Free-range kids

When we arrive home in England, it'll be harder to do what we've done here.

Yell to Shark, 'See you later!' listen for the reassuring slam of the front door, then settle down with a beer and Henry IV. She was gone for six hours.

This is great parenting. This is realising the independence of kids by edging them closer to the nest edge, then delivering a swift rear kick over the threshold.

And what a relief, watching them go! We come from Small town, remember, where low-level assaults, muggings, vehicle damage, vandalism, and simply making your town a worse place to live by pissing in your lobby are all average weekday pursuits.

But here, I'm watching Shark go and breathing a sigh of relief. I'm not worried. I can't say there's no crime, but there's no threat on the streets, and I'm not surprised I hear the English expats say they raise kids here because 'it's safe'. I know what they mean. You can let the eight-year olds wander off, reasonably assured that in the road outside they won't be knocked over, kidnapped, stabbed, or be turned into a crazed alcopop junkie head.

It's the same with Squirrel, too. Last week I kissed her fluffy head goodbye amidst two hundred thousand people surging through a Hong Kong shopping mall, then said, 'Call to tell us which ferry you'll catch'. She nodded and disappeared, almost immediately, weaving her way over Hong Kong to find her favourite library corner. I knew she'd stack up a pillar of books, stay put, read her way through the pile until her tummy rumbled. Remembering the promise of spaghetti, she'd rewind her route, catch the ferry, and forget to call.

Shark and Squirrel say they love this independence. They love moving about the islands on their own, making meeting points, accepting a few spending dollars, slipping a mobile phone into their pockets, and being left alone to get on with it.

But what's the betting I won't be able to kick the kids out in England on a school day?

It's not only the random muggings that worry me back home. Not only the overflowing skips, local hobos and empty cans of Stella rolling down the back lane. No, it's the community police and EWOs. They'll be out in force, crawling the neighbourhood, sniper-hunting any kid, Mon-Fri, 9-3.

In my humiliating experience, they don't give a stuff whether a kid's escaped the institution, or whether they're the cute alternative-educated Squirrel, skipping innocently to the library. In Squirrel's mind, she's returning Unicorn in Danger! on the due date to avoid the 15p fine. In the head of an officious CPO, it's an opportunity for righteous family intervention on the basis of poor parenting and child protection.

Next of course I'll fear the Daily Mail. How will it read in the Daily Mail? If I were to tip Shark out of doors to go play on the rec for five hours come Monday morning? So-called 'home educated' child wanders streets while neglectful beer swilling mother lives in squalor.

Then what's the betting I'd run into women like Jilly, policing the local school gates and toddler groups. The type who reckons it's a crime to let your kid touch a toilet roll or look at a non-organic grape. They feed on horror stories about children being kidnapped and locked in car boots.

And England, what have you done there? Brought CCTVs to local street corners, created a fear of kids, trained teachers to never apply a plaster without attending a safety course and completing the approved paperwork? How else can you bring about the feeling that someone's watching you; someone disapproves; someone's sure it's illegal. In that culture, what's the likelihood that an ignorant neighbour will pick up a phone to make a complaint about kids out during school hours?

So, Shark, Squirrel, and the home-girl Tiger. Take my wise parental advice, and get out the door while you can. Enjoy your roaming freedom while it lasts. It may last only while you're in Hong Kong.

Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve

For a moment, walking the forest path, a crunch of leaves and a smell of earth, I can't recall where I am. My feet are treading somewhere. I think, I am overlooked by those mature trees, I see the layering of green woodland, the spindle branches, fallen leaves, pale blue beyond the trees: I am in England, and those ferns are Northumberland, then the hillside, sliding steep towards a river, pooled in cold grey mists, puts me close on the footpaths of Cragside.

The children run backwards and forwards, complaining about sisters, slipping their fingers in and out the picnic bag, ripping apart bread and stuffing crumbling chunks into their mouths, saying, Mummy, hurry up, you're so slow. You take forever.


But it can't be right: the way the boulders have tumbled, the sharp turn of the track, the wax coated leaves. The air isn't right, not cold enough for March, a misshapen bark on a tree, too thin, is hung with broad green leaves of a type I can't place. My footfalls are all wrong too. Here is a click at the hips where I should be fatter and rounder. By rights, I should have no memory of these strange loose clothes.

I hear the children, gone ahead. They're brought to my sight as the leaf-covered trail gives way to a broad grey, concrete road, familiar with storm drains and marked with signs, and I know where I am. Remembering, telling myself it's no disappointment, that now I have imaginings to hoard, I watch the children. They're already here by a pond, feeding fat yellow and black fish with bread dangling from sticks, laughing under the rattling and creaking of bamboo.

And another thing

That's a strange idea about kids educated from home: they're unlikely to take part in activities if the parental interest doesn't lie there.

Eh? That doesn't work, does it? Take sports.

The gym, I like. The kids think I'm crazy. But I'm not interested in ballet and Squirrel did three years of the torture. I have no particular interest in sailing either, but Shark loves it. And Tiger! Great snorty horse creatures are the stuff of my nightmares! Tiger, she loves them. In England, she regularly and happily sits on a horse, while I sit in the car and happily test the chocolaty bits of digestives.

I don't think I'm alone. I think there are thousands of educating parents out there - school-choosing or otherwise - who encourage their kids in one sport or another while themselves disguising active loathing.

Each week they probably suffer miserably by the sides of rugby pitches, or feel excluded and marginalised at dance classes, or desperately try to weasel out from any parental involvement of school sports days. We still turn out, cheer on, and face up to it all.

But what choice do the children have, especially if it's a school-bound sport?

Of the alternative educating parents I know, one common bond we have is our shared experience of horrible times with sports at school. It makes us all the more determined that our kids should choose for themselves what sports to do, and that their choice should be enjoyment and involvement.

When I was a kid I loved swimming. The swimming pool was one of the first places I went to independently; I can recall the thrill of catching a bus there alone for the first time; every week I imagined myself in training for a triumph great and glorious, even though I was a terrible swimmer and a competitive no-hoper. It didn't matter to me. I adored it all.

Then I attended a school where swimming was a compulsory part of the curriculum. Within a year I was terrified of it. As the hour approached, so did the panic attacks, sweating, shaking, stammering. It was nothing but fear and humiliation. With water. Everything that I'd loved about it, I hated. When it finished, I didn't go swimming again until I was aged 32. That's what school did for my passion.

