspective, so we can move on. No real problem either with Physics and Biology. I have been waiting for Maths. Where there is a big problem, and it's called The Maths Teacher.

Now what do you do, you parents? Because I cannot just sit there and shut up. At home we hear a constant complaint about Maths Teacher.

Shark's report is that they are disorganised, don't give any appearance that they're actually interested in maths, writes up stuff wrong on the board to be corrected by the class, dismisses student problems, and fails to answer questions with clarity. Shark is worried that, if she relies on Maths Teacher, any higher grade is under threat.

So that's more or less what I tell Maths Teacher. Then I ask how they are going to attend to organisation and pay attention to detail? By the end of five minutes I am tapping the desk pointedly asking for a different teaching approach in the class, with Dig wading in with questions like, What is the point of daughter coming to school?

I would just like to say, at this point, that I used to dread parents coming in like this. But unlike Maths Teacher (got defensive) I knew that I deserved a telling off.

Because, by the requirements of the day, I was dreadful, and a thoroughly useless teacher. My teaching fell far short of what was sanctioned. I was supposed to teach a National Curriculum approved anthology of poetry, so I locked it in a cupboard and instead put a broken umbrella on the floor with an old tin can and a crumpled newspaper, then assaulted everyone with metaphysics. But at least I had the self-awareness to know that the style of teaching I wanted to do was not the type of teaching that the Ofsted-approved world was moving towards. So I left.

But I do not expect Maths Teacher to change, despite us giving them an E grade. I don't expect them to suddenly find any passion in maths, either. They are one of those long-serving bodies who are ill-equipped for any other career, without much reflection on the job they do, and failing to see, or care, whether they are inspiring any child within a 50-mile radius. They are in it for the next 15 years to retirement. Even in my short teaching career I could spot them, and surely other parents can, too.

Meanwhile, Shark is planning a Maths self-teaching schedule at home.

Selling the church lecturn

I reproduce this here, since some of you are local.

I bought this church lecturn, not from a vicar with a problem, but from a secondhand shop specialising in curios.

I thought this lovely oak lecturn would be BRILLIANT, placed decoratively in our late Victorian house, holding up the Family Diary - which is the same as the Bible in our house. You want to suffer for all eternity with Satan and his little pixies? Then mess with MOTHER'S DIARY.

Just look at it! It is ELEGANT, SIMPLE, and DELIGHTFUL. Really, I cannot say when it dates from, because it is a simple style; non-fussy, a generous tilted top, and with a discreet rim to hold your big books; height measures 47ins up, floor to front, and 52ins up floor to back. About chest height on a medium sized person. PERFECT.

But the lecturn was too big for the hallway.

This is the problem with fantasy, is it not?

You tour the junk shops and salvage yards, convincing yourself it will fit, if only we move the anchor.

I moved the lecturn into the kitchen, which it immediately transformed into a restaurant. And it still didn't fit.

Then I moved it to the front room. It stayed there for a while, positioned elegantly in the front window, until someone knocked on the door thinking we were something to do with the council and where could they get new bins?

I moved the lecturn into the children's room - but whipped it out sharpish when they started using it to hold up knitting - and I moved it into a corner of nowhere, where it has sat in the dark feeling sorry for itself.

Now! I bought a printer's box, so the lecturn has to go!

But I think it would look very lovely in your home. I'm not peeping through your windows or anything, just saying I think you are probably the person with enough style and presence needed to own this beautiful piece, and have it in your home, holding up your most beautiful and treasured book.

If you want my lecturn, let me know. I do no deliveries. And I'm not wrapping it up for the post. For collection only.

Difference? Home ed and illegal schools

Branwen Jeffreys on BBC Radio 4 Today spoke clearly: an illegal school is a setting where more than five children are present 'full time' (I assume the boundaries of school guide her education reporting, so she means kids are at the setting between 9am to 3pm).

Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of schools - who quite rightly is concerned about public money being used to place vulnerable children in unregistered centres with poorly-qualified staff - then went on, at the end of the piece, to gloss it all, home education.

I would just like to point out that Home Education is NOT the same as an illegal school.