School did that for all sports. Hockey nearly killed me. Athletics, I loathed. Netball, I dreaded. Tennis, it left largely unscathed, because the PE teacher told us we would never do much, so we may as well use it as an excuse to run about in the sunshine. I could probably pick up tennis again today.

But the worst of all was ice skating. I hated ice skating. With a hard hatred that could slice ice better than hot skates. The six ice skating lessons in 1974 were the only lessons at school from which I played truant. So catch me now, Mrs Watson.


The whole miserable experience has made me sure that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger shouldn't go through that route. But that they should choose their sports, follow their enjoyment, and engage to their comfort and ability levels. Today, we visit the ice rink. Shark wants lessons when we arrive home in England. Tiger and Squirrel already reached the level of their satisfaction.

I don't need to suffer. Ice skating is no pain to me. The kids can do any sport they want, regardless of whether I like it or not. Anyway, Starbucks does a decent coffee, and it's just round the corner from the ice rink.

Excuse me while I climb on the soap box

There's a type of glib opinion I hear. If you take the kids away from school, it's not possible to cover science.

Well, do tell me, what exactly is the state of science teaching in primary schools?

I'm coming out the back end of the primary years, and my kids have covered science in so many engaging, active and interesting ways I can't list them, but certainly in more practical ways than any school local to us could have offered.

We've scoured woods, fields, tin mines, quarries and the sewage works. We've visited the Royal Institution, Magma, countless science parks (from UK to Australia) and set the kitchen table on fire (Dig's contribution). We've watched rivers and electric storms; made clocks, bugs, soap and a mess; we've travelled chemistry, physics, stars; taken the Mad Science workshops, followed lessons, joined online groups, and chucked unicorns out of third floor bedroom windows to measure trajectory, speed, and how much of a drama queen is Blutina?

Humph.

I just had to get that off my chest.

Because I read how we can't do science again today, and by coincidence we'd just arrived home from another visit to the Space Museum.


Where we watched an imax film about mending the Hubble telescope. Shark had to explain moons to me (one more time), and Squirrel did the thing she most wanted to do in all Hong Kong (apart from trap a real, live fairy).

That is, travel the moon walk, for which you have to weigh enough. Last time they threw her off when they discovered the rocks in her pockets. This time we planned better and made sure we'd fed her enough chips, pizza, sweets and cake.


If you're going to express a view about what can't be done in home ed land, I'd suggest making it very specific.

Like, a family of home ed kids aged 5-11 cannot dissect a fish in peace and quiet if one of their number is a fishy freedom fighter making a stand for mackerel rights. Then yes, that bit is true.

All else, we can sodding well do. Alright?

From a voice of reason

Dig says, watch this. Krashen discusses coffee, bilingualism, education and books, then questions what you get if a government chooses to fund a) tests in schools or b) libraries and book projects.

Dig also suggested that the No Child Left Behind / Every Child Matters are the same package under different labels and what's to be done about that, eh? He gave the Tories a sound tongue lashing and prepared a large cheese sandwich, while I suggested fire bombing someone's offices.

Language learning

Clo is home! Hurrah for Clo and her cross Channel sister!

Clo, if you don't know, just completed six months living in France. Her new French sister now lives for six months in lovely England, learning English. You can follow how she does it, over here.

This is the proper way to learn a language. Immersion. I bet Clo has the Gallic accent, the disgusted lip curl, the shoulders-round-the-ears, all the outraged honking noises, the expression of sneering superiority, everything.

R can learn all the proper expressions I associate with the English roastbeef too! Repression, seething resentments, gritted-teeth politeness, debilitating social anxieties, angry shouting, and general fawning in the face of anyone considered vaguely upper class.

Well, Clo&R are going about language learning the right way. By living.

Prising language and culture apart; sticking a foreign language into an English classroom with 32 kids; teaching students pointless expressions like Where is the post office? instead of You want how much for a beer? they're all defeated ways to learn languages. Try and feed bush meat to a vegan. You may as well give up before you start.

Real life language learning is a much better way to acquire a language than any sterile experience dreamed up by school. I merely provide, by way of example, three observations:

I spent five years in conventional school French lessons, one in Spanish and two in Italian. I was rendered completely dumb, failed, and lip-paralysed. However, two days with eight Michel Thomas CDs in preparation for an Italian holiday and no-one could shut me up. Blinded by my own enthusiasm, I began random conversations with anyone and everyone, including suspicious taxi drivers, unwilling hotel staff, reluctant restaurant chefs, and several old men unfortunate enough to stand inside beat up city kiosks selling the Corriere della Sera. Eventually my toddler children had to drag me off an elderly woman I found in the street. Proof, that when you want to do something, you can do it. It simply didn't need years of slow pain, misery and torture.

At the first school I taught, a little kid wanted to take his French GCSE a year early because he said, 'he had taught himself at home'. This was poo-pooed by the language staff until his dad came in and 'had a quiet word' (whatever that looked like). The kid took his French exam early, got an A grade, and proceeded to teach himself A level while everyone else slogged on against the odds with comment allez-vous (like you're going to need that for navigating the Paris Nord ticket office).

At the second school I was crazy enough to join, the French language teacher had a breakdown. I briefly covered her lessons (and was advised to take in pepper spray). Her first cover lesson for the prisoners was to draw a map and a picture of a boulangerie (the type of which I distinctly recalled from a 1950s text book). The kids then had to ask each other the way to it (as if they wouldn't have the wit to see the boulangerie even when it stared them in the face). Anyway, the task was clearly impossible for anyone to do without stabbing each other. All else seemed preferable. Including Emergency Plan 1: In desperation and need to survive, put on a very silly French accent and claim I az lived in zee France then draw chalk lines all over floor, desks, and walls for the entire class to follow while yelling a droit a gauche munch munch munch le croissant donnez moi le cake. When the bell sounded (and I patted myself down to check for wounds, blood and bullet holes) one kid sped past me and shouted that was the best fucking French lesson he'd ever had. This anecdote is not told to suggest my general teaching condition (OFSTED unapproved) but to show how crap and pointless most ordinary classroom language teaching really must be.

Conclusion. School language teaching brings you only to a state of failure. Real-life language learning celebrates your success. Bravo Clo&R!

In favour of 'Um, er, well, if I explain it like this...'

Here's a great attention-grabbing article!

Reading it certainly suggests the state is following an imperative to teach the language of sexual practice to younger and younger kids. I don't know why.

I read some theorists who tell me that early sex education is as sinister as you can imagine it to be. That there is a clandestine network of pedophiles linking the judiciary, administration, education, all society, who need access to children. They need children to be as aware as possible about sexual pleasure and totally without modesty or inhibition when it comes to exchanging it.

The theorists say, of course the people who need access to kids must shift the availability of children to their favour; they must do away with social prohibitions, redefine social morality, and simply provide kids with a clinical language for sexual trade. Schools are places of social control. What else should we expect?

I read others who say it isn't pedophilia driving the course. It's money. Any child, any age, is a consumer. If society can be organised in ways that increase consumption of items we can make on a renewable basis, then every child must be made willing to take part. Making children self-conscious about their bodies, defined for them at the convenience of the markets, is merely one step along the way. Centralised markets and global brands will benefit. Kids from Japan to Ireland, via their consuming parents, can be sold must-have jewellery, branded padded bras, and three pairs of shoes for every occasion, better from babyhood.

Of course anyone can put these theories in the same nest as David Icke and his lizards. It's up to you.

Me, I feel a little resentful that the state assumes sex education is theirs by right at all. I think it's my duty. For a start, I want my children to grow up finding out about intimacy at their own individual pace, thanks very much. Not because it was already agreed at the summit on education and employability to order it on the tick-box curriculum for their year group.

Then I resent how the state behaves as if only their mechanisms are trustworthy enough to give the language of sex to my child. Actually, minister, I think I trust myself to talk about intimacy, love, sex, modesty, shyness, pregnancy, abortion, emotions, commitments. (Uh? I'm a grown up!)

But there's the point. I guess the only way a teacher can effectively 'deliver' the sex curriculum in a classroom is with the same plodding monotone used for any other anatomical circumstance, like sound vibrations banging the ear canal.

I'm bolshy. I wouldn't accept that. I want my children to hear my language wrap sex around with value, ambiguity, hesitancy, delicacy. A few ums and ers. I want my children to hear me find a way of talking, and with words that convey emotion, modesty, shyness, chivalry. I'm not going to describe sexuality devoid of those values.

I'm far from advocating ignorance. I want my children to be aware how people can talk of sexuality, from poetry to anatomy. I, as a parent, and the woman who gave birth to them, want to take my responsible place in that spectrum.

Likewise, I want each of my children to take control over their own unique places and identities within that range. I want them to take their time to find their own voices, discover their own ways of talking, and seek a language that is truly theirs. I want them to develop a language that they can feel empowered by, and be responsible towards.

Wrestling with these fundamental issues, thinking through a who-you-are, I believe is part of what makes a unique human being know themselves.

Well, you can bet this subject of sex education in school makes me feel glad that my kids don't go there. To some extent, we're going to bypass this particular problem, and do things our way, finding out as we go, what best to do, making it up. Um, as usual.

Tiger's list

Tiger brought me a list. It began, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Hamlet.

These are the plays she wants to see. She's read as many story versions of Shakespeare as she can find in the library; she says they're all good, and now she wants to see the plays.

I am delighted, over the moon, cartwheeling with joy. But I don't tell her. I nod, say okay, and treat her list as if it is absolutely normal, matter of fact, could be a shopping run. Celery, tin of tomatoes, red pepper, Macbeth.

It's not normal, of course it's not. No 11-year old at school ever came to me with a list like that. But I don't think this daughter is especially academically gifted, or precocious in her reading, or even aware that her list might surprise some people.

I think she has arrived at that list for several reasons. First, the way she's been brought up. Thanks to her education away from classrooms, she's becoming passionate about art, theatre and books.

I just handed someone ammunition. Someone will cry, Aha! not a broad and balanced education then! School would be better placed to give a child 'an all round education!'

Crap. She's an arts girl. She's unlikely, at this point, to change nature, character, and disposition to become a maths graduate. If that's likely, I'll see it and let you know. Anyway, to accuse parents from wordy backgrounds of failing to raise maths scholars is a bit like complaining that parents who are musicians fail to raise kids who are chemists; that science-driven adults fail to raise dramatists, and that Jewish parents don't raise Catholic kids. Parental outlook, attitude, education, interest, input, home culture: it all impacts massively on the child you raise.

Simply, as parents, we're bringing Tiger up to enjoy reading; anything and everything. It's not going to surprise me if she looks for challenge and interest within it, including Shakespeare. If her tastes are wide, varied and filled with adventure, all the better. My mother would read Tolstoy in the morning and Catherine Cookson in the afternoon. I want my kids to be the same; to know that freedom, that scope, that great enjoyment of reading.

But there's that list. It's so worthy! I'm sure someone will suspect that Tiger has arrived there because we have a fixed agenda, and she's been hot housed. That is one popular idea when a child is 'not seen at school'. When we're not beating up our little darlings, we restrict their liberties, present narrow world views and sit them at desks forcing them to study Shakespeare from age eight.

I can only laugh. Tiger is mostly left alone to wander about her chosen reading areas. If I'm taking any credit, I might have pointed her in that direction by library visits, reading aloud, showing enthusiasm. Then, simply by taking her to the theatre, as often as possible. (Hey! we don't have to get up for 7am starts!) That's my meagre way of a literary education at primary age.

Tiger's list is there because school isn't. Schools commit crimes against reading. They control books; restrict texts to times and places; place books in hierarchy and value; introduce some texts as difficult and others as easy. Classrooms chop up the reading process, make it laborious, bothersome, slow and painful. Children are tested for what they read; their reading must test the effectiveness of the system. This is anti-book culture; it's anti-educational.

But it's what schools must do. You cannot inculcate an atmosphere of quiet reading with a class of thirty-two, twenty minutes till playtime and a government test to undertake on Friday. It's simply not possible. They must cater for the timetable and parcel it up in testable chunks, contain the kids at either end and keep everyone busy without allowing anyone to think too hard about anything. Tiger's not had this background. If she wants to read continuously, quietly, and privately for five hours straight on her Shakespeare story collection, she can.