Here are TWO DIFFERENCES. They are Great Big ones.

1. Home educators draw no public money to home ed our kids.

2. Home educators do not send kids to a centre for 6 hours a day Monday to Friday.

Michael Wilshaw knows what he is saying, when he uses the term 'home education' to mean all education provision that is not mainstream. He knows the difference between home ed and illegal school settings. But he hopes that you don't.

Because what's on his immediate wish-list is Registration for every child. You may want this approach or not - it's up to you to argue your point of view - but to advance his agenda, Wilshaw should have the decency not to lie to you. There is a difference, and he knows it. But he would like to make you think that home educators are doing something illegal, dirty, dangerous, and wrong.

Now, if you want to know more, then know the debate in home ed land about the use of public money to fund home ed.

Some home educators argue that we should receive state help for exams, text books, syllabus provision, tutors, invigilation fees. It can be frighteningly expensive, depending how you do it. Seven hundred quid to get three kids through their Global Citizenship course, and roughly a hundred pounds each child for each exam, means I haven't bought a new pair of shoes since 2002. (Barnardos charity equips us all at £1.99 a pair.)

In my view, if we accept state money for exams, then we also allow the state to scrutinise us in our home, tell us how my kids are to learn stuff, and dictate their rates of learning. That would cut a fundamental freedom of choice - which we all enjoy - about how to live our family life. My kids have learned most of their stuff autonomously, with some structures as they've needed: they study for an exam in one year, not two, and if their study means spending most of the day in a field, then that's what they need to do. I trust my kids to learn the way they need.

Let's just say, the debate about whether home educators should accept state money will continue, for sure.

The second point - sending kids to a centre for 6 hours a day and assuming this is 'home education' - is frankly a bizarre thing for Wilshaw to claim, and it shouldn't stand up to any scrutiny at all. One of the reasons people pull kids out of school is to free them from this constraint. This blog has been fairly typical of many home educating styles, and how many days were there for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to see the same setting?

But Mr Wilshaw, you know we use the mantra, The World is our Classroom. It is about as far away from the concept of school setting that we can get. You know this. My request to you is, whatever your aim, to get it, at least be decent. Don't lie.

In love with a soup maker

Yes, a soup maker. Soup Maker is not a metaphor. Not a metaphor for a naked man wearing one of those PVC aprons with cursive writing over his delicious middle, like 'souper douper soup maker'. That is fantasy only, and one cannot be in love with fantasy.

What I am in love with, is an actual soup maker, as in a kettle-ish machine with an On button and a whizzy stick for blending. This is Love as in Need.

Because with only a potato and a carrot, I am conjuring wondrous home goodness for Shark and for me and for everyone who wants delicious soop from a thermos at any time of day!

In the nature of all new love-struck yearnlings, I want to share my love with you. Here are my favourites.

Add to all below a goodly amount of the finest sold by ethical enterprise, Daily Bread Co-op. The delicious Marigold. (The stock, not a rubber glove.)

Sweet potato and ginger
My absolute favourite. A huge sweet potato and a thumb lump of ginger.

Pea
Potato, onion, big lump of frozen pea.

Celery and cumin
Potato, celery, cumin.

Sweetcorn
Tin sweetcorn, onion, potato

Red pepper and garlic
Potato, red pepper, garlic.

Old Familiar
Yesterday's dinner, with added water and rubber glove. Today, it was yesterday's pearl barley and yesterday's suede.

Vegetable
Anything in the fridge, or grown in the veg patch. (Not much there. Those carrots were puny! And the slugs ate the cabbage.) But! I acquired four bags of kale from Tesco bins at 10p each, thus ensuring tomorrow's soup contains kale.

Carrot
Potato, carrot, something from the spice shelf, best before date.

I think we have the hang of this now.

All I can say is, buy a soup maker! It is one of those things in life that you think DUH, I am not an IDIOT. I can make soup ALREADY! But then! When you actually have a loverly soup maker, I guarantee that life is made easier. I simply stick the soup in a thermos and leave it on the kitchen table. Lunch is sorted.