Finally, Tiger's got her list because she's not had to put up with other kids telling her that Shakespeare is rubbish, too hard, or pointless.

This doesn't mean she's not had contact with other kids, nor that some kids she has contact with in the home ed world might not hold those views. It is because in the home ed world we find a lot more respect for each other's passions and specialisms. Children in this world generally do not tear round the playground organising a gang to beat up the nerdy kid who wants to sit in the corner with a book. In the home ed world there is a lot of respect for individual approaches, attitudes and points of view.

So of course I took her list, said okay, and straight off was able to tick one. Macbeth is being performed by Cheek by Jowl. We visited the library, borrowed the playscript and I read the play at home (two half-days), introducing themes, ideas, characters, lines to listen for.

At the theatre, my kids were the youngest there, were glanced at, and, I suspect, one or two of the glances conveyed the impression that someone thought I obviously didn't know what I was doing, bringing young children out late at night to a performance of psychological drama, murder and consequence.

I know exactly what I'm doing. Creating a child who delights in art, books and theatres. Tiger never lifted her eyes from the stage. She, like both her sisters, was totally fixed and silent throughout, absorbing everything and, afterwards, eager to share ideas. We talked until after midnight, expressing thoughts about as much as we could think of: from the stage set to the mime actions, the delivery of lines, costume, movement of characters, to the lighting, sounds, and use of dry ice.

When I asked Tiger if she would see Macbeth again, she answered a definite Yes! Then added, And I want to see Richard III.

The real world

This is what's fantastic about living out here, in the real world. As opposed to the cossetted, controlled, risk-averse and safety-obsessed place called your local school, where a nervous head spends their day fretting about liability and insurance more than they do education. (With regret, he must therefore ban running in the playground, and the extreme sport called conkers.)

Out here in the real world, a place of practical application, plenty of imagination, and a group of kids wondering how best to spend an afternoon together, Ditta finds a box of matches, leans over the balcony, and shouts, Do you want kerosene? Then the firestarters dig a pit, load it with dried wood, and set about making charcoal. Sam the chemist teaches everyone how to cool burned items quick with sand, and Tiger's towed off twenty charred sticks as tools for her art.

Each to their own

A woman tapped my arm and said, 'I hope you don't mind, but can I ask, do your children go to school?'

I looked at her and assessed the odds that she was a member of the Chinese Secret Service. Then I looked at Tiger, who kicked the pavement to hear the concrete squeal. If the Tiger world met the school world? What would happen? Would the planets collide, explode, and all matter be sucked into a vacuum? My guess is, almost certainly, by 9am on her first Monday morning.

So I confessed and said No. No. No. No. None of these children go to school. Never in Hong Kong. Maybe later in England if they choose. A middle way to suit all parties? Possibly. Who knows? The person asking me smiled. Maybe in relief, maybe in horror.

Why not, why no school, I didn't add. But Tiger. She needs to measure out her own day. I wrestle with her mind if I'm to extract two lines of handwriting. Could I imagine the result in her head if I brought her to an hourly, daily, timetable outside of her control? Told her straight, from now on, all your time is someone else's; all your activities are brought to you by someone else. That's the nature of any conventional school system, let alone the regime in Hong Kong - a land where you sit at a desk on someone's command, return with your completed hours of homework, and obey the rule of no running in the playground.

Um. If you want to keep the world habitable, best leave Tiger in the library, that's what I advise. Leave her for five hours with the book she chooses. Or with her sketchbook; happy anywhere. Denied those, but assaulted instead by bells! noise! people! pointless stuff! I don't rate any chances of survival.

Then Squirrel, standing there waiting, swinging her fish bag. School for her? Hmmm. I wouldn't. She knows her own mind. Don't assume she agrees, just because everyone else does. She wants to know why. What is the point? Why are you asking me? Who are you anyway? When she's suffered the shocked authority reactions, reprimands, detentions, and I've suffered the attempt at humiliation and the letters home, she would seek other, non-confronting, non-conforming ways to resist and survive the schooling years. She'd emerge at age 16, not fulfilled, not forgiving.

But Shark? She'd probably achieve in school, of sorts. She'd make friends, tell anyone what she thought, get straight to the point. She'd have a ready made audience for her lecture on dolphin habitats. But Shark, school is not always the best place to shine, nor is it a place that lets you follow your own path. I've taught there. I've seen that a bright kid to survive must slowly fade. Better to hide ambitions, shush the spark, quietly take unusual interests safely home.

But there's our practical problems too. Apart from the fact that I can't dance to an institutional 6am start. Neither can Dig. It's one of where our family goes. Together or apart? Could I put Shark in school, but tell her that today I've made it so that Tiger can head to the mountains? The amah will pick you up at three. By the way, the rest of us are poking rock pools, meeting for dinner, hiking old woods, making the playdates, attending the theatre. Maybe, Shark, you could join us at the weekend, after your homework?

On that basis, school might last 24 hours for the novelty.

So yes, we home educate. No school. It suits the bolshy parents. It suits the wild child. It suits the maverick fairy follower. It suits Shark. She makes her timetable and sets her clock. She wants to take examined courses, and we'll provide them in a way that suits her, and us.

Then is home education possible? It is, of course, even in Hong Kong. It either suits your own family, or it doesn't. We've believed that young kids need time to ask questions, find out answers, and explore the world; they need the space to make a mess, scatter sand, mud, paint, then build imaginary futures.

And what's the worst that can happen if you choose this life? They didn't like the museum, gallery, or theatre you took them to? They got wet and covered with mud in the woods and the fields? They met some independent minds from all walks of life in all places? Their handwriting is terrible? If that's the worst that can happen, then consider what you can achieve together, and how it can be the best.

Why I dread the school holidays

Because isn't the language predictable?

Newspapers, magazines, radio, they've all got ideas about how parents can 'cope'. What assumptions they're making. About parents, about the role of schools, about kids.

That looking after your own children is truly horrible; it's a job for schools to do; kids are a nightmare and you can't return quick enough to the normality of packing them out the door. Apparently, two hours of Monday morning half term, and everyone must know the kids are bored already. Hot tip! Print out the accompanying voucher and treat them to a theme park!