PS. to anyone who thinks they might be able to make money from this post because you can get me to review soup makers, don't bother. I will be a sad disappointment*. As in, I can't recall the brand of the one I bought at Costco, even while I am in love with it. I think it's a Russell Hobbes, but don't push me and I can't be bothered to go and look.

*I do however accept free bags of chocolate with no strings attached.

The pointless misery of the school English class

Okay Shark! You've had nearly two months of this! You can see now why I home educated. To make DAMN SURE that in the morning you could wake up with Rowling and Pullman, in the afternoon carouse with Chesterton and Dickens, and in the evening, go out with Shakespeare. And THINK NOTHING OF IT.

Because to my way of thinking, this is what your reading should be about - the freedom to wander about life, history, cultures, and everything in between. No book on the shelf is banned and I never set reading lists. They are pointless chronicles of misery and guilt. Read what you damn well like.

So the school is unpicking my intention, obviously. That is a purpose of these institutions: to separate children from family cultures. You can say that's a good thing, or a bad thing, or an it-depends-thing. Have your own debate.

But they are using the following means.

1. Telling you you must do English. It is non-negotiable.
When asked why? because Shark has been allocated, at 6th form, a resit class, when she's not a resit student and already has a pass at IGCSE in English Literature, so she already meets the requirements for prior attainment, she is told it is for 'a lot of complicated reasons'. Which basically means, we're fobbing you off with guff so you submit to us. Guess what, Mrs and Mrs School? Shark now says she hates English. THANKS FOR THAT.

2. But the English teacher doesn't turn up.
Because there isn't one! Well, a new appointee did arrive for one week. Then decided the job wasn't for them. Maybe they had a breakdown. Maybe they fled the country. Who knows? We all know how unstable are English teachers, coming over a bit Blake and Quincey.

3. The cover teacher turns up.
And they can't give a fuck. They teach History. But from the skool's pov ... English - History, History - English. It's all the same, innit? Words, words, words. Anyone can do that! Dear Mrs and Mrs School, you are sending out a message that English? It's just that thing you MUST DO. Nothing special.

4. The cover teacher changes every day until a temporary teacher is hired bloody asap.
Oh! We're 6 weeks into the term and no-one learned Shark's name because there's no point.

5. Shark has been picking up work from the office.
What is the point of this? she asks. No-one collects it, no-one marks it. It is just stuff you must do.

6. Aha! Someone talks to her!
Admittedly, I have to email the school to find out 'what syllabus she must be put on for complicated reasons', and at the end of it, she finds out it's Of Mice and Men. This is a book we've read in our Home Ed Reading Group! But Shark does not want this dragged out for 6 months while we all slowly die of pain. Her critical opinion of this text is that 'it is depressing, especially the second time round', which I agree is fair enough. I have told her to answer a question on another book when she gets to the exam. Meanwhile, dig your fingernails into the palms of your hands. That worked for me, with Ezra Pound.

7. Why does school assume all students can't be bothered?
Now this really PISSES ME OFF, Mr and Mrs School. In my experience, what you assume is true tends, in time, to become true. Standing on my soap box - which already levitates, powered by moral righteousness - I have assumed all my children are brilliant readers capable of reading everything from Dostoyevsky to Joyce to Dos Passos to Anglo-Saxon riddlings, to I Love Dolphins. Hey! GUESS WHAT? Admittedly, some authors are yet on the shelf, waiting to be found, but IT WILL COME TRUE. Such is the power of that assumption. It's only a matter of time. So why, why, why, do Mr and Mrs School assume the people - the same people they are charged with inspiring and inflaming with reading passion - cannot be bothered, so must be lectured and nannied and hectored. Really, now they got the very people they made.

So soon after this short blast of school, I can feel Shark's reading pleasure recast as a drag and a chore and a problem.

Mr and Mrs School, you are damaging and downright dangerous. If I ever had times of doubt about the venture of home education, then two months with you has made me dispel all my doubts. We did the right thing. And I hope that when Shark is done with your miserable experience, that she bounces back to normal, and wants to wake up with Austen, all over again.