Oh please, am I fed up now, after years of reading it and hearing it. Like every parent has a mutual shared horror or they can't be normal. In some places, I hear it's got so bad - school holidays are such a 'terror' - you can acquire a badge, proud to display that 'you survived'.

Tedious, predictable, shallow.

Roll on back to school.

Good bye, mummy bloggers

I used to belong to a mummy blogging forum. I say, used to. I still do, technically. They've got my password. But recently, I lost interest. I don't go there anymore. I haven't anything positive to post, even though I'm a mummy, and I blog.

Really, I should leave it for good. Idleness will probably overtake my resolve, and their unread messages will steadily stack up in my mail folder.

It started okay. It was a forum where women went to spill out their innards on motherhood. Because parenting is hard work, right? Shit and blood, literally. 'Things are a little traumatic here, because never having handled a baby in my life, I'm holding one right now. It's this mewling blob. The one I ripped naked from my womb while screaming. Er, it didn't come out with a wardrobe of clothes, an instruction manual, or a car seat. It's making a weird face. Any suggestions?'

Then I needed those online forums. The world I inhabited before kids was one where I was in control. I could use my own words. When I had three kids, swapped office for home, exchanged wife for mother, lost colleagues and gained health visitors, then everyone else's words defined me: a language was given to me; other people explained my experience to me; my place in society was determined and managed without me. My change of status became a world turned upside down. Meanwhile, I slowly dissolved and became invisible. That's before we get to the emotional labour. Love, loathing, need to protect, urge to abandon, desire to run, screaming to stay behind. In sum, I know how important those online triplet forums became to my knife edges of in/sanity.

But there's this particular forum. I just don't want to go there anymore. I feel it's inevitable, having watched how things have changed. What's separated me from this particular place is not only that my kids have grown older, or that I'm far away from the urgent hours of babyhood. It's proof that the online mummy world has shifted, too.

I still believe there should be a powerful sound that rings out around the world about what shit and blood and emotional anguish is motherhood. How it works, what makes it tick, what society says, how society acts. Women's voices can turn the invisible into the visible. Women bursting with their own words can effect political change; they can challenge assumptions, demand services, expose social hypocrisies.

But this mummy blogging forum. I go there and first on my screen I see, How do I increase my stats? Making your blog pay. Top tips for working with PRs. Then there's all the products to review! And yet another post on how social media can change everyone's life.

What they mean is, not life, but patterns of consumption. You can model your identity through the products you choose. You can change who you are by the items you review, by the brands you work with, by the corporates you endorse. That's not changing a life. That's not pressing for political change, or yelling at society that they can do better. That's making motherhood fit the market.

But I've lingered on, complaining a bit here and there. Then, what finally turned me off was a post about how a blogger had tried to muscle in on a PR network using an 'inappropriate' approach. The nanny voice urged all the mummy bloggers not to be so rude. They wrote, 'Don't give mummy blogging a bad name'.

So that's it. The values of the words mummy and blogging are defined and policed. A good name in mummy blogging is not about shit and blood, bringing about change, taking on politics and power. It's about approaching PRs in the right way to increase your market visibility.

I'm done on this particular forum. I'm still a mummy, and a blogger. But not at all, I think, a mummy blogger.

Thanks to Rachel

Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger look at me sternly and say, 'Mummy, never meet anyone in real life that you know only on the Internet'.

Pah! What's with the finger wagging? I know lots of people on the Internet! Of course I'm happy to meet them in real life!

Anyway, here's no danger: the person I've arranged to meet can't be a stranger. Because for two years I've read her blog, alright? She let me see pictures of her kiddo covered head to foot with sand. I know which of her shoes feels comfortable. She's wondering if it would be cool to live in Vietnam.

This is what it is, I'm telling Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger, to live in the Kingdom of Blog. We pick our paths. Let dialogue change places. Rest in someone else's space. We can come and go. Most important, we can pick the blogsters who generally don't just tell you want you want to hear. They do their own thing, observe life, tell it how it is, what it means to them. Making it easier to wave, and say, Hi! If you're passing, would you like to sit on a bus?

That's what we do today. We blog-crossers and life-tellers, US to UK, we exchange paths and saying hello, face to face. We sit together on a bus, travel up a mountain, ride a tram, walk round by a beach, eat dinner.

There, I tell the kids. What went wrong? Absolutely nothing. She didn't step off the ferry with a rolling eye and a shotgun; I didn't turn up with my face in bandages and ten police in hot pursuit. No. Everything was fine. And, thanks to Rachel, I'm now wearing a fantastic new hat.

(Tales of wall eyes and no teeth are merely part of the mythos)

But it won't pass us any exams

We take the kids to 108 Heroes: Tales from the Water Margin at the Lyric Theatre. I confess my ignorance. The plot? The characters? The settings? Like, um, what's happening now?

No one comes to grit's day for the quality of the theatre reviews, huh?

Well, I excuse myself. I write primarily to provide a record of education in case some officious little warrior from a shire-bound Local Authority gets antsy with me. I can point here and say, Yaboosucker!

So the kids liked the performance. Even though it was three hours long. That was hard work for me. But there was acrobatic bouncing on a mat. (Not by us.) Tumbling too, which was impressive to a type of fifty-year old woman who spends a long time sitting on her backside. There was ribbon dancing, intricate and beautiful costumes, dramatic makeup, and some village destruction followed by extended fight scenes with shiny swords. (Scenes which went on a bit too long for my comfort. I don't want impressionable young ladies getting any ideas.)

Then there was the main reason why I chose this one. To have the kids hear fusion music performed live. Traditional Peking opera-style singing, cymbals, drums, the instrument that goes ping! plus rock chords from a rock god. Or so I took him to be, from the coiffured and stretched-trousered young man who lounged on stage fondling a guitar, when all the women screamed. (Except me, obviously. I just went Uh?)

But it was great material for discussion. We had that alright. East-west, stage conventions, Peking theatre, fusion spectacle. It's one of those experiences where me and the kids are probably equally matched. I'm learning alongside them about the theatre of China. Stage crossing diagonals; walking while gliding; tiny steps for women; striding steps for men. The kids help me out.

It's helped our Western values education, clearly. Ironic in that the Chinese actors we watched were astonishingly young: one superb tumbling 17-year old acrobat spent the performance walking, dancing and jumping from a squat and bent position, playing the dwarf tiger.

Dismaying and uplifting. Dismaying, because this is Hong Kong China, and I bet there was a single focus goal to all those educational years. Broad? Balanced? Breadth of experience? Those don't figure so much here. But you create a young teenage acrobat capable of launching themselves across the stage from a crouching position and already specialist in operatic military parts. Uplifting too, because it's good to see professional, polished performance of any age. I'm grateful for that, respectful of the thousands of hours of hard work it took to get there, and aware of what gives in a life to make it happen.

There. Job done. Now if any little antsy warrior is looking to take me on regarding my educational provision, just try it. After a three-hour stage performance and a two-hour discussion on east-west fusion theatre, I'm so strong armed in educational righteousness, I don't need the bloody sword.

Don't come to Hong Kong for the shopping

If you have a spare day as you pass through Hong Kong, dump Zara. She's not worth it. Dump Harbour City shopping mall too, and the IFC mall. Elements shopping experience is more of the same. Pacific Place? Don't get me started.

Take the underground to Kam Sheung Road, then board the 64K bus to Kadoorie Farm. Walk up through the lower farm, round the coil of the road, through the gate; climb up into the mountains.

Everyday I realise how little I know. I didn't know Hong Kong was hundreds of uninhabited islands. I didn't know Hong Kong was pyramids of rock that rose from the sea. I didn't know Hong Kong was mountains of green. I didn't know how remote Hong Kong can feel, how beautiful it can look, two hours from Central.

I am going to be an ace tour guide!

I have begun to find out about Hong Kong guided walks. Some are very expensive, aren't they? Asking $800 to walk with you from one side of our puny island to the other.

$800! There's only one path! If I was following that walk, for $800 and one path, I would want several naked men and a decent bottle of red wine thrown in.

Then I thought, I bet that's an easy way to earn money. Being a tour guide. I could organise tours for hapless tourists and I would be rich by next Thursday.

So I have decided to start my own tour guiding business. I'm doing it right now and I'm offering a more competitive rate than $800. I have to. Dig won't strip off.

But first I must cut my teeth on this tour guiding business.

I have found a list of do's. I shall follow that. I am sure to succeed!

1. Do: Organise the meet point precisely.
Well this is easy. I sit on the ferry with a broken phone connection and I make Ditta get on a boat too and come to meet me and be experimented on.

From then, it takes only 45 minutes to locate each other in the shopping centre. Both of us hang on the telephone to follow each other round, saying things like 'I'm just passing Zara!' 'So am I!' 'We must be near each other!' 'Yes! I'm just passing City Super!' 'So am I!' 'We must be near each other!' (Repeat for 45 minutes until one of us stops at a toilet.) It only takes us one hour 30 minutes to get started! PASS.

2. Do: Give everyone information in advance about the places you will see.
I can do that! Hey everyone! We are going to the Ping Shan Heritage Trail to explore the Tang Clan!

Ping Shan? Tang Clan? It rhymes! Let's go to Ping Pong Ding Dong and find out about Bang Shang Dang! What do you mean, Squirrel? Am I being rude? Hmm. Upsetting the neighbours doesn't sound good for my business. But what about Humpty Dumpty? He rhymes. Good grief, you can't say anything these days. It's all so controversial. Very well, let's go to Ping Shan for the Tang Clan and not say Tingtong Dingdong Bingbong. PASS.

3. Do: Plan your route in advance.
PASS. Except I have never been here in my life, obviously. When you take Grit's Guides for real, of course we won't blunder about the metro looking for an exit, or take the path that looks likely. It's a dead end, stupid. We'll know what we're doing second time. Take the road, turn left by the truck stop, head to the rubbish bins. These Chinese, they know how to present a heritage trail.


By the way, I apologise for my assistant Tiger. When she faces sudden new directions she breaks out in a screaming fit.

4. Do: Tell an interesting story at each stop on your route.
EASY. Here is the pagoda! Six hundred years old!


Looks like it was built in 1992. Apparently it brings good luck. Except the top four storeys fell off in a thunderstorm. Maybe it brings good luck but only if you stand in the right wind direction, what?

And, did you know? Pagodas are Buddhist and will show you the way to immortality. Typical. We can't get in. Bloody cheek. The pagoda guard just shut the door on me then hung a sign on it, saying Meal Break. We will have to find our own way to immortality until 2pm. Never mind. PASS.

5. Do: Draw everyone's attention to interesting features as you walk.
Yes, here we are, passing the Shrine of the Earth God!


No Ditta, I don't know anything about it. Except that it is v. interesting.

And here's the walled village! Strangely reminds me of Sheffield.

Old well.

PASS!

6. Do: Add original research to your tour.
EASY EASY EASY. I can make up stuff like a proper tour guide, no problem! Ditta, you can have a flying wombat if you like. One that lands on someone's head and claws their face off. It is an evil wombat! Help us! Only the forces of good can save us now!

Ahem, apart from that type of original approach, here's stuff I nicked from a blog. I shall read it out.

'Here is the shrine of a general. He is revered as a god, because he gave up his li fe in honour of his master.'

What is that, his lee fay? What is a lee fay? I don't know what that is. It must be something Chinese. Alright everyone, listen to me explain this. I am the tour guide.

This man was very brave because he gave up his lee fay. Do you not know what a lee fay is Squirrel? Tsk. I shall tell you. His lee fay was a magic shield which had been given to him by another god who was very pleased with all that he had done in his life.

What's that Squirrel? Life? Li fe? Shut up. Don't tell anyone. I think I got away with it. PASS.


7. Do: Keep the group together at all times.
Yes Ditta found Shark eventually. What do you take me for? The type of tour guide who hasn't a clue where she's going and can't remember the faces of her own children? PASS.


By the way, here are some ancestral halls. V. old.

8. Do: Make sure all stops on the tour are accessible.
It is only a little hill! Stop whining! And how was I to know the explanation gallery at the top is locked up? Who's supposed to be organising this? Don't they know these places shut?


Squirrel, what do you mean you are copying out the map in case we get lost again. Tsk. I shall demote you in my new office arrangements if you're not careful. PASS.

9. Do: Leave time for questions.
No I don't know. Ask Dr Internet about calligraphic practices in public places 1280-1460. I'm busy, talking to Ditta about saucepans. Right, any more questions about the woks, Ditta? PASS.

10. Do: Make sure the tour ends at a convenient place for departure.
No problem. I'm sure there will be an underground station if we look a bit harder. What's that? Is it a tram? Can we catch it? I have no idea Tiger. But let me reassure you. We won't end up in Pittsburgh.

There! This tour guiding stuff is EASY. Ditta says I am very good! I made it with FULL MARKS. Well done me.

Now I am a fully qualified tour guide available for hire at only $2000 per walk. I know it's a little bit expensive but I guarantee to make your tour extra memorable when half way round I take all my clothes off.

It keeps our marriage together

Dig is back in Hong Kong. No more talk of crumbling houses and cellar mould.

I say instead, Aren't there are a lot of public notices in Hong Kong? Stand up on the escalators, Hold the handrail, Sit down, Do not climb, Do not sneeze, If you are going to sneeze, put a bag over your mouth, Stop it, Do it like this, Don't do it like that. They're always scolding you and nagging you.

Why are you looking at me in that funny way, Dig? Wasn't part of my magnetic attraction for you how social expectation brings out a defiant streak in me? Here in Hong Kong there are so many reminders about conformity that I might have to throw myself onto a railway track, just to be awkward.

I am sure he looked a little hopeful. Well next time I'm on the going-up escalator, I might deliberately try not holding onto the handrail.

Why is it like this? I ask Dig. Why don't people rebel against all this public instruction? Don't they feel impatient with being told what to do? Like this. It's only a bit of a ditch. Does it really need 15 public safety signs?


Dig says that I have got it all wrong. I am just not understanding Hong Kong China at all. Dig says, you can't read your relationship with Chinese authorities using the frameworks of an English person. You English, he says (Dig comes from Northumberland, so has debatable provenance) you think you're all individuals! You read messages from authority as if they are personal! When a politician in England says something, you interpret that as if it is meant for you. Politicians even try and use individual body parts like someone's ear as a way of relating to you.

But here in Hong Kong China, says Dig with a patient voice, the authorities couldn't care less about you as an individual. They're brutally honest about the relationship of the state to you. They tell you what you're going to do, and that's it. Be quiet. (I didn't like to say, I'm not interrupting.) If you as an individual do not fit, that's your look-out. If you fall down the escalator, why would the authorities bother? It's your problem.

Well then I decided I would put my hand back on the handrail, and sharpish.

But! says Dig, the authorities care if you take two hundred other bodies with you. They care about crowds. Do not forget there are seven million people stacked on top of each other here. So the signs are like big public statements designed for crowd control. That is how to read them.

Look, he says, what the Hong Kong authorities are afraid of. Direct confrontation with large numbers of discontents. Any direct conflict on that scale is embarrassing and threatening. Beijing would sit up and take notice, and that's the last thing anyone wants round here, because it might disrupt the business of making money. You have to see the bigger picture.

That is true, I say. It's just like when I say Stop burning the spaghetti sauce. It's like a direct confrontation to your cooking routine. No-one wants that situation, because it disrupts dinner.

Hmm, says Dig, then adds, it would be best not to assume the Hong Kong Chinese are passive. They like to show their resistance through demonstration, stern letters, public exhortation, and political non-compliance; and all of these are quieter, more understated ways than the protest you might be used to in England. (I totally deny any involvement in any violent activism, criminal damage, firebombing, window smashing, arson, and incendiary devices in the mail.)

But I figure Dig is right. This has opened my eyes to the politics of public signage. I may have to interpret Hong Kong in a whole new light. First though, I must be the individual English rebel I truly am and defy 15 safety instructions about a trench to put my foot in it.


Well, I had to report something for the day Dig returned. And the only other story I have is my sorry tale of cellar rot.

Handwriting

I saw Shark's handwriting again today. I admit, for a while, I've been trying not to look. I think I have been hoping it would simply get better, then I need never say my opinion. But I'm unable not to look any longer. I saw it deliberately today.

I tried not to blurt out what really went through my mind. It would have sounded unforgiving and a little cruel. Your handwriting is terrible! Look Squirrel, you cannot just put down a capital T whenever you feel like it! Shark, put those ascenders where they should be! Why are they creeping off down the page? Tiger, show me your handwriting. Show it me. Now.

Handwriting is a difficult one, isn't it? I do so little of it, in practice, and certainly nothing extended. Who does? But still, it seems to occupy a ridiculous place of value.

So I talked about how people judge things about each other. How handwriting seems to occupy a special place. People will understand and sympathise if you struggle with maths, or spelling, or say you're not much interested in chemistry and prefer physics. But they won't have any sympathy with you if you show them terrible mixed up handwriting, especially not as you grow older. They'll judge you, negatively, immediately. And let's not even begin that assessment they'll make about your feminine values when they see the spikiness of those letters.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger look at me, like this is an entirely new idea. So I have to continue. I say, maybe people think, if they see your handwriting, they're seeing a little peep into you. Your values, your personality, your opinions, your thoughts, the way you see yourself in the world, the value you place on your communication with others. Maybe your handwriting even conveys your spiritual self. I think it does round here. The elegance of your hand conveys the purity of you. A sloppy, messy, scruffy hand? Well, you have to improve your worth.

So I told Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, to be aware of this hazard. How people probably judge handwriting in the same way as they do scruffy clothing, tangles in your hair, the dirt line around your neck. They probably make assumptions about you; your social status, your level of education, your values, your personhood.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger listened intently, and said, That's stupid. How can anyone look at handwriting and know what someone else is like? Then they wanted to see my handwriting. I thought, that's not the point of this little talk. I want your handwriting to improve, not mine. So I tried to wriggle out of it. But they persisted. Then I copied out a whole paragraph from a book.

We all looked at it. I'm not in a position to judge my own handwriting. But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger all agreed about its impact. Maybe things will turn out alright, because they all suddenly agreed to work harder at their own.

Did six months pass already?

I count the months on my fingers, and can barely believe it's true, but we left England, and the house, in August. Looked after by friends, the house has stayed up under a battering from junk mail, rain, snow, flood. Now Dig is there, saving us from bailiffs probably, mending a boiler, certainly.

He calls on Skype, and I see him, sitting exactly where he sits in the familiar office, ill-slept and time-worn in a grey-soaked England morning, beamed to me by screen; I sit in evening time Hong Kong. There's a strange reversal for you. He has the cold house, and the boiler that rattles and bangs. I have the warm evening, crickets and birdsong.

All I can I think, is how it's true you can tell yourself the same thing, over and over, for years. I can do it, even though it becomes hard work, and some moments it's nigh impossible. Like, that house, where I lived for over twenty years, right until August. The house where I'll live again from April, that is a beautiful house. It is, I'm sure of it.

Even though, on my screen, behind him, I can see the ceiling light in the office. Is it still really there? I forgot. I hate that ceiling light. Now I remember how it upsets me, everytime I see it. I wonder, how can I imagine I missed that room, when I see that light? How can I want to live with that light again, when I dislike it so much? Who would look forward to living with a ceiling light they couldn't change?

It's not as if I haven't tried. I bought a replacement, but then I clumsily dropped a brass curtain rail on it by accident. I smashed it, even before Dig never managed to put it up. Then I resolved to do something about the ceiling light, but now it's too low down on the list of priorities. I have to face it, I might never do anything at all.

Surely more urgent is the paint peel on the ceiling and the place where the plaster fell off thanks to the leaky water pipe in the upstairs neighbour's bathroom. And the pane of Victorian glass that smashed in the beautiful oak door when the ladder fell over. The bookcase door that doesn't close. The decorative wooden lion on the mantelpiece with its chin and bottom teeth dropped off. The piles of papers over the floor that somehow no-one can ever pick up. The exhausted armchair with the straw poking out the arms; the wall lights which don't light; the cellar that's wet and crumbling; the mirror that's cracked; the walls that are grey; the unused, unplugged fax machine, gone into hiding under a yellow towel, occupying the shelf space where the printer should be. The printer sits on the floor, surrounded by boxes.

I look at the whole now. It's falling apart, more than ever. I wonder if I've done what I can do about that house. It's a house I can't realise myself inside. It's a house I want to leave. It's a house I want to live in. I must keep it alive inside my head. Dig, even though he looks crumpled and worn out with travel, he fits this house, surrounded by papers, hidden by piles of mail, sat by a desk spilling with wires, a discarded keyboard, telephones, jottings of things to do.

For six months, I've only imagined that house. Now I see it, I feel powerless to change anything at all, even a light. And it makes me sad, the thought that living with what's there, how it is, how things stand, they'll always stand. It has to be enough.

There's no way out but to tell myself this. Underneath the mess, the chaos, the hopeless prospect, it is a beautiful house. It is. It is.

More than you need to know about this subject

Shark, Tiger and Squirrel bound downstairs in a great excited hurry, and tell me they have a new pet.

My heart freezes, and if you knew what happened to the old pet, your heart would freeze too.

I tell them whatever it is, it must not be a pet, because there is a thing called killing with kindness, and to the pet it looks a lot like certain death in a bucket of water.

When I reach the top of the stairs, all the children squeal that I mustn't open the door because THE PET would be alarmed! I say it is me who is already alarmed, now show me the ruddy pet. Tiger points to an open window, where I peer out and see this.


I say that is most certainly not a pet. That is a pigeon.

Pigeons are different, I say sternly. Pigeons can never be pets. They can only be enemies who should be exterminated. Get the bucket of water.

I know the children look shocked, but so be it. A pigeon unloaded its liquid contents all over me in London in June 1982 outside Euston station. Until that moment I was wearing a stunning fitted summer dress and looked fantastic. I shall never forget the expression of horror on the face of the man standing next to me. That single moment created, for all eternity, a dark hole in my heart where pigeon compassion should be. Children, it may be sad to you, but I would happily dedicate my remaining days to executing all pigeons.

Of course the children begin to beg and plead and ask whether they can keep the revolting disgusting pigeon, the one who, if it comes one claw nearer me, I swear I will batter it to death with the bent squash racquet propped by the fridge.

No, I say. Absolutely not. To which Tiger assaults my loveless heart by bursting into tears all over my leg and saying that she has always wanted a pet and we can never have a pet and she is so desperate for a pet that she would even consider a DOG.

I look between the pigeon and Tiger and am just about to suggest they can have it as a pet for fifteen minutes and then I kill it, when Shark asks, why is it so tame and fat? And look, mama, it is ringed.

She is right. Then that confirms my suspicion. I say, calmly, the pigeon might be a homing pigeon! It is already someone's pet! It is loved already. It is merely pausing for a breather on the roof to take a break after a strenuous flap. Soon it must go home. It is now our duty to help the pigeon return to the owner who loves it.

Good, I think, this is excellent, because I can be righteous for my children and helpful and conciliatory and calm, get away with no pet and still hate the stinking pigeon, all at once.

Then Squirrel suggests we find out why we have a tame ringed homing pigeon hiding out on the corner of the roof, and here is the number she's read, so off we go to the Internet.

Oh dear.

We discover things. Like, given our location, yesterday's windy weather, and half a visible ring, this is probably not any old homing pigeon fondly cared for by an old man pottering about a shed who lost his wife but loves his pigeons.

No. This is a trained pigeon machine with serious money on its head. It is a pigeon destined to cross 550 miles with no rest, no water, no dinner. If it fails, it dies. If it succeeds, it dies. If it flaps home bringing pathetic excuses, it dies.There is no room for emotion in competitive pigeon racing.

No surprise it is hiding out on our roof. It is on the run, seeking asylum from fundamentalist pigeon racers.

Believe me, they are out there, in the Taiwanese Pigeon Racing World. I hardly dare direct you, sensitive reader, to the literature of the zealot, but if you browse Young Birds Race in Taiwan, you do not get porn. Well, unless you are unlucky enough to be turned on by explicit methods for breeding warrior pigeons to be the master pigeon race.

I look at that pigeon, hiding on a corner of the roof, knowing the future in all directions is certain death, and I say to my tender hearted daughters, more sensitive than me, Okay, you can feed it a bread pellet, then you must poke it with a stick to help it flap off and find a banana tree to nest in. But say farewell, because next it takes its chances, if not with me, then with the hungry kites.